“How To Add Muscle Mass”Welcome to building muscle 101's tips on how to add muscle mass.
Adding lean, hard muscle mass is no easy task. It takes hard work, dedication, discipline, desire, and an openness to learn the real aspects to improving your body. Hard and intense training is one half of the key to adding lean muscle mass. Now, I’m sure most of you reading this page understand that training is not where you grow. In fact, weight training actually tears down the muscle tissue and breaks the body down. Training is often mistaken with growth. Which of course, it’s not. The real growth happens afterwards. That is, what you do from the moment you stop training until your next training session will dictate how much muscle mass you gain. Remember this, it is the recovery period from training that leads to muscle growth - Not the actual training itself. You must understand this concept if you ever want to add muscle mass. You see, when it comes to weight training, your body works is cycles. The body encounters a stress point, such as weight training, and based on this stress, the body builds and breaks down in a sequence or cycles. If you can learn how to reduce the amount of muscle breakdown from weight training, you can capitalize on these cycles and keep your body in a constant state of growth. What I’d like to do is give you some key strategies on how you can greatly improve your recovery periods, and keep your body growing. 1) Have One Whey Protein Drink With 5 Grams Of Glutamine As You Wake Up This one is a must. As soon as you wake up in the morning, stumble over to your kitchen and mix yourself up a whey (Isolate if possible) drink mixed with 5 grams of glutamine. Your body is in starvation mode and desperately needs protein in order kick start the growth process. If you can, try adding 1 to 2 tablespoons of honey with your drink. This way, you can get some carbs into your nutrient starved body. Also, glutamine is a much needed nutrient at this point. If you can shuttle some glutamine into your muscles, first thing in the morning, you can help stop the muscle breakdown process and get your body back into growth mode. Here’s a drink I use: Here’s a great breakfast protein smoothie for you to try. • 1 scoop of orange creamsicle protein powder (NxCare ISO xp); Add all the ingredients to a blender and mix. Try and blend the mix until all the ice cubes are chopped up, usually about 30 to 40 seconds. This is a fantastic breakfast “wake up” protein drink to get your body growing. Give it a shot, I’m sure you’ll love it. 2) Eat A High Protein, High Complex Carb Breakfast This is so important. Approximately 45 minutes to 1 hour, after you’ve taken your morning protein drink, have a high protein, high carb breakfast. What you want to do here is give your body the magic of food synergy that only quality foods can provide. Oatmeal provides slow burning carbs to give you energy, which greatly benefits recovery in the long run. Think of this breakfast as giving your body “time released” recovery throughout the day. Here’s a sample breakfast: One cup of oatmeal, 8 to 10 egg whites, one scoop of protein powder and 1 tablespoon of raisins. Have with one or two toasts with light butter. One glass of orange or apple juice. 3) Have A Pre-Workout Shake Do yourself a huge favour, have a pre workout shake 40 minutes to 1 hour before your workout. Believe me, taking in a pre workout shake is one of the most critical things you can do to enhance your growth and recovery. If you want to get some body mass, your gonna have to take in a pre workout shake. By filling up on amino acids and some carbs prior to your workout, you ensure that your internal gas tank is filled with quality, high grade octane and premium building material. This is especially important if you’re body is low on nutrients because the workout will force you to use protein for fuel - And you never, ever want to do this! Try adding 40 grams of whey protein and have one banana prior to your workout. If you can, try having a small bowl of oatmeal - You’ll see what I’m talking about if you try this before your intenst workouts over the next week or so! Here’s a simple pre workout shake to try: • 1 Banana Mix it all up in a blender and you have yourself a power protein drink. Remember, if you can, try and fit in a small bowl of oatmeal. If you can’t, try using Prolab’s Mass Matrix Complex which uses 40 grams of complex carbs from oat flour. It also uses 40 grams of whey protein powder. This sounds like a fantastic drink! 4) Have A Glutamine And Creatine Drink Before A Workout Approximately 10 minutes before your workout, try having a glutamine and creatine drink. It has taken me a bit of practice but I personally found that this works best (for me), right before a workout. I personally use NOZ supecharged (Lemon lime flavour!), or Dymatize Xpand (Cherry limonade flavour). I have gotten mind blowing results from this combination. By stuffing your muscles full of creatine and glutamine, you keep your muscles cells filled with fluid. Now, if you can afford it, I strongly recommend that you also take some Endothil CR. I’ve used this supplement for over 5 months and I am blown away by the results. 5) Drink A Post Workout Shake This goes without saying. If you’re not having a post workout shake, you are basically cutting your results in half. Yes, I’m sure of it! This is the absolute best time to have a whey protein drink for the most dramatic results. Ingesting protein right after a hard workout will be your window of opportunity and the most optimal time to ingest protein. I cannot stress the importance of ingesting protein upon completion of your workouts. Why? This is your golden opportunity for building muscle, and trust me, this will help you put you on the road to building hard, strong muscles. You see, after you have had a gruelling workout, your body is in a state of havoc. The body is starting the repair and growth process of muscle tissue. You can greatly enhance this recovery process by consuming protein after your workout. Research has shown that you can get a head start on this recovery process by ingesting at least .5 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight along with a high glycemic carbohydrate such as maltodextrin, dextrose, or sucrose within 30 minutes of working out. Why carbohydrates with protein? When carbohydrates is taken with protein, there’s a blast of insulin. Insulin kicks the body’s glycogen making machine into high gear. Glycogen is considered the principal storage form of glucose and is found mainly in liver and muscle. Glucose supplies the tissues with energy and are found principally in the liver, and muscle as glycogen. Therefore, insulin will speed up the movement of glucose and amino acids into cells which is what you definitely want and secondly, it activates a special enzyme which is essential for glycogen synthesis. If you are serious about adding hard, lean muscle mass to your body, you will not forego your post workout protein drink. Try this post workout drink: Power Drink If you want to get bulk whey isolate for the cheapest price anywhere, try going to the following address: http://www.bulkfoods.com You can get about 5 pounds of whey isolate for about 40$ compared to $90 at your local GNC. 6) Take At Least 5 Grams Of Creatine With Your Post Workout Shake In addition to your post workout shake, you should add 5 to 10 grams of creatine. Personally, I’d add 5 grams of tri creatine malate. For some reason, I get awesome results with this kind of creatine. Taking creatine with your post workout shake has two main advantages. Firstly, exercises muscles takes up creatine so much better, so less is wasted. Secondly, the insulin spike you get after ingesting a high carb, post workout shake will not only shuttle a high level of carbs and protein into the muscle but creatine as well. The result is more creatine in each muscle fibre at saturation and a bigger, tighter muscle. 7) If You Can, Try Adding More Leucine To Your Post Workout Shake Leucine has been shown to help in the muscle recovery process. If you can get more leucine into the muscle immediately after your workouts, the better off you’ll be in terms of your recovery period. Lately, more and more supplement companies are catching on to this fact and are adding more leucine to their formulas. I’m sure you are all familiar with Muscle Tech’s Anator P-70. This supplement’s main active ingredient is Leucine and at 7.2 grams per serving, it’s at about the right proportion for optimal growth. However, for anyone over 200 pounds, this is simply not enough. Personally, I’d like to see at least 15 grams + of leucine per serving. You can usually get bulk leucine or branched chain amino acids for pretty cheap. Try going to www.bulknutrition.com for more selection. 8) Take Antioxidants I think taking antioxidants is important for two reasons. Firstly, hard weight training creates free radicals that destroys muscle tissue. If you can take some antioxidants immediately after training, you can help “scoop up” these free radicals and help prevent damage to your muscle cells. Secondly, after training, your body is very open to viruses that cause sickness. Since your body is at it’s most weakest after training, you need to reinforce your defences with antioxidants. You can’t train if you’re sick so keep your body and immune system strong with antioxidants. 9) Have A Complex Carb And Long Sustaining Protein Drink Before Bed What you want to do here is give your body, slow acting nutrients that will help prevent the hormone, cortisol from doing it’s job on your body. Cortisol will help with the muscle breakdown process and will increase over the course of the night. You want to keep cortisol levels down to a minimum and the only way to do this is to keep nutrients flowing into the muscle cells. Try having a small bowl of slow acting oats with a casein based protein drink before you go to bed. Try Dorian Yates’ Pro Peptide which uses micellar casein as it’s main protein source. Have one serving of this drink with a small bowl of oatmeal. Each tip outlined here will greatly enhance your recovery periods and therefore, more muscle mass and strength. If you can, try implementing all of the above noted recommendations, if you can’t, try to follow as many as you can. If you're looking for a complete program, try Jeff Anderson's program, Optimum Anabolics. It's a great program that will add some muscle to your body. Click here All the best, Blake |