Fun New Fitness Blog with Personality!

So, as you'll see we tend to only post mainly articles here, however I've recently just set up a new website with a friend of mine

We are currently competing against each other in a quest to lose weight and get super ripped up for the summer!

The posts are all written personally and not 'informational' so to speak like i tend to write here, so if you want to learn more about the real me and follow my path to weight loss with pictures and videos head on over to ExcuseMyAbs.com

Get Bigger, Stronger Muscles Faster

Getting the body that you want is not always easy to achieve and that means that you need to ensure that you not only have the determination but also the right supplements within your body to enable you to aid your body to develop in the way that you want.

There is more to building muscles than simply heading to the gym and using the weight machines that are on the gym floor, you need to know the most effective ways to use them to unlock the hidden benefits that even the slightest alteration would offer, whether that be the way in which you use the weight or how much weight you are putting onto the resistance against your body.

Like a car engine, your body will not be able to function correctly if you are not fueling it with the right fuel, in this case the vitamins and minerals that are vital when your body is looking to enhance, repair or break down any element within your build up.

Although many gym goers believe that simply eating healthy and keeping hydrated with water is all that you need, failing to increase your intake of protein, iron and other minerals will result in you hitting a plateau in your development, something that can’t be overcome with further resistance.

If you are looking to gain lean muscle mass and add definition, you need to ensure that you keep all of the vital requirements within your body to enable it to work its most effective level, so the best advice that you can be given it to buy supplements online so that they can be dispatched to you without the need to interrupt your gym time.

Keeping hydrated is also vitally important because the human body is 85 percent water, meaning that you need to ensure that the balance is restored from the losses that will be lost through sweating after a heavy workout.

Once you have fueled your body effectively, maintain a healthy diet and continue to add resistance to your workouts, without progression there will be no growth.

Do Diet Pills Work?

Often we see Diet Pills marketed primarily towards women however, there has been a recent increase in males looking at trying out diet pills.

As with anything, diet pills are not a miracle drug! You won't take a few of these and start shedding the weight if your daily routine, diet and exercise isn't on key. All these pills will do is 'supplement' your weight loss and try to speed things up.

There are diet pills on the market that target different areas such as Alli diet pills and Hoodia which tries to suppress appetite and there are others which will speed up your metabolism or mess with your stomach enzymes.

I personally from a male point of view am not a huge fan of these diet pills, I would much prefer to jump on the fat burners band wagon but that's not to say that you guys have to do it!

Here is another great article which looks to answer the question; Do diet pills work? - http://health.howstuffworks.com/medicine/medication/diet-pill.htm

Essentials of How to Build Muscle

Building muscle is not an impossible task for anyone that is willing to dedicate their time and effort into their goal and do everything that they can to aid their body through the development stages.


There are a number of ways that you are able to build muscle but with each different method there is a different timescale attached to it so if you are looking the build muscles quickly with strong, solid gains then you need to follow these hints, tips and rules carefully.

 

Sort out your diet

The chances are that if you are looking to add muscle to your body then you are either trying to convert excess fat stores or you are looking to simply strengthen and improve the size of the muscles that you already have, either way you need to have the right diet.


Getting the right diet is not as simple as just cutting out the junk food and replacing it with the heavily pushed '5-a-day' program that looks to have you ensure that you are eating five portions of fruit and vegetables per day.


For your body to be able to generate and strength muscle mass while burning off the fat stores that you are holding on your physique, you need to be looking to eat a protein heavy diet as this is the prime requirement for your body to be able to convert fat into muscle.

 

Train to the best of your ability

Working out at the gym should be about pushing your body to and through its physical limits if you are setting about the common goal of adding muscle to your frame.


If you are working the body to that level of exhaustion, that is the time that your natural metabolism will be able to operate in an optimum fashion, working much harder than if you were to stay within comfortable levels of work requirement.


If you find that you are breaking away from your rep sets or are talking too much to those around you, you might as well pack up and head home as you are wasting precious workout time, time that you could be fueling your natural fat burning abilities so that they can get to work while at their most efficient.

 

Give your body as much help as you can

Your body will be working as hard as it possible can in order to repay you for your hard work within the gym but you have to be willing to offer it everything that it needs if you want it to be able to handle the amount of work that you are expecting it to cover.


This means that you should be topping up your vitamin and mineral levels as frequently as required, something that could be done with the use of food but is more effectively done with the use of bodybuilding supplements.


Failure to supply your body with the things that it needs to be able to convert your fat into muscle and repair the growth following training sessions will not only hinder you performance in your next training session but will also reduce the effect of the one that you have just put yourself through.

 

Continue to push your limits

Falling into a complacent state of mind is one of the biggest problems that many gym users face as they are often afraid to continue to put their body through the pain barrier in order to progress further.


Failure to continue to make progress will mean that your body will quickly become comfortable with the level of workout that you are doing and so development and growth of your muscles will begin to slow before coming to a halt.


To ensure that you are getting the biggest gains, you need to be consistently adding more and more resistance to your workouts, forcing your body to have to deal with increasing demand on its capabilities.

 

Ensure your have the right form

Making sure that you have the right form for each and every exercise that you do within your workout is vital as failure to do the exercise the way that it is meant to be done will either result in reduced effect or none at all.


Most gyms have personal trainers that are walking about looking for their next client but they are likely to offer you advice for free as long as you ask them. Failing that, ask the gym staff as they should be fully briefed on how to use the machines for such a question.


Remember that doing 10 reps of an exercise with good form is worth 100 reps of doing the same exercise with poor form.

Does Muscle Size Equal Muscle Strength?

The common goal that is shared within anyone who is looking to improve their physical body shape through bodybuilding is that they are constantly looking to add lean muscle mass in exchange for a reduction in excess body fat.

With that in mind, does it mean that those that are large in terms of the amount of muscle that they have on their frame are naturally gifted with the strength that would be associated with large muscles?

The fact of the matter is that although the natural body has the ability to be able to create, regenerate and strengthen muscles, nothing comes as a pair within those factors, so in order to add lean muscle mass and increase strength, you have to perform exercises that specifically target each goal.

Scientific studies that have been conducted in the past have shown that people of roughly the same size both share the ability to be able to add the same amount of strength to their muscle tissue but that doesn’t mean that they can succeed in doing so without targeting the goal of adding the strength into the tissue fibers.

As you will have seen in the gym, different weight lifters are able to handle a variance of resistances, even though the heavier weight lifters could be smaller than some of their peers.

This is due to the focus that they have being broader than that of the gym user that has focused primarily on simply gaining muscle size.

There are a number of misconceptions when it comes to gaining muscle and adding strength to your frame, especially when you are first starting out on a bodybuilding programme.

One of the main misconceptions that seems the haunt new and inexperienced bodybuilders is that they believe that if you focus on adding strength to your muscles, the gains will happen alongside the growth but that is incorrect and you are simply strengthening the muscles that you already have rather than building new, bigger muscle tissues.

Obviously this means that if you are not focusing on exercises that are going to allow your body to add growth into the size of your muscles, you are going to hit a point where you will fail to see any return for the workouts that you are conducting, simply due to the fact that the muscles that you have can’t handle any more strengthening.

This means that you need to be trying to work both of the goals with each and every workout that you are having, allowing your muscles to grow while strengthening them as you do so.

Getting the right balance of the two will not only increase the look of your results but will also make them solid gains rather than simply adding one or the other.

Why Fad Diets WILL Fail You

How many times have you opened up a newspaper or glossy magazine to see another random celebrity exposing the virtues of the latest fad diets to be doing the rounds in Hollywood and beyond?

The problem is that most of the time these fad diets are not only not all that successful in losing weight, and certainly not on a long term basis, they can actually seriously damage your health.

It is fine for celebrities who can afford top of the range nutritionists to put together their diets, but for most people trying to follow a fad diet is is more likely to make them ill than lose them weight long term.

Why?

Almost all fad diets rely on one thing – a gimmick. They use this gimmick to beat you over the head with a couple of facts, or some pseudo-science. But they then ignore a huge amount of facts.

So taking their information in isolation leaves big wholes in the truth.

Fuel

We need food not just because it tastes nice but to fuel our bodies. Our bodies need a certain amount of certain foods to be able to go. From vitamin C right through to fats (and yes, certain fats are essential, you should never cut all fat out of your diet).

All too often these fad diets ignore these basic principles of human biology and instead try to get you to give up certain foods.

Our bodies need all sorts of foods, form all the food groups, in order to be healthy. As such it is important that you don't cut certain aspects our of your diet completely.

Cutting down on over eating is one thing, and healthy eating should certainly be encouraged – but denying our body what it needs should never be encouraged.

Next time you see a fad diet that tempts you, stop and look at it properly. If it is missing essential foods then walk away, quickly.

I've also written some great weight loss articles over at http://supplementshack.co.uk/ that are worth checking out if your looking for some more in-depth tips on losing weight.

4 Awesome Tips To Help You Increase Your Bench Press

There are certain times in your bodybuilding routine that you will find that you seem to hit a brick wall and feel that you will never be able to push anymore additional weight, especially on the bench press.

Increasing the resistance (weight) that is held on the bar can become harder as you progress through the different levels as the requirements of your body become much higher and sometimes you will be trying to push weights that are just out of your ability.

So how about I share 4 tips with you that will help you to add that little more weight to the bar?

Tip 1 – Make your body the focus of your attention, not the bar

Finding your focus while in the gym is vital if you are going to be able to get the most out of your time at the gym.

You wouldn’t run on the treadmill while looking at the running belt as that would distract you from the task on hand so when using the bench press you shouldn’t be focusing on the bar, something that forms one of the common mistakes made by gym users.

Instead of thinking about pushing the bar away from your body, a simple alteration to your train of thought will help you to retain more focus than ever before.

Simply think about pushing your body away from the bar.

The reason that this works while using the bench press is that the brain can be easily convinced into thinking that something isn’t possible and so thinking about the bar rather than your body you are giving your brain the indication that it is the bar that you have to battle against and as with any solid object, there will always be a point where you are unable to beat it.

Tip 2 – Alter the way that you push the bar away from yourself

The way that you push the bar while using the bench press is vital as using a technique that isn’t strong enough to deal with the weights that you are trying to lift will only result in either injury or failure to complete the set that you are working on.

Altering the way that your pushing technique is done will not only help you to secure your grip but will also increase the resistance that you can handle.

The new method that you want to be looking to adapt is that while pushing your body away from the bar, you want your hands to act as if they are pulling the bar into a longer shape, without moving your hands physically.

Adopting this technique helps you to push higher weights due to the body calling on more ‘stabilizer’ muscles within the arm and hands, allowing you to have a firmer grip and push on the bar.

Tip 3 – Envision The Bar Going Up

When working out with a partner or a ‘spotter’ it seems that you are able to increase the weight that you are able to push while using the bench press.

Think about all the times that you have been pushing the bar but seem to have hit a sticking spot with your rep, feeling like you can’t complete the movement. When your struggling with the bar what does your training partner do?

The most common practice is that without taking too much of the weight, the person spotting will place two fingers under the bar and suddenly with their help you are able to lift the bar.

Do you honestly think that the two additional fingers on the bar are really helping you to lift the bar? No, they are there as a signal to the brain to believe that you can now complete the set, giving the brain cause to believe that it can be done.

Because of this, we can clearly see that the majority of situations where you feel that you can’t push yourself to the limit any further can be rectified through positive thought and the brain telling the body that it can do it.

Tip 4 – Give Your Stronger Hand The Visual Power

Once again we offer a tip to help you complete those sets on the bench press that seem to haunt so many gym users.

When you find that you are hitting a sticking point during your set and you feel that you can’t move the bar any further away from your body, take that opportunity to alter your eye line and look at your most powerful hand, often the one that you write with.

Although not giving any reinforcement, altering your line of sight to include your most powerful hand will trigger a message within the brain that will call on the body to increase the power output of your hand.

Remembering that the mind is your most powerful tool is highly recommended as it does possess the ability to help you leave those broken sets in the history books as long as you use it correctly and extract all you can from it.

Once you've worked these tips for a few weeks head over to Brian Macs site and conduct yourself the bench press test to see if you've gained any strength