Becoming #1: Beginning Competitive Bodybuilding

If you are going to put a lot of time, effort, and money into training, you might wish to show off the end results in a bodybuilding fitness competition. These contests are held throughout the country and world and showcase some of the most physically fit bodies known to humankind. There are many levels of competition, so don't worry if you aren't Mr. Universe just yet-you can find a competition that is right for you. Any sort of contest does, however, require a dedication to training, including a healthy diet and lots of exercise.

The first thing you should do when you decide to begin competitive bodybuilding is to find a coach. It will be much easier to break into the competition world if you have someone with a little experience under his or her belt guiding you. With your coach, decide on a training schedule and diet, and choose whether or not you want to take supplements. Natural training is, of course, always best, but you may wish to take vitamins or other supplements to make sure your body is getting the nutrients it needs even if you cut some foods out of your diet.

Next, research some of the events held near you. Local events are a good place to start if you live in a big city. If not, you may have to travel some distance to find events, so plan accordingly. Some competitions have an entry fee, and all have different rules of conduct. In most cases, you will have an orientation session the day or morning before the event, but you need to be well prepared before this to avoid looking like a novice in front of the judges. Before the competition, you should not only train, but also learn to flex while you pose and still look relaxed. You may also want to tan, remove hair, and take other measures to help your body look as lean and sculpted as possible. Your coach, if he or she has participated in competitive bodybuilding, should be able to give you advice in these areas.

After the competition, evaluate your performance, good or bad. Nobody is perfect, but by learning from past mistakes, you can do better at future competitions. Keep your eyes peeled in the staging area-what are other competitors doing to help their performance? As soon as the winners are announced and the applause has died, head to the judges' table. They are the experts and can give you a quick verbal assessment of your body and give you advice for your next competition. Be humble and listen to everything they have to say, both positive and negative. In no time, it will be you in the winner's circle, and you can give advice to the new competitive bodybuilders in your area.

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Get Fast Results - Tips to Successful Bodybuilding for Beginners

With so many ads and free bodybuilding regimen in magazines and the Internet, it is easy to go wrong. DO NOT use the bodybuilding regimen of professional bodybuilders when you start off.

Begin slowly. It is natural to be enthusiastic at this stage. But your body needs only 3 non-consecutive days of workout a week. To be successful, your bodybuilding regimen needs to focus on:

• The right kinds of exercises
• The right technique
• Breathing technique
• Diet

Mastering technique is the most important part of a beginner?s routine. If you are doing the right exercise in the wrong way, you are wasting your time. Once you have mastered the technique, you can push your body harder and do the number of recommended reps. This way you can achieve more number of reps without having to worry about injury.

Gaining muscle mass is not just about exercising. This has to be coupled with a bodybuilding diet. Good nutrition is an important part of your muscle building program. You should ideally be having five or six small meals a day. Here are some changes you need to make:

• Cut fats
• Say ?no? to refined sugar
• Take in lots of water
• Increase your protein intake

The best time to work out is in the morning, on an empty stomach. Your body needs food after the workout because your last meal would probably have been 8-10 hours before the exercise. So, you should NEVER miss your post workout meal.

Your ideal diet should include potatoes, rice, pasta, lean red meat, egg whites, banana, turkey, cottage cheese and tuna. Natural fats like natural peanut butter, olive oil and flaxseed oil are good because they are rich in monounsaturated fats.

Warm up before you start your bodybuilding exercises. Perform all exercises through their full range of motion. Keep your movements slow and controlled. This will help keep resistance on the muscles. You may need to rest between exercises, especially in the beginning.

There are a number of exercises that you can choose from to build the body of your dreams. For the exercises to work in peak form, you need to cycle the exercises so that all the major muscles receive their fair share of resistance training. Change the sets, switch the order of body parts, choose different exercises and vary the rest time between sets.

Do not start on any supplements right away. The need for supplements comes in only after you hit a plateau ? the stage when you are doing all the right things, but not seeing any results.

While bodybuilding success depends on pushing the limits, never ignore pain. Set small and achievable goals. Do not give up. Remember bodybuilding is not just about exercises, it is a lifestyle in itself.

Bodybuilding is serious business. So, the first thing you have to do is get a physical done. It is absolutely essential to ensure that all your organs are in perfect working order. A healthy heart, liver and kidneys are a must if you dream of body building success. Your hormonal balance also plays a very important part in bodybuilding.

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What Is The Best Home Gym

When it comes to choosing home gyms, you may find yourself with many different decisions to make and not sure where to start. Choosing home gyms involve many different aspects to check out, this is true, but it is actually quite simple to pick one for you and your needs. There are a few main things that you should check out before you choose a gym. Focusing just on these will help simplify the search process.

First and foremost you will want to determine how much space you have for the home gym, before you begin choosing home gyms. This is because there are different gyms that will fit in different amounts of space. Some home gyms will fold up and fit just about anywhere, while some have tons of equipment and require a lot of space. Once you have decided on the size you can use for your home gym, you will have narrowed down what you can buy. Then it is just up to you to choose from among those that will work with the space that you have.

Getting recommendations from friends, family and even your doctor will help you when choosing home gyms. That way you will have a few ideas of certain gyms to check out. This should narrow your search down even further. Make sure you let your doctor know exactly what your goals are and they should be able to recommend some equipment that will work with your personal goals and needs. Also make sure you ask friends and family members that have had some of the same goals as you, in order to pick some equipment that will work with yours as well.

Lastly when it comes to choosing home gyms, you will need to set up a budget. This will let you to further narrow down the equipment that you are looking at. Once you determine how much you can spend, you should be down to one or two choices. Make sure you thoroughly check out the equipment before you buy. Ask if you can try out the equipment as well. Sometimes a local gym may have similar equipment and you can use it there to see if you like how it works with you and your needs.

Choosing home gyms doesn't need to be complicated. Taking some of these simple things and keeping them in mind while you shop should make it quite simple. Once you find the home gym you need, you will be well on your way to a healthier life and all the looking will have been worth it.

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Shopping for Used Home Gyms

Because saving money is a priority that?s steadily gaining importance for most individuals today, our plans for purchasing home gyms usually end up being affected as well. But the need to economize shouldn?t be reason enough to stop us from building our own personal fitness hub. Rather, it simply makes a little adjustment to our planning necessary.

More to the point, we now have to focus on shopping for used home gyms rather than purchasing brand new ones.

Shopping for used home gyms can be quite tricky if you?re not, as a rule, used to purchasing secondhand stuff. Nevertheless, our shopping guide to used home gyms shall help you avoid the usual difficulties associated with it.

Tip #1: Buy from a Reputable Source

There are many people and companies selling secondhand exercise equipment, but not all of them will give you a fair deal. To ensure that you?ll always get your money?s worth and to simply stay on the safe side, check with the Better Business Bureau if you?re planning to purchase from a certain store. The BBB shall let you know if there?s anything fishy going on.

As for individual sellers, if the transaction takes place online, make sure that you check what other people have to say about the seller first (feedback) before proceeding any further.

As for sellers whom you?ve found out about in the classifieds or something similar, always ask if you could check the item first for any visible damages or mechanical errors before giving your final answer.

Tip #2: Ask for Warranties

A one-week warranty is typical although at the very least, ask for a three-day warranty.

Tip #3: Check Out Online Auction Sites

It?s best that you only make purchases on popular and controlled sites like E-bay or Wal-Mart.

Tip #4: Ask for Specific List of Flaws and Damages

This would help you compare several similarly priced secondhand products more effectively.

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Bodybuilding Periodization: Bodybuilding Workouts without Bodybuilding Pain

Periodization is a very popular word in the bodybuilding and powerlifting worlds. It seems that every day we see an article promising us great gains through the use of this or that periodization scheme. We have old school linear periodization. We have new school Russian waved periodization, for example, by Boris Sheiko or Pavel Tsatsouline. We have Westside Barbell?s conjugate periodization. Well, get ready, because now we have yet another form of periodization: Pain Periodization.

What is Pain Periodization? Is it some new hardcore bodybuilding method? Is it the latest fitness fad? Is it some leftover practice of the Marquis de Sade? Is it a new reality game show? That would be three nos. It is simply a common sense way to schedule productive bodybuilding exercises that might otherwise be discarded. Read on and I?ll explain, but first let me illustrate the problem we are trying to overcome.

We all know that there are exercises that we both love and hate. For example, skullcrushers are one of the best triceps moves for getting those huge guns. Unfortunately, some of us also get nasty elbow pain after a few weeks of skullcrushers. It?s the same with presses behind the neck. Some of us swear by them for their ability to build cannonball delts. Some of us swear at them for their ability to produce rotator cuff pain. We all love the bench press, but not all of us can handle the shoulder strain the bench press can produce. Luckily, there is an answer. It?s called Pain Periodization. Let?s break it down.

Pain Periodization is a method of planning our workouts so that we can use our favorite exercises without letting the pain get out of hand. We use the exercise for a certain preplanned period, and then move on to something else. As James Brown would say, we ?hit it and quit it.? Let?s look at some examples.

For shoulder size, we might like the behind neck press. But after four or five weeks, the rotator cuff is so sore that it takes a month to heal. We have forsaken the behind neck press altogether and instead used machine shoulder presses. We?d like to do behind neck presses, but we can?t afford the pain and possible down time. By using Pain Periodization, we can have our cake and eat it too. We can start using our favorite shoulder exercise again and still retain shoulder health.

Here is an example 8-week workout plan using Pain Periodization.

? Weeks 1-2 Behind Neck Press

? Weeks 3-4 Machine Press

? Weeks 5-6 Behind Neck Press

? Week 7 Machine Press

? Week 8 Prehab/Rehab

In the above example, we used the behind neck press for 2 weeks only, then went to the machine press which we find easier on the rotator cuff. We don?t just keep using the behind neck press until our shoulder health is wrecked. In effect, we ?hit it and quit it.? In the second 4-week period, again we use the behind neck press for 2 weeks followed by the machine press. Also shown is an optional week of rehab or ?prehab? during which time we drop all heavy overhead pressing and focus on rotator cuff work and stretching. This one-week rehab phase can work wonders for our shoulder health.

Let?s look at another example using the bench press. We all want that big bench press, but we don?t want a blown rotator cuff. We can use Pain Periodization to allow us to work the bench press without wrecking our delts. Like this:

? Weeks 1-3 Bench Press

? Week 4 Machine Bench

? Weeks 4-6 Bench Press

? Week 7 Machine Bench

? Week 8 Rehab/Prehab

Are we getting the picture here? In both of these examples, the ?painful? exercise was alternated with an exercise that we find to be easier on the body. The examples were slightly different, but the main idea is the same. The pain producing exercises were used only for a short period, and then we switched exercises before the pain had a chance to accumulate. In essence, we ?hit it and quit it.? Try Pain Periodization. It may be just what you need to resurrect some of those forsaken exercises.

Randy Williams is an online personal trainer with 24 years of weightlifting experience. Please visit my blog at http://massactionheroes.com/ and sign up for my free newsletter and receive a 2-part free report on bread and butter bodybuilding set methods. Inquire about online personal training by emailing me at Randy@massactionheroes.com

A Stair Stepper For Your Home Gym

Why would you consider a stair stepping machine for your home gym? Because home is where the heart is. It's also where more and more people are increasingly building their own gyms to exercise the heart -- along with abs, lats and every other body part that can benefit from a little regular lubrication. Home exercise equipment such as treadmills have been the runaway favorite for years, but is it the best exerciser for you? Have you considered a stair stepper?

The best exercise steppers have complete display readouts with all the resistance adjustments and info on distance, calories burned, etc. Steppers can be considered as a workout by themselves or they are a great cross training tool to mix with other aerobic activities such as biking or walking.

Some of the best benefits a stair stepping machine offers is the low shock to the body while providing a high intensity exercise, and some people find it easy to read while stepping. Steppers have been a popular way to get into shape for years since they simulate climbing stairs, but instead of actual steps they use alternating pedals or platforms. In addition to the great aerobic exercise, adding a stepper to your home gym will help you get into shape for activities such as hiking or skiing.

You use a stair stepper by speeding up or slowing down the stepping rate and control the amount of resistance. Thus, you are able to choose the intensity of the exercise and make better adjustments as needed. As your step ability increases, so will your need for increased stepping resistance.

It's one of the best ways to work the legs, but steppers also place emphasis on the glutes, and incorporate some additional calorie burning cardio. Many people don't perform cardio after an intense leg/glute workout, because it's just so intense. With stair steppers, you've found a better exercise for a full body workout.

Kevin Urban is the editor at Best Home Gyms.com, a comprehensive guide featuring the best home gyms and online treadmill reviews Click here to read home gym reviews on the most popular brands.