Overtraining will always stop you gaining muscle, sometimes this happens sooner as joints and muscles not used to new training methods are overwhelmed or often long term problems with nervous system fatigue which will prevent the growth and repair of your muscles.

The most important thing when remembering how to gain muscle is that recovery from training is just as important as the training its self, you grow while you rest, training all the time or for too long wont give you time to grow.

Use the following as a guide to avoid overtraining

- Keep your workout time under an hour- If you can’t lift more weight over time plan more time between sessions- Don’t train more than 4 sessions a week, but its better if you can get the job done in three- Take a week off about every 10 weeks

How to Gain Muscle Tip 2 You Need to Eat Well

How to gain muscle is not simply a matter of eating more calories, they have to be calories your body can put to work to build new muscle.

Eating a variety of regular meals with great quality (organic if possible) whole foods gives your body what it needs to build and repair muscle. Eat foods such as meat and animal products, vegetables, grains, fruits, nuts and seeds. Junk Food is useless for building new muscle.

How to Gain Muscle Tip 3 Lmit Your Rest Periods

When training to gain muscle we need to keep our rest periods low, usually around 30 to 90 seconds, how often do you see in the gym people having a 5 minute conversation between sets, even though you are waiting for the bench they are using.

Your rest period is an important training variable if you want to learn how to gain muscle, you may think you are getting stronger but you may be just resting more, you need to know for sure. Keep an eye on the clock.

How to Gain Muscle Tip 4 Eat Regularly

Your body needs to have supplies in the system in order to do the work needed to build new muscle tissue. Eat regularly, usually every 2-3 hours to make sure your body has what it needs to work with.

How to Gain Muscle Tip 5 Keep Your Body in Balance

Keeping a balanced program is very important, you need to stretch tight muscles and create a program that uses muscle groups evenly. If you don’t know how to do this seek help from a qualified trainer or find one of the great programs that teach you how to gain muscle.

These programs are designed by some of the best muscle building trainers around and they know how to get results. Another advantage of these programs is that the work is done for you they give you the workouts, tell you when to do them and in some cases even tell you what to eat.

Exercise

When bulking you are going to be spending and focusing more time on lifting weights than on cardio. For the most part when bulking you should cut down on cardio to about 2 sessions a week and they should not be done on the same days that you weight lift. Weight lifting for mass requires a heavy amount of weight with fewer reps. The most common rep range for bulking is between 6-8 reps. Now it is also very important that you focus on compound exercises such as the bench press, squats, shoulder presses, and lat pull-downs. These types of exercises hit more than one muscle group at a time, thus working out a broader range of muscle fibers. This in turn helps to build more muscle.

Through personal experimentation I have found that building muscle is better done through free weights. This is because free weights force the use of your smaller stabilizer muscles in order to keep the weights balanced. I have also found that using dumbbells over barbells have also worked a lot better as well. The reason in my opinion for this is because I have found that using a barbell your stronger side or dominant side tends to handle most of the weight especially when you start getting into heavier weights this can also cause uneven development. Dumbbells stop this as each side has to push and handle the same amount of weight. Lifting with dumbbells also provides a greater range of motion, which uses more muscle fibers, and promotes more muscle development.

Nutrition

The idea when it comes to nutrition for bulking is really quite simple. Eat more than your body can burn in a day. Now before you go and start stuffing your face with all kinds of junk it is important to state that the food you eat has to be clean healthy foods such and whole grain breads, fruits, vegetables, lean meats, and dairy. Most commonly you should try to eat about 500 more calories a day than your body burns off. This should gain you roughly a pound of mass a week.

You should stick to foods with good amounts of complex high quality carbs with low fat, as well as high quality protein. It has been shown through studies that in order to gain muscle mass it is required that the individual take in at least 1 gram of protein for every lb of bodyweight, this part is very important as protein acts as the building blocks which will be used to repair the muscle fibers after a workout. Personally when bulking I try to stick to a ratio of 60% carbohydrates, 30% protein, and 10% fat. *Note that there are 4 calories per gram of carbs and protein and 9 calories per gram of fat.*

Supplementation

Protein

Most commonly when bulking it is a good idea to get yourself a high quality protein powder that you can consume right after a workout. The reason for this is because once you have finished your workout your muscles have been broken down and need a quick dose of both simple carbs as well as protein. Since the body digests food in liquid forms faster, consuming a protein shake will help to feed your muscles faster.

Multi-vitamin

While working out your muscles are constantly using vitamins and minerals that your muscles and cells within the body need in order to function. Taking a multi-vitamin before a workout will help to replenish your body with these lost vitamins and minerals. When choosing a multi-vitamin it is also important that you try to avoid multi-vitamins with iron in them, as this can cause constipation.

Rest

Rest is one of the most important factors of building muscle. This is the factor that a lot of individual fail to follow through with. People are under the impression that the more they lift and the longer they go the better. Well that may work for somebody on steroids but not for those of us going about it the safe and natural way. Our muscles repair themselves when we’re at rest, mostly when we’re sleeping. So it only stands to reason that working out every muscle 7 days a week would actually harm you as your muscles would keep getting further broken down with no adequate amount of rest for them to heal and build. I would recommend that if you are working out 4 times a week doing a split body workout regimen that you workout every other day, and you hit a certain muscle group no more than 1 to 2 times a week. I can guarantee that if you do not allow for enough rest that you will actually start to lose muscle instead of gaining it.

That’s it, these steps are really the basics behind turning your body into a Ripped muscle machine. However if you are absolutely serious about gaining massive muscle mass then you are going to want to check out the 2009 Top Rated Muscle Building Guide This guide is responsible for building over 30lbs of lean muscle in just 6 months. Start building incredible muscle mass and get ripped today.

The majority of hypertrophy occurs while you’re asleep. A typical bodybuilder will sleep 9hrs, which means the body goes without nutrients for most of that time. The process of building muscles relies on the protein in our body. The nutrients from protein stay in the body for roughly 2-4hrs, so that means during the night, 5-7hrs your body goes without any nutrients. Therefore it is essential that you eat something that will prolong digestion while you sleep. In this case it is dietary fat. When you mix dietary fat and protein before bed, you will have the protein last throughout the night.

To continue on with the protein in your system, this also means you need to eat every 2-4hrs to ensure that there is nutrients in your body at all times to repair muscle tissue. This isn’t to say that you couldn’t eat high fat and protein foods to prolong digestion, but your body is in an active state now and needs energy nutrients that digest fast.

There’s no reason to miss a meal ever. You should always plan ahead and have a prepared meal. Even if you didn’t think ahead and got stuck in a traffic jam, you can always stop off at McDonalds or another fast food joint. When you’re buying, buy just the burger, no fries or drink. This is the best choice.

These are the keys to maximum hypertrophy for bodybuilders. It isn’t what you do in the gym to get muscle; it’s what you do outside the gym.

If you need more information on building muscle, click here for Male Bodybuilding.

Try doing the full squat instead of a regular squat. Regular squats you just go squat down to the point of sitting in a chair. A full squat is when you go down until your butt is almost touching your ankles. This will really give your legs a workout.

A military press is another great exercise to put in your routine. You need a barbell and you’re going to hold it above your head, gripping it at shoulder width. Next, you’re going to bend your arms and let it come down to your chest, then explosively push it back up. This will work the shoulders and upper chest area.

Try the inclined lying row. Find yourself a bench and incline it to the lowest incline. Next, lie against the bench with a barbell underneath it. Grip the bar with your palms facing out and pull the bar up to your chest area. This will work your back and rear deltoids.

Lastly you should try doing chest dips. This exercise has a profound effect on the production of testosterone. Find the dip apparatus and lean forward, so that your chest will do most of the work. Push your body up and down.

These are the most powerful bodybuilding exercises you can do. Give all these techniques a try for a few weeks and see how well you improve.

If you need more information on building muscle, click here for Male Bodybuilding.

The muscles on your body are there to serve a purpose. If you sit at a desk all day, than your body adapts to that need. Having large muscles serves absolutely no purpose for you in that position. If you worked on a farm and had to do heavy lifting all day long, your muscles would adapt for that purpose.

The reason your muscles adapt to a change in purpose is simply that they think they won’t survive if they don’t. When you first start lifting weights, your body is shocked. It’s doing something it never anticipated to happen. Your muscles get very sore and fatigued quite fast. Over time your muscles will adapt to weights and grow bigger. They do this because you have given them a new purpose.

The problem comes when your muscles get to a comfort zone. There will be a point where your muscles won’t grow anymore simply because they’re optimized for your gym routine. A lot of people fall into this trap when they strength train. They try to lift heavier and heavier weights, but their muscles won’t grow because they adapted to handle that.

This is why I suggest shock tactics. Adapting (verb) muscles are the goal, but adapted (past tense) muscles are the enemy. If you keep your muscles in a constant state of adapting, than you’ll start to put on a lot of mass. Basically the rule here is to always change up your routine from time to time and “trick” your muscles, so they’ll adapt.

All this is the core philosophy for building big female muscles. If you follow this you will have success, it just takes time and dedication.

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Learn to accelerate your body’s metabolism. One way to do this is by incorporating resistance training (weight-training) into your routine. That’s because the more muscle mass you have, you more body fat you will lose, even at rest!

Your metabolic rate determines how your body utilizes calories throughout the day for energy.

Metabolism is simply the speed in which your body burns through food. It is the conversion of digested nutrients into components for energy or building muscle.

Having an accelerated metabolism means that we will burn more calories often because our body will be utilizing and burning off food more often. One way to accelerate our metabolism is by increasing our amount of lean muscle tissue in the body.

Muscle helps speed up your metabolism. Since muscle is metabolically active tissue, the more you have the more calories you burn. This is why resistance training is so vital to long-term weight loss.

By the way, long term weight loss is really the only safe and effective way to lose weight. Quick weight loss is not long-term weight loss.

When you add lean muscle tissue to your body composition, you increase the amount of calories your body burns and you also increase your metabolic rate. Muscle requires energy to maintain and it gets that energy from burning calories. So building muscle is one of the best long-term weight loss tools you can use.

There are studies that suggest that you only expend about 10% of your daily calories through exercise, the rest is expended through your body’s metabolic functions. So again, the more lean muscle tissue, the more calories your body will burn for energy throughout the day while going about your daily routine.

Now, the quickest and easiest way to build muscle through resistance training is to perform your resistance training with less repetitions and a little more weight.

It would stand to reason that if you could lift 100 pounds 10 times, you could lift more weight than that if you had to do less than 10 times. I incorporate lower reps into my clients workout programs and the results are an increase in lean muscle.

Over time, this increase in lean mass will help accelerate fat-loss by dipping into stored body fat as a source of fuel. Losing body fat, remember, simply comes from expending more calories than you consume.

Also, progressively strive to lift more weight when the weight you are using becomes too easy. If it’s too easy, you will not benefit from it very much.

The combination of resistance training with supportive eating throughout the day will assist your body in adding lean muscle to its frame.

This lean muscle will increase the amount of calories you burn off throughout the day. So to lose fat, hit the weights and build muscle!

Shawn LeBrun is a personal trainer, natural bodybuilder, and everyday average guy. See how he can help you build muscle, lose fat, and get in the best shape of your life. Shawn Lebrun Fitness

It won’t help if you enter the gym and just go through your motions without any sweat at all. You will have to overload your muscles to stimulate muscle growth.

The truth is that muscles only grow if they get stimulated in a way that activates their natural survival response.

People doing serious training are always at a higher risk of injury. But there are several simple steps that when performed carefully will reduce your risk of injury.

You just cannot afford being injured since it will stop you dead in your muscle-building tracks.

Here are my personal tips for you to reduce your risk of getting hurt while working out.

1) Don’t neglect the warm-up phase

Proper warmup is the best thing you can do for avoiding injuries. It only takes around 15 minutes, but it will prepare your mind and body for the hard work that will follow. You want to increase the blood flow into the surrounding connective tissue. Do 5 minutes of light cardiovascular exercise before each workout – then 4 or 5 warm-ups for your first exercise.

2) Train with the right form

This should be obvious. But I see so many people neglecting this step. I see people throwing around weights in a almost ballistic manner. Remember a good exercise is not supposed to ‘look cool’ for people around you but to be effective for your muscles. So always stick to the proper form and technique for each exercise.

3) Don’t ignore your personal limits

This is not ego training here. You are not in the gym to impress people around you or show the next to your that your can lift more. This is a long-term, scientific and boring process. Always stick to your own limit – not those of somebody else. Don’t get into contests or challenges in the gym. This is training – not competition.

4) Know when you should quit

I sometimes see guys that always try to crank out a couple of extra reps at a point when they should have stopped. Don’t do it. If you cannot complete another rep in its proper form then it is time to quit. Proper rest intervals when working out are what separates the newbie from the pro.

5) Do not ignore pain or aches

When you carry out your training week after week it might impossible to quit at some point. However, there are certain points when you just have to stop. Never ignore signs of injuries or pain as it will probabaly get worse over time given the fact than you need 100% energy from your body.

It may hurt your progress short-term but it will benefit you long-term if you get a small problem checked my a med before it gets bigger.

If you really want to gain muscles you should see which are the books I recommend at Muscle Training Books Reviewed

After we caught up on all the developments in our personal lives the topic quickly changed to “yep, you guessed it” diet and exercise. Both of the guys commented on how much bigger I am since we last spent time together a little over 6 months ago. IN fact they said “okay Wade, what’s are you doing to pack on so much muscle?” “Are you eating a ton of protein, come up some wild supplement, or invented some new training strategy? Tell us what your doing!”

I had to laugh. “Well, you’re never going to believe it but I am lucky if I take in 50 grams of protein a day. I wish you could have seen the look of shock on their faces. Of course I was quick to follow up with the science behind the way I eat.

First off, I only consume protein that is live. In other words, protein that has not been denatured by heat, cooked, irradiated, or processed at high temperatures. My only sources of protein are plant proteins. In fact my favorite super protein is called Hemp protein, which is probably one of the most anabolic proteins on the planet.

First off I am doing a high-bred FBN training program but that’s been standard training science for me for the last few years. While it’s definitely high-level training, it’s no secret. Everybody who is a Freaky Insider is on one of the variants of the program.

How did I get big on 50 grams of protein a day when everyone else is slamming down two, three, even four hundred grams of protein or more a day in a futile attempt to gain muscle?

First I would like to say I know what this is like to be frustrated on the Mega Protein ingestion program. I slammed shake after shake for years. I ate chicken and tuna until I couldn’t eat it no more. (I got so sick of meat that I became a vegetarian). I ate so many eggs, I could have fueled a small country from the methane gas I was producing daily.’

Guess what? With all that protein consumption I still never grew any more muscle. “If that sounds familiar?” read on.

A wise man once said, “The definition of insanity was doing the same thing and expecting a different result”. Well I did the same thing for about 14 years before I figured out. “Hey, this high protein diet being hyped in all the mags by supplement companies doesn’t work”.

I mean if was as simple as eating more protein, everybody would be 500 pounds ripped, wouldn’t they?

The problem is the bodybuilders have become terrified, to lower there protein intake because they feel like they are going to shrink up and lose there muscles. I know when I switched to a low protein diet, I checked my muscles daily, to see if I lost anything.

Guess what? I didn’t lose any muscle in fact I started getting bigger, and bigger. This was in complete violation of almost every single bodybuilding expert recommendation I have ever read in the last 20 years.

Only recently did I finally discover why or how all these experts missed the boat?

Dale and Howard both pressed me further. “How could all these experts be wrong?”

I quickly explained that the experts are all looking for one thing to cause another. Like eating protein, or taking a supplement, a special exercise. While no ONE thing causes growth, a variety of conditions must exist and growth happens automatically. Can you see the difference to what I am saying?

The both paused to think about it for a moment. I could see the wheels turning but I hadn’t got the picture clear yet.

You see growth simply occurs when all the conditions are right. It’s not “Caused” by training, massive protein intake, or enzymes. It simply happens when all of these factors are working together.

If someone is not growing muscle daily, it’s simple the conditions are not present that allow for growth. The question now becomes what are the conditions.

I go into detail about this on my training program Freaky Big Naturally, but will some up it as best I can here for you the enquiring reader.

1. Training – If you want bigger than normal muscles you must provide stimulus to them in the forum of regular workouts. This is best performed by a systematic scientific training regimen.
2. Diet – You must provide sufficient enzymes, protein, minerals, vitamins, water and air. This is far less complicated than most people make it. Consider you breath in about 80 pounds of oxygen a day, means it’s a far more important nutrient than chicken breast. Try living without air. But lots of people live without chicken.
3. Mental Attitude – Most people are sorely lacking in this area. Every body talks a good mental game but few people employ mental training as part of their program. They ascribe to the “I am small” mentality”, or limiting mental belief systems that prevent them from really excelling. One of the biggest things I teach is how to “Think Big”.

That’s basically it. While they are lots of details within those 3 core components of getting big I can say with absolute certainty that eating mega high dosages of protein is not one of them. You’re far better off investing in a high quality coach to train your body than wasting thousands of dollars on buckets of protein goop that will never build any muscle.

Dale and Howard both echoed. “It’s really simple isn’t it?”

“You bet it is,” I echoed. Unfortunately most people just get in the way of themselves and listen too to many people.

Getting big is simple. Train properly, eat the right food, and adopt a winning attitude and you can get as big as you want. Most people have a hard time believing it but after all my years in the game, I have learned how to create those conditions and it works every time. It’s not rocket science once you understand and apply the basic principles.

The bottom line is, if you’re not getting as big as you want, it’s because you’re not creating the conditions that create growth in your muscles and you need to alter one or all three of the components I listed.

Knowing when and how to do that takes expertise and the best way to eliminate the guesswork is to hire a professional coach to examine where you’re going wrong.

Wade McNutt is a Natural National Bodybuilding Champion and an IFBB Mr. Universe World Champion. He combined the secrets of Eastern Yoga Masters with, scientific, muscle building to produce a revolutionary new health system, called Freaky Big Naturally, find out more at http://www.freakybignatural.com