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As you probably remember the last time you looked at a proposed grocery list or visited the nearest supplement store, you realized you needed to take out an equity loan first in order to get your month’s supply of food and supplements.
Believe me…
I’ve had my fair share of large bills especially when I’m trying to bulk up and gain weight.
Am I right about this so far?
Don’t’ worry… there are some really overlooked and rather inexpensive methods to get all the food you need without breaking the bank. But I have an even better idea… let me just start off with a quick list of foods that you can find at most grocery stories and warehouse locations that are cheap and are excellent sources of protein, carbohydrates and fats.
Low Cost Bodybuilding Foods (no particular order):
1. Tuna
2. Nuts
3. Olive Oil
4. Whey Protein Concentrate, in bulk
5. Pasta
6. Chicken legs
7. Beans
Of course you’ll want to get servings of fruits and veggies but normally it’s the other foods that are expensive in bulk. With just the above foods, you can get many of them in bulk or for discounts and have plenty of wholesome foods for your bulking, cutting and bodybuilding endeavors.
By now, you’re probably wondering…
Okay, that’s a nice list of general foods I can use but I am taking some supplements. And they aren’t so cheap. I’d like to try everything I see in the latest muscle magazines but I really only have time for what works. Where’s the cheap list of supplements?
Inexpensive (best bang for your buck) supplements:
1. Multi-vitamin
2. Fish oil
3. Whey concentrate
4. Dextrose
5. Creatine Monohydrate
Fact is…
I try a lot of supplements myself. I’m curious. I want to know what works and sometimes I stumble across something that is worth it. But the above list is the basic supplement list that I always return to no matter what. It’s part of the vitamin closet in the kitchen. If I have no time, no money or no desire to try anything new, I know that above is the only stash I need to make any gains I’ll need.
So let me summarize and review…
Bodybuilding on budget is real. If you look for specific foods that are great sources of protein, carbs and healthy fats and mix and match, you have a really well rounded selection to make many meals. No matter if you are on a bulk phase, cutting phase or just want to eat healthy, it doesn’t have to be the most expensive things you’ve ever done.
Marc David is an innovative fitness enthusiast and the creator of the “The Beginner’s Guide to Fitness And Bodybuilding” method on http://www.Beginning-Bodybuilding.com. He can show you how to reduce your body fat thru diet, how to gain weight or create more muscle thru an abundance of workout tips by training LESS! Not more. He dispels many “bodybuilding myths”, tells you what most people never realize about nutrition, and what the drug companies DON’T WANT YOU to know. Go to: http://www.Beginning-Bodybuilding.com to find out more about The Beginner’s Guide to Fitness And Bodybuilding.
Every guy who steps into the gym dreams of achieving that great classical V-shaped upper body that commands respect and attention. Many have trained for months, if not years and yet that V-shaped upper body just isn’t forth coming. Ever wondered why?
Before I show you various ways to achieve that glorious ‘V’, you must also be aware that the ‘V’ shape is also an illusion. If you have a wide thick back with a powerful chest, coupled with boulder-like deltoids, your ‘V’ will show up commandingly because those attributes will make your waist look small and thus accentuating the ‘V’ illusion.
To have a stupendous upper body, you MUST train your lower body. V-shapes will just be an ugly upper body shape if your legs are like bamboo poles. The excellent full body shape is called the X-frame. Just like those super heroes you see in comic books. If you don’t train legs, you are missing out on training the largest muscle mass. When training legs, many other upper body muscles especially the back and abs will be involved. This gives you the most muscle mass trained in one go. And because you are training so many muscles at one go, you secrete tons of growth hormones when you sleep, further enhancing overall muscle development for that perfect X-frame.
Another muscle group many people fail to pay attention to is the back. The back must be trained for thickness as well as width. Many back exercises also develop the rear deltoids and the trapezius which are very important to getting that ‘V’. When your back is thick, you will look powerful and with the width, it will make your waist look narrower, thus making the ‘V’ more pronounced. Do bar-bell row, deadlifts for a thick and powerful back. Chin-ups and push-ups (weighted and doing them in a slow controlled motion) will provide you the width or more commonly called ‘wings’.
Another very obvious V-shape illusion creator are your triceps. But most people pay more attention to the biceps than triceps. Why triceps then? Because your triceps, as the name ‘tri’ suggests, has three ‘heads’ and each ‘head’ must be dealt with when you exercise them. They are also 1/3 bigger than your biceps. By training the triceps hard, your upper arms will grow bigger faster, giving more berth to your upper body and again creating a narrow waistline illusion.
The best illusion-shapers are your deltoids. Your delts have 3 ‘heads’. However, most of the time, I see people only working out the front delts. When you develop your delts well, they will be round and boulder-like, and they make your shoulder wide and strong. Now, close your eyes and have a mental image of yourself with a wide thick back, big strong triceps… now, do you see that ‘V’? Add lateral raise, bent-over lat-raisers and upright rows to your routine.
How to have a beautiful ‘V’ if your abs are flabby? Forget the side crunches and side bends. It will only make your waistline thicker. Go on a lose fat program by combining weight lifting, cardio exercises and eating correctly. Your abs will show in no time.
Ahh… to finally stamp your authority in the gym and at the beach, a wide and powerful gladiator’s chest will put you ahead of the pack! Train your chest heavy with dumbbells, barbells and cables machines. Use incline benches rather than flat or declining ones. You want to build the upper chest and not targeting the lower chest in case it gets you the droop or saggy chest which we call ‘bitch tits’. Although the pec is one huge muscle, it can be targeted at different places to recruit different fibres to shape it.
Chris Chew is a fitness personal trainer and count celebrities such as actors, models and pageant winners amongst his clients. He authored the book “Burn Fat Build Muscles Fast” at www.sgfitness.com and runs a fitness school at www.sgfitnessonline.com
The foolish idea that ‘more is better’ when it comes to bodybuilding goes directly against the basics of exercise science. When is comes to increasing your rate of muscle gains, more exercise is almost never what is needed. As I have mentioned already, once you have “stimulated” muscle gains by hitting the gym hard, any additional amount of exercise, will in fact, prevent any muscle gains from happening.
You see, muscles are made up of ‘muscle fibers’. Muscles themselves work by contracting and reducing their length. In order for muscles to contract, they must move. For a muscle to produce movement, and therefore the power to move a given weight, it must do so by lengthening and contracting.
In other words, a muscle performs exercise by contracting, and by doing this it generates force and power. While a muscle uses some of it’s fibers to perform a given exercise, it almost never uses all of them at the same time.
For a muscle to contract every one of its available fibers at the same time, it must be in a totally contracted position. To increase your muscle mass in the shortest time possible, the maximum number of muscle fibers possible must be “stimulated”. The easiest way to achieve this is through multiple repetitions of a particular exercise. More often than not it is impossible to contract all of the muscle fibers in a specific part of the body, using only one repetition, without risking injury. Multiple repetitions however, allow it to be done safely.
As a general rule, it’s almost impossible to perform an exercise in a way that contracts all of the muscle fibers of the body parts involved. However, if the exercise is performed with intensity, many more muscle fibers will be stimulated, than there would have been otherwise.
As an example, when you perform a basic exercise like the barbell curl (standing upright with a barbell and curling your arms from resting against your thighs up towards your chest), you are using the fibers of the biceps muscle of the upper arm. At the beginning of the exercise, when performing the first repetition of a set of ten, your biceps muscles are at their strongest and most rested.
However, during the first repetition you can only involve a minimal number of the muscle fibers available. Most of the fibers are unable to contract unless in a totally contracted position. The bicep itself will only use the minimal number of fibers needed to perform that one repetition. Muscle fibers will only perform at full capacity, and are only “recruited” by a specific body part as they are needed.
By increasing your speed of movement you can dramatically increase the number of muscle fibers involved. However, in many cases this is extremely dangerous, leading to the muscle tearing loose from its attachment. Not fun or desirable. As well as the risk of severe injury, increasing the speed of movement will often involve extra momentum. By using overall body motion to “cheat”, the intensity shifts away from the muscles and body parts you are trying to stimulate.
So keep this in mind. In the case of the barbell curl example, the first repetition should be performed in perfect form, but at a pace that is considerably slower than is actually possible. A pace that will allow you to perform each repetition as fast as possible without risking injury.
The bottom line is this. Regardless of how you perform the first repetition of the barbell curl, you will still only be involving a very small percentage of the muscle fibers available. This is due to the following three reasons. (1) When the muscle is not in a fully contracted position, only a limited number of muscle fibers are involved. (2) During the first repetition the biceps muscle fibers are at their strongest and most rested. (3) The majority of the exercise equipment on the market provides practically no resistance to a muscle in a fully contracted position.
Zero resistance can become an issue during almost all basic exercises. For example, during the bench press, a totally contracted position is reached when the arms are completely extended. Because your arms also reach a point of total “lockout” of the elbow joints at this point, there is basically zero resistance in this position. The way this problem can be resolved is by performing all of your exercises in a series of repetitions. You can then make sure that you achieve maximum stimulation of the muscles involved.
Let’s look the barbell curl example again. If you are using a weight that allows you to perform about ten repetitions, then the first repetition will only involve about five percent of the total number of muscle fibers available. The remaining ninety-five percent of fibers are not involved at all.
When you perform the second repetition however, things start to change. And change fast! The previous five percent are no longer as strong or as rested as they were during the first repetition. The strength levels of these fibers have been challenged, and so they now need the help of additional fibers to perform the second repetition. These additional fibers are at their strongest and most rested. However, they too will only be used to the extent that they are actually needed.
As you continue to perform the exercise, more and more muscle fibers become involved. Finally, by the tenth repetition you will be using as much as twenty percent of the total muscle fibers available. By this stage of the exercise your breathing should be coming thick and be fast. And, the intensity level will be high.
In this example, the exercise is being performed with a weight that the you knew you could only perform ten repetitions with. It is at this point that most “skinny” guys stop the exercise. This is a big mistake. Doing so with result in almost no muscle gains at all.
By stopping the exercise at this point, you are not pushing through your comfort zone. You are just nudging up to it. Also, the various muscles involved are not being pushed enough to cause them to GROW. If you are “stupid” enough to train in this manner, your muscle gains will be slow and in many cases, totally non-existent. In short. If you are going to go for it. Then, make sure you go all the way… and then some!
Trent Brook is the Author of “Huge Gains Fast - How to Get More Rock-Hard Muscle Mass In A Month Than You Now Get All Year. His “Huge Gains Fast” muscle building program is an easy-to-follow system so simple and understandable it’s fully explained to you in just 4 easy steps! The Revised Edition is now available online at his website, http://www.hugegainsfast.com