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

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 »

Why is Form Important? Form is crucial in preventing injuries and ensuring the targeted muscles get the best workout possible. It’s common to see people in the gym with bad form, but what exactly is it? Well bad form is when someone is doing an exercise which has additional ranges of motion. Lets take the classic bicep curl as an example. When performing a correct bicep curl you should have a fixed elbow at your hip and then have a steady, stable range of motion while you contract the bicep. You will not only feel your bicep working but a bit of shoulders and core, these should however only be working to keep your body stable. The only motion you should be going through is the bicep contraction and not the lurching, rocking, leaning back heavily action commonly seen. What causes bad form? The principal cause of poor form is ... 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 »

If you have watched the film 300 you will know that every actor was in unbelievable shape. Muscles bulging, veins pumping and not a ounce of fat to be seen. People in the fitness industry were talking about it, saying, ‘it’s not all natural there must be lots of special effects.’ It turns out that it’s all natural, they did in-fact train exceptionally hard to get in shape and in some cases the actors collapsed due to exhaustion. I bet you can’t wait to try their routine…. Soon after the films release a workout emerged dubbed the 300 workout, which by no means is for the feint hearted. It is an epic full body workout, starting off with a mere set of 25 chin ups. All in all you perform 300 repetitions and you are supposed to complete in a time of 20 minutes or less. The workout is as ... Read More »

Fitness and Vitamins If you have embarked or are embarking upon a fitness regime, you have to ensure you still follow basic principals. I’m sure as a child you were told to eat your vegetables and fruits because they contained vitamins which made you strong and healthy. Well your parents weren’t lying. You should still be doing this because you need vitamins as much as you need air, they catalyse and facilitate thousands of metabolic reactions. Almost every energy production or muscle growth process is reliant on a vitamin. Being deficient in any one of  them is going to seriously impede your progress. So Which vitamins should I take? You should be getting all of them from your varied diet consisting of fruit, vegetables, meats etc. You can also take a multi vitamin tablet to boost any of the ones your diet may not be providing you with. What do ... Read More »

Improve your fitness Right so improving your fitness, lets get one thing straight it’s not going to be as enjoyable as lifting weights. It’s harder to see physical improvements, you will not get bulging veins like you do when you lift weights. Well that’s not entirely true, what I should have said was at first it might not be enjoyable, I personally love increasing my fitness. Why? Well once you get into it your body starts releasing a hormones called endorphins, which to be frank are ‘feel good’ hormones. The more you do it the more of these you are going to get. So that being said what steps do you need to take? Record everything You need to make sure you keep a record of what you are doing, so get a pen and paper and write down what you want to achieve for the week. Set goals, at ... Read More »