Strength and Fitness Tips | How to Build Muscle Top muscle building and fat loss tips.

Correct me if i’m wrong but it’s not only guys who would like a set of abs. How to get abs for girls something more and more girls are looking into how to achieve. The inspiration of this post came from a Facebook group Hot Chicks With Ab’s which you have to check out! here. It features girls who have amazing definition and great abs. Having ab’s is a sign of a slim, sexy and toned physique. As a female what you don’t want is the thick bulky abs like a bodybuilder. A flat stomach with small defined abs is much more desirable, if you are after these kinds of abs then this is the page for you. What we need to avoid is thickening the abs to much. The thicker your abs are the more ‘bloated’ you will look. This is why how to get abs for girls differs ... Read More »

Bicep Workouts for Mass – Build Thick Biceps! If you work out your biceps with exercises that don’t utilise the entire muscle then you could build biceps that look slightly out of proportion. For example being able to see ample amounts of bicep muscle while looking front on, however when you look from behind much less bicep is visible. This is because he/she has not utilised bicep workouts for mass. Instead of building a thick bicep the entire way around the arm, only the inner bicep has been built. Bicep workouts for mass are not like full body mass building exercises, you don’t have to lift heavy, it’s much more to do with the variation of lifts you perform. The aim here is to build a good peak to the bicep as well as a good width. Keeping good form is crucial for building good bicep mass. Overlifting can cause ... Read More »

In his latest two films, Bronson and Warrior Tom Hardy has shown he can put on a good amount of mass. In Bronson he put on lots of weight and played the role of a brawler, and in Warrior a MMA underdog. His workout routine differs from all plans i’ve seen before and i’ve been going it for 3 weeks and it’s given me great lean gains. Tom managed to bulk up to 18 stone for Bronson, pretty impressive. Tom Hardy Warrior Workout In the film Tom has traps that make him look very scary and you presume are the result of shrugging a small elephant for days on end.  In the Tom Hardy Warrior workout he did not lift excessively heavy. In actual fact what he did do was lift often. In training he would exercise on average 3-4 times a day. Obviously he couldn’t lift really heavy as your body ... Read More »

In this article I am going to go over all the reported side effects of creatine and give my personal views towards the use of creatine. It’s important to consider both documented research results as well as anecdotal results due to the unique responses we all have to different chemicals. I have already written a post on ‘what does creatine do‘ which you should check out if you don’t know how creatine works. Creatine Side Effects Creatine is a very well researched substance, and there has yet to be a paper reporting creatine to be the sole cause of any sort of problem. Research involves looking at how creatine affects athletes performance in sports that are anaerobic or aerobic based. Many research trials have also been conducted into the affect supplemented creatine has on the kidneys and liver. It’s worth noting that 85% of users taking creatine reported substantial strength ... Read More »

Insulin and Bodybuilding – Isn’t Insulin a drug to treat Diabetics?   Before I started hitting the gym and reading up on how to put on muscle I thought that Insulin was used to treat high blood sugar levels in diabetics, little did I know about how it’s affects work wonders for muscle growth. In every healthy human insulin is produced in the pancreas, and it is produced on demand in order to regulate blood sugar levels. High blood sugar causes dehydration and loss of nutrients through urine. If all your energy is in your blood you will feel weak, lose weight and will have varied water retention throughout different parts of your body. All of these things are signs of being diabetic and obviously things to look out for. Insulin combats high blood sugar by channeling the sugars into the muscle where they can be used for energy and ... Read More »

‘Bulking‘ is an ambiguous phrase thrown around the gym. Some people perceive it to be putting on as much mass as physically possible by eating whatever they can get their hands on. It’s also mainly of a concern to the ectomorph (skinny people) when beginning their training routines. If you are a endomorph then you will have little interest of gaining even more fat! Bulking is it for me? The idea of a bulk is ensuring that your body has the optimum environment for building new muscle. If you have a very low body fat percentage, something around 6% then putting on pure muscle is going to be a slow process if your bodyfat remains constant. The body at this point is much more inclined to put on fat as it’s more useful in storing energy, boosting immune system, keeping you warm etc etc. This is where the idea of a ... Read More »

If you were asked how do muscles grow? What would be your response? It dawned on me that I didn’t actually know how muscles in fact grow. Obviously some form of stress needs to be applied in order to induce this growth, otherwise gym work would be utterly pointless. Hopefully not speaking purely on my own behalf but the common way it is seen is that the weights and exercise cause damage to the muscle. The muscle will then take nutrients and repair itself even stronger. It’s this repetitive process that gives you size, strength and stamina etc. This is very basic and my inner geek was not satisfied with this simple principle. So what I have researched is a more biologically in depth way in which muscles grow and how all the proteins you try so hard to intake actually help in muscle growth. How do Muscles grow – Basic ... Read More »

Break the Mould An exceptionally important aspect of increasing your strength, fitness, you name it, is the importance of a sense of progression. It’s a hurdle that everyone will most likely hit, stopping gaining, a point which separates the strong from the weak. If you are trying to build up muscle, tracking your gains is mighty important. If for the last 3 months you have been unable to increase the amount of weight on the bench press then by logic you are not progressing. A common reason for this happening is because you have not varied your workouts. The body is a clever thing and will go out of it’s way to resist affects placed on it. If you simply repeat the same old workouts and movements each week then you may reach a plateau, then start to lose interest because your not gaining. This doesn’t simply relate to gaining ... Read More »

Is doing weights at too young an age bad for you? For the Youngsters on Strength and Fitnesstips. I as a teenager always wanted to be stronger, bigger and lift weights. It would have really helped to be bigger, faster and stronger than everyone else when I was playing rugby. There was a lot of skepticism about wether it’s advisable for youngsters to lift weights while they are still developing. There is not question about it that squats and dead lifts will put a lot of pressure on your back and joints. When you are developing your bones are ligaments are not as strong and you will be much more prone to injury. It’s therefore a bad idea to start doing heavy dead lifts and squats under the age of 16. I do not agree with the fact that it’s completely unadvisable to do any weights when your growing up, ... Read More »

Do Girls Like Muscles? – A pressing question in need of an answer If you asked any guy if girls prefer muscly guys over skinny guys, the unanimous opinion would be a yes they do. This reasoning could be because it’s very rare to see a guy poster model being skinny, he will more likely have a good degree of muscle and definition. It’s also very common to see attractive girls with muscly guys. Leading to one of the overwhelming reasons guys spend hours lifting weights in the gym is so that they can impress the ladies. There must be a underlying psychological principle for this observation. Looking into it, it can be thought of as a primitive trait. Throughout the animal kingdom the alpha male is notoriously the most aggressive and powerful. They can provide the highest level of protection and safety within the group. So does this view ... Read More »