Weight Training Tips and Articles

Natural Muscle Building

Nowadays, pro athletes are constantly getting caught using steroids and other performance enhancing drugs, and it can be confusing for the average weight trainer. It’s gotten to the point where many people believe that you can’t succeed at natural muscle building. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It can be tough for young beginning weight trainers to see that most (maybe all) professional bodybuilders are using steroids, growth hormone, and other drugs to build muscle. A lot of average joes are even using these drugs to build a muscular physique. However, it’s so much better for your health if you try for natural muscle building. Since steroids will lower the amount of testosterone your body produces, your levels of this hormone will drop considerably if you stop taking them. This means that you’ll never have to worry about the massive drop in your testosterone levels from having to quit steroids if you follow a natural muscle building routine.

One of the biggest keys to natural muscle building success is to not overtrain when you lift weights. Anytime you see a professional bodybuilding routine in a book or magazine, you have to realize that there’s a good chance that it’s a steroid users routine. These drugs help people recover much quicker from intense weight training, so these routines may include as much as 30 sets or more for each muscle. This is way too much for anybody who wants to succeed at natural muscle building. You’ve probably seen guys at the gym who lift for 2 or more hours per workout, doing set after set of every exercise, yet never build any real size and strength. Your muscles grow when they rebuild after being broken down from intense weight training. The muscles are forced to adapt. If your muscles don’t recover because you’re doing to many exercises and sets, you won’t get bigger and stronger.

Along the same lines, you need to take days off of lifting altogether for natural muscle building. If you weight every single day, you won’t be giving your muscles the recovery time they need to rebuild.

Taking both of these factors into account, to succeed at natural muscle building you shouldn’t do more than 10 to 12 total sets per muscle. If you can weight train with high intensity during every set, you may want to do even less than this. You also don’t want your weight training workouts to last more than 45 minutes to an hour. If you train hard, this is plenty of time.

Weight training 4 times a week should be enough for natural muscle building. If you split your routine 3 ways you’ll train each muscle every 5 or 6 days. If you don’t do too many sets, this should be enough time for your muscles to recover and grow.

Your diet also plays an important role in natural muscle building. You’ll need to get plenty of protein in your diet. The best sources of protein include lean red meat, chicken, fish, and egg whites. If you aren’t getting enough protein from whole foods, you should purchase some protein powder.

Besides protein powder and maybe creatine, you don’t need to buy every overhyped supplement for natural muscle building. Most of the supplement ads that you see in bodybuilding magazines are extremely exaggerated. Save your money for the new wardrobe you’ll need when you succeed at natural muscle building.

Weight Training For Women

Weight training is something that many men do to gain muscle strength and size and get into better shape. Because of this, weight training for women is often overlooked. The problem is that most women are afraid that if they weight train they will become too muscular and manly. However, it’s very unlikely that a woman will build huge muscles unless they take steroids and other bodybuilding drugs. Weight training for women can be very beneficial for losing body fat and getting a more shapely body.

Since building some muscle mass will boost your resting metabolism, weight training for women is great for helping to lose fat or maintain your body weight. You don’t need to build a lot of muscle, just a little, and you will be burning more calories even when you aren’t doing anything.

A weight training for women routine should include some exercises for each muscle group, with most of the focus being on lower body exercises. The legs and butt should be train more, as building some muscle in these areas will give the ladies a more eye pleasing shape. Some upper body exercises should be included though. Just do a couple of light sets for the muscles of the chest, back, shoulders, and arms. Squats, leg presses, leg extensions, leg curls, and calf raises are the exercises you’ll want to do more sets for as part of a weight training for women routine.

A weight training for women workout should also be made up of sets done with lighter weight for more reps. If you do this, it’s highly unlikely that you will build muscles that are too big. Doing a set or 2 of some light barbell or dumbbell curls isn’t going to cause your arms to explode with growth. Just look at how hard some men have to work to build muscle.

Doing some weight training for women just a few days a week after or before you do some cardiovascular exercise will be enough to lose body fat and improve your shape without getting too big. You’ll be surprised at how good you look.

Best Weight Training Tips

Many people who are new to lifting weights are looking for the best weight training tips. There are certainly some things you can do to help you succeed quicker in your efforts to building muscle size and strength.

One of the best weight training tips when you first start out is to set up and follow a routine. For the first few weeks or so, you may want to train your whole body during every workout with a few sets per muscle group to get your body used to lifting. Make sure to train larger muscle groups first, and the smaller muscles later. Don’t waste your time with too many isolation exercises - focus mostly on the major compound ones like squats, bench presses, and deadlifts.

Another one of the best weight training tips is to learn proper lifting form on all the major exercises. If you start out by using poor exercise form, you’ll develop bad habits that will be tough to break later on. You can’t try to lift too much weight too soon and be forced to cheat all of the time, as it will likely lead to injury. If you do your exercises the right way, you’ll eventually build the size and strength you’re looking for.

After you’ve learned proper exercise form and want to do more training for each muscle group, you should split up your routine. The best weight training tip for this is to try a 3 way push-pull split routine. This routine looks like this:
Day 1 - chest, shoulders, and triceps (upper body muscles that “push” weight)
Day 2 - back and biceps (upper body muscles that “pull” weight)
Day 3 - legs
When you follow a routine like this, one of the best weight training tips is to take a day off in between each workout. You can also do some abdominal training at each workout.

Avoiding overtraining is another one of the best weight training tips. Your body needs a chance to recover from your workouts to grow bigger and stronger. If you do too many sets and exercises during each workout or train too often, your body won’t have the chance to rebuild after the breakdown it gets from intense weight training. Try to get your weight training sessions done in one hour or less and don’t lift more than 4 days per week.

The best weight training tip to avoid hitting a plateau in your gains is to make changes in your routine regularly. If you do the same thing every time you weight train, you will hit a wall at some point. Switch up some of the exercises you do or change your rep range per set to keep your body guessing.

Another one of the best weight training tips is to train with high intensity. Do reps until you are sure you can’t get one more. You should have a spotter watch you on some exercises just in case. If you don’t try to get an extra rep or lift a little bit more weight you’re not going to build strength and size as quickly as you could.

If you follow the best weight training tips and stick with a routine, you’ll succeed in getting a bigger and stronger physique.