Take a Break from Your Muscle Mass Workout Programme

For many bodybuilders, getting into the gym and working up a sweat can be the highlight of the week. Your time in the gym gives you time to clear your mind, a time to re-focus on the important things, an opportunity to forget about work and all it entails.   However, you do need to take a break from your muscle mass workout programme every so often.

Your weightlifting exercises are doing your body good; you’re using up fat, you’re building up muscle mass and you’re making your body into a more efficient working machine.  To be effective, however, you must consider pacing yourself properly.  It’s easy to overdo it, and if you don’t take proper breaks and rest periods, your exercise workout will be inefficient and you will not be building muscle mass as quickly as you would like. 

The benefits of regular exercise are obvious.  You feel better, you look better, your body works more efficiently and you live longer, but it is important to make sure that your exercise regime includes time to have a break and relax.  Working flat out can be very detrimental to your health, especially at the outset of a training programme.  You can ‘burn yourself out’, both physically and mentally, so be prepared to be aware of how your body feels and make sure that you have regular relaxation breaks to allow your body to recover.  Overdoing exercise can do you more harm than not exercising at all. 

If you make the mistake of letting your exercise take over your life, you are missing out on all the other things that you need to be happy and healthy.  It’s like having a balanced diet.  We all get a lot of pleasure out of eating fatty foods, but you can’t live off them for a long time without them having an adverse effect. 

When the body is relaxed and happy it releases chemicals which help to maintain a good mental balance.  Without this mental wellbeing, an exercise regime will do you no good.  If you feel mentally unsettled, frustrated or angry, you won’t feel the benefit.  It’s to do with thinking of the body and mind as a whole.  They both need to be working efficiently for you to feel good and to enjoy life.

Why Take up Bodybuilding–The Benefits of Body Building

So, why go to all the trouble of building up your body?  What is the point of all the exercise, the diet and the discipline? So, why take up bodybuilding?  We explore some of the benefits of body building.

Some of the reasons why people take up bodybuilding are obvious.  To start with, you’ll feel better.  An efficient body will work better and make you feel better.  A good physique gives an individual confidence.  You’ll be more sure of yourself, you’ll sleep better and you’ll find physical tasks that much easier to do. You’ll be able to lift things more easily.  You’ll be able to run or swim for longer and with greater ease. 

In addition, you may be admired, not only by the opposite sex, but also by your fellow man.  Most people are attracted to a good physique and associate it with power and strength.  Some people body build simply to stop others regarding them as weaklings.  Many do it simply for the personal challenge of self-improvement.  Whatever the reason, it requires commitment, organisation and hard work if you are to succeed.

You may need to be stronger for the work you do.  You may be one of those people who regularly find themselves straining and getting out of breath when faced with the slightest of physical tasks.  Bodybuilding will make all the difference.

It’s good for your body and the discipline is good for your mind.

How often have you seen someone perform a physical act on television or in the sports arena and wished that you could do that?  How often have you wondered if it’s too late for you to get your body into shape?  With the right attitude, the right training and the right diet, it can be done.  Take up bodybuilding and experience the many positive benefits that this sport will give you.

Body Building Muscle Mass Diet Foods

Like a high performance car or a pedigree racehorse, your body needs the right kind of fuel for building muscle mass.  Your muscle mass diet must, therefore, include the right kind of food, in the right quantities in order to achieve optimum performance and muscle definition.  If you give your body what it needs, you will give yourself every chance of successfully building muscle mass fast.

You don’t feed a horse on bananas and expect it to win.  Your body is the same. Give it what it needs.  Remember how well you looked after your first car?  Do the same for your body.  If you’ve strained a muscle, take a break and sort it out. Pain usually means that there’s something wrong.  Look after it.  There is no point exercising through the pain – you will not be building muscle because your muscles will be working inefficiently and you may, in fact, cause more damage.  Bear in mind that body building exercise has at lease three stages: preparation, activity and recovery.  Good planning is fundamental to good exercise and it starts with your food.

The ‘petrol’ your body needs, what is termed ‘energy-giving food’, mainly comes from carbohydrates such as pasta, bread, potatoes and rice.  These foods are used by the body to produce energy, but if this energy is not used, then the calories in these foods are turned to fat and stored in your fat cells.  Therefore, if you are not exercising regularly you will put on weight, so make sure that you stick to your body building routine.

Proteins come in the form of meat, fish, eggs and other diary products.  These are the foods that help you to build muscle and allow you to work for longer periods of time.  The meat should be lean and proteins should be consumed in small quantities several times a day.

Your body also needs fats in order to function properly, but these must be “good fats” which are found in fish, nuts, flax seed oil, avocados, etc.  Essential fatty acids are vital for muscle growth and repair and so you must ensure that you incorporate them into your muscle mass diet.

Your body is a complex and sensitive instrument.  To build muscle mass fast you must eat the right kind of food, in the right quantity several times a day.  The best way to achieve this is to create a muscle mass diet plan and stick to it.  And don’t forget that during and after exercise your body needs proper rest.  Treat your body with respect and you will not only feel good, but you’ll look good and achieve your goals faster.

How to Lose Fat and Gain Muscle–Vary Your Muscle Mass Workouts

You’re concentrating on how to lose fat and gain muscle fast.  So you’ve got into a good, steady routine with your muscle mass workouts.  You feel good.  You look fitter and you’re starting to believe that all your hard work is making a difference.  All of a sudden you start to feel weak. You find yourself putting on weight.  Don’t be concerned.  It happens to all of us. 

This happens because people rarely change their muscle mass workout exercises.  You’ve got into a rhythm and you don’t want to change your exercise regime.  You do the same exercises, the same number of times and for the same amount of time.  You need to shake things up and introduce some variety into your sessions. 

So, what can you change and keep your weight gain to a minimum and your muscle building and fat loss to a maximum? 

There are a host of aspects that you can change and vary in your bodybuilding workout:

1)    The sequence in which you do your exercises
2)    Do your exercises as part of a circuit; put them into sets, etc.
3)    The type, e.g. multi-joint, single-joint, machine-based, free weight
4)    The number of exercises per workout
5)    The amount of resistance
6)    The time under tension
7)    The stability: stand, sit, one-legged, etc.
8)    The volume of work
9)    The rest periods between sets
10) The range of motion
11)  The angle: flat, declined, bent over
12)  Frequency per workout or per week

With all these variables under your control you really can begin to take the predictable trudge out of your body building workout.

Here’s a series of variables you may like to include to add a creative side to your muscle mass workout routine:

• 10 sets of 3, with only 20 seconds rest between sets.
• use heavier weight and complete 6 sets of 6 reps, doing a 3 minute treadmill sprint between each weight lifting set.
• use a near maximum weight and do 10 sets of 1 rep, with 30 seconds rest between sets.
• using a lighter than normal weight and do 1 set of 50 reps for each exercise
• a workout based on only one full body exercise, such as barbell clean and presses or dumbbell squat and presses, and do nothing but that exercise for an intense 20 minutes.
• a workout based on all bodyweight exercises such as push-ups, pull-ups, chin-ups, dips, bodyweight squats, lunges, etc.
• a circuit of 12 different exercises covering the entire body without any rest between exercises.
• the same 12 exercise circuit on your subsequent workout, but do the entire circuit in the reverse order.
• try your usual exercises at a faster repetition speed on one workout and then at a super-slow speed on your next workout.
• try completing five 30 minute workouts one week, followed by three 1-hour workouts the next week.
• try doing drop sets of all of your exercises, where you drop the weight between each set and keep doing repetitions without any rest until complete muscular fatigue (usually about 5-6 sets in a row).

Always vary your muscle mass workout routines and you will lose fat and gain muscle most effectively.  In this way you will get the most from every exercise session and gain the maximum benefit for your effort.

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