Building Biceps For Physical Fitness

by. musclecharged.com

Building biceps for physical fitness is a great goal to have. Unfortunately, many men and women put building their biceps above everything else. This is a huge health risk. Most of the major muscles work in pairs of opposing groups. Therefore, both groups must be kept strong to reduce the risk of injury. For example, if you are working to build your biceps, you need to be sure you are working equally as hard to build your triceps. Should you do these two groups of muscles and neglect everything else? Not if you want to be physically fit and avoid injuries. You need to be sure you are also working on your quads, shoulders, pecs, and the stomach muscles. The biggest injury that occurs if you neglect working on important muscle groups is tearing your triceps.

Why do so many people believe building big biceps is the best type of body building activity? Maybe because they are so noticeable. Ironically, while they think they are working on being physically fit, many do just the opposite. They will do endless curls to build their biceps as well as take health supplements. Don’t be fooled by the term health supplement. Many of them contain steroids or other similar substances that are potentially harmful. I can’t tell you how many people don’t realize the health risks they are taking by focusing on building their biceps. It is nice to feel good about your body and look good, but not when it puts your health at risk! You can eliminate that risk by implementing a complete fitness routine that includes building your biceps as well as many other activities.

It can be very beneficial to take the time to research various fitness routines. This will allow you to find one that suites your individual needs and takes into consideration what you want to achieve from the program. You may also want to consult with a personal trainer.

It is recommended that before you start any body building program that you make sure your heart is in good shape. You must start with cardiovascular exercises at least three times per week. This is essential for good health and fitness. In fact, if you do weight training without doing cardiovascular and aerobic exercises, you will make your body stiffer and less healthy. So before jumping in to build bigger biceps, ask yourself is it more important to you to have bigger arms than to be healthy overall? There is no reason to sacrifice health for appearance. The tools are available for you to have both.

Simple Fitness Tips for College People

Just because you are supposed to be expanding your mind in college does not mean your belly and hips have to follow. Regular exercise not only burns calories and boosts your metabolism but can help you think better. Before the typical party fare of pizza and beer gets the best of your body and brain, try these fitness tips.

1. Walk or ride your bike to class
2. Set aside 30-60 minutes each day for weight training
3. Enroll in a fitness class
4. Use the stairs
5. Take walks or bike rides between classes
6. Learn how to dance
7. Play intramural sports
8. Take an athletic study break

By Chris Lockwood, from M&F, Nov 2000

Ten Tips to Building Workout Intensity

There you sit, totally confused about why your muscles aren't responding the way you expected. You've read tons of articles, you eat right, sleep enough, take supplements and train like a warrior. Still, you aren't getting your intended results. You start to give in to frustration and wonder if all the effort is worth it.

But what if I tell you that you just think you're training as hard as you can? Consider the following factors that could hold you back, and the secrets to surmounting them.

#1: Applied Intensity for Success

The secret for most successful athletes is to develop highly refined competitive skills and to perform them with intensity. Especially for those who weight train, mastering intensity is a key ingredient toward fulfilling the goal of training for size and muscularity. But you need to build up to full intensity by first developing the physical skills and strength needed.

Intensity is defined as the application of maximum physical effort systematically applied to a technically developed motor skill. This means you must be experienced in technique before intensity is applied. Therefore, if you're inexperienced and attempt a maximum deadlift with bad form, you may get injured. But performing a maximum deadlift with expert skill and good form will aid in the prevention of training accidents.

#2: Going for the Gold

Before you can be the best that you can be, you must first master the physical discomfort associated with intense physical activity. "No pain, no gain" refers to the mental development of pain tolerance to push your muscular endurance to the absolute limits of failure - thereby stimulating muscle growth.

Strength and endurance athletes use such terms as "pushing it to the limit", "to the max", and "hitting the wall" to describe these upper limits of performance. However, these don't imply reckless and dangerous techniques for maximum performance at any cost. Just the opposite. With regard to exercise, the terms refer to the skilled use of weight training techniques systematically applied to a working muscle group sufficient to cause temporary failure - without causing muscular injury. Therefore, you need to distinguish muscle burn and muscle fatigue from the pain of injury.

The burn from muscle fatigue subsides within 20-30 seconds, whereas injury pain is pronounced, sharp and continuous. Know your physical limitations ad learn to read your body's signal.

#3: Breaking the Pain Barrier

The next step is to break through the pain barrier. To do so, you must first develop pain tolerance.This is developed by progressively increasing intensity so your body gradually adjusts to sensory overload. Eventually, the same weight, pressure, endurance and muscle fatigue experience will feel less intense. To a beginner,a 20 pound dumbbell curl would feel heavy and cause considerable muscle burn and fatigue. After 3-4 workouts, those same dumbbells would feel much lighter. In a month, 30 pound dumbbells would feel the same as 20 pounders. In other words, your muscles adapt to the increased weight and respond as if the same weight was lighter.

#4: Be Mentally Prepared

Expect some pain. This prepares you emotionally for increased physical intensity. Unfortunately, pain has become a four letter word in our culture. All manner of media messages condition us to view pain as undesirable, something to be avoided. Television commercials direct us to treat pain with an ever growing arsenal of painkillers. We're often admonished not to strain ourselves, not to overdo it. Such statements program us to become pleasure seekers without first developing the discipline or the ability to work through pain or difficulties.

To combat this trend, you can psychologically alter the perception of pain as something to tolerate, even strive for. As time progresses, the same pain level feels lessened, And your brain reinterprets the pain as acceptable. Surprisingly, with continued physical work in the pain zone, your muscular responses of increased size and strength will be mentally perceived as pure pleasure. This is the very point where your brain begins to transform these pain sensations into feelings of euphoria. As well, continued neurological exposure to pain stimuli produces a diminished response to the same level of pain.

#5: Brains over Brawn

To get your brain to reinterpret pain as pleasure isn't difficult. It requires three elements: 1) constant effort, 2) repetitive exposure and 3) absolute determination to succeed. Getting used to noninjurious pain is similar to gradual immersion into a hot Jacuzzi - you slowly allow your body to adjust to the intensity of the heat. In the same manner, if you gradually increase your training intensity over a month, your brain won;t experience abrupt feelings of physical discomfort. As time passes, muscle fatigue, muscle burn and the burden of weight become commonplace and expected. Once you've attained this upper limit of pain tolerance, it becomes your future barometer of intensity.

#6: Pleasure in the Pain Zone

What turns intense physical effort into pure ecstasy is the victory over your feelings, fears and self doubts. When you achieve that next big step by piling on more weights and grinding out those extra reps - continuing to strive beyond your previous limits - you've reached the benchmark of a true athlete. Those of you who can achieve this level will enjoy the sheer pleasure of victory over your past limitations. The next time you reach 12 reps on a set of squats, challenge yourself, and be confident that you can increase your poundage by at least 10% to the amount required to perform 8 - 10 reps safely. (Make sure that a skilled spotter helps you.)

#7: Conquer or Be Conquered

Fear of pain, stress and failure may be grounded more in emotion than in your physical inability to succeed. If you're motivated by "fear reduction," you'll do anything to avoid fear rather than confront it and achieve a victory. Suppose that you can bench press 250 pounds, but you tremble at the prospect of pushing 275. This is precisely where you need to develop your confidence by moving forward and taking that next big step.

You get out of weight training what you put into it. Big, muscular gains are the visible signs of victory, but the emotional payoff motivated you to continue to training with intensity.

#8: Memories

Old experiences of pain may teach you to avoid pain rather than confront it and work through it. A curious human phenomenon is that we cannot fully appreciate pleasure until we've fully experienced some sense of pain.

These days, we Americas are conditioned by television, technology and automation to reduce effort, avoid discomfort and seek immediate gratification. Consequently, we overemphasize pleasure, which weakens the discipline needed for achievement that requires intense and prolonged effort. Giving up is so much easier that pursuing a difficult task. This is why so few becomes superstars while millions remain wanna-bes. Take not: Prolonged effort is the chief ingredient for athletic success (not to mention riches and fame). If you're serious about making improvements, you must keep moving forward and challenge your fears of failure. Be confident that each attempt you will make will improve your skills and increase your strength.

#9: Survival of the Fittest

While waging the internal battle between pleasure and pain, you must decide your long term goals. If you pleasure seek for only what feels good, you'll probably avoid most of the experiences that feel bad. The danger therein is that even a little bit of effort begins to feel bad, with the consequence that you avoid doing anything that requires any intense work whatsoever.

The work ethic may seem like an unpleasant choice, but in the long run, the rewards from your efforts are felt as a pure victory. Great achievements demand great efforts, and nothing worth having comes easy. If it did, then everyone would have it at no cost.

#10: To the Victor Go the Spoils

You must sacrifice laziness, pain avoidance, and pleasure seeking to develop the pain tolerance for hard work. Hard work helps ensure that your sustained efforts will lead you in the direction of achievement. Realistically, you must battle against fear, apathy and pain avoidance to defeat your worst enemy - most likely yourself.

Your mind is the strongest "muscle" in your body. If you believe the molly coddling bromides such as "Don't strain yourself", "You can't do this", and "Pain isn't good", you'll be imprisoned by your fears as long as they remain unconscious and unchallenged, The choice is yours: Be guided by your fears of be self directed by your own free will.

If you're intimidated by the thought of adding more weight to the bar when you can if fact safely handle it, you aren't tapping into your true physical potential. Now is the time to reconsidered your options. Remember, to defeat your fears, you must face them with the conviction and courage that you'll ultimately succeed

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By John F. Tristany, PhD, QME From Muscle & Fitness, October 1996 issue

Beginner Exercise Guidance (1)

At first, we have to know that the beginner is a person who has never practice or exercise before, maybe has exercise but he stop his exercise in long time moreover in several years, or he hasn’t regularly exercise in 6 month.

Then, get your aim or purpose. Such as gain your weight, decrease your fat, keep your health and stay fresh, build your body to get muscle’s gain and bigger muscle, to stronger your muscle for use it in other sport, or combination of your mentioned purposes.

After you get your purpose, the next step is you have to conscious that to get the wished result, there is no single factor, but the success is a combination and exercise, diet, optimum nutrition, good food arrangement, take your rest time, using supplement, and focus mentality to do all your activity. Then you have to prepare your program which it’s clearly and focus, consist of all things mentioned above.

There is no secret in building muscle. You just do your purpose which prepared by you and you just have more knowledge all about things mentioned. Always there are new things which be able to learned.

Of course, you have a self reason that why I want to do fitness activity. You also have different self motivation with others, different genetic potential, different financial conditions, and different environment of your fitness center. The same principle, all of us wish to get the best result of our purpose. It’s not hard to do.

Advice of Daily Protein Consumption

The good consumption of protein is always based on your completely requirement with others kind of protein for selected time. As a man who has many activity ( cause has listed exercise time) and has a specific purpose ( to get your muscle gain, to decrease your fat, or to gain your stamina), so the body requirement about nutrition will rise.

The requirement of protein as an athlete or bodybuilder, generally they need 1.5 until 2.5 grams of protein per kilogram of body’s weight. So, for man who has 65 kg of his body’s weight needs between 97.5 until 162.5 grams protein daily. This advice occur for men and women.

Protein is the most difficult digested nutrition by our body than fat and carbohydrate. Because this character of protein, we need more energy (calories) to absorb it. So that, if you take much protein for your daily consumption, you will get the advantage of burning these calories when your body absorb the protein than take fat and carbohydrate for your consumption.

Beginner Exercise Guidance (2)

Before start it, you have to go to a doctor to examine your health especially for who has self obstacles. You have to think your condition such as financial condition, time, others work and since now until 3 month, 6 month, and 1 year, keep your target and spare your time for it.

Keep patient when you do fitness activity is needed to get the optimum result. There is no short way to get it in building your body. Ronaldo, Michael Jordan, Evander Holyfield, and others professional athlete didn’t get the optimum result in short time. There is no soccer school which be able to make us the best like Ronaldo in short time! This pattern seems in body building and fitness activity. The high quality of bodybuilder’s body isn’t build in short time, need a hard effort, and high dedication to get the wished body.

The excellent thing in bodybuilding exercise that enjoy all of what you do! Be a habit what you do, not a compulsion. Bodybuilding is a sport which it give a victory for who ever. You don’t have to get a victory in this competition before, to collect the achievement. If you success build your body better than before through this sport, of course you get the victory. The victory from unwanted condition to wished condition. For women, perhaps from fat body to slim, from sick to get health, and also from thin body to strong, moreover became a bodybuilding athlete and more. The winners are people who have hard effort and always take action.

The principal exercise for basic training is very simple. Most of people moreover professional bodybuilder athletes keep doing the simple exercise until a year. After practice it more 10 years, all achievement of positive things are received couse doing the basicly strong foundation in the exercise. As building a house, it’s need strong foundation too.

Cycle and Philosophy of musle growth

In fact, what happen when we have a burden exercise with high intensity? Basicly, it cause the breakage on our muscle. The muscle breakage is not a big misfortune, but it’s a little muscle breakage which it be able to get well if there are important support elements such as protein ( amino acid ), carbohydrate, enough calories, condusive hormone condition, and enough rest time. The period of recovery time of your muscle depend on how much elements which it mentioned before, but generally it take 72 until 90 hours to get super compensation after excersise.

In the rest process, not only exercised muscle has recovery process but also central nervous system get it. Moreover, it believed that it’s harder and take longer time to recover or repair central nervous system than your exercised muscle. It coused by a reason that the central nervous system control others body’s function which it also contribute when your body receive a stress condition. Such as air pollution, many trouble at your job, moreover when you are riding it also has physical and mentality pressure at your central nervous system.