Tag: hypertrophy

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Effort Exertion

Why effort exertion MATTERS for muscle growth

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▪️Effort is a key factor for hypertrophy, and if you try to get away with no-effort based workouts, well… then you’re hindering the efficacy of your training program.⁣

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▪️But don’t get me wrong, there are cases in which exerting high levels of effort is unnecessary. For example, beginners who are just starting out with resistance training and learning the movement can get away with putting less effort into their workouts as they gain substantial strength through improvements in coordination.

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▪️But past this phase, you need to push yourself progressively, if you want to get results. The reason why effort exertion is essential for muscle growth, is because the perceived level of effort establishes the level of motor unit recruitment to be assessed. ⁣

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▪️The more of the effort perceived, the higher the level of motor units recruited to perform the task, which creates a greater force to be produced.⁣

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▪️When the goal is muscle growth, we need to optimize the level of motor unit recruitment. This way we are able to get access to the fibers controlled by the high-threshold motor units. These are the largest fibers and the ones which grow by lifting weights.⁣

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▪️Having slow bar speeds (close or to failure) with high-effort reps will increase the amount of hypertrophy we can create during each set. So if your goal is to build muscle, start putting some more effort into your sets so you can get the best results possible.

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Are BCAAS Useless?

ARE BCAA’s USELESS?

▪️BCAA’s (Branched Chain Amino Acids) are compounds that form chains (polypeptides) in order to create proteins in the body. As we all know, protein is essential for muscle growth and repair. 

▪️However, supplementing with BCAA’s are useless once you examine what’s in the supplement vs what you’re already consuming. After you eat a meal that has protein in it, your body will shift into an anabolic state where it rebuilds the muscle broken down after a workout, given the meal contained all 9 essential amino acids. 

▪️So putting more BCAA’s into your body won’t really do anything. Besides, only taking in 3 of the 9 amino acids is not optimal either.

▪️Save your money on something that works like getting your aminos from real food or a meal program.

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Upper Body Compounds

Here are four essential movements that will target the prominent parts of your upper body.

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1️⃣ There are several Bench Press variations, I always look forward to hitting the Flat Bench Press and Incline Dumbbell Press.⁠

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2️⃣ For Pull-Ups, I like doing weighted Chin-ups because they’re less strenuous on the shoulders and they also target the biceps. 

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3️⃣ Overhead Presses are one of the best workouts for targeting your deltoids and your upper chest. My go to is the standing barbell overhead press.⁠

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4️⃣ Rows have many variations as well. I like doing the barbell row because it’s better for me to progressively overload with heavyweights.⁠

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Overhead Press

✔️Overhead Press

▪️If you wan’t to grow bigger and stronger shoulders, the Overhead Press is a great compound exercise to take you there!
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▪️It’s one of the best exercises for progressively overload your deltoids to improve size and strength in your shoulders.
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▪️You can do the exercise with either dumbbells or barbell, seated or standing.
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▪️When you perform it standing, you’re recruiting your Pectoralis (chest), Deltoids (shoulders), Triceps (arms), and Trapezius (upper back). But to stay balanced and upright, your Lower Back, Obliques, Serratus Anterior, Transverse Abdominal and Spinal Stabilizers are engaged.
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▪️Also, keep your Glutes and Abs engaged to press the weight up with stability.
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▪️Make sure you have enough shoulder mobility to perform this exercise correctly, otherwise you might compensate by overarching and hurt your back and shoulders.
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▪️A good solution is to add Wall Angels to your routine and foam roll your lats before Overhead Pressing.

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5 Ways To Build Muscle

▪️Patience is overvalued; especially within the weight room and particularly when it involves those focused on a specific outcome: 

▪️Sure it takes time to build muscles, but if you’re trying to build muscle and aren’t seeing obvious size increases from month to month, it’s a sign that your approach is off.

▪️And a workout may be a terrible thing to waste. Plus, if you’re seeing progress, there’s no reason you can’t see more.

▪️How do you rev up your results? Here are 5 ways.

1. Increase Your Training Volume

▪️Training volume—your number of reps multiplied by your number of sets—is a primary determiner of hypertrophy (aka the way to grow muscle). And to extend volume, you’ll really need to lower the weight than you would expect.

2. Focus On The Eccentric Phase

▪️When weight training, you’ve got a concentric (hard) and eccentric (easy) phase.  For example , as you lower into a squat, you’re performing an eccentric movement. Once you return to standing, that’s concentric. And, according to research published within the ecu Journal of Applied Physiology, eccentric work is much better at activating muscle growth. 

3. Decrease Rest Intervals

▪️When lifting for hypertrophy, rest periods of 30 to 90 seconds encourage a fast release in muscle-building hormones (including testosterone and human growth hormone) while also ensuring that you truly fatigue your muscles.

4. To Grow Your Muscle, Eat More Protein

▪️Weight training breaks down your muscles. Protein rebuilds them. The more intense your workouts, the more important it is to consume protein to solidify recovery.

5. Focus On Being In A Calorie Surplus 

▪️This can be hard to get used to , especially for those who are used to counting calories within the hopes to burn fat. But to most efficiently  build muscle mass quickly (that means weight gained, not lost), you have to consume more calories than you burn every day.

▪️That’s because, when your body senses that you are in a calorie deficit which means that you’re consuming fewer calories than you’re burning each day—it lowers your body’s ability to create new muscle. After all, if your body thinks food is on low supply, getting swole isn’t going to be its main priority.

▪️Consume roughly between 250 to 500 extra calories per day to make sure that any weight gained is from muscle. A 2014 Pennington Biomedical research facility concluded from a study of people that ate a high-calorie diet rich in protein stored about 45 percent of these calories as muscle, while people following a low-protein diet with an equivalent number of calories stored 95 percent of these calories as fat.

▪️Resources: https://sandcresearch.medium.com/what-is-muscle-growth-and-how-does-it-happen-b7f7cd68ee34

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Keys To Hydration

♠️Hydration♠️

▪️Drinking a 1/2 liter of water per hour during your training session is enough to prevent dehydration.

▪️One liter of water is around 33 fluid ounces, so half would be 16.5 fl oz, or the size of a medium water bottle. A quick sip of water is normally about an ounce, give-or-take a little, so consuming between 16-33 fl oz during exercise shouldn’t be too difficult if you’re constantly taking a swig between each set.

▪️Even if you’re not thirsty, it’s a good rule of thumb to head for the water fountain or drink a quick gulp from your bottle between sets. Work smarter, less harder is what I always say.

▪️There was a study that states that consuming 500mL (16.9 fl oz) about 2-hours before exercise is a good place to start. A good routine to start is to simply start sipping on water at least two hours before your workout if you haven’t already been drinking water all day.

▪️If you start to get light-headed or nauseous during your workouts, you might not only be dehydrated, but there’s a possibility that you are experiencing symptoms of hyponatremia as well, which means that your sodium levels are decreasing.

▪️Most sports drinks such as Gatorade, contains sodium so it’s a good idea to sip on a sports drink during your workout if you think you may have issues with sodium deficiencies.

▪️Water is the most essential factor for your performance and for your gains in the long term.

▪️Good thing that water is on he easiest deficits to overcome. Just get yourself a water bottle and keep it by your side at all times. If you don’t like plain water, add flavoring into it to make it to jazz it up. Whatever has to be done, just do it.

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Resources:

https://journals.lww.com/acsm-csmr/Abstract/2003/08000/Fluid_Balance_and_Endurance_Exercise_Performance.6.aspx

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.583.3481&rep=rep1&type=pdf

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Bulgarian Split Squat

▪️Try this workout to target your glutes, quads, adductors and calves

▪️You can do this workout at home, using a couch or a chair

▪️Make sure that you are keeping your weight in your heel, while your head, hip and back knee is aligned. Try to keep your front knee aligned with the middle of your front foot

▪️Your front foot further away will target your glutes, but bringing your foot closer will target your quads

▪️Make sure that you maintain perfect form and aim for 8-15 reps

▪️Take your workout to the next level and add weights

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Office Jobs & Fitness

♠️Stay In Shape With A Office Job♠️

▪️It’s common knowledge that spending hours out of our day sitting down isn’t good for u.

▪️But the question of the day is; just how much exercise is needed to counteract the negative health impact of a day at a desk?

▪️A 2020 study concluded that about 30-40 minutes per day of building up a sweat should do the trick.

▪️Up to 40 minutes of “moderate to intense physical activity” daily is about the right amount to balance out 10 hours of sitting behind a desk.

▪️Research states that any amount of exercise or even just standing up helps to some capacity.

▪️This data is from the examination of nine previous studies, which involved 44,370 people in four various countries who were wearing a fitness tracker.

▪️️The analysis discovered an increase in the risk of death among those who lived a more sedentary lifestyle and a decrease in risk of death in those who spent time engaging in moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity.

▪️Implementing intense activities such as cycling, brisk walking, even gardening can lower your risk of an earlier death just as if you weren’t doing all that sitting around in the office.

Join The Muscle Hackers Club For Updates On Free Fitness Books : https://mailchi.mp/aa9bea26a029/musclehacking

Resources: https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/54/24/1451

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Losing Weight Too Fast

♠️The Truth Behind Rapid Fat Loss♠️

▪️Energy balance is the prime element to lose weight; it’s essential that your expenditure exceeds energy intake.

▪️Although aggressively dieting can increase fat loss, it will also reduce muscle mass. This sparks the question if losing weight as fast as humanly possible is the most optimal strategy.

▪️A case study inspected the effect of two different rates of weight loss on body composition. One group lost weight rather quickly (1% of bodyweight per week), while the other group lost weight at a  more slower pace (0.7% bodyweight per week).

▪️After 5.3 weeks, the aggressive dieting group lost 4.2 kg or 9.2lbs of bodyweight. On the other hand, the slower dieting group took 8.5 weeks to lose this amount.

▪️Even though both groups lost an equal amount of weight, the body composition of the lost weight was different. The aggressively dieting group lost more muscle mass  and less fat in comparison to the slower dieting group. 

▪️Therefore, this study concludes that more aggressive weight loss goes at the expense of losing muscle gains.

▪️So technically aggressive dieting is effective for rapid weight loss, but suboptimal if you want to keep the muscles that you worked hard for.

▪️Resources: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21558571/

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How To Show Your Veins

How To Show Your Veins

  • Caloric Deficit

🔹Science proves that if you want to burn fat, diet manipulations are more effective than doing extra cardio.

🔹Push towards getting under 15 percent body fat for some of you. To be sure though, aim for under 12 percent body fat.

🔹 You can never go wrong with leafy greens when it comes to gaining vascularity.

🔹 Most importants keep your calories at least 200 under your BMR

  • Increase Nitic Oxide Intake

🔹 Nitric oxide is the compound that is responsible for your veins to dilate; AKA get bigger. There are alot of foods out there that help increase the amount of nitric oxide in the blood to make your veins show.

🔹 Foods that that will convert into nitrates in the body will most definitely do the trick to up your level of nitric oxide. Eat foods such as:

.Beetroot
.Lettuce
.Celery
.Broccoli
.Arugula
.Spinach

  • Keep sodium intake low

🔹 Salt will hold onto water which is what you don’t want. In other words, the more salt that you have in your diet, the more water your body will retain, which means the less your biceps vein will show.

  • Keep water intake consistent

🔹 If you’re chronically dehydrated and not getting the amount of water your body needs, your body will start to crave water and will retain as much as possible whenever it has the chance.

🔹 Avoid dehydration so that your body will hoard less water and be willing to excrete any extra water.