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

The Best Home Gym Equipment to Build Muscle and Lose Fat In this article I am going to give you some advice on how to find the best home workout equipment for your home gym. Most of the equipment you find in a gym is quite unnecessary and you can use free weights as an alternative to get exactly the same results. Working out from home is proving more and more popular and i’m going to cover all aspects from weightlifting to cardio and stretching, then advise you on the best equipment to ensure you can give yourself a workout at home just like you would get in a gym. Best Home Exercise Cardio Equipment For me getting a running machine at home seems like a bit of a waste of time. You really want to have a piece of equipment that gives you a unique workout. If you want ... Read More »

What is the basis for a healthy person? There is an old adage that you are what you eat. While eating right is one aspect of a healthy lifestyle, obviously there are more factors that contribute to the overall well being of an individual. Since we all want to look and feel our very best, let’s examine the basic building blocks of a healthy person. It goes without saying that diet is an important factor. You’ve probably seen documentaries on the ill effects of fast food. Maybe you try to avoid things like high fructose corn syrup. Your health may require you to be on an even more restrictive diet due to allergies. Whatever your situation is, eating healthy foods in the right amounts is definitely a key to health. While a proper diet is different from person to person, something everyone has in common is that we need fresh ... Read More »

Certain jobs require huge amounts of sitting down, as I’m sure you are aware it is very hard to live a healthy lifestyle by sitting down all the time. There are also claims that sitting down can seriously damage health, however I suspect this is because merely because of correlation and not causation. Lorry drivers are at a certain advantage because they have a huge lorry to carry some equipment, while on a bike you are slightly more limited as to what you can carry. For a lorry driver it’s worth investing in some kettle bells. For some these are the weapon of choice as kettlebell workouts do offer an extensive full body workout. If you are familiar with workouts such as the 300 workout you will know that when it comes to the kettlebell push press it is absolutely killer! In the picture below there are 6 exercises you can ... Read More »

When going on holiday or visiting people one thing that is always on my mind is how am I going to maintain all my gains! There is no worse feeling than worrying about all those hours of dieting and training going out the window because you either can’t train or can’t consume. So to protect yourself and maintain your fitness and well being while travelling there is only one thing you need to do and that is prepare. “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.” Most of this post is going to operate on the following pretences, you are travelling around and either staying in a hotel or friends house. You will not necessarily be in the same place each day and you will be carrying around 2 or so pieces of luggage. First things first, in my opinion the hardest thing to get right while travelling is your diet. ... Read More »

If asked, ‘ which is the most important part of your body to ensure you can maintain a healthy lifestyle?’ Some people may respond with their legs so that they are mobile and can easily take part in cardiovascular exercises. Others may say upper body mobility with the use of your arms to do a series of upper body exercises. However any answer involving logic like this is wrong. The most valuable part of any person’s health and fitness irrespective of disability issues is the mind and your will power. The brain is what stimulates your muscle in the body via the central nervous system, this in itself is vital for causing muscle contractions enabling you the potential to increase your fitness. A healthy lifestyle will never come easily, the honest truth being healthy food can be more expensive, less appetizing and all round more hassle to prepare. Working out ... Read More »

One of the hardest things I find about working out and trying the achieve the body and fitness levels I want is taking the time off to ensure growth and recovery. I’m surely not alone when I say people could spend hours in the gym doing specific exercises to target each muscle group as well as the big primary lifts in order to stimulate growth. It’s instinctive to think that stimulating muscle more will cause you to grow more… Why is this a bad idea? Well this can cause the issue of overtraining. Overtraining Symptoms Overtraining results in coordination impairment, performance impairment and a series of psychological symptoms. The most common being the performance impairment. Athletes will experience diminished powers of endurance, strength, speed. Increase in recovery time, loss of ‘sparkle’ (competitive qualities). Susceptibility to demoralising influences before and during competition and increasing tendency to abandon the struggle. All the hard work ... Read More »

How Long can you Last? The numerous innuendoes that can be thought of when talking about this topic is obscene yet I will resist as I am sure you are far more mature than I am. So Stamina and endurance what is it? It’s how long your body can exercise at either an anaerobic or aerobic pace. If you noticed, I mention two categories; aerobic (with) and anaerobic (without) oxygen, each of these have different techniques associated with improving your stamina in each of them. Before you can start to increase your stamina you need to gauge the level at which you are starting from. I recommend for this you use a heart rate monitor if you have access to one, as you need to establish an aerobic fitness zone. It is easy for me to tell you that you need to run for X amount of time at 65% ... Read More »

Is there just one sport that is good for getting you ripped? The truth is that if you take a sport seriously as long as it involves some cardiovascular exercise and you have a good diet you will get ripped it doesn’t actually matter what the sport is you are partaking in. A multitude of sports will infact be better than solely focusing on one sport. For instance running be it sprinting or endurance is a great way to get ripped. When you run you use a lot of core muscles, these help stabilise your upper body, so it’s not only your legs getting a good workout. You also burn a lot of calories running so it’s great for losing fat and getting ripped up! When running you use your legs and core, but you also want to make sure your arms are getting used. So you need another sport… ... Read More »

Have you ever been in the gym after a night out drinking and been frustrated at how lethargic and weak you feel? Obviously this is going to be down to the alcohol, you are not the only person who is going to have experienced this but why is it so apparent? I’m afraid it’s not good news…. First of all alcohol is a diuretic, this means it forces the increase in the rate of urination. Specifically it acts as a vasopressin inhibitor, this is also known as ADH and this regulates the rate of water reabsorption in the kidneys. Thus meaning more water is lost during urination. Co-insiding with this effect is it’s solubility, alcohol is transported around the body in the blood plasma. It’s a polar molecule and prefers being dissolved in water as opposed to fat. This effect causes it to remove water from cells so that it ... Read More »

Have you ever found yourself becoming increasingly lethargic within the first 30 minutes of a workout? Your muscles don’t feel tired, yet you have an unexplainable feeling of weakness? This is most likely down to your pre and during workout nutrition. During workout nutrition is often overlooked, however without it training can be very counter productive. So lets go into an overview of what your body is doing during exercise. Your body can use three different types of energy source these are; Carbohydrates, Fats and Proteins. So what do they do? Carbohydrates – They come in two forms, complex and simple. A complex carbohydrate is found in foods like bread, they are long chain and give a sustained energy release over a longer period of time. An example of a simple carbohydrate is Glucose that gives the body an immediate energy resource. Fats – Fats are much more complex molecules, ... Read More »