Natural Bodybuilding The Key To Endless Growth Part II

In the first part of this installment we examined how to build a road map to get to your destination. We talked about training the nervous system, innervation of specific body parts for symmetry, and advanced stage training.

In Part II we are going to examine the most common challenge bodybuilders face which is nutrition. Unfortunately there is so much confusion about what to eat, when to eat , how much to eat and on and on that it is almost impossible to sort out what to do. Also eating to grow is very different the eating to get shredded so the key point to remember is that your diet needs to evolve with your physique.

Consistency and self discipline on your eating is two biggest keys to long term success on whatever eating program that you are following. Bodybuilders who are successful always plan ahead and have meals prepared well in advance. If you don't plan out your meals and have them with you at all times you will invariably fail in giving yourself the best possible gains. Hoping that restaurants, or friends or relatives will be serving "bodybuilding food" is unrealistic and leads to frustration as well as no progress.

Almost every person I have every met that could not gain weight or lose weight was simply because they did not prepare there food in advance. It sounds simple, and it is simple but few overlook this critical point. Don't be one of those people who doesn't prepare there meals in advance. In the Freaky Big Naturally training course there is a whole section on food prep to keep you on your eating program. I learned these food preparation and food avoidance skills over years of trial and error. Many people think that it is a matter of will power or won't power but in reality it is simple preparation beforehand.

Here is a few simple rules to remember"

1. Always carry 1-2 meals with you more than you think you will need. This way any delays in your schedule will not throw your eating off.

2. Always eat before you go shopping, to the movies, or to other social occasions where non nutritious food will be served this way you will reduce any cravings for junk.

3. Prepare food in bulk and use Tupperware containers so that you can grab quick meals at any time. Also you will find it takes very little extra time to prepare 10 meals as it does one meal. This savings in time will actually make your life way more efficient and your eating plan easy to stick too.

4. Get off all artificial sweeteners. Artificial sweeteners cause cravings for sugar, mess up your metabolism and brain function, and may have negative effects on your overall health. Cut them out of your diet immediately and switch to Stevia, or Raw Honey for sweetening. NO Diet Sodas.

5. Drink plenty of water each day. Most often dehydration is misinterpreted as hunger. Slug back a liter of water 30 minutes before eating or when you feel hungry and you will see how it curbs appetite significantly.

6. Place nutritious snacks in you car, your office desk at your house basically everywhere that you spend a considerable amount of time. You will quickly develop the habit of eating healthy and junk foods will quickly lose there appeal.

7. Schedule a regular junk food meal once per week. This is a powerful lesson that starts building the will to understand delayed gratification. Every time you have a craving for junk food simply right it down and schedule to eat it on a set day. By the end of the week you can review the list and go eat those foods guilt free. Often times by the junk food day you won't want the food or it won't taste as good as you anticipated. Over time you will develop more control over your cravings and reduce negative guilt associations with food.

This list isn't the be all and end all of eating but it gives you a start to work with.

Keep in mind that your eating program should evolve over time. Your body will naturally adjust from desiring different types of foods depending on a variety of factors such as season, nutrient levels, PH balance of the body, training demands, and conditioning levels to name a few.

Recording how food affects you as biofeedback is critical in understanding the powerful effects of food on your mood and your performance. Review your eating journal regularly so that you become aware of your patterns of eating as well developing awareness of how each food effects your body. Clients are always surprised at how much they can learn about food just by charting there eating patterns for a few months.

One final note is too remember you must master eating and training first before supplements can be effective. So many people try the other way around and wind up frustrated. No supplement can make up for a poor diet or poor training so vow to master these two facets first before wasting money on supplements. Once you master your diet than the right supplement at the right time can do wonders to improve performance but seldom does the supplement deliver when the diet is poor.

In the third part of this installment we will look at having a big reason why. The key to realizing your full physical potential.

Wade McNutt http://www.freakybignatural.com is a Natural National Bodybuilding Champion and an IFBB Mr. Universe World Champion. He combined the secrets of Eastern Yoga Masters with, scientific, muscle building to produce a revolutionary new system called Freaky Big Naturally. Learn More at: http://www.freakybignatural.com

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 Supplement Leukic - Does Leukic Really Work For Bodybuilders?

If you are a bodybuilder then you know full well the importance of maintaining a positive anabolic muscle building state in order to grow muscle mass. Many companies in the world specialize in the development and promotion of supplements that work to maintain this state for bodybuilders. Leukic, developed and promoted by MuscleTech is such a supplement and seems to be getting a lot of attention in the bodybuilding world. Leukic promises results in muscle growth far superior to the other products currently on the market. This article will look at Leukic as a bodybuilding supplement and examine its pros and cons.

Leucine-ketoisocaproic acid calcium is the chemical name for Leukic which is classified as an anabolic activator and it is not illegal nor a steroid. MuscleTech claims that it is the only 100% anabolic compound available on the market. Being 100% pure, there are supposedly no androgenic or estrogenic side effects such as bloating or Gynecomastia. Gynecomastia, commonly knows as gyno is the condition where a male bodybuilder develops feminine style breasts due to increased estrogen in his system. When a bodybuilder trains, hormones are elevated that will signal the muscles to grow. The negative side to this is that elevating these muscle building hormones can also elevate other unwanted hormones such as estrogen. This may cause serious side effects that can set your training back by weeks or even months. MuscleTech claims that the anabolic supplement Leukic will induce anabolism without affecting hormone levels.

The effects of Leukic are said to be immediately effective when taken before a training workout so no loading is required. This is important because many supplements require that you take the product for a specific time frame before it becomes effective. Also known as loading, this phrase means that you must allow the supplement to build up in your system before it starts to work. The manufacturers directions say to take one serving first thing when you wake up and on workout days, take one serving immediately before your workout. For extreme muscle growth, you can and may wish to take two servings a day. MuscleTech also recommends that you drink a generous amount of water when taking Leukic.

Leukic is said to stimulate your muscle growth and build permanent, dense muscle mass with ongoing training. MuscleTech claims that this is possible because Leukic will set off the anabolic signals that testosterone and other growth hormones generate without actually manipulating these and other unwanted hormones. This will induce an anabolic state without fear of the negative feedback loop which many bodybuilder experience and fear. In this supercharged anabolic state, your body has no choice but to build lean, dense muscle. In addition to putting your body in a positive anabolic state, MuscleTech claims that Leukic will also help you stay out of the muscle wasting catabolic state.

With the word anabolic popping up through this article, you may be thinking anabolic steroids and banned performance enhancing drugs and I must stress once again that Leukic is an activator and not a illegal steroid. If you are a professional bodybuilder with competition in mind, then taking a banned substance is not in your best interest. With this fact in mind, I searched through the North American anti-doping list and did not find Leukic on the list. In addition to this, it is rumored that Leukic was actually designed to be a replacement for the banned substances. If this is truly the case then professional bodybuilders who compete have no reason to fear using this supplement.

Dedicated bodybuilders know that there are thousands of supplements available to enhance their efforts and it can be extremely difficult to decide on the best product regardless of all the positive claims made by the manufacturer. As with most supplements, MuscleTech makes a lot of claims about Leukic being the very best product available on the market. While this can sometimes be difficult to prove scientifically, it is always informative to read some reviews by those who have actually used a certain product such as Leukic. After reading comments written by people who have been using the supplement Leukic, it became clear that most were happy with the results and offered a positive comment. I did, however, notice several comments that indicated that Leukic caused more weight gain then desired for that particular individual. While MuscleTech promotes Leukic as a muscle building supplement not designed specifically for gaining weight, it is a well known fact that increasing your muscle mass will often increase your weight as well.

For more information about bodybuilding, increasing muscle mass, and the supplement Leukic please visit http://www.Leukic-Reviews.com.