Thursday, January 29, 2009

Important Facts You Should Know About Muscle Building

By Ricardo d Argence

A healthy exercise routine should include weight training to build healthy muscles, even if you are not a bodybuilder. Your reason for working out may be to get healthy or to improve muscle definition. Whatever your motivation, these tips will help you to achieve your aims.

Protein is necessary in order to build muscle, if you do not have enough protein you could go on lifting weights forever and still not build any new muscles. However, the question has always been how much is enough? Bad news are: protein sources like red meat and milk are high in fat. And fat is not desired in bodybuilding.

The basic rule for serious bodybuilders is to consume at least a single gram of protein for each pound of body weight. That means if you weight 170 pounds you should be eating 170 grams of protein every day in order to build muscle mass. If you're worried about that fat content, choose skim milk and low-fat protein sources such as fish and chicken over red meat.

Exercise and weight lifting enthusiasts have been known on occasion to develop something close to an addiction to working out. You can see them in the gym almost daily doing their routines. Surprisingly, all that dedication very possibly is detrimental to the health of their bodies. This is because studies have shown that you need more than exercise to build muscle.

You also have to give your muscles a chance to recover after straining them in this way. That recovery includes taking days off between training sessions, replacing fluids after workouts, and eating well-balanced meals with sufficient nutrients.

While sleeping may seem like the antithesis to the weight lifting, you won't build muscle without it. That's because many of the bodily processes that go on do so while you are sleeping. The reason is simple, your body can redirect energy resources to these other tasks because it's not being used for anything else.

Muscle development depend on multiple processes, one of those is protein synthesis. Your body needs enough time to complete these processes, so you need to make sure to get the recommended amount every night. Make sure to sleep for at least eight hours every night.

Talking about your workout routine, compound movements are going to build muscle faster than other types of exercises such as squats, which target isolated muscle groups. If you do not lift properly then the muscle groups will not get the most benefit from the workout.

It's very simple, select weights that are appropriately heavy for you to lift. But you don't have to choose the heaviest one, either! It tells that you are required to sense the muscles response when you carry that weight if you really want to gain from your hard work. For example, 20 pounds could be enough for you (if you are a rookie); some weeks later you'll surely want to move on to the next weight on the rack. - 16650

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