Gravity Transformation - Fat Loss Experts
What Happens After 30 Days of Cold Showers
updated
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
As you age from 20 to 30 to 40 plus the game of building muscle changes. Some people believe that the younger you start, the more moldable your body will be, meanwhile others believe that your full muscle-building potential won't be achieved until you're at least in your 30s. Regardless, as you age you may have to start doing things differently like adjusting your protein intake, your exercise selection, your rep range, and maybe even your hormones. Unfortunately, there are many misconceptions and most people don't know how to maximize their results as they age past their 30s, 40's, and so on, so this video will help you understand what the ideal steps are as you get older.
First let me start by saying that you can definitely gain and maintain muscle well after your 30s. Sarcopenia is a term that refers to age-related muscle weakening. While muscle loss was often thought to begin in your 30s, research shows most people only start losing lean muscle mass around age 50, at a rate of around 0.4 pounds per year. (1) But this doesn’t mean that you’ll necessarily lose muscle as you age because much of that muscle loss is a direct result of inactivity and an unhealthy lifestyle rather than age. Staying lean, active, and eating healthily can delay muscle loss for many years. In fact, we can refer to a study that found that age does not significantly impact muscle growth as a result of strength training in individuals with ages from 18 to 39. (2) And even elderly individuals between 65 to 75 years of age can gain as much muscle as those in their 20s with strength training. (3) On top of that, research in high-level older athletes found no significant loss of lean body mass or strength from the age of 40 all the way to 81 years old. (4) These findings challenge the common belief about inevitable muscle loss as we age, which shows why it’s important to maintain an active lifestyle at all ages rather than using your age as an excuse.
Something else that most people don't realize is that it's mostly a myth that you'll need more recovery time between your workouts. This is mostly untrue even as you age far past your 30's and 40's. Most people can train just as often as before. While our recovery capacity can go down as we age, the decline is much less significant than what most people believe. In fact, some studies show that there's no significant difference between young groups and elderly groups when it comes to recovery capacity at all. For example, research shows that while individuals in their 60s took more time to regain muscle force than individuals in their 20s, the older group experienced less muscle soreness. (11) Another study found that individuals over 70 years old recover at a similar rate to those between the ages of 18 and 30, in the 72 hours following a rigorous eccentric training workout. The study found no differences in terms of recovery time for force production, hormone levels, and inflammatory markers. (12) And we can look at other studies that found similar results. For example a study found that roughly 50-year-old individuals recover as rapidly as those around 20 years old in the 48 hours following a high-volume isokinetic workout. (13) So, just because you’re getting older doesn’t mean you have to train less. Purely from a recovery and performance perspective, you can still get away with training regularly.
With that said one thing that you may have to consider changing to maximize muscle growth as you age is your rep range especially if your joints start to bother you. Research shows that people over the age of 30 and older individuals who lift weights experience similar muscle growth with both low and high-intensity training or in other words they can see the same results whether they're using heavy or light weights. (7) However, as you age from 30 to 40 plus, it can potentially be better to focus more on higher rep training compared to lower rep training where you use really heavy weights, and there are multiple reasons for this. One reason is age-related loss of type II muscle fibers and motor units. When you age, fast-twitch muscle fibers shrink and, over time, lose their nerve connections completely. The number of type II fibers can drop by 25-60 percent whereas type I fibers experience only a reduction ranging from 0 to 25 percent as a result of aging. Even though for most people this reduction in type 2 muscle fibers is primarily due to inactivity, aging itself is very likely to cause these changes as well. This is why you become more slow-twitch dominant when you get older. Slow-twitch muscle fibers are better at performing higher reps with lower...
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Taking creatine and protein can help you build muscle, lift more weight, and improve your overall performance in a wide range of athletic activities whether it's used for weight lifting, cardio, or sports. Many people want to start taking protein and creatine since they are natural supplements but they aren't exactly sure how it works within the body. There are also many myths ranging from muscle cramps all the way to kidney damage. So today we're going to take a journey inside the body to find out exactly what happens when you supplement with protein and creatine for 30 days straight based on scientific evidence.
To fully understand the changes and reactions that'll happen you need to understand what these supplements are and where they come from. Starting first with protein, which is one of the three main macronutrients, protein, carbohydrates, and fats. It's made up of building blocks called amino acids. There are 20 different amino acids that can form a protein and most are naturally produced within your body. However, nine of these amino acids can't be produced by your body on its own. These are known as essential amino acids and need to be obtained from food.
When we consume protein, whether it comes from plant or animal sources, it undergoes a series of transformations. First, our body's priority is to break down the protein into amino acids. This breakdown process begins in the mouth through chewing, then continues in the stomach where gastric juices assist in further digestion. After that, the partially digested protein enters the small intestine, where specialized enzymes and acids from the pancreas complete the breakdown, ultimately resulting in singular amino acids ready for utilization.
Once the amino acids are in their individual form, they are transported to the liver, which acts as a control center. The liver rearranges and combines these amino acids to synthesize the specific proteins that the body needs. Different proteins have diverse functions, such as aiding the immune system, facilitating chemical reactions, transporting molecules, or assisting in DNA synthesis.
The average person doesn't consume enough protein but it's also totally possible to overconsume it. Unfortunately, our bodies don't have a storage system for excess protein, unlike carbohydrates. So, any surplus protein that you take in will be broken down and stored as fat. During that process the liver removes the nitrogen from the amino acids, excreting it as urine, while the remaining components, known as alpha keto-acids, undergo a chemical process to form triglycerides that get stored in fatty tissues.
In certain instances such as when you're cutting calories really low or you're fasting, alpha-keto acids can be converted into glucose for immediate fuel, but your body prefers to rely on fats and carbs for fuel rather than protein which is reserved for tissue repair.
Creatine on the other hand is a molecule that's naturally produced in the body, primarily in the liver, kidneys, and pancreas. It's actually made from three amino acids arginine, glycine, and methionine. You can also obtain creatine from certain foods, particularly meat, and fish. Creatine is important for energy metabolism because it helps to replenish adenosine triphosphate also known as ATP which is the primary energy currency of your cells.
Now it’s important to keep in mind that the things that'll happen to your body when you take creatine and protein for 30 days will depend largely on how much creatine and protein you’re already consuming. In regard to creatine, the most often recommended dose for supplementation if you want the fastest results is to do a loading phase where you take 20 to 25 grams of creatine monohydrate for the first five to seven days followed by five grams of creatine monohydrate daily. While it is possible to consume five grams of creatine per day through the food you eat, it’s very tough to do for most people.
For example, 3.5 ounces of herring contains 1.1 grams of creatine, 3.5 ounces of beef contains 0.9 grams, 3.5 ounces of salmon also has 0.9 grams, and 3.5 ounces of pork has 0.7 grams. And those are the most creatine-dense foods available meaning that most foods have lower amounts. So, if you eat somewhere around 2 to 3 pounds of fish and meat every day it is technically possible to consume high amounts of creatine through diet alone. In that case, supplementing with extra creatine likely won’t deliver any additional benefits since your muscle creatine stores will already be full. But most people don’t come anywhere close to getting enough. The same thing applies to protein. If you already consume enough protein...
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Losing a bunch of belly fat in a few short weeks is not only possible, but I'm going to give you the exact framework for you to see drastic improvements in just 30 days. The truth is you can lose a substantial amount of belly fat in a few short weeks while improving your health, energy levels, and overall body composition. So in today's video, I'm going to lay out the most applicable steps to quickly burn off belly fat while retaining as much muscle as possible
Obviously, we all know that to drop fat we have to reduce our calories and eat healthy foods, and there are a lot of different ways you can do this, but in today's video I want to provide a super simple step-by-step guide that you can try without overthinking it and taking action is the biggest key to actually losing that belly fat. So the very first step that I'd like you to take is to decrease your meal frequency. And I know this runs counter to much of the mainstream advice that convinces you to eat 5 or 6 meals a day. Instead, I'd rather you try to eat one or two meals a day tops. We want to minimize not only the amount of calories you take in per day but also the amount of willpower and complexity that it takes to burn as much fat as possible.
One meal or two meals a day is ideal for this, and unless I'm actively trying to build muscle and trying to bulk up it's the way I've been eating for years. (1) You're not going to lose muscle, you're not going to slow your metabolism down and you're not even going to be hungry if you set up your one or two meals a day properly and give your body some time to adjust. The benefit of eating fewer times is that your stomach has a natural stretch reflex that indicates to your brain when you're full, so you're only physically going to be able to eat so much per meal. And I'll explain exactly what you're going to be putting in your meal if you want a super simplified approach that isn't based on counting calories at all. But before we jump into that I want you to plan on eating absolutely nothing for breakfast. A good idea is to start your day with black coffee rather than a meal because it may help reduce your appetite and most people can quickly adapt to just skipping breakfast with relative ease. If you can't wait until your nighttime meal I recommend setting up two meals per day. One sometime around lunch and the other an hour or so before bed.
The next step is to go shopping for the simplest foods that can make delicious-tasting meals that fill you up and provide the nutrients that your body needs. The general advice that I always give is to go shopping on the outside aisles of the grocery store, in sections like produce, meat and seafood, dairy and eggs, and also a few items in the inner aisles, but today I want to get much more specific to make this guide very directly applicable and straight to the point. So when you get to the grocery store start in the produce section and buy already cut-up fruit like watermelon, pineapple, and honeydew melon. You can also get some avocados in this section and you can buy whole fruit that's easy to eat and doesn't require prep time like apples, bananas, and berries. But the point is to buy things that are simple to prepare. You don't want to have to cut up a whole watermelon every time you're feeling hungry, because we want to make the dieting process as easy and hassle-free as possible it takes enough willpower as it is to cut back on the number of calories you're eating per day.
If you're starving and you run over to the fridge, you're much more likely to grab watermelon if it's already prepared rather than something else that's unhealthy in your fridge. So after produce you're going to move on to the meat and seafood section. Here I want you to get 1 pound portioned amounts of protein either salmon, ground turkey, ground chicken, lean ground beef, or chicken breast, and you can also get other seafood like shrimp, or white fish. Next, you're going to go to the frozen veggie section. I highly recommend frozen veggies over raw vegetables, because they're already cut up, they're just as nutritious, and they're so much easier to prepare. You should get some frozen bags of green vegetables like broccoli, a California mixed vegetables bag that will include carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower, and you can get a bag of mixed peppers. If your grocery store also has a stir fry option you can get that as well. Next, I recommend you get some carbs for taste, although of course, you don't have to do this. But for me, I enjoy my meals so much more with some carbs in...
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
We're told that Belly fat is unhealthy, unattractive, and based solely on eating too many calories. The common perspective is that anyone can lose their gut and replace it with 6-pack abs just by dieting and working out consistently. And while there is a lot of truth to this it's not entirely accurate and there are many things that nobody really talks about when it comes to belly fat whether it's trainers, influencers, or even doctors.
Starting first with genetics which plays a SIGNIFICANT role. Specifically, we can refer to a study from Uppsala University which found that genetic factors significantly influence fat distribution in the body. (1) The research involved nearly 360,000 participants and found that men accumulated more fat around the abdomen while women tend to store more fat on their hips and legs. Using data from the UK Biobank, the researchers identified almost 100 genes that influence the fat distribution, and many of those effects were stronger or exclusively present in one gender over the other. Another well-known factor that influences body fat distribution in men is testosterone. An older study and analysis published in the International Journal of Obesity found that “Recent studies in men have shown that abdominal fat increases with age and decreasing testosterone concentrations” (2)
The good news is that, even if you happen to be more predisposed to storing fat around your midsection, you shouldn't use it as an excuse. You still can get a lean midsection. It just might be a bit harder because your body will burn that fat only after it has burned off the fat from the rest of the body. If you are more likely to store fat around your midsection you'll first likely burn the fat from your extremities like your hand's feet and face. Next will be your arms and legs and eventually it should come off your hips and belly. Since your body's preferential fat storage patterns are likely different than someone else's I always say you should compare your results to yourself only by measuring with a tape measurer, a scale, and how you look in the mirror. As long as you are making progress regardless of how small keep moving in that direction and the belly fat will eventually come off.
Another myth about belly fat that has been increasingly coming to light is the myth of spot reduction. Even though far fewer people believe in this nowadays there are still countless people in every gym around the world doing crunches right now believing that they can target and spot reduce their belly fat. But especially lately the academic world has made it crystal clear that you can't shed belly fat solely through ab exercises. For example in a study published in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, participants engaged in four hours of ab training per week for six weeks. Yet, despite their hard work, the ab exercises resulted in no significant belly fat loss or overall fat reduction in general. The researchers concluded, “There was no significant effect of abdominal exercises on body weight, body fat percentage. . . abdominal circumference, abdominal skinfold, and suprailiac skinfold measurements.” To put this into simple terms, chasing a toned and trimmed midsection by only performing endless crunches and sit-ups is essentially a complete waste of time. Instead, your primary focus should be on your diet. Make sure that you’re in a calorie deficit, that you're eating real unprocessed foods found around the outside aisles of your grocery store and you should also be getting enough protein while performing resistance training at least 3 to 4 times a week. That’ll help you get rid of belly fat while maintaining muscle mass.
Next, you probably don't know that Vitamin D has a direct connection to belly fat. That's right studies have found that individuals with lower levels of vitamin D tend to have higher levels of belly fat and larger waistlines. (5) Vitamin D is produced in the skin upon contact with sunlight and it plays many important roles in the human body which is why its been linked to protection against heart failure, diabetes, and cancer. However, the crazy thing is that Over 40% of the US population is vitamin D deficient, which some authors call "an ignored epidemic." So you're probably thinking Why does vitamin D cause higher levels of belly fat? Well, even though we need more research to say for sure there are a couple possible reasons for this connection. First, vitamin D is involved in the regulation of insulin....
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Adding muscle to your arms makes you look stronger, fitter, and more attractive so here are 3 tips to grow bigger arms fast. First, it's critical that you apply progressive overload. To do this select a weightload that makes you hit failure somewhere between 7 and 10 reps. Once you can do that weight load for 10 reps without failing you need to up the weight. This will cause you to hit failure at a lower rep count like 7 reps. Then work your way back to 10 reps with that heavier weight load and repeat this process over and over again over time. Next, make sure you're in a calorie surplus by using a macro calculator online and by tracking your calories at first. Make sure you're getting about .73 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight and the rest of the surplus can be evenly divided between carbs and fats. Finally, you'll also want to incorporate high-rep supersets to maximize fatigue, especially at the end of your workout. An example is to do heavy barbell curls anywhere from 7 to 10 reps and then immediately follow up with light preacher curls for 20 reps before taking a break and repeating that for 3 sets.
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
If your abs aren't showing after doing tons of crunches and eating clean it can be very discouraging. Being stuck at this in between phase where you have a slim waist but either no abs or just a faint outline of the top two abs, is actually a very common problem but by fixing the issues that are preventing you from seeing your abs you can quickly start making progress towards a more defined looking midsection with abs that clearly show.
So lets start with the most obvious issue which is body fat percentage. The amount of fat you have on your body will play one of the biggest impacts on how visible your abs are. Unfortunately the belly area is one of the last spots to drop fat so you'll see fat reduction from your face, hands, and arms long before you see it coming off your stomach. The key is to be consistent with your diet and to stick to a calorie deficit made up of healthy single ingredient foods for long enough for the fat to start coming off of the areas close to your center of mass. No matter how hard you work your abs of you have a layer of fat covering your abs your abs are just not going to show. Now you mightve been told to get your body fat percentage under 12 percent as a man to see your abs, but this exact measurement strategy is flawed. Some men will start seeing well defined abs at 14 percent and others will have to cut more body fat.
This is due to the fact that different people have different bodies that have different preferential fat storage patterns. So if your body loves to store and retain fat specifically around the midsection you'll have to cut down further than someone who primarily stores fat around his hips. The solution to this is to once again stay consistent with reducing calories by eating healthy calorie dense foods like lean sources of protein, veggetables, and fruits for long enough until your body fat percentage is low enough to have thise abs pop out more. Now if your diet is good and you're starting to get lean you could be making many different mistakes during your workouts that prevent your abs from growing properly. For example one of the biggest issues I see with ab workouts is that most people don't use enough weight to train their abs and instead they perform way Too Many Reps. This belief that you should train your abs with high reps stems from the false idea that they are slow-twitch fiber dominant. And the best way to stimulate slow twitch fibers is with a lot of reps. Well turns out that first of all, research shows you'll build more muscle when you train with a variety of reps instead of always using the same number. (6)
Second, studies show that the abdominal muscles have a balanced muscle profile type of around 55 to 58 percent slow-twitch fibers, while the other almost half of the fibers are fast twitch. This is why it’s especially beneficial to use a variety of rep ranges instead of only doing high reps. (7) For example, you could do four sets of heavy declined situps for six to ten reps and, once you’re done, you can do hanging leg raises for three sets of fifteen to twenty reps. You can also superset the 2 starting with your heavy set for 6 to 10 reps and then immediately finishing off with a lighter set of 15 to 20 reps. Not using heavy weight and not focusing on upping the weightload used overtime tends to be the bigger issue. Theres no more sure fire way to know youre properly progressively overloading your abs than moving up from using a 35 pound weight on declined situps for 10 reps to a 50 pound weight for those same 10 reps. The issue with high reps in general is that most people rarely take those sets to failure. That failure would be guaranteed if you just bumped the weight up everytime you completed a set of 10 reps but if your focusing on more reps true failure becomes more difficult to objectively achieve. And you dont hit failure with your high rep sets many studies show that high-rep training becomes less effective than training with low or moderate reps. (8) So personally I reccommend you concentrate primarily on upping the weight load overtime and then sprinkling in some high rep supersets that have you hit failure within the first 20 reps.
Another issue that many people run into is believing that doing compound exercises like squats, deadlifts, overhead presses, and chin ups are enough to develop the ab muscles. Unfortunately thats just not true. if you want more defined and developed abs, you’ll have to do direct ab exercises. In fact, if you’re beyond the beginner phase, it’s unlikely that compound exercises will develop your abs any further than where they are currently.
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
The first one is waiting too long to eat something. You don’t have to rapidly make a protein shake directly after your workout to not miss the mythical anabolic window, but it's still a good idea to not wait too long because studies show that spreading your protein intake out evenly throughout the day yields the best results. In most cases, it’s best to eat a meal or shake within the first 2 hours after your workout. Another big mistake is having alcohol directly after your workout. If you immediately drink alcohol, it will be shuttled through your bloodstream directly to those torn-up muscles instead of the nutrients that your body needs to start repairing your muscles. Now the third mistake is the opposite of the first one which is going overboard with rewarding yourself after a workout with junk food. In General, working out is going to make you feel hungrier. And, if you binge on food found at your local 7 eleven, like candy, tacquitos, or pizza you’re probably going to wind up overeating.
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Arms that are over 14.5 inches in circumference are considered above average for men. And just adding a few inches of muscle to your arms will make you look stronger, fitter, and even more attractive. In fact in a survey of over 100 college women across the country, the majority of them ranked arms as the biggest turn on. And when you have strong defined arms they can be visible whether your wearing a t shirt, long sleeve shirt, or a sweater. So today im going to give you 5 of the best tips to add inches of muscle onto your arms fast.
First I'm going to give you a very specific step by step plan that you can use to set up your arm workouts today and this method is guaranteed to help you build bigger arms. It revolves around one of my favorite super simple training strategies for arm growth that most people are not using properly...supersets. If you're not familiar with supersets In general, a superset is performing 2 sets back to back with no break in between. The key is no break at all. I see a lot of people setting up their next set or waiting a minute or two until the burn is gone but you want to make sure you go from one set to the next with absolutely as little of a break as possible. So the specific superset that I want you to start your workout with is shoulder width grip standing barbell curls and you're going to superset with seated wide grip ez bar preachur curls.
So for the standing barbell bicep curl you need to use a weight thats heavy enough for you to fail somewhere between 8 to 10 reps. Then for seated preachur curl we're going to be shooting for a much lighter weight but youre going to be going for 20 reps. And keep in mind the weight should still be challenging enough that you're barely able to squeeze out those 20 reps. You should be hitting failure either on the 20th rep or earlier. After your done with the superset youre going to take a 2 to 3 minute break and repeat these 2 exercises back to back for 3 sets. After that you're going to do Alternating standing dumbbell curls for 10 reps on each side and you're going to superset that with outward dumbbell curls for 20 reps. So to do outward dumbbell curls you're just going to keep your elbows tight to your body while you rotate your forearms and hands away from your body and perform curls that way. Next, you'll work on your triceps by super-setting heavy skull crushers for 10 reps with diamond or close grip pushups for 20 reps. After 3 sets of that, you'll superset Dumbbell behind the head tricep extensions for 10 reps with two arm dumbbell kickbacks for 20 reps. And finally last but not least you're just going to superset heavy cable bicep curls for 10 reps with heavy cable tricep extensions for 10 reps. So that simple structure is going to be your entire workout and you can take a screenshot right now of the workout log that's on the screen.
Now a huge part that makes this workout work and something that you will absolutely want to do as the weeks go by is progressively overloading all of these exercises with an emphasis on lifting heavy. So each time that you do these exercises the goal is going to be to up the weight more than last time. Obviously, it isn't realistic for you to up the weight every single time that you train your arms. In fact you may get stuck for a while sometimes even a month or longer. But the goal should always be to push yourself to up your weight. If you're easily able to complete all ten reps or all 20 reps of your superset then that means that you need to increase the weight load even if it's by 2.5 pounds on each side.
Those small incremental increases in weight load are hugely responsible for helping you grow. If you stick to the same weight every time, you will see some initial results, but your results will level off. The only way to consistently see results is to consistently push the intensity of your workout and the best way to do that with weights is by upping the weight over time. For some reason, many people treat their arms differently than they treat other muscles in their body like their chest, back, and legs. But the truth is that it's just as important to push yourself to failure and up that weight load with arms as it is with other muscles in your body that you want to grow. In the same way that you focus on upping your weight on exercises like bench presses, squats, and deadlifts you should focus on upping your weight for bicep curls and tricep extensions. I want you to keep in mind that pushing yourself to lift heavier weights is so important that I would rather have you drop.
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Eating the wrong foods can clog arteries, increase blood pressure, and cause heart disease. Meanwhile, the right foods can actually help unclog arteries, lower inflammation, and improve the function of your heart. So today I want to go over the worst foods that you may be eating right now without realizing the damage it's doing to one of your most valuable organs your heart. And also I want to give you some of the best replacement options to clean out your arteries and drastically improve your health.
So first let's start with the commonly known issue associated with fried foods. These have been classified as a problem by the American heart association for some time now. This is because fried foods are high in unhealthy fats. That includes trans fats, which are created through a process known as hydrogenation. Trans fats can raise LDL cholesterol levels, or the bad cholesterol while reducing HDL cholesterol levels which is considered good cholesterol. This can directly cause the buildup of fatty deposits in your blood vessels, which increases the risk of heart disease by blocking arteries and impeding blood flow. Trans fat also increases inflammation throughout the body, which is also very bad for heart health. In fact, two large observational studies found that the more often people ate fried foods, the greater their risk of developing heart disease was (2). So, to protect your heart, limit your intake of junk fried foods like fried chicken, mozzarella sticks, and french fries. Instead choose healthier fat sources, such as avocados, nuts, seeds, and olive oil.
Next, we have high-sugar sodas which are inherently bad for heart health for various reasons. First, soda contributes to weight gain and obesity because it’s high in sugar, and you drink the calories. Both of these factors make soda ineffective at satiating hunger which causes the calories from sugar to typically go on top of the calories already consumed throughout the day. So this causes weight gain, and that in turn, increases blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and inflammation, which negatively affects heart function. The second reason is that high sugar intake can also lead to insulin resistance, a precursor to type 2 diabetes, which can affect the heart by damaging blood vessels. And third, excessive sugar consumption can cause chronic inflammation. That’s a problem because, as mentioned by a 2020 paper published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, "Chronic inflammation is currently considered as one of the key factors in atherosclerosis development.”(1) Atherosclerosis is a condition where fatty deposits build up in the arteries. That leads to a restriction in blood flow and an increased risk of heart attack and stroke. Therefore, to support a healthy heart, limit your soda and overall sugar intake and choose healthier beverage options instead like water, tea, coffee, or other unsweetened beverages.
Another food group that you want to avoid for better heart health is refined carbohydrate sources like white bread, pastries, and cakes. Research shows that these can be pretty bad for heart health. In fact, one study found that those who ate the most refined carbs were two to three times more likely to get heart disease than those who ate the least. (3) One reason is that refined carbs can produce a rapid spike in blood sugar levels. Rapid blood sugar fluctuations can cause insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes, which is a significant risk factor for heart disease. Diabetes can damage blood vessels and nerves, which affects the heart as well as other vital organs. Another downside of refined carbs similar to simple sugar is that they’re not very filling. It’s easy to eat hundreds of calories in the form of white bread or cakes. The associated weight gain can cause hurts cardiovascular health by increasing blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and inflammation.
Another food you should stay away from is sugary cereal. While cereals are often considered to be a healthy way to start the day, that couldn't be further from the truth, especially not if it includes high amounts of added sugars, which most cereals do. While consuming processed sugars, in general, is bad for heart health, it might be especially problematic if you consume it first thing in the morning. That’s because the blood sugar fluctuations it causes will make you feel hungrier throughout the day, which can cause an increased caloric intake and ultimately lead to weight gain. On top of that, cereals aren't nutrient dense. Sure, they contain some fiber and a bit of vitamins and minerals...
🔥 FREE 6-Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
When you consume sugar, your body breaks it down into glucose, which your cells can use as fuel to perform many different functions. It's found in various foods and beverages like fruits, vegetables, baked goods, and sweet drinks. That's right sugar is even found in vegetables so it's not inherently bad. But consuming too much sugar can have adverse effects on your body, your health, and your weight. So in today's video, I want to give you the step-by-step process of what happens as you eat sugar, based on all the available scientific data.
It all originally begins when sugar first makes contact with your tongue. Immediately it undergoes a complex process of digestion and absorption, which is critical to providing your cells with the energy needed to carry out their tasks. So there are enzymes in your saliva that'll start to break down the sugar molecules into simpler smaller molecules. These enzymes are known as amylases and their job is to break the chemical bonds between the glucose and fructose molecules that make up sucrose, converting it into simple sugars. From there, the sugar moves to your stomach, where it gets mixed with gastric juices and enzymes. These enzymes help separate the individual sugar molecules from other components of the food or beverage that you consumed. Once that’s done, the sugar moves from the stomach into your small intestine. This is where the bulk of the absorption process takes place. Here the sugar gets further broken down by enzymes and then gets absorbed into your bloodstream.
Glucose is absorbed directly into your bloodstream, while fructose is absorbed more slowly and primarily metabolized in the liver. Once the glucose reaches your bloodstream, it gets transported to your cells, where it's used as fuel for things like contracting muscle tissue, supporting brain function, and producing hormones and enzymes. Unfortunately just like fructose and other forms of sugar, if you consume more glucose than your body needs, the excess will get converted into glycogen, and that excess glycogen will first be stored in your liver and muscles. Since your body doesn't need it at the moment, this glycogen can be used later as a source of energy when your body does in fact need it.
That’s great because throughout human evolution we often have had to go extended periods of time without food. The stored glucose, alongside stored body fat, helps act as an energy reserve in these kinds of scenarios. Now, if your body has reached its glycogen storage capacity, any excess glucose is converted into fat and stored in your adipose tissue. This excess fat can lead to weight gain and obesity if it tips you over into a calorie surplus.
Another obvious effect that'll happen after sugar enters your bloodstream is that it'll raise your blood sugar levels. This causes your body to release insulin, a hormone produced by the pancreas that helps to regulate your blood sugar. The way it does this is by removing glucose from your bloodstream and then funneling it into your cells, where it can be used for energy. That’s a really good thing because having elevated blood glucose levels, also known as hyperglycemia, can lead to some very bad side effects, like damaging heart health and increasing inflammation. The problem, however, is that consuming too much sugar can negatively impact insulin production and insulin response. Excessive sugar consumption can cause the pancreas to work so hard at excreting insulin that you can develop insulin resistance, a condition in which your body becomes less responsive to this very important hormone insulin.
This means that your body has to produce more insulin to achieve the same effect on controlling blood sugar levels. Research links insulin resistance to a range of health issues, such as type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and cardiovascular disease. As I said when your body becomes resistant to insulin, your pancreas will have to work harder to produce more insulin, which, over time, can lead to pancreatic burnout and a decrease in insulin production, also known as type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is a chronic condition that’s characterized by high blood sugar levels due to insulin resistance and a reduction in insulin production. It's estimated that 462 million people around the world are affected by type 2 diabetes which is a little over 6 percent of the world's entire population.” (1) This number likely will only increase over the upcoming years and decades because people are more obese and continue to eat unhealthier than ever before.
The adverse effects on insulin production that come from consuming too much sugar are largely...
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
You can build muscle and burn fat at home without any equipment relatively quickly by following what I'm about to show you in this video. When it comes to improving your appearance, bodyweight exercises, can be effective for developing a muscular physique and increasing overall strength. Of course if you have some dumbbells or even just a bookbag, it will make it easier because it'll offer you more progression paths to force muscular adaptations. But you don't need any equipment at all as I'll go over other ways that you can progressivly overload these 8 extremely effective body weight exercises.
And first, we're going to start with one of the most basic. Push-ups. Now even though pushups aren't new there are many different ways you can do them to build upper body strength and muscle. (1) The width of your shoulders as well as the fullness of your chest and arms play a big role in creating an attractive male physique. And luckily pushups will work your chest, shoulders, and triceps, and they can be modified to make them easier or more challenging. For example, you can do push-ups on your knees if you're just starting out, or you can elevate your feet to make them more difficult. So for a basic pushup, you want to start in a plank position with your hands slightly wider than shoulder-width apart and your feet together. Then simply lower your body until your chest nearly touches the floor, keeping your elbows close to your sides at about 45-degree angles. Then push back up to the starting position while keeping your core engaged and your body in a straight line. Now, the key to building muscle is to progressively overload by bringing your body close to failure. And if you're advanced that could take 30, 40, or maybe 50 or more reps to really challenge your chest, shoulders, and triceps with regular pushups. So alternatively you can pack a bookbag with heavy objects and then perform significantly fewer reps before fatigue sets in. Point is you can either work on increasing the weight load in a bookbag while maintaining a steady rep range, or you can just use your bodyweight and work overtime on increasing your rep count higher and higher.
Next we have Pull-ups. Pullups happen to be another classic bodyweight exercise that's excellent for building upper body strength and developing your back, biceps, forearms, and helping you create that V taper look. (2) Once again even if you're a beginner you can make pullups easier at home by getting a set of pullup assist resistance bands along with your doorway pullup bar. And the nice thing is as you get stronger at pullups you'll just switch to bands that offer less and less support on the way up, until you can do pullups with just your body weight, and from there as you become advanced you can always add a bookbag for extra weight. To perform a proper pull-up start by hanging from a pull-up bar with your palms facing away from you and your hands slightly wider than shoulder-width apart. Before beginning squeeze your core and pull your shoulder blades down and back. Then pull your body up towards the bar by bending your arms, tracking your elbows down and back, and bringing your chin over the bar. From there you'll just lower your body back down slow and controlled to the starting position. Even bodyweight pull-ups can start to feel plenty challenging even for someone that's advanced with a relatively moderate rep count of 10 to 15 reps.
Now in addition to pull-ups you can get a great upper back workout by doing inverted rows at home. While pullups will target more of your lats, inverted rows will help target more of your rhomboids as well as the biceps of course. For inverted rows, you can use a sturdy table that doesn't tip over or a broom stick that you position on top of two even platforms or chairs. You would just grab the table and walk your feet forward until your under it. Then lift your hips up off the ground and get your head, hips, and heels in a straight line. From there you would just pull your elbows back and bring your chest up to the table. Then lower back down and repeat for reps.
Another exercise you'll want to do at home for your upper body is dips. Specifically, dips will help you develop your triceps and your chest. (3) Your triceps make up over 60 percent of your arms size, and not very difficult to overload dips with low to moderate rep count while just using your body weight. Normally you would do dips using parallel bars, but it's unlikely you'll have this at home so a perfectly suitable replacement is to use chairs that don't tip over instead...
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
How to take Creatine for Muscle Growth: youtu.be/KkT7jKJOEYg
What Happens to your body on creatine: youtu.be/gbGprU_ofzM
When you take creatine many biological changes begin to happen inside your body. It's most well-known for being a nutritional supplement used to increase muscle mass and strength, but there are many other benefits, uses, and effects that occur after taking creatine. It's already naturally produced in the human body from the amino acids, glycine, and arginine, which are found in many common foods including red meat and fish, but supplementing with creatine does more than most people think. So that's why today I want to go over 10 things that most people don't know and don't tell you about creatine.
And the first lesser-known fact is that creatine can actually improve your cognitive function. So counter to the phrase all brawns and no brains, taking creatine can actually help improve both the function of your brain and your muscles. Research has proven that although creatine is primarily used as a bodybuilding supplement it can also have very positive effects on your cognitive function. For example, a study from the University of Sydney found that creatine supplementation improved the cognitive function of elderly individuals, both mentally and physically. The researchers found that this was achieved through an increase in brain energy metabolism and an improvement in memory. Other studies also have found similar effects. Take for example another study that showed that short-term creatine supplementation can lead to an improvement in cognitive tasks such as memory, reasoning, and intelligence. This suggests that creatine supplementation could potentially have a range of beneficial effects on cognitive performance for people of all different ages. Some studies have also demonstrated that creatine supplementation can have positive effects on other aspects of mental health, such as reducing stress and anxiety and even improving mood and sleep quality. This is likely due to the supplement's ability to help the body produce more energy, which can directly improve overall well-being.
Another thing that creatine can do is it can help improve bone health. This is due to its ability to increase muscle mass, which can in turn lead to an increase in bone density. Research has shown that taking creatine can lead to an increase in bone mineral content, which is important for bone health and strength. One of the ways it provides this benefit is by increasing calcium absorption and protein synthesis. Both of these are important for strong bones. Everyone loses bone density as they age. One of the best activities that you can do to maintain good bone density is to lift weights. When you lift weights your bones are put under direct pressure from the weights you are lifting and also they experience tension from your muscle tendons pulling on the bones. This results in adaptations that make your bones thicker and stronger. And creatine is surprisingly able to assist with this process of developing bone density and reducing the risk of osteoporosis and osteopenia.
Another fact that most people don't know is that creatine has been linked to a reduction in inflammation. This is due to its ability to reduce the production of certain pro-inflammatory cytokines such as tumor necrosis factor alpha and interleukin-6. Research has also shown that supplementing with creatine can reduce the markers of oxidative stress, which is beneficial for reducing inflammation. One of the ways that it does this is by reducing the activity of the enzyme cyclooxygenase. It has also been shown to reduce inflammatory markers, such as leukotrienes and prostaglandins. These hormones are produced in response to injury or infection. By supplementing with creatine you can reduce the production of these hormones and reduce inflammation. It's also worth mentioning that creatine can help with cellular antioxidant activity and with the process of discarding free radicals. All of this can help reduce the risk of chronic diseases that are associated with inflammation such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, and Alzheimer’s.
This actually brings me to my next point Creatine can help reduce muscle soreness and fatigue. This is due to creatine’s ability to increase the production of phosphocreatine, which helps delay fatigue by providing the muscles with more energy. It assists in the formation of adenosine triphosphate also known as (ATP). Atp is the key molecule that your cells use for energy and it constantly has to be resynthesized within your body. Creatine increases Phosphocreatine..
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Here are 3 very effective tips to burn more fat while sleeping. First, you want to optimize your thyroid function mostly by making sure that you're getting enough Idodine, zinc, selenium, and vitamin d. Make sure you're having iodized salt for Iodine, oysters for zinc, seafood for selenium, and sunlight exposure or a supplement for vitamin D. Optimizing your thyroid function can increase your metabolism by up to 1000 calories a day. Second tip is to build more muscle, not only does muscle mass require a lot of calories to maintain even while you sleep, but it also increases insulin sensitivity and depletes glycogen stores which will help recycle carbohydrates rather than storing them as fat. And the third thing is to eat more protein, at least .7 grams of protein per pound of body weight. This is because protein has a high thermic effect.This means that the amount of energy it takes for your body to digest, process and store protein is much higher when compared to other nutrients. Some studies estimate that between 15 to 30 percent of the calories taken in from protein are used right back up during the digestion process.
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Losing weight and burning fat can be very challenging, and it's especially hard to stick it out if you don't see quick wins in the form of results either in the mirror or at least on the scale. Luckily there are simple and effective ways to significantly speed up this process. Whether it's changing your diet, increasing your physical activity, or making small lifestyle changes, there are many options available to help boost your metabolism and get your body burning fat more efficiently. So today I want to go over 10 simple ways to speed up your fat loss, and each one is backed by scientific evidence proven to be effective at helping people lose weight and burn fat.
And first I want to start with a technique that many of you have never heard of known as A protein-sparing modified fast or PSMF in short. This is a weight loss approach designed to get lean as fast as possible. It accomplishes this by putting you through a low-carb, low-fat, high-protein diet that restricts calorie intake to a minimal level. The PSMF diet typically only includes lean protein sources such as chicken, fish, and turkey, as well as low-carb vegetables like spinach, broccoli, and cauliflower. Other foods are avoided. Now, before you go ahead and implement this strategy, I would only do this if you have a body fat percentage over 26 percent as a male and 39 percent as a female. In those scenarios, you can implement a PSMF for two weeks on, and then take two weeks off where you bring your calories back to maintenance with a more even distribution of protein carbs and fats, just make sure you're not exceeding maintenance calories. four to twelve. weeks without risking muscle loss as long as you get enough protein and are also lifting weights. Also if you’re leaner than 26 percent body fat as a man and 39 percent as a woman, I wouldn’t implement it on a consistent schedule. Instead, just follow a protein-sparing modified fast diet one or two non-consecutive days per week where you eat according to the PSMF guidelines. You want to try to do this on days that you’re not exercising because your body doesn’t need the additional calories on those days. Simply only consume lean protein sources and avoid all other foods. Make sure to get at least .73 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day while following this schedule. Even though following this kind of eating style can be challenging, when it's done right, it’s one of the, if not the, fastest ways to lose weight while retaining muscle mass.
Another strategy instead of a protein-sparing modified fast is to simply do a more aggressive cut. In other words, you increase your calorie deficit. Keep in mind that once again your current level of body fat determines how much more aggressively you can cut your calories back without losing muscle and if you don't know your body fat percentage just stick with me I'll show an easy way to figure it out. So If you're a male with over 26% body fat or a female with over 39% body fat, you can shoot for a calorie deficit of 40-50% under maintenance calories. If you're a man with between 21 and 26% body fat or a female with between 33 to 39% body fat, you shouldn't create more of a calorie deficit than 30 to 40% below maintenance. If you're 14 to 21% body fat as a man or 24 to 33% body fat as a woman, go for a calorie deficit of 20-30% under maintenance. And finally, if you're 10 to 14% body fat as a man 14 to 24% as a woman you can go for a calorie deficit between 5 to 20%. (**)
Even with these more aggressive deficit numbers, you shouldn't worry about losing muscle. As long as you're getting enough protein, lifting weights, and getting enough sleep, the amount of muscle you'll lose should be minimal. For example, in a study where men and women were placed on an 800-calorie-per-day diet for 12 weeks, they managed to still maintain their muscle mass as long as they were weight training 3 times a week. (1) Also, In another study, obese men were instructed to eat 1,000 fewer calories per day while lifting weights 3 days a week and they were able to maintain their muscle mass while dropping over 20 pounds of fat. (2)
This actually brings us to my next point. You should primarily focus your workouts on strength training and muscle growth because that'll help you maintain muscle mass as you drop body fat. Maintaining muscle mass is not only beneficial from an aesthetic perspective, but also from a long-term weight loss perspective because carrying more muscle will improve your metabolism and insulin sensitivity. Now aside from eating enough protein, the best way to prevent muscle loss while dieting is to make sure that you...
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Modern Men's testosterone levels are dropping rapidly partially due to a type of unsaturated fat that's used to make many tasty foods. This fat is artificially created by adding hydrogen to liquid vegetable oils. It's known as trans fat and even though the FDA banned food manufacturers from adding these partially hydrogenated oils way back in 2015, certain foods still have them like microwaveable popcorn, pizza, cookies, crackers, french fries, cake, and many others. Studies show that diets high in trans fats lower testosterone and sperm quality in both male rodents and in humans (5) This is because trans fats increase inflammation throughout the body while also lowering the levels of the "good" cholesterol HDL and that HDL happens to be a crucial building block in the testosterone synthesis process. To reduce your exposure to trans fats you should limit the amount processed and packaged foods that you eat, including things like chicken nuggets, pies, margarine, and even nondairy coffee creamer.
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
your biceps are one of the primary muscles that instantly showcase that you do in fact work out regardless of what you're wearing. This is why biceps and abs are on the forefront of most guys minds when they first start working out. But if you're making a few very common mistakes your biceps are not going to grow much past that initial newbie gains period.
And one of the biggest reasons that you might be stuck with bicep growth is that you're not treating your bicep like other major muscle groups, which causes you to train your biceps differently. The major difference is that you're not overloading your bicep workouts. I've seen way too many people get so obsessed with things like going slowly on the way down or trying to concentrate on turning their pinky up during every one of their reps to the point that they lose sight of the most important things like progressively upping the weight used for bicep curls. For some reason, the biceps are one of those muscles that many people lump into the same category as abs, where the weight load used doesn't seem to be as important as the weight load used for exercises like squats or bench presses. But I'm here to tell you that the weight that you use for bicep curls has a direct impact on how big your biceps grow, just like it has a direct impact on your abs, your legs, and other muscles throughout your body.
So you absolutely need to focus on increasing the weight load that you're using on your bicep curling exercises. Most people that are stuck with bicep growth will become satisfied with having 25-pound plates on each side of the ez bar, or doing 35-pound dumbbell curls for 10 reps on each side, but even though hitting these weight loads requires work, effort, and progress, you shouldn't just stop there and expect your biceps to keep growing especially if you're a natural. You will have to continually progressively overload your bicep exercises by lifting those heavier and heavier weights if you want your arms to grow. Now it's easier said than done to just up your weight for bicep curls, but one super simple extremely effective strategy is to always increase the weight when you are near the top of your rep range. So as an example one of my favorite rep ranges for bicep growth and increasing weight load for biceps have always been 6 to 10 reps. When you get to the point where you're able to complete 9 or 10 reps on your first heavy set of bicep curls, that means you need to up the weight to a point that forces you to fail at an earlier point like 6 or 7 reps. And then your goal should be to train with that heavier weight load until you can do it for 9 or 10 reps again. Then repeat this whole process. So every time you come to that upper limit of your rep range increase the weight, drop your reps, and work those reps back up over the next few weeks.
Another thing that can help with this is mixing up your bicep exercises. A lot of people just do easy-access exercises like standing dumbbell curls or standing barbell curls. And even though these are two of the best bicep exercises available, there are many other exercises that overload and challenge your biceps in a different way and you absolutely should be doing these exercises if you want your biceps to grow. A perfect example is the preacher curl. This exercise is hard, uncomfortable, and requires much less weight to be effective than regular standing bicep culs, but getting stronger at preachur curls will directly translate to boosts in strength on your upright standing curls. And same thing vice versa getting stronger at standing curls will translate to increase strength on preachur curls. And like I said in the very beginning progressively overloading all of these exercises is the number one foolproof thing you can do to ensure consistent bicep growth. So make sure you're doing more challenging exercises like preachur curls or inclined dumbbell curls. These exercises may require you to lift a lighter weight load than what you can do with the standing bicep exercises but just by applying the same strategy of dropping reps, increasing weight load, building back up your reps, and then repeating you can translate all that strength to all your other bicep exercises. Aside from strength you also have to remember that your biceps have two heads and some exercises emphasize the development of the short head while others emphasize the long head. By doing a variety of exercises over time you'll ensure you're building both effectively.
That brings us actually to another mistake a lot of you are making and that's not starting your arm workouts with fresh biceps when..
"After about 6-10 hours without food, most of the leftover carbohydrates from your previous meals will be used up for fuel. As a response your pancreas will secrete glucagon, a hormone, that makes your body release the stored glucose from your liver and your muscles. Your hunger hormone ghrelin will rise making you feel hungry. After 10 hours your pituitary gland will boost the production of Human Growth Hormone which will help delay muscle loss much longer than most people think. Your body temperature may also drop and you'll start feeling colder than usual. After 16 hours your body will become more reliant on burning fat for energy and ketone production will increase. At around this time, autophagy will kick in which is a process where your body will recycle any junk it finds such as damaged proteins, bacteria, or dysfunctional cells. This boosts immunity and reduces inflammation. 24 to 32 hours in your body will run out of glycogen and become entirely reliant on its own fat stores for energy while reducing protein breakdown rates substantially to spare muscle tissue. About 48 hours in you'll experience improvements in your mood, alertness, and tranquility. After 3 days of fasting, muscle catabolism becomes an actual issue and nutrient deficiencies may slowly start to emerge."
After you eat a meal, food is broken down into simpler molecules and used as fuel so your body can function properly. An organ in the abdomen known as the pancreas produces insulin which is a hormone that helps your cells absorb the glucose found in the bloodstream after a meal. Dietary fat, on the other hand, is broken down into fatty acids which are used by the body for energy as well as for many different biological processes like testosterone production for example. Excess fatty acids are converted back to triglycerides and then most of those triglycerides are stored in adipose tissue otherwise known as body fat.
Meanwhile, excess carbohydrates from that meal will first get converted into glycogen which is a string of glucose molecules that can be stored and used later. Glycogen is mostly stored in the liver and your muscles. Since there's a biological limit to how much glycogen a person can store, once that limit is reached the rest of the excess energy is converted into triglycerides and once again stored as adipose tissue. This is the routine process that our bodies go through when we eat throughout the day. But what would happen if you were to totally stop eating for 3 days?
Well after about 6-10 hours of fasting, most of the leftover glucose that's still circulating in your bloodstream will be used for fuel. Since your body is not receiving any new nutrients, it has to start using its own glycogen reserves to fuel itself. It's at that point that the pancreas secretes glucagon. Glucagon is not the same as glycogen or glucose. It's actually a hormone, and one of its jobs is to signal your body to release glycogen and fatty acids. Also if your last meal was low in carbohydrates your body may start producing ketones as an energy source within this early stage of fasting. Ketones are chemicals produced by the liver when fat cells are converted into fatty acids. So in general during those first 6 hours, your blood glucose levels will start to elevate and then they'll gradually decline. Meanwhile, your ketone levels, will do pretty much the opposite. They'll gradually rise, especially after approximately the 10th hour of fasting. (1)
Now before you ever hit that 10th-hour mark, if you’re accustomed to eating three meals per day or you regularly eat a high-carb diet you'll probably experience hunger and low energy levels. The hunger you feel isn't only due to being low on calories. In fact it's largely tied to your circadian rythm. Your body has gotten into a pattern and now expects food at the certain times of the day that you normally eat. This is due to the hunger hormone ghrelin, which has the effect of stimulating your appetite when it's released. So if you stop eating studies show that ghrelin will spike automatically around the times of the day that you typically have your meals which usually would be breakfast, lunch, and dinner (1) and that spike will make you feel hungry. (1) If you continue fasting, these hunger pangs will subside after about 2 hours, and your body will naturally adapt to a new meal frequency over time.
After fasting for at least 10 hours your body will also start to increase the levels of a hormone produced by the pituitary gland called Human Growth Hormone otherwise known as (HGH). Fasting can actually increase HGH just as much as exercise, stress, or hypoglycemia. (2) HGH plays an important role in the fasting process because it's associated with enhanced muscle repair, exercise...
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
What if you could get stronger, lift heavier, and gain muscle faster just by making a few simple adjustments to your weekly routine? Well in this video I'm going to go over 9 proven things you can do get stronger faster.
So the first super simple change you can make to get stronger faster is to alternate the weight loads you use between certain time periods and training sessions. If you had to choose only one rep range as the best rep range for strength, you would be better off using heavy weights in combination with a lower rep range. But, we don't have to exclusively stick to just one rep range and it turns out that it's important to train in a variety of rep ranges even if your sole goal is to get as strong as possible. This is because research shows people who vary up their rep ranges gain more strength and muscle within a set length of time. (5)
Even though low, moderate, and high rep ranges can all individually be effective for muscle growth it seems that switching up your rep ranges provides the biggest advantage. So a simple way to implement this into your routine is to perform a low rep range of something like 3 to 5 reps for 3 weeks, then a moderate rep range of 6 to 10 reps for 3 weeks, and finally a high rep range of 12 to 15 reps for 3 weeks. Then start all over again back at the low 3 to 5 rep range and repeat. The goal should be to lift a heavier weight than the last time you performed each specific rep range. This is just one example of something known as periodization and doing this can work very well for rapid strength gains. One of the primary reasons that mixing up your rep range is more beneficial is that by having variety, you’ll train a broader range of muscle fibers.
We have slow twitch and fast twitch muscle fibers and one is stimulated more with low weight and high reps while the other is stimulated more with heavy weight and low reps. Also, you're constantly going to be forcing your body to adapt to different rep ranges which will limit stagnation. Even though you might've gotten stuck if you were just to continuously do the same heavy weight load at a low rep range of 3 to 5 reps, switching up your rep range gives you an opportunity to get stronger at a different rep range, where you may have different sticking points that you can work on, and then transfer that increased strength back to that lower rep range of 3 to 5 reps a few weeks down the line helping you to continuously break through plateaus.
Another thing you should be mixing up is bilateral and unilateral exercises. For upper body in a nutshell this can be summed up by mixing dumbbell work with barbell work. The barbell is going to provide certain strength benefits like having both hands on the bar allowing you to lift a greater overall weight load, while dumbbells will force each side to work on its own and will recruit a greater number of stabilizer muscle fibers. Strengthening these stabilizers even a small amount can lead to some pretty big strength gains across the board, so make sure you're not just doing barbell work or just doing dumbbell work, both have their benefits and you should use bilateral and unilateral exercises on alternating days during the early portion of your workout when you're still fresh. Keep in mind with legs performing a barbell squat or a dumbbell squat is still going to be considered a bilateral exercise because both your legs will be pushing into the ground at the same time. To incorporate unilateral leg exercises you can do things like Bulgarian split squats, the single leg press, and pistol squats.
Now another thing that has a direct correlation to your strength is your overall mass, specifically your fat-free mass. So one of the most straightforward ways to get stronger is by gaining weight, preferably in the form of muscle. This is because there’s a very close relationship between strength and body mass. Research shows this relationship is pretty tight for Olympic weightlifters (9) And it's even more prominent in powerlifters, where they have an 86 to 95 percent correlation between fat-free mass and their performance on their power lifts. (10) This means that if you want to gain strength, make sure to also focus on gaining muscle and body weight. This means being in a calorie surplus, doing enough training volume, consuming enough protein, and getting enough rest and recovery.
And speaking of a calorie surplus this is another important tip that can drastically increase your strength... eat... more. Simply going to the gym and trying to improve your lifts isn't enough because of your performance at...
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Whether it's too many video games, too little exercise, too much junk food, or not enough drive to compete researchers are not exactly sure why testosterone levels are on the decline for decades now. This means that your grandfather had higher testosterone levels than you do at your current age, and this is a little odd given the fact that medicine, technology, and quality of life have all continued to improve. But the very same technology that allows us to live more comfortable lives can be one of the major things contributing to a reduction in testosterone.
For example, the modern food and agricultural system has been improved to the point that most people that are around today have to worry more about eating too much food rather than not finding enough of it to eat. The bad habit of Eating too much of the wrong foods, is all too easy to fall victim to, nowadays that we have infinite aisles of instantly available junk food to choose from at any time we want. This causes many men to walk around with a high body fat percentage. High body fat percentages in males reduce testosterone because the extra fat cells produce an enzyme called aromatase, which converts testosterone into estrogen. This reaction occurs mainly in fat tissue also known as adipose tissue and it's actually a natural process that helps maintain a balance between your hormones. However, when there is too much aromatase activity due to a high body fat percentage it leads to a reduction of available free testosterone. That’s why it’s important to maintain a healthy body fat percentage. An ideal range for optimal male hormonal health is, for most men, is between 10 to 15%. According to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, this number can range further from all the way from 8 to 19% body fat. If you’re currently above that, you can lose excess fat by sticking to a calorie deficit, in a way that's sustainable for you whether that be intermittent fasting, carb cycling, keto, vegetarian, or one of the many other options.
Another major technological breakthrough that could be very damaging to our testosterone levels is plastic which was invented in the 1800s but didn't go into mass production until after World War II. Unfortunately, plastics happen to be a major source of exposure to synthetic hormones and xenoestrogens, which can have very serious consequences for not just your testosterone levels but also your overall health. Phthalates and Bisphenol A also known as BPA are two chemicals commonly used in the manufacturing process of plastic products that have been linked to delayed puberty, low testosterone, feminization effects, and sexual dysfunction in various human and animal studies. For example, in a study that compared men working at a chemical plant that manufactures BPA to men working at a tap water factory (3) the men who were exposed to BPA had significantly lower total and free testosterone levels than those who worked in the tap water factory. Other chemicals such as PCBs, Bisphenol S (BPS), dioxin, vinyl chloride, styrene, and phenolic epoxy resin all also disrupt testosterone.
These chemicals can be found by consuming food or drinks packaged in plastic containers, or wraps and especially when microwaving plastics. In general, it’s especially important to not expose the plastic to high heat like what happens when you microwave it or put hot food or water into a plastic container. Doing these things causes way more of the estrogenic compounds to leak into your foods and beverages. To reduce exposure to these toxins do your best to avoid plastic products for storing and preparing your food and water as much as possible, but especially be weary of heating to plastic. If you're able to, the best option is to try to go for alternatives like wood, metal, glass, or ceramic.
Now, something else that you can be doing every day without realizing the negative effects on your testosterone levels is maintaining poor or weak posture. that's right body language can have a powerful effect on our physical and mental states, as shown by a study that compared levels of testosterone and cortisol in subjects that held either low-power poses for two minutes or high-power poses. Examples of low-power poses in this study were things like taking up less space and having your arms crossed. Meanwhile, high-power poses would be postures that were more open and would take up more space. Surprisingly the results showed that only a mere 2 minutes of performing...
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Getting shredded is associated with ripped-looking abs, defined muscle striations, and an attractive physique that turn heads. But there are many costs that come with getting shredded that most people don't realize. Some of these are actually really negative effects that nobody likes to talk about, so in this video, you'll find out exactly what comes along with getting your body fat percentage low enough to be considered shredded and how to avoid the negative effects.
First, you have to realize that even though people that are considered shredded look extremely muscular and strong you're actually very likely to get weaker as you drive your body fat percentage further and further down. There are really only three exceptions to this rule. So, If you’re relatively untrained or a beginner, you can maintain or even gain strength simply because your muscles and nervous system aren’t adapted to lifting weights. If you're taking steroids, which I do not recommend, but if someone is taking steroids that could potentially negate big strength losses because you’ll maintain more muscle as you cut. And the third exception is if your workouts or your form sucked beforehand, but now you fixed it you can gain strength simply as a result of performing your exercises more efficiently.
Those three aside, there’s no way around it - losing weight and body fat tends to go hand in hand with losing strength. This is because of two main reasons. First, reaching a state that's considered shredded means that your body fat percentage will most likely be lower than 10-12% as a male. This low body fat percentage tends to pair with muscle loss. That's what happens even if you train and eat right as you cut down. The second reason essential boils down to the fact that mass moves mass, even if the increase in mass is just fat tissue, simply because it improves leverage during movements. So, when you’re leaning down, don’t be surprised if you aren’t able to maintain the same strength levels as before. The goal as you lose body fat should be to maintain your strength as much as possible because that helps you prevent muscle loss. But know that you probably won’t be able to negate all the adverse effects entirely.
Another issue nobody wants to talk about is libido which will very likely go down. When you’re dieting to get shredded, your testosterone levels will drop, and, as a result, your libido will also take a hit. This is because when the amount of calories consumed is lower than what the body needs to function, it will shut down or slow some non-essential functions in order to save energy for the more vital functions. And reproductive system activity is one of the first things that slow down when this happens because it’s less important from a survival standpoint compared to let’s say beating your heart or sending energy to your brain. On top of that, when you're in a calorie deficit, your body will view that as a form of stress, which leads to an increase in the levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Research shows that when those stress hormones rise in the bloodstream, testosterone starts to drop pretty much dose-dependently or in a 1-to-1 ratio. (1) Interestingly, in a one-year case study on contest prep for bodybuilders, it was found that testosterone levels fell to one-fourth of their baseline values three months into the six-month preparation period." (2) Fortunately, the testosterone levels did recover after three months of a recovery period which included an increase in calorie intake. But there's no denying that strenuous dieting will lower testosterone levels and, reduce your libido.
Next is nutrient deficiencies. Even though shredded people may look healthy from the outside dropping your body fat lower and lower will leave you more likely to develop nutrient deficiencies. There's no way around the fact that if you want to get rid of body fat, you need to be in a calorie deficit. In the process of creating that deficit, there will likely be many types of foods that you’ll have to get rid of or at least reduce your exposure to significantly. For example nuts. They’re highly nutritious, but they’re also loaded with calories, which is why you won’t be able to eat that much of them if at all when you’re trying to reach a shredded level. Another example is meat. When aiming for a very low body fat percentage many people will resort to only eating lean meats instead of fatty cuts, which can make it harder to rea
"One of the worst things to do before a workout is static stretching which is done by holding a muscle in a stretched position for a set amount of time, usually 20 to 30 seconds long. An example of this for the hamstrings would be the sit and reach. Many people growing up have been taught there are benefits to stretching before working out, but studies show that runners can't run as fast, athletes can't jump as high, and weight lifters can't lift as heavy if they engage in passive static stretching beforehand. (1) So the truth is contrary to popular belief you absolutely do not need to stretch at all before your workouts. It actually won't reduce the likelihood of injury and you're much better off spending your time simply performing some light warm-up sets before your actual workout."
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Inflammation is a normal biological response to injury, infection, and illness. When inflammation is triggered your body’s immune system releases chemicals that cause swelling, redness, and heat in the affected area. But Inflammation isn't all bad in fact it's necessary for healing. After a workout, for example, inflammation spikes to help stimulate your muscles into recovery. It's chronic inflammation that can lead to long-term health problems such as diabetes, heart disease, and even obesity. One of the biggest controllable factors that cause inflammation in our bodies is the food we eat, as certain food groups are extremely likely to trigger the inflammation response.
These foods can cause chronic inflammation which will affect your body composition negatively because it leads to the erosion of many tissues in your body, including muscle tissue. This is because inflammation goes hand in hand with an overactive immune system which can lead to the loss of muscle mass. This is why research links chronic inflammation to having a harder time building muscle as well as joint injuries and lower testosterone levels. (4) Studies show that Inflammation markers like resting IL-6 levels negatively correlate with muscle growth meaning the more inflammation the less muscle participants will grow and the more prone they'll be to weight and fat gain (5) So if you want less pain in your joints, and to have less friction with burning fat and building muscle you're going to want to avoid or at least limit these 7 food groups that are known to trigger the inflammatory response.
And one of the most well-known culprits is Refined sugar. Refined sugars can cause inflammation in the body due to their ability to activate a process known as glycation. Glycation is when sugar molecules bind with proteins or fats, creating advanced glycation end products otherwise known as AGE's. AGE's are toxic compounds that the body finds difficult to break down and dispose of. This leads to an accumulation of AGE's which can cause inflammation throughout the body. In addition to activating glycation pathways, refined sugar can cause leptin resistance. We don't want leptin resistance because leptin is one of the hormones responsible for regulating appetite and metabolism.
When leptin is not able to respond properly it causes an elevation in inflammatory markers like TNFα and IL-6 – further contributing to systemic inflammation within the body. Of course, the ideal solution would be to avoid processed sugars altogether forever, but most people will want to have some ice cream, cake, cookies, or other sweets at least here and there. So aside from doing your best to only eat these foods in moderation and in very limited quantities, if you still really crave sweet desserts, one easy solution to implement is to replace sugar with natural alternative sweeteners like stevia. There's no doubt that you can use stevia to make just as delicious desserts including cakes, cookies, and pastries while drastically reducing AGE's and the number of calories you take in.
With all that said one thing to keep in mind is that the sugars found in fruit aren’t refined sugars. You don’t have to avoid fruit. The reason is that fruit contains lots of anti-inflammatory compounds like antioxidants and fiber.
Now another thing aside from sugar that can make almost any food taste significantly better is to fry it. But unfortunately, Fried Foods as nice as they may be for our taste buds, are also highly inflammatory. Common processed fried foods like chicken nuggets, mozzarella sticks, onion rings, and french fries aren't the only problem. Many homemade foods that are less processed, happen to be a staple in many people's diets around the world, and the act of frying in and of itself makes these foods popular and tasty, but also highly inflammatory. The main culprit behind the inflammatory responses caused by fried foods is the high temperature used to cook them. The heat breaks down fats and oils, once again creating those toxins Age's which trigger inflammation by activating the body's immune system, leading to an increase in cytokine production.
Aside from that, fried foods also often contain our next big no-no for inflammation artificial trans-fats. Artificial trans-fats are found in partially hydrogenated vegetable oils which are commonly used for deep frying and other cooking methods. They are a type of unsaturated fat that has been artificially created by the hydrogenation process...
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
When you lift weights you break down muscle tissue and that muscle tissue needs to be repaired after the workout in order for it to heal and grow back stronger. Without taking the right steps post workout your muscles are not going to recover properly potentially leading to a loss of mass, a reduction in power output, and a heightened chance of injury. The things that you do during the hours of the day after lifting are truly as important as the workout itself for building muscle and burning fat.
For example one of the worst things you can do after lifting weights is not eating or drinking any kind of nutrients for an extended period of time and this is something that is becoming more common ever since the anabolic window myth was debunked. For a long time, everyone was under the impression that the anabolic window was a sacred short time period after your workout where you needed to take in nutrients immediately, or else you wouldn't get the gains or benefits from that workout. So people would bring protein powder with them to the gym and then rush to have a protein shake right after their workout out of fear of potentially losing muscle gains. But now that we know that the anabolic window is a myth the pendulum has swung back in the opposite direction, where people think that it doesn't matter if you don't eat protein or take a protein shake for hours and hours after you lift weights.
Well, research shows that it actually does matter and that there is a benefit to consuming protein sometime soon after your workout, specifically within the first hour. (15) We can draw from a study published in the journal of strength and conditioning research that found evidence that consuming protein shortly after a workout can help improve strength and muscle growth EVEN if you're already consuming enough protein throughout the rest of the day.(15) This is because after your workout your muscles are left broken down, and that can lead to a negative nitrogen balance. If you want to build muscle you want to spend more time throughout the day maintaining a positive nitrogen balance so your body always has a pool of amino acids readily available to draw from to repair and build muscle tissue. That's why you want to have either a high-protein meal or a protein shake as soon as you reasonably can after a workout. Specifically, you want to do this at most, within the first hour after you're finished lifting weights. This will provide your body the nutrients it needs to boost protein synthesis rates and shift right back over into a positive protein turnover rate. This is especially true if you didn't eat anything before your workout, by having something soon afterward your body can go from muscle breakdown to muscle growth allowing you to get more benefits from your training session.
Another thing that you want to be really careful with especially after a heavy leg or back lifting session is moving a lot of heavy furniture, Awkward objects, or doing another intense physical activity directly afterward. Again this is especially true when you're doing heavy sets of exercises like deadlifts or squats during your workout. Even if you perform these exercises with perfect form, if you're pushing yourself and lifting heavy weight you will exhaust the stabilizer muscles around your core and lower back. If you immediately go on to lift heavy awkward objects, you can be much more susceptible to an injury. And it's not only heavy objects it can be any kind of intense physical activity immediately after a heavy deadlift or leg session. For example, I completely destroyed my back a few years ago, by tearing up and replacing the turf at my gym after a heavy deadlifting session. (**) Just by bending down over and over again to rip up and lay down new turf my back was wrecked for weeks. So if you're planning on moving out, or if you have some really difficult physical tasks that you need to get done, make sure you're not doing it on a day and time that you're going all out at the gym directly beforehand. It's much better to choose to take one day off, take it a little easier at the gym, or adjust your workout schedule so that you can have adequate rest, rather than be forced to take weeks off because of a nasty lower back injury.
Now another common mistake with nutrition instead of not eating for hours after your workout is overeating or eating the wrong things afterward. Lifting weights and working out, in general, can make some people feel hungry. This is because exercise
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Stronger legs will help you move faster, jump higher, and be more explosive with athletic activities. It'll also improve your overall balance, and decrease the chances of getting an injury to your knees and lower back. There's no doubt that it's extremely important to strengthen and develop your lower body which is why today I want to give you guys the 10 Best Exercises that you can do for stronger bigger Legs.
And by far one of the best exercises for legs is the back barbell squat. Now a lot of beginners give up on doing heavy barbell squats because they feel awkward at first, but after showing the regular squat ill explain the box squat variation that beginners can use to get comfortable with the form.
Either way, whether you want rounder glutes, nicer thighs, or more power in your lower body squats should be one of your staple leg exercises. So to do a regular barbell squat you'll first step up to a loaded barbell and unrack it with the barbell resting on your traps, not your neck. After unracking and stepping back, spread your feet a little wider than shoulder-width apart while also slightly rotating your feet outward. Before you begin lowering yourself down make sure that you're focusing on keeping your chest up pointing straight ahead and that you're maintaining the neutral curve in your lower back. Then take a deep breath and hold it as you drive your hips back, bend your knees, bend your ankles, and lower your body down. As you're doing this make sure you're keeping your weight over the middle of your foot. Squat down until your legs are either parallel or a little under parallel with your knees. Then push your feet into the ground, and extend your knees as your hips drive forward under your shoulders. Once you get the barbell all the way up in a relatively straight line, release your breath, then take your next deep breath, hold it, and squat back down for your next rep. Taking a deep breath before each rep is a technique known as the Valsalva maneuver and it shouldn't be overlooked because it acts as a natural belt and protects your lower back while squatting or deadlifting.
Now like I said a big issue that a lot of beginners have with squats is learning how to sit back rather than just lowering themselves straight down. That's why another great exercise for both beginners as well as those of you that are advanced is the box squat. The movement pattern for this is almost identical to a regular squat but now you'll start with a bench or another platform that's set up behind you at about knee level. So you're going to unrack the barbell and back your feet up until your heels are almost against the platform. Then you're going to squat down the same way as before and if you're a beginner concentrate on sitting rather than squatting. When you take a seat on a daily basis you don't even think about it but you naturally shift your hips back and perform a squat to get your butt into that seat. That's why this exercise is beneficial because it allows you to sit rather than Squat and you'll automatically feel less afraid of falling back. Keep in mind when you squat down to the bench you don't want to relax your core and allow your spine to round forward. Just bring your butt back tap the seat and Drive the weight back up. Like I said this is still great for those of you that are Advanced because it challenges you to go all the way down to whatever platform or bench height you choose and that slight pause at the bottom really makes the exercise feel more challenging.
That's why you'll most likely have to use a lighter weight load for box squats than what you can normally use for regular squats.
Next, we have an exercise that'll improve your unilateral strength, weighted lateral lunges. Unilateral strength just refers to training and developing one side of your body at a time. Most of your everyday tasks use one leg at a time rather than both, for example walking up a flight of stairs, you drive your body up with one leg at a time. It's also especially important for athletic activities, for example running or changing directions quickly will require unilateral strength. Aside from developing each of your legs separately, lateral lunges are also great for developing the muscles around your inner thighs. So to perform lateral lunges you're going to grab two dumbells and hold them at your sides while standing straight up. Then take a big step out to one side. As you're doing this don't make the...
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
We only have 24 hours a day, and 7 days a week to build muscle, burn fat, and improve our body composition. Since time is so limited many people believe that they can condense their workout to no more than 3 days a week while still achieving optimal results. Meanwhile on the other side of the spectrum...is the belief that you can get much faster results by working out more frequently, so 5, 6, or even 7 days a week. Some advanced athletes even swear by double training sessions where they train once in the morning and once at night multiple times a week. So which is best?
Common sense would make it seem that working out more often will automatically lead to more muscle growth and better overall results. And this is true to a degree. To maximize muscle growth, you have to do enough training volume. To put it simply total training volume is essentially sets x reps x weight load. So if you keep everything else the same in your workout but find a way to increase either the number of sets, reps, or the weight load that you're using every week you're increasing total training volume, which is a potent stimulus for muscle growth. In fact, a meta-analysis found a dose-response relationship between training volume and muscle growth. The more sets people performed, the more muscle they put on. (6) Other studies also come to the same conclusion. (7)
So, which workout split do you think will be easier to get a higher training volume out of? Well if you're only hitting the gym 3 days a week it's most likely going to be harder to hit all the muscles in your body with the same amount of sets, reps, and intensity that you would be able to get out of hitting the gym let's say 5, 6, or 7 days a week. If you work out 6 days a week for example you can use a split training routine like chest and back on one day, legs the next day, and shoulders, biceps, triceps, and abs on the 3rd day. Then take a day off and repeat the entire process. With this split, you'd be breaking down each muscle in your body twice every week, while still getting at least 48 to 72 hours of rest for each muscle group between workouts. Meanwhile, if you're only training 3 days per week and you try a split training routine where you spend day 1 working specifically on just chest and back, you'd still have to train the rest of your body during the other two workout days of the week, leaving no time for a second chest and back session during that week. A good way to get around this problem with a 3 day a week split is to train your entire body during every session.
This allows you to train each muscle more than just once a week and training a muscle more often has been proven to lead to more muscle growth even when total training volume is matched (20) In fact we have a randomized control trial where researchers evaluated the difference in muscle growth between training a muscle once or three times per week while maintaining a similar total training volume between groups. The results showed that those who trained their muscles three times a week gained much more muscle than the participants that worked out less often. (21) For example when researchers performed an ultrasound on a section of the quads known as the vastus lateralis there was a 6.7 percent increase for the 3 times per week group versus only a 2.1 percent increase for the 1 time per week group. (22) In another study (23) participants either performed all their weekly exercise volume in one giant full-body workout or spread out the same training volume over three smaller full-body sessions. And once again, those who trained more often gained significantly more muscle. The once-a-week group enhanced lean body mass by only 1% meanwhile the three-times-per-week group gained 8%, which is a huge difference and many other studies also show similar results.(24)
So we can say for sure that it's not optimal to train each muscle only once per week. One reason for this is that you'll be able to do fewer quality sets per muscle group. What I mean is, After you've already done a few heavy sets for a muscle, the amount of force you'll be able to produce during later sets will be reduced. On the other hand, if you spread that volume out more evenly over the week, you'll be able to push yourself and perform at a higher level during each set because you'll be less fatigued at the start of each set....
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Defined abs will make you look significantly more fit while increasing confidence, and attractiveness. Having a strong core will also improve your posture, prevent lower back pain, and it can help increase your overall athleticism since the core is what connects your upper and lower body together. Unfortunately, many people are wasting time on things that'll never get their abs to show, so today I want to give you guys 10 steps that you can follow to guarantee that you get the best abdominal muscle growth and definition as soon as possible
And the first obvious step that we cannot ignore is that you have to make Sure that You Are Lean Enough. Unless you have a low enough body fat, you’ll never see your abs, and you especially won't see them in a well-defined way. That’s why one of the primary goals that you should have if you want well-defined abs is to get lean. To provide a concrete example take a look at bodybuilder Lee Priest during a bulk and during a cut. (1) In the first photo his abs aren’t visible even though he carries a lot of muscle. Trust me the abs are still there, they're just under a thick layer of fat. Meanwhile, in the second photo, his abs are very clearly visible because he's much leaner. So you're probably wondering how lean you have to be to see your abs? And the truth is there is no set-in-stone answer. That’s because we all have different body fat distributions. Some people tend to store more of their fat around their midsection, which means they need to maintain an overall leaner body composition to see their abs compared to someone that doesn’t store as much fat specifically around their midsection. While there are overall rules of thumb guidelines that men need to be around 12% body fat, and women need to be around 19 percent body fat to see nice abs, this will fluctuate quite a bit from person to person. For example, even when my body fat percentage was significantly higher than normal I could still see my abs because my body preferentially stores fat in other places.
This also does have to do with another thing I recommend you do, which is to add more muscle to your abs so that they pop out more. You would do that by training Your Abs With Progressive Overload. Just like any other muscle, if you want it to grow, you have to train the muscle in a way that exposes that muscle or muscle group to more challenging stimuli over time. So an example is, if you could do a particular ab exercise for 12 reps in your last workout, you could try to do 13 reps during your next session. Or you could do the same 12 reps but make it more challenging with some extra weight. Most people already train their abs with high reps so I see very good results for my clients incorporating lower 8 to 10-rep sets and working on increasing weight load during the beginning of their ab workouts.
With that said training higher rep ab training shouldn't be ignored or skipped over. Both high reps with low weight and low reps with heavy weight should be incorporated into your routine. It's just that usually people forget to do the heavy-weight sets with abs rather than the high-rep sets with abs. It's important to do both high reps and low reps because data indicates that the abs have a balanced profile of around 55 to 58% slow-twitch fibers and the rest in fast-twitch fibers. (12) Fast twitch fibers are known to respond better to higher intensity, higher weight loads, and lower rep counts. Meanwhile, slow twitch responds better to higher reps with a lower weight. So, you want to do both low- and high-rep sets for optimal growth. One of the best ways to do this is to save the higher rep bodyweight sets for the end of your workout after you've already done all your heavy weighted exercises like weighted declined situps, weighted crunches, and weighted pulse-ups. Or alternatively, you can do high and low rep sets together with supersets. Utilizing this superset strategy you would do a high rep set with no weight right after every low rep set with heavy weight. An example would be to perform weighted declined situps for 10 reps and then immediately perform 20 to 40 reps of jackknifes.
You should also specifically focus on Ab Isolation Exercises Instead of General Compound Movements. Lots of people claim that doing compound exercises like squats, deadlifts, and barbell overhead presses are enough to develop flawless abs. But is that true? Well, if you’re...
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
If you want bigger arms you absolutely must develop your triceps. And even if you can't get to the gym, you can still get a great tricep workout without using any gym equipment like dumbbells, barbells, and machines. All you need is just your body weight and then maybe a few household items like a bookbag to incorporate a larger variety of exercises that you can do at home.
And one of the most basic yet extremely effective home tricep exercises you can do is the weighted close-grip pushup. To add weight to this exercise, you can either put a flat object on your upper back or you can just pack a bookbag full of heavy objects and then wear it while doing pushups. Now you're going to do these pushups a little differently to better target the triceps. To begin you'll place your hands directly under your shoulders so that they're exactly shoulder-width apart. Then extend your legs, come up on your toes, and get into a starting pushup position. From there lower your chest down towards the ground by bending your elbows while tracking them close to your body. Usually, when we perform pushups we want our elbows to be at about 45-degree angles in relation to our bodies. But for weighted tricep pushups, you want your elbows tight to your body. After slowly lowering yourself down press back up while still keeping those elbows close together. Then repeat for reps.
Another excellent tricep exercise that you can do at home are dips and there are a few ways you can perform dips. Many people will perform dips at home by positioning themselves at the edge of a platform or chair with their hands behind their backs. And then they perform reps by bending their elbows, lowering their hips to the floor, and pressing themselves back up to the starting position. Now even though this exercise has been around for a long time and has been recommended by countless trainers as a great tricep exercise for home, it's not that great at all. Lifting weight with your arms behind your back like that puts your shoulders into an internally rotated position which can lead to shoulder pain and shoulder injuries like impingement over time.
Instead, I recommend you use two sturdy objects like two chairs to perform regular dips with your hands at your sides. Obviously, make sure that each of these chairs or platforms can hold your body weight and make sure they don't tip over. Regular folding steel chairs are great for this and if you want to be extra safe you can put something heavy on each chair to ensure that it won't tip over. To Begin you'll stand in between the chairs which will be facing away from each other and place your hands on the chairs with your arms extended. Then raise your feet off the ground and begin slowly lowering yourself down by bending your elbows. To help Target the triceps more rather than the chest you want to try to keep your chest pointed forward as best as you can. Lower yourself down until your shoulders are about even with your elbows or a little lower and then press back up to the original starting position with your elbows locked out. Then repeat for reps.
Let's move on to the next one which is overhead tricep extensions. Normally this is done with a dumbbell, but a bookbag can actually work as a great replacement if you don't have a dumbbell. You would just pack the bookbag full of heavy objects like gallons of water. Then you would grab the opposite strap in each hand and swing the bookbag behind your head. From there you want to position your upper arms directly above your head so that your elbows are basically pointing to the ceiling. Then extend your arms and lift the weight all the way up until your arms are almost fully locked out. As you're doing this remember to try to keep your elbows close together, rather than letting them flair apart. After that just slowly lower the weight back down behind your head until your forearms are a little lower than parallel to the ground. From there you'll just once extend your arms back above your head and repeat for reps.
Now for some of you that are more advanced, you're not going to be able to put enough weight in a bookbag to effectively challenge your tricep strength with two hands at the same time. So another excellent variation is the one-arm overhead tricep extension, which we can once again do with a book bag. To do this one you'll grab both straps in one hand and once again swing the book bag behind your head except now instead of the book bag hanging directly behind you it's going to be angled towards your opposite shoulder. From there just like before you're going to extend your elbow until your arm is...
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
After you eat a meal, your body enters an anabolic state, where food is broken down into simpler molecules and used as fuel so your organs can function properly. An organ in the abdomen known as the pancreas produces insulin which is a hormone that regulates the process of breaking down and metabolizing primarily carbohydrates but also protein. So insulin is the hormone that helps the cells absorb the glucose found in the bloodstream after a meal. Dietary fat, on the other hand, is broken down into fatty acids which are used by the body for energy as well as for many different biological processes like testosterone production for example. Excess fatty acids are converted back to triglycerides and then most of those triglycerides are stored in adipose tissue otherwise known as body fat.
Meanwhile, excess carbohydrates from that meal will first get converted into glycogen which is a string of glucose molecules that can be stored and used later. Glycogen is mostly stored in the liver and your muscles. Since there's a biological limit to how much glycogen a person can store, once that limit is reached the rest of the excess energy is converted into triglycerides and stored as adipose tissue, otherwise known as body fat. This is the routine process that our bodies go through when we eat throughout the day. But what would happen if you chose to stop eating for 3 days straight?
Well after about 6-10 hours of fasting, most of the glucose that's still circulating in your bloodstream will be used for fuel. At that point, your body will start shifting from an anabolic to a catabolic state. Since it's not receiving any new nutrients, your body has to start using its own glycogen reserves to fuel itself. It's at that point that the pancreas secretes glucagon. Glucagon is not the same as glycogen or glucose. It's actually a hormone, and one of its jobs is to signal your body to release glycogen and fatty acids. Also if your last meal was low in carbohydrates your body may start producing ketones as an energy source within this early stage of fasting. Ketones are chemicals produced by the liver when fat cells are converted into fatty acids. So in general during those first 6 hours, your blood glucose levels will start to elevate and then they'll gradually decline. Meanwhile, your ketone levels will do pretty much the opposite. They'll gradually rise, especially after approximately the 10th hour of fasting. (1)
Now before you ever hit that 10th-hour mark, if you’re accustomed to eating three meals per day or you regularly eat a high-carb diet you'll probably experience hunger and low energy levels. If you ignore this hunger and continue fasting for at least 10 hours your body will start to increase the levels of a hormone produced by the pituitary gland called Human Growth Hormone otherwise known as (HGH). Fasting can actually increase HGH just as effectively as exercise, stress, and very low blood sugar, also known as hypoglycemia. (2) HGH plays an important role in the fasting process because it's associated with enhanced muscle growth, exercise performance, better body composition, a faster metabolic rate, stronger immunity, and faster recovery from injuries. (3) Although HGH is unlikely to lead to muscle growth in the absence of nutrients while you're fasting, it's believed to be responsible for delaying the breakdown of muscle. So it helps prevent muscle loss while fasting. It does this by stimulating metabolic processes such as protein synthesis and muscle tissue repair. According to research, the longer you fast, the more HGH you'll produce. For example, a study found that fasting for just two days increased HGH production by 5X. (4)
Now at around 12-16 hours in, depending on how many carbs you normally eat, your body will continue to deplete its glycogen stores, while also increasing its reliance on ketone bodies. (5) The benefits of this initial period of fasting have been well documented because multiple studies have been designed to observe people fasting for Ramadan, which is a Muslim holiday where people stop eating food from dawn to sunset, every day for one month. The studies on this topic all provide an excellent overview of the benefits that fasting for 10-17 hours daily has on the human body. According to the findings, there's great improvement in weight management, digestion, and cholesterol levels. (6). Also, some studies show a significant decrease in inflammation markers associated with a number of diseases such as homocysteine, C-reactive protein...
🔥 FREE 6-Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Every day, billions of people rely on caffeine to wake up and get through the day. In fact, It’s the most widely used psychoactive substance in the world. But what exactly happens inside your body when you drink coffee or intake caffeine? How does it wake you up, make you more alert, and increase motivation?
Well, when you drink coffee your body can experience many different changes and go through a number of different processes, but the actual intensity of the impact that caffeine has on your body is highly influenced by how much of a tolerance your body has built up to caffeine consumption over time. If you have low tolerance caffeine can send your energy levels through the roof and leave you feeling jittery and anxious. On the other hand, a high tolerance can make one or two cups of coffee feel like water. But in a nutshell, after drinking coffee, the caffeine is quickly absorbed upon consumption, going from your gut into the bloodstream. It'll then travel to the liver, where it gets broken down into compounds that affect the function of various organs.
The main organ caffeine impacts is your brain. It blocks the effects of adenosine, which is a neurotransmitter that relaxes the brain and makes you feel tired. So rather than the common misconception that caffeine provides you with energy, it instead inhibits a neurotransmitter that makes you tired. You see adenosine is the broken-down product of cellular metabolism. As your cells work and perform their functions you build up more adenosine. By the end of the day, adenosine levels are normally pretty high. And when those levels rise, we start to feel tired and become sleepy. Caffeine blocks these effects that adenosine has on the brain. It does this by binding to the same brain receptors that adenosine would bind to. This means that when caffeine binds to that receptor, there’s no space left for the adenosine to bind to that same receptor, leading to a reduction in tiredness and an increase in alertness. This effect is further increased by the fact that caffeine also enhances the levels of adrenaline in the blood. It also increases brain activity of the neurotransmitters norepinephrine and dopamine.
These are both neurotransmitters which are chemicals of the brain that send signals and ultimately have an effect on many things including our mood and energy levels. So after taking in caffeine, norepinephrine, and dopamine further stimulate the brain, promoting a state of alertness, arousal, and focus. Not only that, caffeine also increases the sensitivity of your dopamine receptors. In combination with the increase in dopamine, you’ll get a double whammy so to speak in terms of how the dopamine will impact your body. This is great for boosting energy because dopamine is one of the most important neurotransmitters in your body. This is especially true in regard to exercise and athletic performance because dopamine is associated with movement. Dopamine is also a big part of the “reward center” of your brain, which is why, when activated (as in the case of caffeine consumption), you’ll feel happier and more accomplished. Another thing that dopamine will do is it'll make you feel significantly more motivated. This is why people that are low in dopamine have trouble starting and finishing tasks and staying focused. So to flip that around if you boost your dopamine levels with caffeine it can help you be more productive and accomplish more. It'll help increase motivation and focus while studying or working.
Now, aside from the psychological benefits, there are also a lot of health and performance benefits that caffeine can provide for your body. The totality of scientific evidence concludes that coffee is overall good for your health, and those health benefits include better glycemic control, better cardiovascular health, a small reduction in blood pressure, and even a reduced risk of cancer. (1) Some of these health benefits can be attributed to the high amounts of phytochemicals in coffee, specifically, it's polyphenols that have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects. On top of that, some people also find that they can work out harder, are stronger, and have more endurance when they have caffeine before their workouts.
Interestingly, however, research indicates much of this might be the result of a placebo effect, meaning it increases performance because people believe it should instead of actual direct physiological changes. For example, one study found that believing you're on caffeine seems to improve performance more than actually consuming 6 milligrams of caffeine per kilogram of body weight, which is about five cups of coffee...
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Taking effective supplements will boost your energy levels, your strength, and provide the nutrients that your muscles need to recover and grow faster. Even though, supplements should just be treated as the cherry on top of an already effective diet and training plan that cherry on top actually does matter and can have a big impact. For example, take a look at just one supplement creatine monohydrate which studies have shown can provide a 15% boost in performance markers like maximal power, strength, and muscle contractions. (8) 15 percent may not sound like a whole lot, but it is a lot because just this one supplement can help you push yourself to lift a heavier weight or squeeze out an extra rep or two and that's what you need to build more muscle.
So the first tip, if you want to bulk up faster, is to really consider taking creatine. The fact that creatine can help significantly improve lifting performance, is backed by over 20 studies that found an average increase of 14% in overall weight lifting performance and up to a whopping 45 percent boost on an exercise like the bench press. (3) Not only does creatine help you build more muscle by getting stronger, but it also increases cellular hydration. Or in other words, it increases water retention within your muscles. This obviously makes your muscles appear fuller and bigger, but it also is actually another way that creatine helps to stimulate muscle growth because water retention increases the pressure placed against the cell membranes and cytoskeletons within your muscle cells, and your muscle cells perceive that as a threat to their integrity, which can increase anabolic signaling, leading to a more favorable protein turnover rate, ultimately stimulating more muscle growth. That's probably one of the reasons why we see studies like this one where after just 6 weeks of strength training men that supplemented with creatine gained, on average, 4.5 extra pounds of muscle than the men that received a placebo instead. (11)
Now even though you do naturally take in creatine from sources like chicken, seafood, and red meat to get the maximum benefits for muscle growth, supplementation is generally required. So simply taking five grams of creatine monohydrate per day will have your muscles fully saturated with creatine within 3 to 4 weeks according to the evidence. One last thing is to make sure you have this after your workout. A lot of people take creatine before their workout, but most likely you're better off taking it after your workout because research shows us that this is likely more effective. (4)
Next let's talk about mass gainers because even though they're VERY popular for bulking, I recommend you just make your own protein shake after your workout. A Mass gainer is very appealing because it sounds like some special formula that's specifically designed to boost muscle growth. But in reality, most mass gainers use cheaper protein sources and are essentially just mixed with a lot of sugar. You're better off spending your money on a higher-quality protein powder and if you really need the additional calories you can add things like whole milk, peanut butter, a banana, AND even blend in additional carbs like oats.
Now another thing you should know is that even though the anabolic window has been debunked meaning even though you don't need to rush to take a protein shake immediately after your workout research does still show us that there is a benefit to consuming protein sometimes soon after your workout, specifically within the first hour. (15) For example a 2018 study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found evidence that consuming protein shortly after a workout can help improve strength and muscle growth even if you're already consuming enough protein throughout the rest of the day.(15) This is because taking protein powder post-workout spikes your insulin and quickly delivers amino acids to your muscles. Those amino acids provide the building blocks to regain and maintain a positive protein turnover rate within your muscles. The protein turnover rate refers to the balance between muscle protein synthesis and muscle protein breakdown, we want a greater amount of synthesis than breakdown to build muscle or in other words, we want a positive protein turnover rate and after a workout, our muscles have gone through the exact opposite they've gone through muscle protein breakdown. So if you can't eat a high-protein meal soon after your...
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
.
Having strong forearms highly improves your grip strength, your wrist stability, and your overall lifting strength. Strong forearms can also benefit many everyday activities like opening a pickle jar, using a screwdriver or carrying heavy groceries. It's also nice that thicker forearms make you appear more fit and strong and this impression dates all the way back to inspirational characters like Popeye. So today I want to give you guys 10 exercises that you can do at home or pretty much anywhere to get thicker forearms and improve your grip strength in the process.
And the first exercise is wrist roller extensions. You can buy a wrist roller or to save money you can also easily make your own wrist roller from scratch by buying a wooden pole, cutting it into a longer piece that's about a foot long, and a shorter piece that's just a few inches long. Then you would drill a hole in the middle of each and connect them with a rope or twine. And from there you can load it with plate weights or heavy objects like gallons of water. To use the wrist roller for your outer forearm muscles you would start with the rope fully unwound and your hands in a pronated position with your knuckles up. Then perform one reverse wrist curl on each side alternating one hand after the other until you roll the rope and your weight all the way up to the top. Once you're at the top don't just allow the weight to drop by loosening your grip. Instead, curl back down in the opposite direction for the full benefits of this exercise. Do this for three to four sets of 3 to 5 rounds per set and one round means fully winding and unwinding the weight up and down so you want to try to do that 3 to 5 times per set.
Another very simple exercise is the standing reverse wrist curl. This will target your outer forearms and only requires a gallon of water. So you're going to take the gallon of water and grip it by the handle with your thumb down. so the opposite of how you would grab it to pour water. Then you're going to bend your elbow until your forearms is basically parallel to the ground. You can then take your other arm and grab your own forearm for support. And from there curl your wrist upwards, while specifically concentrating on driving your pointer finger knuckle towards the ceiling. So you're curling and slightly rotating up. Then slowly lower back down and repeat for reps before switching to the other side.
Next, we have weighted forearm wrist curls to hit the inner forearms. For this one, I recommend finding a flat object like a table, a bed, or a couch, or you can even sit down and use your knee, but the point is to use something sturdy that you can pin your forearm down against while doing this exercise. To begin you would pack a bookbag with some heavy objects and hold the bookbag by the strap at the top with your palm facing up. Then you would plant your forearm against the table, couch, or your knee with your wrist hanging off the edge. From there you simply curl your wrist up towards your bicep and slowly lower back down. When you lower down open your fingers at the bottom to allow the strap to slide down to the tips of your fingers. Then curl all the way back up and repeat that for about 10 reps before switching to the other side.
You can also use the same wrist roller as before to perform the wrist roller flexion exercise which will allow you to once again target your inner forearm muscles. You would take the same overhand pronated grip, bend your arms, and then flex one wrist after the other going back and forth until you once again roll the weight all the way up. Alternatively, you can also take an underhanded supinated grip, bend your arms at about 90 degrees, and then alternate curling one wrist in at a time that way. If this position bothers your wrist stick to doing this exercise with an overhand grip. And just like the other one you want to do 3 to 5 rounds per set and three to four sets total.
Moving on to the next one we have hammer curls, and in general, whenever you perform curls with your wrist in either a neutral or pronated position you will also target your forearms. Specifically, you'll be able to build up a large arm muscle that runs all the way up to your bicep known as the brachioradialis. One of the best ways to do hammer curls at home while simultaneously improving your grip is by using heavy objects in combination with a thick rope or towel. So you would take a few gallons of water and loop a towel through the handles. Then grab both ends of the towel in one hand with your thumb facing up. From there just curl one arm all the way up, bring..
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Certain foods are likely to lead to the accumulation of fat around your love handles as well as other common fat storage sites like your chest, belly, and hips. Meanwhile, other foods can help you easily reduce your calories without making you feel hungry leading to sustainable fat loss over time. So today I want to give you guys 19 foods that you can incorporate into your diet to fill your stomach and satisfy your taste buds while burning that love handle fat and building muscle in the process.
First, let's start with pasta, and specifically I'm talking about black bean and mung bean pasta. These are significantly lower in carbs and higher in protein than regular pasta. For example, 2 ounces of regular spaghetti will contain 42 grams of carbohydrates and only 7 grams of protein. Meanwhile, the same 2 ounces of black bean pasta will provide only 19 grams of carbs 11 of which will be in the form of filling fiber and a whopping 25 grams of protein. The protein and the fiber from black beans will leave you feeling very full and satisfied, unlike regular pasta which will quickly be converted into sugar and leave you feeling hungry. I also find it very important to include these comfort foods like pasta in your diet if you want to be able to actually stick to your diet for long enough to see those love handles disappear.
Now that I've given you a fun food let's talk about one of the most common high-protein options for fat loss chicken breast. And chicken breast is great because there are so many different and easy ways to eat it without even having to cook it yourself. For example, you can go around the deli section of your grocery store and find many pre-cooked options for chicken breast. These will likely include a thin sliced chicken breast off the grill, buffalo chicken tenders, and of course rotisserie chicken. Having easy options is very important when trying to reduce your calories because when you're cutting calories you're more likely to get hungry and sometimes you don't have the time to cook a meal. Pre-prepped chicken breast even with the addition of buffalo sauce is usually very low in calories and very high in protein. Of course, you can also just buy fresh chicken breast, season it right, maybe add some low-calorie marinade, and cook it on your own as well.
Another thing that'll help is frozen vegetables. These are a staple part of my diet and I highly recommend you always have frozen vegetables in the freezer at home. You can buy pre-mixed stir fries, peppers, cut-up onions, and pretty much whatever you need to make a delicious meal. When you buy fresh vegetables there's once again much more prep time, making it a battle of willpower to just prep a healthy meal. On the other hand frozen vegetables, they're already cut up and ready to be thrown on a frying pan. With some seasoning and low-calorie high protein sauces like soy sauce, you can make some delicious stir fries in under 10 minutes. Also on a side note, many people believe that frozen vegetables aren't as nutritious as fresh vegetables, but that's actually not true and there's even an argument to be made that frozen fruits and vegetables, can be even more nutritious because they stop decomposing the moment they're frozen.
And speaking of frozen fruits these can also help you reduce your calories along with your love handle fat, specifically I recommend you get a mixed berry option and keep it in your freezer. I personally like to take a cup, fill it with frozen berries, and then eat them as they defrost. Eating them while they're still defrosting it'll take you longer making it feel like you're eating much more than you actually are again helping you save calories. Either way you don't have to eat these frozen, because berries are naturally low in calories while also being very filling. Eating 1 or 2 cups of berries per day should only assist with fat loss.
Next, let's move on to something that you can have alongside your meals to take in significantly fewer calories, soups. Soup is very filling and it'll help you take in a lot more water which on its own can help reduce your appetite. You do of course want to choose the right type of soup. So make sure you stay away from high-fat creamy soups and instead go with a healthy soup full of vegetables alongside a lean protein source. An example would be chicken vegetable soup. I personally also enjoy adding black bean pasta to the soup as an alternative to chicken noodle soup. This alternative will have tons of fiber from the black bean pasta and veggies and it'll also have tons of protein, making it very filling without costing
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
3-dimensional capped-like shoulders create a v-shape upper body making you appear leaner, more attractive, and more athletic. If you're training your shoulders and they just don't seem to want to grow you're probably making one of three very common mistakes. First, you're saving your shoulder exercises Too Late into your Workout. If your goal is to bulk up your shoulders start your arm workouts with shoulder exercises so that you're fresh and can perform at your peak. Combining Shoulders, biceps, and triceps, into one workout can help you accomplish that better than a split where you would combine chest shoulders, and triceps. The second mistake is you're focusing too much on the front delts and not enough on the side and rear delts. Most compound upper body exercises like Overhead presses and chest presses will target the front head of your shoulders. So on your shoulder days, you want to focus primarily on the side and rear delts rather than the front delt. Finally, the last mistake is letting your traps take over your shoulders. To prevent this, stretch your traps before training your shoulders and focus on pushing the dumbbells as far away from your body during lateral raises rather than just lifting the dumbbells straight up.
3-dimensional capped-like shoulders help form a v-shaped appearance for your upper body making you appear leaner, more attractive, and more athletic. It also helps your arms look significantly more muscular when you have pronounced shoulders that appear to separate from the rest of the muscles in your arm. Unfortunately, many guys make the same common mistakes that prevent them from adding much mass to their shoulders at all, so today I want to go over 8 of the most common mistakes that are holding you back in terms of bulking up those shoulders.
And the first one that I see all the time, is that most people don’t train through a full range of motion, especially when doing exercises like overhead presses. If you're someone that actually does go all the way down next time you go to the gym take a look at how most people perform their barbell, dumbbell, and machine overhead presses. You’ll see that most people don’t lower the weight further than the point where their upper arms are parallel to the floor before pressing the weight back up. What you want to do instead is lower the weight all the way down until your hands at least at ear level and you can go even lower until the dumbbells are about the same height as your shoulders. This is beneficial because it’s specifically the lower part of the exercise that stimulates the delts the most. The upper part, on the other hand, is largely a function of the triceps. If we divide the motion of an overhead press into a lower, middle, and the upper portion (**) we can see that the triceps are heavily involved in locking out the weight during that upper portion, Not so much your shoulders. Your shoulders fire fully in the lower and middle portions of the exercise. On top of the fact that your shoulders are more active in the lower and middle section, research also indicates that in general training through a greater range of motion is better for muscle growth. For example, studies show that full squats cause more glute and adductor growth than partial squats and a full range of motion curls produce more bicep growth when compared to partial curls. (1)
Another common mistake is that you’re Focusing Too Much on the Front Delts But Not Enough on the Side and Rear Delts. This is usually done unintentionally and this issue can even affect advanced bodybuilders. Performing a disproportionate amount of volume for your front delts is common for two reasons. First, one of the staple shoulder exercises in everyone's routine is the overhead press. Unfortunately, the overhead press as great of an exercise as it is focuses primarily on the front delts. Meanwhile, the side and especially the rear delts get much less activation. The second, and also the bigger issue is the fact that you already train your front delts quite a bit during all your horizontal pressing exercises like the dumbbell and barbell bench press. So when you train your chest you inadvertently also train the front part of your shoulders a lot. Even your rear delts will get recruited to a decent extent as you perform different pulling exercises, like pull-ups, rows, and especially Bent over high rows. But that’s not the case for the side delts, which are especially important for giving your shoulders that wide look. With the exception of upright rows which can actually lead to shoulder impingement, your side delts are not activated to a very significant extent from most..
🏋️ Pushup Variations At Home (Video): youtu.be/cienXRha-XI
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Performing Pushups All The Way Down requires strong pecs, shoulders, triceps, and even a strong core. The number of pushups you can do is also used as a metric that can measure your overall level of fitness and your upper body strength in most fitness tests across multiple continents. Unfortunately many people either struggle with pushups or they're stuck at a certain number of good clean reps even though they want to do more, so today I want to go over 7 things you can do to increase the number of pushups you can perform in the next 30 days.
The first and one of the best things you can do is increase the difficulty of regular pushups by adding weight to the exercise. There are a couple simple ways you can do this. You can either add a plate directly onto your upper back or you can take a regular bookbag and pack it with heavy objects. When you're performing reps with this heavier weight you should aim for a moderate rep count of 10 to 20 reps. In fact the closer you can get to failure within this rep range while still maintaining good form the better. Rather than focusing on reps when doing these weighted pushups, you should focus on increasing the weight that you're able to load on your back. Of course, you are limited by how much weight you can add to your back, so if you can't hit failure within the first 20 reps with the weight load you have available then yes aim for a higher rep range where you'll hit failure. Also in general I'm not saying you can't also do high reps later on in your workout, in fact, training with various rep ranges can help you get much stronger at pushups. But you should start with weighted pushups that force you to do fewer reps and do that for at least a few sets before moving on to higher rep bodyweight pushups.
Now what this is going to do is it's going to force your muscles to get used to performing pushups with a much heavier weight load than just your body weight. And your body is going to progressively adapt to doing these more challenging pushups in many ways, but especially by increasing the strenght of your active muscles like your chest shoulders, and triceps. This is actually going to lead to you being able to do more reps without that weight load.
Another thing you should do is incorporate knee pushups. These are excellent regardless of whether you're advanced or you're a beginner. If you struggle with regular bodyweight pushups and let's say you can't do 10 clean reps all the way down, knee pushups are a perfect way for you to progressively overload and get stronger at pushups. When you hit let's say 7 reps and you can't do any more pushups without dropping to the floor, drop to your knees instead and complete the number of reps that you were aiming for. Then during your next workout try to hit 8 reps before dropping to your knees and completing your reps. Now if you're someone that's advanced knee pushups can be used to hit true failure with pushups. You don't have to do this on every set, but on your last set of weighted pushups, or even bodyweight pushups you can do as many reps as possible on your toes, and then drop to your knees to continue doing reps until you hit true failure.
This will again create favorable muscular adaptations that will enable you to perform more pushups. Just keep in mind when doing knee pushups that you shouldn't stick your butt up in the air doing what looks like a prayer. Your hips should still be in line with your upper back and your knees when doing these pushups for them to be effective.
Something else that will help you drastically increase the number of pushups you could do is to lift weights and specifically work on increasing the amount of weight you can lift for your pressing and push exercises.
These include compound exercises like barbell bench press, dumbbell press, Incline press, Barbell Military Press, and Dumbbell overhead press. Getting stronger at tricep extensions can also translate to more pushups on the ground. So exercises like skull crushers, behind-the-head tricep extensions, cable rope extensions, and especially dips can all help with pushups. So don't think that just because your goal is to improve pushups you should only stick to pushups because focusing on upping just your bench press for example by a couple pounds every few weeks should highly improve the strenght of your chest shoulders and triceps...
🏋️ FREE DOWNLOAD Wide Shoulder Workout: bit.ly/3eZSLs8
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
The adonis index ratio suggests that men that have shoulders about 60 percent wider than their waists are most attractive to women. A study from Cambridge University that included more than 700 women also confirmed that the shoulders were viewed as the most attractive male asset. This likely has something to do with the fact that having broader shoulders will give you more of a v-shaped appearance which gives off the impression of strength, good health, and a lower body fat percentage. Women across multiple cultures repeatedly choose a ratio of 1 to 1.6 as the most attractive waist-to-shoulder ratio regardless of whether you're wearing a tank top, a regular t-shirt, or no shirt at all. So today I want to give you the 8 key steps you should take over the next 30 days to get bigger wider shoulders and I'll even include a full shoulder workout that you can download at the end
So the very first thing that you're going to want to do is make sure you're hitting your shoulders at least twice per week. In my experience, the best split for this would combine shoulders, biceps, and triceps into one workout, Glutes, quads, hamstrings, and calves into another workout, and chest and back into a third workout. By doing 3 days on and 1 day off you can directly hit your shoulders twice a week every week. Training your shoulders more frequently than just once a week has been shown to lead to far superior and faster muscle growth because by the end of the week you wind up with significantly more training volume. Essentially you'll be doing more sets x reps x weight load over the course of each week which is the formula for faster muscle growth.
The other thing that you're going to want to do is increase the weight you lift for all your shoulder exercises. And I'm going to tell you exactly how to do that over the next 30 days, but this is so important because it's one of the most efficient and straightforward ways to progressively overload your shoulder workouts. Without progressive overload, your body has no reason to build more muscle mass that's going to cost lots of energy to maintain. So to up your weight, you're simply going to stick between a rep range of 6 to 9 reps for all your shoulder exercises.
Specifically what I mean is that once you can do 9 reps on your first set of a shoulder exercise like military presses, and you can do that without failing, well at that point you're required to up the weight by a small increment to the next level. This new weight load that you select should be an amount that you're only able to do around 6 to 7 reps with. And then your goal from there is to work on increasing your rep count with that new weight back up to 9 reps. Once you can do 9 reps of that slightly heavier weight load you're going to repeat the process by moving up again. So essentially every time you get to the upper limit of your rep range up the weight enough to force you to drop back down to 6 or 7 reps. Even upping the weight by 2.5 pounds on each side of the bar can lead to massive gains especially if you're using this strategy for every shoulder exercise.
Next, when doing your sets make sure you hit actual failure. Don't just stop at 6 or 7 reps because you hit your target with this heavier weight load. If you can squeeze out the 8th rep, even if it's a slight cheat rep, you shouldn't stop just because your target was 6 to 7 reps. Most people never truly hit failure so they never really put their muscles into an uncomfortable enough position where those muscles are forced to grow. Unlike many leg exercises like squats where going to failure would create a high risk of injury, most shoulder exercises can be taken to failure with minimal risk of injury. And over the next 30 days, you should hit total failure on at least the last set of each shoulder exercise that you perform. That means if you're doing let's says 3 sets of military presses, followed by 3 sets of lateral raises, followed by 3 sets of face pulls, you're going to want to ensure that you hit failure on the 3rd and final set of each of those exercises. You'll know that you hit failure because you'll literally be unable to lift the weight for any more complete reps. So squeeze out those last one or two cheat reps and hit actual full-out failure.
The next step is to make sure that the shoulder exercises you select primarily focus on your lateral and posterior shoulder heads. So like I already mentioned you'll want to do 3 to 4 different shou...
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: http://bit.ly/2Bv8CL4
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Performing cardio can be very beneficial for your heart, your lungs, and your overall health. But overdoing cardio has been proven to lead to a shorter lifespan. This is just one of many counterintuitive things that many people simply don't know about cardio. So today I want to go over the 8 things that nobody tells you about cardiovascular exercise.
Starting first with the simple fact that you don't burn as many calories from cardio as you think. Most people believe that you burn a lot more calories from cardio than resistance training. But according to the research, there actually isn’t that much of a difference. For example, we can look at a study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. (9) In this study, researchers compared the energy expenditure of 30 minutes of weight training, to 30 minutes of a HIIT/circuit style training workout, to 30 minutes of a steady-state cardio workout performed at 70% of the participant's maximum heart rate. As you can see in the graph in front of you, there was no significant difference in energy expenditure between weight training and steady-state cardio. (10) In other words, if you want to lose fat.... from a purely caloric perspective, you would be just as well off performing a resistance training workout with a decent amount of training volume.
In fact, resistance training is even better from a pure calorie-cutting perspective because another thing that no one tells you is that cardio Can Cause “Constrained Energy Expenditure. This is one reason why cardio isn’t that effective for weight loss and fat loss in general. Constrained energy expenditure basically points to the phenomenon that doing cardio tends to lower calorie expenditure in the hours after you're done with cardio. When most people do (aerobic) exercise, their non-exercise physical activity, also known as NEAT, tends to go down. This refers to the calories you burn through everyday activities, mostly movement that's not related to exercise. A couple examples include fidgeting, bouncing your foot up and down, and even the way you sit in your chair.
The point is after burning calories through cardio, people tend to become less active throughout the rest of the day. For example, they may keep their hands and feet still instead of bouncing their feet around and fidgeting. Or, they may slouch in their chair instead of sitting in an active and straightened position. They may also be more likely to drive instead of walking. If you've ever done a heavy cardio session, you've probably noticed this yourself. A simple task like going to the kitchen to grab a glass of water requires more mental and physical effort than normal. In general, your body will make many unconscious adaptations where it'll cut back on every form of non-essential energy expenditure if you try to burn more and more calories from cardio reducing the number of calories you burn for the rest of the day which brings us right to the next point...
Cardio is Not That Beneficial for Fat Loss. Now don't get me wrong. Cardio can be beneficial for many reasons, including improving heart health, endurance, and your health and well-being in general. However, if your sole goal is to lose weight, cardio is not the most effective option. This was well shown by a meta-analysis in which 14 studies were reviewed that involved over 1,800 overweight and obese people. (11) The researchers looked at whether cardio would benefit weight loss, and when the data was in they concluded that "Isolated aerobic exercise is not an effective weight loss therapy." (12) So you're probably thinking well duh...isolated cardio won't work because doing cardio alone without dieting obviously won't help you lose weight. But what if I told you that you could just diet without the cardio and still lose the same amount of weight without all that extra effort. If you don't believe me I'll link up another meta-analysis, which by the way a meta-analysis is considered the gold standard of evidence. But this other meta-analysis also found that adding cardio to a diet plan did not increase weight loss compared to just dieting without cardio. The difference was 11 kilos of weight loss versus 10.7 kilos of weight loss. (13) So if you're doing cardio to improve your cardiovascular health or your endurance capacity you're on the right track, but if you're doing cardio to lose an extra 0.3 kilos which is the same as a little more than half a pound I think you're wasting your time...
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Most diet plans are bland and boring, leaving no room for snacks or foods that you actually enjoy eating. And if you want to stick to a diet, you have to give yourself the psychological edge with some options that make you feel like you're not on a diet at all. Your belly fat will only go down after you've stayed in a calorie deficit for long enough for your body to release its most precious fat stores that it just loves to hold on to. So this list of 12 tasty low-calorie snacks will not only fill your stomach, but more importantly they'll satisfy your mind which is an often overlooked yet very crucial piece of the fat loss puzzle.
And the first snack that packs plenty of flavor to satisfy your tastebuds and that crunch feeling is roasted seaweed. Roasted seaweed has recently really blown up so it's now available in most supermarkets already pre-packaged and flavored, so you don't have to cook these yourself to enjoy them. Simply choose from a variety of flavors like teriyaki, sesame, or my absolute favorite flavor wasabi, pop it open, and enjoy your snack. One serving of this snack only contains 25 calories, and that includes 1 gram of protein, about 1 gram of fiber, and 2 grams of fat. Between the flavor and the crunchy texture, the seaweed will satisfy you while adding virtually negligible calories to your diet. And you'll be surprised how many pieces of seaweed you can eat before you hit 25 calories or especially if you have 2 servings totaling 50 calories. Another awesome aspect of eating seaweed is that it contains many antioxidants, as well as vitamins and minerals like vitamins A, C, E, and Iodine. Even though seaweed isn't going to be the most filling snack it helps you feel like you're cheating without costing almost any calories.
Next, we have a sweet snack that can replace Ice cream while being virtually calorie-free, popsicle sticks. These can be made very easily by using a popsicle ice tray and a sweet calorie-free beverage like crystal light or a flavored water enhancer. You would simply pour the sweet beverage into your popsicle mold or even a regular ice tray and then freeze it. If you're using a regular ice tray, tightly cover it with plastic wrap, and then insert toothpicks into each flavored Ice cube. These are truly satisfying and if done correctly they can taste just as good as an Italian Ice but instead of taking in 60 calories along with a bunch of simple sugars you'll take in close to 0 calories with 0 sugar.
Another prepackaged snack that I've mentioned numerous times before is beef jerky and today I want to highlight the absolutely amazing zero-sugar variety. Beef jerky isn't going to be as low in calories as seaweed but the majority of the calories will be in the form of filling protein. Protein is the harder macro-nutrient requirement to hit on a daily basis when compared to fats and carbs. So this is a snack that'll help you up your protein count with minimal additional calories, and protein happens to be very filling. The best flavor for fat loss is the original zero sugar option. The macro's on this flavor truly blow my mind because it's almost entirely protein. One serving contains 13 grams of protein, 2 grams of fat, and 0 carbohydrates. If eat the entire package it'll only cost you 160 calories and it'll provide 30 grams of protein with only 4.5 grams of fat. Those macros are better than most protein bars, and if you are having protein bars to up your daily protein count, there's really no reason why you can't switch to this more enjoyable option. And even if you don't get the zero sugar original flavor, there are other low calorie high protein beef jerky flavors, as well as chicken, turkey, and ostrich jerkey that's all available for you to choose from.
Next let's move on to popcorn. The thing that makes popcorn such an excellent snack for fat loss is that it contains a lot of fiber which is very filling and popcorn also has a low energy density. This essentially means that you can eat a lot of popcorn and fill your stomach up while taking in very few calories. 1 cup of butter-free air-popped popcorn only has about 30 calories. If you're on a strict diet you can easily cut out a small amount of sweet potatoes, brown rice, or fruit and add in some salted butter-free popcorn instead. Just like the seaweed, it'll satisfy that crunch sensation that many people are desperately craving on their bland boring diets. Each cup of popcorn that you have will only add about 6 grams of carbs along with 1 gram of protein to your daily total.
Another simple high-protein filling snack that tastes great is deli me...
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Starting your day the right way can help accelerate fat loss, increase motivation, and get the work that actually matters done. For example, the simple choice of staying in bed and watching tv or playing video games first thing after you wake up can lead to a spiral of laziness, maybe leading you to call out of work, miss your workout, and eat a bunch of junk food because you already took the day off anyway... so might as well. Instead of getting trapped in this cycle of demotivation, I want to give you 8 crucial morning habits that you can incorporate into your daily routine to help automatically reduce your calories, burn more fat, decrease the size of your waist, and feel more driven and on point throughout the rest of your day.
And first, if you're trying to accelerate fat loss try having some coffee soon after you wake up. Since burning fat is almost entirely about reducing the number of calories that you take in, coffee can be a very effective tool to make you naturally desire fewer calories. That's because coffee has appetite-suppressing effects that can delay and even negate the feeling of hunger for hours. If you can decrease Ghrelin which is your hunger hormone, while increasing satiety hormones like leptin and peptide YY, youre appetite will go down. And according to numerous studies something found in coffee other than the caffeine makes it effective at reducing hunger for many people. For example, a study compared participants that drank either a placebo, caffeinated coffee, decaffeinated coffee, or water with caffeine added in. And the researchers found that decaffeinated coffee actually had the biggest impact on raising peptide YY and significantly reducing hunger. The second runner-up was the regular coffee, meanwhile, the placebo and the caffeine mixed into the water had no effect. So this showed that one or more noncaffeine ingredients in coffee may be what's leading to a lower appetite and more fat loss. This may have something to do with the fact that coffee contains phytochemical compounds called chlorogenic acids and many obesity researchers are very interested in these compounds because they may be the noncaffeinated ingredients within coffee that help decrease hunger. (1) Generally this decrease in hunger can last a while. For example in a meta-analysis researchers concluded that both coffee and decaffeinated coffee is able to reduce your appetite up to 4 hours after consumption. (2)
This brings me to my next point it may help you to just have coffee and skip breakfast. If you were trying to build muscle I would recommend that you, of course, have breakfast because it'll help you add more calories to your diet which is beneficial for muscle growth since it requires that you stay in a calorie surplus. However, if you're trying to reduce the size of your belly then skipping breakfast can help you take in significantly fewer calories throughout the day. It also allows you to have larger meals later on in the day since those calories haven't been used up on breakfast. Now, this isn't to say that skipping breakfast is the only way you should set up your routine, because some people actually benefit from having breakfast and their better able to manage their hunger that way.
Some people also prefer smaller more frequent meals. However there are a whole bunch of other people that either don't really like having breakfast, have more energy and feel less lethargic by skipping, or they would rather save those calories for larger more enjoyable meals later. Now if you're used to having breakfast and you want to try to skip it to save some calories, you're likely going to feel hungry the first few days because your body is used to getting fed during that that time of the ay so it'll naturally increase your hunger hormones at that time. So make sure you try it for at least a few days and give your body time to adapt to see if it fits well with your body and your preferences.
If you do choose to have a breakfast, then make sure that you weigh yourself before breakfast. Weighing yourself first thing every morning is another very important habit that has been proven to help people lose weight faster, lose it more consistently. Many times we don't realize that something we're eating is actually slowing down our fat loss. If you decided to eat 3 protein cookies the night before hand and you were thinking that they're great for weight loss, but you wake up the next day, weigh yourself, and find out that your 8 pounds heavier, well that's a good sign that you should maybe test if it's the protein cookies. So by weighing yourself daily you can not...
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
The love handle area is a perfect spot for your body to store and retain fat. This fat sits right above the hips, close to your center of mass, which makes it cost very little energy for your body to maintain even if you're working out and staying very active. This innately makes most people's love handle fat very stubborn, especially in comparison to other distal areas like your face and hands.
So one of the first things that you have to understand is that the fastest way to lose your love handles is to stay consistent over time. It takes time to burn fat, especially from the love handle area because it’s one of the last spots where body fat gets burned partly due to hormonal and biomechanical aspects. There are certain places in the body where excess body fat impairs movement more than others. That’s why it's pretty much unheard of for anyone to have stubborn fat around their hands. Our bodies are incredibly smart machines and after thousands of years of evolution, each of our bodies understands that storing fat around the love handles is much more preferable to storing fat around your hands because that would impact your movement capacity too much and from a leverage perspective it would cost much more energy to maintain.
So essentially your body is only going to start using love handle fat for energy when it's out of other options. That's why it's crucial that you stay consistent with eating a healthy diet for at least a certain time period like 6 weeks to a few months before moving into maintenance. In the beginning, you might notice that you’re losing a lot of fat around areas like your face, arms, and legs, but not much from your love handles and belly. Many times people don't realize that this is totally normal and they become discouraged leading them to quit and start back up again with a bunch of excess fat that they have to now once again burn off to get to those love handles. So the fastest way to lose love handles is to not constantly restart at square one, but rather continue to lose body fat until your love handles will eventually disappear.
And to get that done one of the best things you can do that works across the board is cut Out ALL Simple Sugar. When I say simple sugars I'm referring to the kind of sugar you find in products like Coca-Cola, donuts, and cookies. These are the easiest types of calories to overconsume in very large quantities without even realizing it. For example, it's extremely easy to eat 1,000 calories of ice cream or drink thousands of calories from sugary beverages. And all that sugar is very unlikely to fill and satisfy your stomach. Instead, it's likely to give you a huge sugar crash and you'll feel even hungrier soon afterward.
We know from multiple studies that sugar has a minimal effect on satiety, meaning people usually consume sugary calories on top of the calories they already consumed or will consume throughout the day. (1) Cutting out simple sugars is one of the best things you can do to lose love handles faster. You’ll find it much easier to maintain a calorie deficit, which helps you get leaner over time.
Now this doesn't mean you have to avoid sugars in foods like fruits because there are a couple differences between sugar from fruits and sugars found in processed food. For example fruit contains a decent amount of fiber, which slows down the speed at which the sugar gets digested, and it also is effective at increasing fullness because fruit contains significantly fewer calories per 100 grams compared to many foods especially processed foods with added simple sugars. Plus fruit also contains much more micronutrients that benefit your health and body composition overall.
But in general to get to those love handles faster you want to Focus on Eating all sorts of Single-Ingredient Foods with a Low-Calorie Density, whcih obviously isn't just limited to fruit. The concept of burning fat is very easy you have to consume fewer calories than you use, but in practice it happens to be much harder than that primarily because of hunger. Most diets fail because they leave people feeling too hungry, Leading them to undo all the hard work they put in over days, weeks, or sometimes even months due to rebound binge eating.
The best solution I've found for this is to make single-ingredient foods with a low-calorie density the foundation of your diet. This was well-documented by a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. (2) The researchers told people that they could eat as much as they wanted for five days on two different diets. One was a high-energy diet made up of calorie-dense foods like sweet desserts and fatty meats. Meanwhile the other
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
What if you're doing plenty of bench press but you're still stuck in terms of adding muscle to certain portions of your pecs? This is known as a lagging muscle group, and many guys, myself included have struggled with developing either the upper, lower, or middle portion of their chests. So today I want to give you 8 unique exercises that you can throw into your routine to target your chest in a different way and force lagging portions of your chest to grow.
And first let's start with incline log or swiss bar presses. If you don't have a log bar you can use a swiss bar instead. The point is to use a bar that allows you to take a wide neutral grip. This will hit your upper chest in a different way than regular bench press while still allowing you to go really heavy. With regular incline presses, many people allow the front of their shoulders to take over the movement and take tension away from the upper chest. Taking a neutral grip will allow your elbows to follow a more narrow path where they're closer to your body keeping tension on the upper chest.
To begin you're going to grab the neutral grips on a log bar or a swiss bar and lay back on a bench set at 30 to 45-degree incline. Then press the weight starting from your sternum and ending directly over the line of your shoulders. This should create a slight arch-like path. You want to follow this same arch-like path on the way down. You want your hands to end up around your nipple line and then repeat for reps. By the way, if you don't have either of these bars, unfortunately, the tricep bar won't work because it's too narrow of a grip but you can technically use a trap bar instead. The only downside is that you will have to go lighter because there will be a lot more stabilization involved.
Next is a unique cable exercise the cross body incline cable chest press. You can see right away that your starting position is very different than most typical chest exercises. Even though there's no such thing as an actual inner chest muscle, or an outer chest muscle, by changing the angle that you perform presses from, you're able to place more tension on different portions of your chest. So the crossbody incline chest press is very effective at putting more tension on the inner and upper portion of the pectoralis major. So to begin you'll take a seat on a bench, but you're not going to sit straight back, instead, you're going to sit at an angle turned towards the arm that you're going to be pressing with. From there you'll grab the cable and press it straight across your body. By pressing this way across the midline of your body you increase the recruitment of the chest muscle fibers closer to the sternum. From there you're just going to simply lower back down and repeat for reps, making sure to do each side on each set.
Moving on we have a dumbbell pressing exercise that can help you target the top portion of your chest reverse grip dumbbell presses. The incline press has long been used to target the upper chest. But the more your elbows spread away from your body the more your anterior deltoid will take over the upper chest's role in lifting the weight. One great way to get the elbows closer and to incorporate more upper chest is to use a reverse grip. So you're going to take a seat on a bench set at about a 30 to 45-degree angle. Then you're going to lay back and press both dumbbells straight up with your palms facing up towards your head. Then slowly lower back down, and as you come down, you want to follow an arch-like path so that the dumbbells end up at about your nipple line. Then press back up in that same arch like path and repeat for reps.
Another exercise that can help with lagging muscle growth around the sternum is the single arm crossbody pec dec fly. Now I've heard people say that going any further past the midline of your body is not effective for chest growth. But this couldn't be further from the truth. As you go past the midline of your body with these kinds of exercises, you're able to activate the chest in its most shortened position. If you don't believe me feel free to try this without any weight at all. Just take your arm, raise it straight in fron
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Aside from just getting stronger, more muscular, and looking leaner, maintaining healthy testosterone levels with benefit your heart, your bones, your mood, and even your verbal memory and reasoning skills.
This is because testosterone is the primary male sex hormone. It’s also known as an “androgen,” which is a steroid hormone that promotes the development of masculine characteristics. To better understand exactly what testosterone does inside your body, we’ll first have to look at how it's made. And the process of creating testosterone actually starts in the hypothalamus, which is the part of your brain that you can view as the master regulator of your hormones. The hypothalamus releases gonadotropin-releasing hormone which stimulates the pituitary gland to release luteinizing hormone and follicle-stimulating hormone. Both luteinizing hormone and follicle-stimulating hormone are important for male hormonal and sexual health although each are important for their own reasons.
For example Luteinizing hormone is important because it stimulates something within your testes known as a “steroidogenic acute regulatory protein.” This starts the conversion of cholesterol to steroids, more specifically androgens. So, in case you're confused the answer is yes testosterone IS made out of cholesterol. That’s one reason research indicates diets low in cholesterol are terrible for your testosterone levels. (1). They literally crush your testosterone. For example, a study found a direct correlation between cholesterol intake and testosterone. The more cholesterol people ate, the higher their testosterone went. (2))
Now Follicle-stimulating hormone, is less important for hormone production than luteinizing hormone, but it's crucial from a reproductive perspective because it stimulates your body to produce sperm. The testes of the average healthy male produce around four to nine milligrams of testosterone per day. This testosterone production is controlled by a negative feedback loop. This negative feedback loop measures androgen and estrogen levels in the body. That’s done to make sure your hormone levels stay within a certain range. When your body senses testosterone levels have reached the upper range, the hypothalamus stops stimulating the pituitary gland to release Luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone because they're no longer needed for more testosterone and sperm production. But in a normal scenario, when the lower end of that range is reached your body will release more Luteinizing hormone and Follicle stimulating hormone to increase testosterone and sperm production.
Unfortunately if for whatever reason this process is impaired you can suffer from low testosterone. Things that may cause that to happen include poor health, poor nutritional status, or a gonadal disorder. it's also important to realize that not all testosterone that your body makes actually impacts your body in the way testosterone is supposed to impact your body. A big reason for this is that a part of your testosterone gets converted into estrogen on a daily basis, and as most of you already know, estrogen is the primary female sex hormone, that is also of course present in men in more limited quantities. Testosterone is converted into estrogen primarily through the aromatization process. And don't get me wrong, this process isn't inherently bad. In fact, estrogen is vital for regulating your libido, erectile function, and the development of sperm cells. It only becomes an issue if too much of your testosterone gets converted into estrogen. Bodybuilders that abuse steroids routinely run into this issue where they jack up their testosterone, then a percentage of that testosterone gets converted into estrogen, and they end up with issues like gynecomastia. That’s one reason bodybuilders often take anti-aromatase pharmaceuticals like Arimidex. Arimidex helps prevent so much testosterone from turning into estrogen helping keep their testosterone levels high while maintaining more normal estrogen levels.
It’s also important to note that this aromatization process primarily takes place within body fat, which is why overweight and obese people tend to have higher estrogen levels and lower testosterone. Now, aside from being converted into estrogen, about ten percent of the testosterone in your body gets converted by an enzyme known as 5-alpha reductase into dihydrotestosterone also known as DHT. While testosterone is known for its anabolic muscle building effects, DHT is more androgenic which means that it has more impact on things like beard growth, body hair growth, Adam's apple size, and the pitch of your voice...
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Taking in enough protein daily can be very difficult even though it's essential for building muscle and improving your body composition. While carbs and fats are abundant in our overly processed diets protein is a much more difficult macronutrient to get enough of especially because foods that are high in protein and lower in carbs and fats are generally less palatable than foods that are higher in fats and carbs but lower in protein. Take ice cream as an example and compare it to chicken breast. On top of all that protein happens to be very filling further increasing the difficulty of taking in the recommended 0.7 grams of protein per pound of body weight. So today I want to give you guys a list of the best foods that'll Easily help you add over a hundred grams of protein to your diet.
And first, we have to start with egg whites. Part of the reason why egg whites are so easy is that you can simply take your carton of egg whites out of the fridge, pour them directly onto a frying pan, and have them cooked in 5 minutes. A typical egg white that's separated from the yolk will contain about 4 grams of protein with basically no carbs or fats. If you wanted to get let's say 20 grams of protein, you would have to break apart 5 eggs and separate the yolk from the egg whites 5 times. For some people that could be a pain which is why having a carton of egg whites in your fridge is one of the key strategies, I recommend to ensure that you can always quickly add additional protein to your daily total. Liquid egg whites typically contain 5 g of protein for every 3 tablespoon serving. 1 cup of egg whites will contain 26 grams of protein. So by having a cup and half of egg whites you can essentially take in 40 grams of protein very quickly and easily.
Another excellent source is canned fish like tuna. Just one can of tuna contains about 25 grams of protein. One of the best things about tuna is that you can take it with you anywhere and you can easily eat it anywhere to add protein to your daily total. To make it even easier and more palatable you might decide to go with flavored tuna packets instead. When you're ready to eat all you have to do is open one of these pouches and scoop out the flavored tuna with a fork. Flavors like sweet and spicy tuna truly taste great while containing only about 4 grams of combined fats and carbs for 17 grams of protein. Two of these tuna packets throughout the day would add on 34 grams of protein and they're really easy to eat because of the convenience and great taste.
Another food that is actually considered a supplement but it'll make it much easier to meet your daily protein Target is of course protein powder. The two most common types of protein powders are whey protein and casein. Both of these are dairy-based protein sources and even though casein is a more favorable meal replacement since it has a slower digestion rate, it can cause digestion issues compared to whey. Whey protein on the other hand will digest faster and that's why many people will drink whey protein directly after their workout. There's also a plethora of other protein powders including egg protein beef protein pea protein and rice protein just to name a few and all of these can help you meet your daily protein needs. You can increase your protein count even further by having your protein shake with skim milk instead of water. If you're trying to gain weight or bulk up you can also add natural peanut butter or dried peanut powder to add more protein while making your protein shake taste better. After doing these things a simple protein shake can easily add 40 or more grams of protein to your diet on a daily basis. To be fair protein powder is probably the easiest way to add protein to your diet. You can even take foods that are high in carbs like pancakes or waffles and replace some of the ingredients with protein powder.
These kinds of recipes can be found online and can help turn many of your high-carb meals in high protein meals. However, keep in mind that you don't want to abuse this little protein cheat code. You still want the majority of your meals to be made up of real food because of the micronutrients that come with eating a variety of real foods. But having a protein shake after your workout or adding it to one random meal throughout the day can make getting enough protein much easier.
You'll also want to replace your high-carb and high-fat snacks for high protein snacks. One perfect example of this is beef jerky. Just one ounce of jack Link's original flavored...
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Pullups highly challenge and develop the muscles in your back. These muscles include the rhomboids, the latissumus dorsi, the trapezius, and even the deeper muscles that run along your spine like the erector spinae... In addition, pullups are also very effective for developing your biceps and building bigger stronger arms. So today I want to give you guys 10 of the best pullup variations that you can incorporate into your routine to get a muscular and attractive V-shaped back.
And first, let's start with a more creative variation that I'm sure many of you have never tried before the trx L - Sit pullup. (3) This is a more advanced way to do pullups that'll help you target your core much more. To begin, you'll grab a trx strap in each hand with a pronated grip, which means that your palms are going to be facing away from you. Then hang down and raise your legs straight up in front of your body. As the name implies you want your body to look like an L from a side point of view. Then while holding your legs in this position pull yourself up by pulling your elbows down and back. After your chin clears the straps lower back down and repeat for reps while keeping your legs on that L sit position the whole time. Keep in mind you can do this exercise on a regular pullup bar but if you want an even greater challenge use trx straps or rings.
Next is my favorite variation the weighted wide grip pullup. Obviously, you can add weight to any pull-up movement, but if you want to get maximum development of your back, lats and biceps, by far one of the best things you can do is progressively up your weight with wide grip weighted pullups. Start by standing under a pullup bar and grab the bar at least about 6 to 8 inches wider than each of your shoulders. Your palms should be facing away from you and you can either strap the weight to a dip belt or you can have your partner place the weight in between your crossed legs. (4) Then you're going to pull your body up until your chin clears the bar. As you're doing this concentrate on pulling your elbows down and back to better target the muscles in your back. You want to do these earlier on in your workout while you're still fresh and can pull the heaviest weight load possible. I recommend selecting a weight that you can do for at least 6 to 8 reps. You can start by just strapping 5lbs and then slowly work up from there overtime and you'll be amazed at how quickly you can get significantly stronger at this exercise
Another variation that's very effective is the hockey grip pullup. With this one you'll stand sideways, so you'll be facing parallel with the pullup bar. Reach up and grab the bar above your head with both hands placing one hand in front of the other like you're holding a baseball bat. Then hang straight down and pull your body up. As you're pulling up you want to tilt your head to one side of the bar and keep pulling until your chin fully clears the bar. Then lower back down and repeat the same thing except with your head tilted towards the otherside now. Repeat that going back and forth for reps.
A very similar alternative to this one is to use a double Dhandle for pullups. You would once again stand facing the same direction And then take your double d handle and place it over the the top of the pullup bar. Grab the double d handle with both hands and pullup in the same way as before, shifting your head to one side, alternating side to side on each rep. This variation may feel a lot more comfortable for your hands bur essentially should hit your back and arms in a very similar way. As a side note you can also do this similar variation with a rope (1)Next is a fun way to perform pullups while also incorporating effective isometric contractions that are called around the world pullups. Start in a pullup position with your hands pronated and about 6 to 8 inches wider than shoulder width apart on each side. Hang straight down and pull yourself up. Except instead of pulling straight up as you would with regular pullups you're going to pull yourself up to one side. Then while holding yourself up you're going to slide your body over to the other side, and then lower yourself down on that side. Then repeat for reps. Also remember to switch the direction that you go in on each alternate set.
Now if you want to use pullups specifically to get bigger arms one of the best variations you can do is the regular chin up. Here you would stand directly under the pullup bar and grab it with your palms facing towards you instead of away from you. You would also place your...
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
During just one night of sleep, your body will replace billions of cells, it'll repair broken down muscle tissue, release many different hormones, and your brain will process all the new information you've gathered during the day. Anywhere from 1/4 to 1/3 of your entire life will be spent sleeping, so you can bet that it's a pretty important and impressive process that effects everything from your energy levels, to how fast you age, and your body's ability to build muscle and burn fat. So we're going to examine the scientific research to find out exactly what happens to your body while you're sleeping and how you can improve your sleep to fully take advantage of your body's natural rechargeable battery.
When taking a closer look the first thing you'll realize is that sleep is actually not a steady-state process where your body is in the same state the entire time. Instead, during a normal night of sleep, you progress through four or five sleep cycles that last about 70 minutes to 2 hours each. Each of those sleep cycles also contains four individual sleep stages. The first three stages are composed of non-rapid eye movement, also known as NREM, meanwhile, the fourth stage is composed of rapid eye movement also known as (REM).
To give you an example in a graph, here’s what a night of sleep looks like when you go through five cycles that last about 90 minutes each... (*) As you can see, during the first cycle, you spend most of your time in non-REM stage 3, but the further you get into your night's sleep, the less time you'll spend in non-REM stage 3 and instead you'll spend more time in REM sleep. As you go through all the stages different things will happen to your body during each stage.
The first stage of the sleep cycle is a transition period between wakefulness and sleep. During this short period of relatively light sleep, which lasts several minutes, your heartbeat, breathing, and eye movements all slow down, and your muscles relax with only occasional twitches. (1) Your brain on the other hand will still be fairly active and it'll produce high amplitude theta waves, which are slow brainwaves occurring mostly in the frontal lobe of the brain. (2) Even though your brain will remain active the brain waves will begin to slow from the normal daytime wakefulness pattern. Now it's relatively easy to wake someone up while they're in stage 1 sleep. In fact, people often report that they never fell asleep at all if they're woken up while still in stage 1 sleep. You might've experienced this while lightly falling in and out of sleep while watching a tv show before you shut off the tv and actually move forward in the sleeping cycling and go to sleep.
So once you shut that tv off and drift deeper into sleep you move into stage 2 sleep, where the body goes into a state of deeper relaxation. Now keep in mind this is still considered light sleep compared to later stages. But your heartbeat and breathing rate will slow down further, your muscles will become even more relaxed, your eye movements will stop, and your body temperature will drop. (3) Due to all of these adjustments, your body’s total energy expenditure will start to drop. This is largely due to your muscles being much less active but also caused by other bodily processes that slow down. During this stage your brain will also begin to produce bursts of rapid, rhythmic brain wave activity, which are known as sleep spindles. Sleep spindles are believed to be crucial for memory consolidation. This is an activity where your brain gathers, processes, and filters new memories you acquired during the previous day. (4) This is also one reason getting enough sleep is crucial as a student. If you sleep well, your brain will be able to retain what you studied much better. The same can be said for almost anything new that you're trying to learn and retain, sleep is crucial to solidify that information in your head.
As you move further into the sleep cycle you'll enter stage 3 which is also known as deep sleep. You spend the most time in deep sleep during the first half of the night, where each cycle of stage 3 lasts for about 20 to 40 minutes. But as you continue sleeping, the stage 3s get shorter, and you’ll spend more and more time in REM sleep instead. If you've ever tried to wake someone up but the person wasn’t very responsive to your attempt, that person was likely in stage 3 of the sleep cycle. During this stage muscle tension, heart rate, and breathing rate decreases even further as the body continues to relax.....
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Are faster reps or slower reps better for muscle growth? When you perform faster reps you can typically lift more weight on the other hand with slower reps you have much longer eccentric contractions which leads to more muscle breakdown. So today we're going to review what science has to say about which of these strategies is best to build muscle faster and improve your body composition
First, we have to start with something known as repetition tempo. As the name implies, this is the actual term used by researchers to describe how fast you perform reps for a certain exercise. As I already mentioned most exercises include an eccentric phase and concentric phase. The eccentric phase refers to the portion of the movement where the target muscle lengthens. For example, your bicep is in the eccentric phase when you lower the weight during a curl. The muscle lengthens while maintaining tension to prevent the weight from going into free fall. The concentric phase refers to the phase where the target muscle shortens. For example, your bicep is in the concentric phase when you lift the weight during a curl. The muscle needs to shorten with enough force to overcome gravity. So usually you hear trainers giving the advice that you should go extra slow on the way down, and explode on the way up to optimize muscle growth. But is that actually true?
Well in a study published in the journal of strength and conditioning research. (1) Researchers had participants perform 3 sets of 6-10 reps to failure, either with a traditional rep tempo of 1 to 2 seconds for each the concentric and eccentric contraction or they did a slow 10-second concentric followed by a slow 4-second eccentric contraction. Both groups aimed to progress as fast as they could in the amount of weight they could lift and the amount of muscle they could grow, which was measured through muscular biopsies which are considered one of the highest quality measurement methods for this type of test. At the end of the study, researchers realized that the traditional training group increased the cross-sectional area of the leg muscle fibers by 26 percent in type 1 slow-twitch fibers and 34 percent in type 2 fibers. Meanwhile, the slow tempo group only increased by 6 percent in type 1 and 15.5% in type 2. Based on those results, we can say that faster reps were better for muscle growth when compared to very slow reps.
In other studies, we look at something known as tut, which stands for time under tension, and essentially it refers to how many seconds it takes from the start to the end of your sets so it includes time for both concentric and eccentric phases. Most people believe that the longer overall time you have under tension the more muscle you will build and this is simply not true. For example, taking six seconds to do a dumbbell curl was proven to be no better for muscle growth than taking two seconds. (10) Another study found that performing reps at a fixed speed of four seconds per rep instead a naturally self-selected speed led to a decrease in both muscle activation and training volume (11)
So does all the available research support faster reps only? Well, we have a meta-analysis (2) that evaluated eight different studies and found no statistically significant difference between repetition speed and muscle growth. With that said, when you look at the effect sizes for those studies, they do indicate that there was a trend for greater muscle growth for those training with a faster rep tempo. (3) There's a chance that the duration of the study was simply not long enough to detect a statistically significant difference between the groups. That’s why I believe this meta-analysis still indicates that faster tempos are actually better for building muscle, just as the other studies indicated. On top of that the eight studies that were reviewed in the meta analysis had many other limitations. One of those is that the studies were all performed on untrained individuals. You could question whether untrained individuals have the required exercise technique, coordination, and motivation to produce maximum muscle activation when performing an exercise faster; which by the way that's the main way that a faster tempo could increase muscle growth.
So why might faster reps be more efficient for muscle growth. Well, the first reason is that studies show slowing down your reps reduces how much weight you can lift. Meanwhile speeding up your reps can increase the number of reps that you can lift a certain weight. (4)...
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Certain gym machines can put you in position that can do more harm than good especially if they're done incorrectly and unfortunately many of these exercises are very common. Most people assume that any machine that's put into a gym is safe and effective to use. But that's not the case. Having many different machines in a gym may be helpful for selling gym memberships, but basic dumbbells and barbells are typically more effective than the majority of the complex machines that you see at the gym. so today I WANT zoom in and focus on 8 machines that you're better off replacing or at least changing how you use them.
Starting first with the very popular smith machine. Now the smith machine can actually be effective if you perform certain exercises that can only be done on the smith machine. However most people use the smith machine as an alternative to exercises like squats , deadlifts, and bench press which were all intended to be done with a regular barbell. Many people performing these exercises on the smith machine are under the impression that it'll decrease their risk of injury, but this couldn't be further from the truth. The issue is that the smith machine is locked into a set range of motion and has a set barbell path. This means that when you're bench pressing for example, the barbell is forced to go up and down in a fixed straight line. This is bad for your shoulders and it increase the chances that you flare your elbows as you lower the bar down.
In a regular bench press your path would almost be an arch like motion from lock out down to the chest. Looking at squats we see a similar issue. Since the bar is locked into a set range of motion squatting on a smith machine isn't biomechanically natural. This is why most people end up squating, by leaning back against the bar. Not only does this take away huge benefits for your core, glutes, and hamstrings, but if you were to lean back like that using a regular barbell you would fall straight back. On top of the bad positions that your joints are going to be in, you're not going to be working your stabilizor muscles since the bar is locked and already stabilized for you. In fact stabilizor muscle activation is about 43 percent lower on a Smith machine compared to regular barbell squats. This can create lazy lifting technique and will only provide a small fraction of the results that you can get from doing these exercises with barbells and dumbbells especially in regard to functional strength.
Another machine that you want to stay away from is the hip abduction and the adduction machine. These machines are typically used to train the glutes and inner thighs, but there are far better alternatives that are far more effective like squats and lunges. Both of these machines require heavy loads to be challenging. One immediate issue is that naturally your body would never lift heavy loads this way in real life. The only time these muscles would be engaged at a higher level would be when you're doing single leg activities like walking lunges, and they would mostly just be used for stabilization.
Instead as you get stronger at the hip abduction machine you're going to target a muscle know as the tfl or the tensor fasciae latae. This muscle can easily get over worked and tight which will pull on another muscle known as the it band and that quite often leads to knee pain. The heavy weight loads used on both the adductor and the abductor machines can also easily lead to a lower back injury. I've personally seen this time and time again and advising clients to stop using these machines, usually helped improve their lower back pain.
The last thing that I'll say is that these machines do not and will not help you reduce fat from your inner and outer thighs. For most of you this may be common sense, but many people using these machines are under the impression that they will slim their thighs by simply opening and closing their legs with resistance.
Next is one that many of you won't like t leg press machine. Keep in mind if it works for you, you can continue using it, but this machine, as popular as it is, is responsible for a good amount of lower back injuries. And sure it's easy to blame the person doing the exercise, but there are certain components of this exercise that make a back injury more likely, which is why I suggest you replace the leg press with something like squats, lunges, bulgarians, step ups, and the list can go on and on. When doing leg presses your back is pinned against a pad in a way where it becomes very difficult to maintain the natural lumbar curve as your knees bend and the weight comes down. As you go further..
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
The way you start your day can impact muscle growth, fat loss, motivation, productivity, and many other factors related to being a more successful person. You might've heard that simply making your bed in the morning can help fuel you, to get more complex tasks done throughout the rest of the day. Well, there are also certain morning habits that can either help or hurt your ability to build more muscle and develop a more attractive physique.
And one of the best morning habits if you're serious about building muscle, is to have a big breakfast. Even though you don't necessarily need to eat breakfast to build muscle, it’s a good idea to start your morning with a meal if you want to maximize muscle growth. This is because the main dietary requirement for building muscle is to be in a calorie surplus, and if you want to bulk up without adding too much body fat in the process, you're going to mostly be eating natural foods that are very filling per calorie contained. So the more you space out your meals the more time you'll have to digest the large amount of calories you're required to take in on a daily basis to grow. Of course, many people make the mistake of using mass gainers and supplements to increase their calorie count to meet their daily surplus requirements. Not only does this lead to fat gain due to the sugar content of these mass gainer supplements but there's also evidence that unprocessed foods lead to better results than processed ones. This is why you may have heard that you should try to eat whole meals over supplements whenever possible. With protein for example we have research that shows that whole milk stimulates more protein synthesis than skim milk, even when the whole milk contains less protein than the skim milk. (1) This is most likely due to the food processing because another study found that even after adding milk fat to casein, which is a milk-based protein source, it didn't end up increasing muscle protein synthesis. (2) Aside from processing, we also don't know what we don't know, so chances are high we haven't discovered every vtial vitamin, mineral, and chemical found in natural food and how those substances impact muscle growth. So the point is to start your day with a big breakfast made up of whole foods to help you add a bunch of calories to your daily total early on, while still giving you time to digest everything before your next meal.
Another habit that can be very beneficial for certain people is to get your workout done soon after you wake up. Even though research shows that you'll most likely be able to lift more weight and feel stronger with late afternoon and evening workouts, you're not going to make any progress at all if you're skipping your afternoon or evening workouts. So if you struggle to get to the gym after work or you have a busy schedule that typically leaves you exhausted then make sure you get your workout done first thing in the morning. Completing your workout first thing in the morning is the solution if you find yourself making excuses later in the day because it guarantees that you actually get it done, which is way more important than a slight strength boost that you'll potentially get assuming you make it to the gym later in the day.
This goes hand in hand with another thing you may want to do first thing in the morning which is to drink coffee. Of course, coffee isn't required but it could benefit muscle growth, especially if you train in the morning. Research shows that a dose of around 250 mg of caffeine in the morning raises neuromuscular readiness to perform close to afternoon levels. (9) Caffeine also increases your performance and motivation to train. So, if you train in the morning, consider drinking coffee or maybe a pre-workout supplement with caffeine beforehand.
Another thing that can boost your energy and provide motivation in the morning is taking a cold shower. Now taking a cold shower isn't going to make your muscles grow on its own. But taking a cold shower will increase your energy levels and mood while benefiting your mental toughness. Or in other words, your ability to do things that might be uncomfortable or you don't really want to do. Many people experience that if they take a cold shower in the morning, they become more productive throughout the rest of the day because they've already had their first “win” and got the momentum going and that can help motivate you to actually do your workout. On top of that cold showers can reduce inflammation in your body. One of the ways a cold shower can do ...
🔥 FREE 6 Week Shred: https://GravityTransformation.com
📲 FREE Diet/Workout Planner Tool: http://bit.ly/2N41lTX
Cold water running down your body can feel very uncomfortable but the benefits for you health, cognition, and performance are enough to justify torturing yourself for a few minutes a day by taking a cold shower. If you actually commit to doing this every morning when you wake up, you will feel very different sensations and effects that can make you start enjoying cold showers.
For example one of the best instant benefits of stepping into a cold shower is that you'll immediately feel a rush of energy that'll lasts much longer after you're done. You see when you expose yourself to cold, such as in the form of a cold shower, it triggers a shock response in the body. This shock increases the levels of a hormone known as noradrenaline. And that noradrenaline improves your oxygen intake and also increases your heart rate and alertness. So, if you have issues getting your morning started and feeling energetic and ready to take on the day taking a cold shower may be your solution.
Along with the physical boost in energy taking a cold shower first thing in the morning will also give you a psychological boost that can improve your performance and productivity throughout the rest of the day. This is due to two main reasons. First, by taking a cold shower, you’ve already had your first “win” of the day, which makes you more likely to continue practicing other positive and beneficial behaviors that may not feel so pleasant while you're doing them. These include things like working out, eating clean, and getting work done. The second way that cold showers benefit your psychology is by increasing mental toughness. Taking them daily trains your mind to confront things that are uncomfortable, be in control of your emotions, and handle stressors that occur during daily life more efficiently.
Next is a benefit that we can all use right now and that's enhanced immunity. That's right if you take cold showers there's evidence that supports the fact that you’ll be less likely to get sick. This is because consistent cold water exposure leads to a stress response and that creates certain changes in the body that ultimately boost the immune system. A study from the Czech Republic showed that when "athletic young men" were immersed in cold water three times a week for six weeks, it boosted their immune system in a statistically significant way. (3) Another study looked at whether cold water immersion has the ability to impact biomarkers of the immune system in young, healthy men. (4) And sure enough the researchers found that cold water immersion three times per week for six weeks increased the number of lymphocytes, in these young men's body's. A lymphocyte is a type of white blood cell that helps attack invading bacteria, viruses, and toxins as well as the body's own cells that have been taken over by viruses or become cancerous. So if you're interested in improving your immune system taking cold showers could be the thing you need as it may help you reduce how often you get sick.
Another huge benefit that goes hand in hand with your improved psychology and immunity is that you'll actually be more likely to show up to work. That's right a study from the Netherlands that included 3,018 people compared groups of people that took cold showers to groups that took warms showers to find out who took more time off of work. The participants were split into four groups and each of those were instructed to take a warm shower every day for 30 days. The only difference was that one group was asked to end it with 30 seconds of cold water, another group with 60 seconds of cold water, and last with 90 seconds of cold water. Meanwhile, the control group only took warm showers. After a month of following this protocol researchers found that the cold shower groups were less likely to take time off from work due to sickness than those who took warm showers. (1) On top of that after the month long study was over, 64 percent of the participants continued the cold-water regimen because they enjoyed it. And alter a three-month follow-up period, the researchers found that the groups that had cold water exposure had a 29 percent reduction of self-reported sick leave from work. (2)
Another excellent health benefit that cold showers will provide is an improvement in blood circulation. For example, a study published in the International Journal of Sports Medicine looked at how cold-water immersion after...