When To Take Bodybuilding Supplements

Supplement timing

There are lots of supplements now available for bodybuilding to help add more muscle or to get stronger and to recover faster. As the number of supplements that one can use and afford gets greater and people have to figure out when the best time to take various supplements is and what amount to achieve the greatest affect so that the money you spend is spent wisely and you get the greatest gains in the shortest amount of time.

To look at what supplements you should take during the day there are some key times of day that supplementation is based around these are early morning, pre-workout, post-workout and before sleep.

In the morning you have been asleep and without food for about eight hours and you have to prepare for the day you haven?t had any food and your body is running low on fuel.

Pre Workout-This is the time before you hit the gym and put your muscles under stress to stimulate them to grow. What you take before hand can help improve your workout performance thus generating a stronger stimulus for muscle growth.

Post Workout- After you have worked out your body starts to go into recovery mode after the stress that has been put on it, you need to make sure that you body doesn?t slide into a catabolic state causing you to start to lose muscle mass. This is the time to kick start your body into a phase of growth.

Before sleep- You are preparing for sleep, sleep is when your body does a lot of recovery and growth. Levels of growth hormone rise during sleep and muscle growth occurs at this stage certain supplements are needed to help maintain the growth.

Some supplements are more important than others, there is some debate about which supplements are ranked more important but there is general agreement that protein is the most important followed by creatine then following those are arginine, tribulus, glutamine and BCAAs. There are other supplements available the ones I have mentioned here are some of the most popular ones. You may want to experiment to see what works best for you but here is a schedule of these supplements if you had access to all of these you may want to experiment to see which combinations work best for you.

Here is a schedule that you could follow if you were using these six supplements
Morning
40 Grams of Protein
2-3 Grams of Arginine
This is needed to supply the body with protein and amino acids after 8 hours fasting this will help prevent any muscle breakdown. The Arginine help dilate blood vessels when exercising and helps boost levels of growth hormone

Pre Workout
3-5 Grams of Creatine
20 Grams of Protein
40 Grams of Carbohydrate.
5 Grams BCAA
Creatine is taken pre workout to help boost strength and endurance with the whey protein as well and the carbohydrate to provide energy. During exercise you body may turn to amino acids for fuel BCAAs stop the body from turning to muscle tissue for fuel and may also stimulate faster fat burning.

Post Workout
3-5 Grams of Creatine
40 Grams of Protein
40 Grams of Carbohydrate.
5 Grams BCAA
The body is under stress and needs to start to recover the protein is utilized by the body to help repair muscle tissue and the carbohydrate help replenish energy levels from exercise. The creatine helps improve strength and endurance. BCAAs also provide fuel for recovering muscle as they are readily absorbed into the bloodstream.

Sleep Time
40 grams of Protein
2-3 grams of Arginine
Before you go to sleep you need to endure your body has adequate protein for 8 hours, carbohydrate is avoided at this time to prevent it being converted to fat. The Arginine helps boost growth hormone levels during sleep.

This should hopefully serve as a guide to then is the best time to take certain supplements you may want to experiment with different amounts or adding other supplements and you don?t have to use all the ones listed here. Just one or two at the roper times can help with your progress and it is still essential to have a good diet and to weight train proper supplements aid you they will not do all the work.

Graeme Muir has an interest in weight training and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and improving performance through supplementation, go to GRMProducts for a range of supplements available and further articles.

Bodybuilding: Groundless Theories That Can Hamper Your Chest Growth

I wonder how many of you reading this have used alternating dumbell curls for your biceps. If so, let me ask you this: Have you ever asked yourself why you do them? Think about it; you never perform alternating repetitions for most other exercises. When was the last time you did an alternating leg press, alternating leg extensions, or alternating overhead triceps extensions? Probably never. Yet it?s common to see people copying what they see others do in performing alternating biceps curls. And since they?re resting each arm while lifting the weight in the opposing arm, they?re essentially doing a rest/pause between each repetition when performing curls in this manner.

One day in the gym, I asked a guy why he does alternating dumbell curls for his biceps. I pointed out that there aren?t any other muscle groups that get this alternating rest/pause treatment. What benefit was each of his biceps getting from resting as much as five seconds between repetitions? He just scratched his head and looked at the floor. ?I don?t know?? he said, smiling. ?I?ve never really thought about it?

And this brings up my point. I?m not here to tell people they?re wrong in doing alternating dumbell curls. I?m here to express that they might be cutting themselves short in life when they go through it ?never really thinking about it?. We tend to do even less thinking when we perceive the people we?re emulating (like the BIG alternating dumbell curl guy) to be experts.

Here?s something to ponder that?s a bit more consequential than whether you alter your dumbell curls. Do you subscribe to the bodybuilding theory that says you need to focus mostly on compound movements to build size? You know the story: to build a big chest, your routine needs to consist of mostly bench pressing ? for bigger legs, you?d better do a lot of squats. I?ve heard this over and over again. But is it really true? I?ve gained my best pectoral size after putting bench pressing routines on the back burner in favor of flyes. And I?m not the only one; I first became motivated to do it when I read an article many years ago in which bodybuilding legend Scott Wilson said his chest only grew when he dumped the excessive bench pressing.

Think about it: Why would compound movements be better than isolation one?s for building your body? Muscle growth occurs when you advance to moving higher volumes of weight than you previously could. If that happens while doing flat dumbell flyes for your chest, your pecs will get bigger? period. Equally, if you train your chest with bench pressing in a haphazard manner that leads to over-training, your chest won?t get any bigger even though you opted for bench pressing over flyes. It?s that simple.

Consider this: let?s say for argument?s sake that your pectoral muscles will move one third of the load when you?re bench pressing. This sounds reasonable since the deltoids and triceps are heavily called upon when performing upper body pressing movements. If you can eke out ten repetitions of 225 pounds on the bench, you?d move a total volume of 2,225 pounds but your pecs might have been called upon for a third of that work; about 742 pounds.

It?s safe to bet that a person who can do ten good reps with 225 on the bench can also perform ten strict repetitions of flat bench dumbell flyes with 50 pound dumbbells. However, those strict reps of dumbell flyes would place a significantly greater volume demand directly on the pectorals within the same time allotment required by the bench pressing. The two fifty pound dumbells are a hundred pounds on the whole chest, times ten equals a thousand. That?s a thousand pounds of volume (thirty-five percent more than the bench pressing) placed almost exclusively on the pec muscles.

Even if you can only use forty pound dumbells for the flyes, you?ll still beat the bench press for volume load on the pecs (800 lbs vs. 742 lbs). This assumes that your pectorals are indeed taking exactly one-third of the stress during bench pressing. It could be more than that or it could be a bit less; it depends much on the genetically-determined structure of your upper body.

What?s in a Hormone Spike?

Many compound movement advocates site the theory that the body releases more anabolic hormones when performing big movements like squats and bench presses. To this assertion, I can pose three very good questions:

1. How much additional testosterone can bench pressing produce over isolation movements? (unless it?s huge amounts, it?s not going to matter)

2. Does this increase represent higher average levels of the hormone during recovery, or is it only a spike during and directly after a workout? (don?t buy the ?two-hour window? theory)

3. All other things considered ? does it really matter?

Here?s an even better question: If one guy does his bench pressing in a wimpy manner and another guy does his flyes like his life depends on it ? who gets the best testosterone spike?

Another question: Since sexual activity also spikes testosterone levels, does the heavy flye user who has sex after his workout produce more testosterone than the bench presser who doesn?t?

I think you get my point. Natural testosterone ebbs and flows in everyone (women too). It?s really the levels we average during our entire recuperation period between workouts that matters. And how much does that matter? If you average a few nanograms per decileter more than I do, I?ll probably just take one more day off between workouts and make just as much muscular gain as you.

Form Matters on Flye Movements

To build your chest with flyes, good form is absolutely essential. All too often, I see people performing movements that resemble a sort of hybrid between flyes and dumbell presses. These are about the most useless things you can do for your pecs. Your elbows do need to be slightly bent during flyes to prevent hyper-extending them. However, pivoting at the elbows instead of the shoulders is just a sneaky way of deferring or avoiding discomfort.

Let?s face it, doing heavy flyes in a strict and disciplined manner is painful. When relatively heavy dumbells are lowered with outstretched arms until they?re horizontal and even with your head on the bench, there?s a searing kind of stress throughout the chest region. When you squeeze the muscles as you carefully arc the dumbells upward and back together, the pain and positive effect from working the pecs so directly is only intensified. This is a good indication that you?re doing them correctly.

Conclusion

I currently do only one compound movement during my chest workout and the rest of it consists of flyes and pec-deck exercises. What?s more, I do my bench pressing movement late in the workout so that my pectorals have become somewhat pre-exhausted. This has all led to far greater pectoral growth compared to the days when I did set after set of flat and incline bench pressing.

If you?re having trouble with pectoral growth, I suggest you try a flye and pec-deck dominated workout routine. Let go of the erroneous belief that these are ?shaping exercises?. Consider this: Ray ?Thunder? Stern, a bodybuilder from the distant past, had some of the best pectoral muscles I?ve ever seen when he was at his peak. It was said by some of his friends that he could perform incline dumbell flyes with a pair of 120-pound dumbells. That?s incredible.

Impressive flye movements will produce an impressive chest.

Scott Abbett is the author of HardBody Success: 28 Principles to Create Your Ultimate Body and Shape Your Mind for Incredible Success.

Scott is a certified fitness trainer and a certified Master Practitioner and Trainer of NLP. You can view his own physical transformation by visiting http://www.hardbodysuccess.com

How Do I Start Bodybuilding - 4 Secrets For Gaining Muscle Fast

A beautiful body on a magazine can indeed be a product of modern technology. Many people ask how do I start bodybuilding?

To answer this question you need to know that no amount of physical activity can give you your desired body if it is not coupled with bodybuilding nutrition and a body total workout. Actually, it is the bodybuilding nutrition that is the most vital factor in building the best body. Exercise is a mere supplement to it.

Secret #1. Bodybuilding nutrition program encourages smaller and frequent meals rather than large and less frequent ones which can aid in how to get rid of love handles. This is so because frequent meals increase your metabolism. A pattern like not eating for a few hours after a large meal will make the body gain fat and lose muscle because the body will experience a catabolic state.

Secret #2. The body will then feed on the lean muscle tissues in place of the food that you are supposed to eat. A good bodybuilding nutrition program should have meals that include carbohydrates, protein, and fat in the right amounts. This is very important when asking the quesion how do I start bodybuilding.

Secret #3. Carbohydrates and protein should be about 40% while the remaining percentage is for fats. A very effective method in preparing that bodybuilding nutrition meal is to imagine the size of your clenched fist as the amount of food with carbohydrate content, and that of protein as the size of your open hand.

Secret #4. Nutrition supplements are a good addition to your bodybuilding nutrition plan. Bodybuilding supplements work well with a good bodybuilding nutrition program because it improves the metabolism in the body. Thse are the top 4 secrets you should know when you ask how do I start bodybuilding.

Your metabolism may slow down when dieting to achieve weight loss and build muscle and it is believed that exercise can help a great deal. First the metabolic rate can be higher when exercising and so help to burn off those extra calories and help weight loss and build muscle. Also exercising so that you gain more muscle can help to burn more calories as it thought that muscle burns calories more quickly than fat.

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Choosing a Home gym-Fitness equipment

Limited time due to a busy schedule of balancing work and family can prevent anyone from regular exercise at the gym. A home gym, however, could just be the solution to incorporate fitness into your daily routine. With the variety of fitness equipment available, how do you select which is right for you? Consider the following during your planning and purchase.

Fitness goals. Determine your fitness goals. Deciding your fitness goals before you start your equipment selection will help you make a wiser purchase. Do you want to perform strength training to reshape your muscles? Boost your energy or loss weight through cardiovascular exercise? If you want to strength train, decide the muscle groups you want to target. Here is a list of the major muscle groups for you to keep in mind when considering what equipment is right for you:

Pectoralis major and minor (chest)

Deltoids and trapezius (shoulders)

Latissimus dorsi, teres major and minor, rhomboid (upper back)

Biceps, brachialis (front of arms)

Triceps (back of arms)

Gluteus maximus (buttocks)

Quadriceps (front of thighs)

Hamstrings (back of thighs)

Gastrocnemius, soleus (calves)

Rectus abdominis, obliques (abdomen)

Erector spinae, quadratus lumborum (lower back)

Sternocleidomastoids, scalene, splenii (neck)

Space. Before you decide to make a purchase, designate a place specifically for your home gym. Ensure you have adequate space to accommodate everything in the home gym. You should measure the dimensions of your room, (the length, width and height) to have available when purchasing the equipment.

Equipment. After you have determined your fitness goals, shop for equipment, which will help you to meet them. Examples of equipment for aerobic exercises are treadmills, stationary bicycles, and stair-steppers. You could even invest in a television to workout with aerobic tapes or view your favorite show while jogging on your treadmill. http://home-gyms-fitness-equipment.blogspot.com/

Strength training equipment can include free weights such as "dumbbells" or "barbells", or a multi-station machine (also known as a home gym). If you plan to lift heavy free weights you may need a lifting partner. Your partner will help you check your form and monitor safety. For more equipment ideas, you could take a tour of a fitness center.

Cost: Ask yourself, how much money do you want to spend. Most fitness equipment can range from $500-$1000 and more if you want a total body work out. Typically, quality equipment is priced in the upper range.

A Test Ride. Always test the equipment before you buy it. Test the machines for comfort and satisfaction.

Talk to the Experts. Purchase your equipment from a fitness specialty store. These stores specialize in fitness equipment and provide a broad selection for you to choose from. Specialty fitness stores would also employ certified associates to address your questions regarding exercise equipment.

Increase your Knowledge. Be certain you increase your knowledge of weight training safety and proper technique to reduce injury. Read directions for your fitness equipment and follow them.

Remember! Choosing equipment and exercises, which are fun for you, will help you to keep at it and enjoy it. Stop by: http://www.fitnessandkids.com/adult_fitness_equipment.html for some great prices on home gyms-fitness equipment.