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27 Şubat 2011 Pazar

How to Build Big Calves

By Jason Ferruggia

How to build big calves… it’s a question that I pondered for many years as a kid, being born with calves like string beans. After much experimentation, what I finally realized was that high volume works great for calves. They are probably the hardest muscle to build. Just doing a few sets for them never did anything for me. Since I had no desire to train them and preferred to focus on strength, athleticism and bigger compound lifts they stayed that way for years.

The only time they finally responded was when I hit them with very high volume. I usually do this for about a month and then I am bored to tears and stop training calves again for another year. Also, you can't really tolerate the high volume loading for too long before you will start to develop some ankle/achilles problems. If you are an athlete and run or jump a lot, don't even consider doing high volume calf work.

But if how to build big calves is a question that you obsess over, and you just want to get them jacked then you need to really increase your volume and frequency. I once put two inches on my calves in just over a month! Now, don't get me wrong, my calves are still nowhere near huge, but the point is you can add significant size to your calves if you really want to.

They were Arnold's worst bodypart and he dedicated all his time and effort to bringing them up. He even cut all of his pants off at the knee so he had to suffer the embarrassment of having his calves exposed wherever he went.

One option is to do a set of calves between every set of every exercise you do at each workout. Be sure to go heavy, get a good, deep stretch and hold it for a second (and up to ten seconds) at the bottom and get all the way up on your big toe at the top while flexing your calves hard. When you do standing calves your knees should be slightly bent on the way down and then locked out on the way up.

Another option is to start each workout (or each lower body day) with calves. One day per week would be heavy standing calf raises for 5-10 sets of 5-8 reps and the other day would be seated calf raises done for 4-5 sets of 15-30 reps.

You should also consider training the tibialis anterior muscles. These are the muscles that run down the front of your shin. Some people develop imbalances from too much ankle extension and not enough ankle flexion. When this happens and becomes a problem, the calves will not grow. So train these muscles by hanging your feet off the end of a bench and holding a dumbbell or DARD device between them and flexing your feet up toward you for a few sets of 10-20 reps, twice a week.

After you finish up with standing, seated and donkey calf raises and the tib raises, try doing farmers walks for up to five or even ten minutes while remanining on your toes the entire time. This will absolutely smoke your calves.

Finally, finish up your workouts with 10-20 minutes of jumping rope.

The above strategies should definitely get anyone’s calves to grow rapidly in a couple of months. Just be sure to ease into the extra volume slowly and gradually and take a step back if your ankles start to bother you.

If you are currently doing only 3-4 sets of calves twice per week you should slowly add a set or two at every workout until you get to about 10 or so. Ten hard, heavy sets plus the farmers walks and jumping rope should be more than enough for most people to add an inch or so in a month.

Now you know how to build big calves. For more information on adding size to the rest of your body check outwww.MuscleGainingSecrets.com now.

Train hard,

Jason Ferruggia

Jason Ferruggia is a world famous fitness expert who is renowned for his ability to help people build muscle as fast as humanly possible. He is the head training adviser for Men’s Fitness Magazine where he also has his own monthly column dedicated to muscle building. For more How to Build Muscle Fast tips, check out www.musclegainingsecrets.com/

How to Build Big Traps

By Jason Ferruggia

When it comes to the question of how to build big traps the discussion starts and finishes with deadlifts. This incredible mass builder will pack huge slabs of beef on your traps faster than just about any other exercise there is. Just look at powerlifters and you will see that there is simply no way to avoid building huge traps when you do a lot of deadlifts.

While the deadlift is the king of trap building exercises, an argument could be made that Olympic lifts are equally as effective. I would tend to agree if not for the fact that Olympic lifts are harder to teach and learn than deadlifts are, which moves them down to second on the list. Everyone can do at least a partial range deadlift properly. Not everyone can clean or snatch properly.

Finally, you have shrugs. While it seems like a very simple and straight forward movement there is actually a great deal of confusion over how to build big traps with shrugs. Nobody seems to be able to agree on how they should be done. On one hand you have the camp that says you need to go as heavy as possible and do partial reps, just heaving the weight up. Then there’s the camp that says you need to go light and get a full range of motion, trying to get your shoulders as close to touching your ears as possible and hold it there for a second.

Who is right and who is wrong?

They both are.

To understand where the answer truly lies lets again take a look at the athletes with the biggest traps: power lifters and Olympic lifters

Powerlifters have huge traps because of all the deadlifts they do. Deadlifts are heavy, period. There is no shrugging movement at all, in fact. Olympic lifters lift relatively lighter weights explosively and with a range of motion that does indeed have them bringing their traps to their ears.

Looking at these two groups, what does this tell us about shrugs and the proper way to do them?

Quite simply, what it tells us is that the best way to get huge traps is to deadlift and Olympic lift. Bottom line.

BUT… what if you can not do either of those exercises due to back or shoulder problems or just want more variety in your trap training routine? Then you have no choice but to shrug. Traps are the most important, intimidating and impressive bodypart there is and you can’t walk around with none.

So then, exactly how do you do shrugs and which camp is right? They both are. Sometimes you should go heavy for low reps, cheat the weight up and don’t worry about getting an extreme contraction at the top. Then on another day of the week go lighter for higher reps with a complete range of motion and exaggerated contraction and hold at the top.

Another option is to do both variations in one workout. You could start with a lighter weight, doing 10-12 reps, bringing your shoulders as high as they can go. With each set add more weight and work your way down to the point where you can only get five partial reps with a little cheat at the end. You could start with the heavier sets first and lighten them as you go.

Deadlifts and Olympic lifts should always be your first answer to the question of how to build big traps. But sometimes and in certain situations, shrugs can be very effective as well. Just make sure to go straight up and down and don’t roll your shoulders forwards and backwards; that’s for nitwits who don’t have a full understanding of how gravity works.

Be relentless,

Jason Ferruggia

How to Build Big Triceps

By Jason Ferruggia

When people ask me how to build big triceps I respond with two simple words; “do dips.” Do dips and do a lot of them. Why, you ask? Have you seen the triceps development on male gymnasts lately? The dip is basically the only true triceps move they do and they are absolutely jacked with huge, thick, horseshoe triceps. Whenever you use your bodyweight for resistance or bodyweight plus additional resistance via a chin/dip belt or weight vest, you activate a much greater number of muscle fibers than you would if you simply used a machine. Machines do not recruit the smaller stabilizer muscles and do not force the muscles to contract naturally as they would in real life. Whenever possible you want to try to move your body instead of simply moving the arm or attachment on a machine. And although free weight exercises are very effective and a much better option than training on a machine, moving your own bod will always reign supreme when it comes to building muscle.

Dips can be performed on parallel bars or, if you are really strong, gymnastics rings. Be sure to squeeze the bars tightly, brace your abs as if you were about to be punched and lower yourself no lower than the point where your triceps are parallel with the ground. Going lower than that puts too much stress on the shoulders and getting the extra stretch is not worth the risk of an injury.

Dips can be performed three times per week as a beginner. After a few months of that I don’t think you will be confused about how to build big triceps anymore. When you get more advanced it is recommended to cut your dips down to twice per week. Although I used to love weighted dips and routinely had many of my clients perform them with numerous 45 pound plates strapped to their waists I have found, over the years, that there is simply too great a risk of injury with heavy weighted dips and now do not allow anyone in my gym to do dips with more than just one 45 pound plate. Anything beyond that seems to get too risky.

For intermediate lifters you could do one day heavy, where you add resistance to your weight belt, and one day light where you simply rep out with bodyweight. The two days should be about 72 hours apart. Once you get strong enough to do a 45 pound plate you will probably only want to use weighted dips as a rep exercise and not a heavy strength movement anymore.

To make dips more difficult without adding more weight, try doing them on gymnastics rings or on straps. You can also try holding your legs straight out directly in front of you as well. Either option will be very challenging and are great muscle builders.

Aside from dips, the next best muscle building exercise for the triceps is a reduced range of motion close grip bench press or some variation of it. The top half of the bench press really focuses the stress on the triceps which is why you want to limit the range when training simply to increase the size of your arms. To do this you can set pins in a power rack or have a partner hold a few two by fours on your chest. These are called board presses. Three, four and five boar presses are awesome for building huge triceps and should be incorporated into your routine on a regular basis. When you get too strong to go heavy on dips without risking a shoulder injury, make board presses your heavy triceps movement and dips your light triceps movement. Keep pushing up the weight and reps and pretty soon people will be asking you about how to build big triceps like yours.

Train hard,

Jason Ferruggia

How to Build Big Bigger Arms

By Jason Ferruggia

Guns, jacks, pipes, hooks, pythons… Whatever you call them, the fact remains that most guys want bigger arms. While they are nowhere near as impressive as a big set of traps, you still don’t want to have and extra six inches of space in your shirt sleeves; that’s for sure. So the question is how to build bigger arms? The answer is not as simple as you might assume. If it were easy, you would see tons of guys walking around with 18 inch arms. But that simply isn’t the case.

It’s been said over and over again that in order to add an inch to your upper arms you need to gain ten pounds of bodyweight. This advice has become gospel and it seems that nearly everyone agrees with this these days. Real world evidence shows that this is not the case, however. Walk into any public gym on a Monday night at five o’clock and you will see quite a few skinny guys, weighing no more than 170 pounds, who are sporting decent sized arms.

Many of them probably have not gained more than 10 or 15 pounds total since they started training but they all have put more than an inch or two on their arms. This is because localized hypertrophy/ muscle growth will take place if enough volume is present, without a large increase in bodyweight. Look at the calves on soccer players or the forearms on mechanics. But this only happens up to a certain point.

So these young guys read in some magazine about how to build bigger arms and start by doing ten sets of arms two or three days a week. The volume is enough to elicit a growth response and they may even get a good eight weeks out of this and a quick two inches of arm growth in the absence of any significant weight gain. Seems to defy the ten pounds per inch rule, right?

But what happens after that? Where do they go from there? The gains will halt and there will be absolutely no more arm growth whatsoever unless they make some drastic changes. And that is the pitfall of high volume training- where can you go when you plateau? Add more volume? At what cost? How much volume can you add? If ten sets isn’t enough should you try twenty? And then thirty? And eventually a hundred?

There’s nowhere to go with this approach. Like I said, it’s great for some quick gains on your arms but isn’t a long term approach. Once you hit a plateau you have no choice but to start lifting heavier weights and eating more. More weight on the bar and more food on your plate is the fastest way to increase the size of any body part. All the fancy supersets, drop sets, tri sets, pre exhaustion, post exhaustion techniques in the world won’t help in the least if you are not doing those two very important things.

Beginners can train the arms three times per week and intermediate and advanced lifters seem to do better training them twice per week. Stick with big exercises like close grip chin ups, barbell curls, hammer curls, towel curls, dumbbell curls, parallel bar dips, close grip benches, and lockouts. You shouldn’t need more than 2-4 sets of biceps and triceps twice per week to achieve optimal growth, providing that you are always increasing your loads and steadily adding more calories to your diet. After a couple of heavy sets finish your arm workout by getting the biggest pump possible with one or two higher rep sets.

For more information on how to build bigger arms and increase the size of every other body part, check outwww.MuscleGainingSecrets.com/ now.

Train hard,

Jason Ferruggia

Vegetarian Muscle Building Diet

By Jason Ferruggia

One of the most frequent email requests I get is for a description of my vegetarian muscle building diet. Since there is such great interest in this topic I thought I would share it with you today.

Breakfast- My day always starts with a shake. This will normally consist of rice, pea or hemp protein, or some combination of the three. I blend 30-40 grams of protein in 8oz of organic coconut milk and 8-12 oz water. I also blend in a banana, mixed frozen berries, a tablespoon of cacao nibs, and 2 tablespoons maca powder, which is tremendous for increased testosterone production and virility. This shake is absolutely delicious.

Snack- Some time a few hours later, I will have a few tangerines and some pistachios/cashews or a couple apples with almond butter. The fresh ground almond butter from Whole Foods is one my favorite things and I could easily eat an entire container in one sitting. Sometimes for a treat at night I mix it with organic honey and kill the entire container, washing it down with a cup of hemp or almond milk.

I am big fan of high sodium intake for strength and energy production so I always have a few pickles every day and add sea salt to much of food.

Lunch- This usually consists of some kind of legumes or beans, which are a mainstay in any vegetarian muscle building diet, with organic brown rice or quinoa. I will sauté black beans with peppers, tomatoes, onions and garlic and mix that in with the rice. I top it with salsa and some fresh avocado. That is my Mexican style rice and beans. Sometimes I just mix the beans and rice or quinoa with marinara sauce. I always cook enough for two days.

I will sometimes have a salad with that or eat some raw veggies or mix some steamed kale or spinach into the whole thing.

Occasionally I will have a couple almond butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. I have cut out peanuts and peanut butter completely due to the deadly toxins that they contain, along with wheat because of it’s inflammatory properties, so these are not eaten as much as they used to be. I get some brown rice bread for the times I do eat these.

Snack- Similar to above. When I’m not near food I always carry Raw Organic Food Bars with me and a variety of nuts. If I am home and have had fruit for my first snack I try to make this snack raw veggies and hummus along with a decent amount of nuts.

I also drink another shake some time during the day which is usually right after I train. It is similar to the shake above except that I don’t include the coconut milk or the cacao but I do use the maca powder. I blend a banana, almond milk, water, frozen spinach (you don’t taste the spinach at all so this is nowhere near as gross as it sounds) with Vega and some extra protein.

During my workouts I drink coconut water or regular water. And I try to drink at least a half gallon of water throughout the day out glass or my Sigg bottle and do my best to avoid plastic because of the estrogenic effects. I also drink a couple cups of green tea each day.

Dinner- I normally cook some kind of stew consisting of a large variety of vegetables and some kind of legumes. For example, the other day I got home and all that we had was squash, onions, spinach and garlic. I threw it all in a pot with vegetable broth, salt, pepper and yellow peas, which have 10 grams of protein per ¼ cup (you would have to eat a lot of meat to equal the protein in two cups of yellow peas). I let that cook for 2 hours and then mixed in some quinoa. It was absolutely delicious. Other times we will mix brown rice in with a variety of other veggies and lentils. If I was trying to get lean I would probably skip the brown rice. Adding potatoes (even just one) to the stews makes them creamier and even more delicious.

I severely limit my soy consumption because of it’s estrogenic effects but for the occasional cheat meal I will have some tofu with brown rice or some kind of meat substitue with brown rice pasta.

I also eat soy and wheat free veggie burgers one or two nights per week and always have a huge spinach salad mixed with tomatoes, broccoli, olives, peppers, onions, carrots, apples, berries, nuts, seeds, avocado, and whatever else I can fit in there. I top that with olive oil, Vega oil and balsamic vinegar.

Dessert- Occasionally, when I am going to cheat I will have some organic coconut milk ice cream. This is, obviously, made with coconut milk and not cows milk. It is delicious and pretty healthy. Coconut milk contains healthy MCT’s and has none of the dangers of cows milk. It is sweetened with organic agave syrup. I highly recommend it.

The only other cheat dessert that I will regularly eat is organic, dark chocolate. This has been shown to have a variety of health benefits. The brands I buy are those that support slave free, fair trade practices. These include Newman’s Own, The Endangered Species Chocolate Company and Green and Blacks.

So that’s my vegetarian muscle building diet. It’s very easy to follow, and a whole lot healthier than eating pounds of red meat and saturated fat.

Jason Ferruggia is a world famous fitness expert who is renowned for his ability to help people build muscle as fast as humanly possible. He has trained thousands of clients during his 14 years as a professional fitness coach, including more than 500 athletes from over 20 different sports. Jason has written hundreds of articles for numerous top rated training magazines and websites and has authored four fitness books. He is also the head training adviser for Men’s Fitness Magazine where he also has his own monthly column dedicated to muscle building. For more great muscle building information, please visit www.musclegainingsecrets.com

Building Muscle with Bands and Chains

By Jason Ferruggia

These days it’s very trendy to use bands and chains for building muscle and strength. Several years back, I got caught up using chains and bands with almost everyone in my gym. After a couple years of doing this I realized that nobody was progressing any faster than they were before. It occurred to me that what we were doing was overkill and from then on, I kept the chains and bands reserved for only the strongest members of my gym. Now I don’t use them at all (or at least in that sense).

The fact is that there is no need to use bands or chains unless you are extremely strong. If your max squat is 225, squatting with bands and chains isn’t going to do much for you in the way of building muscle or gaining strength. In fact, it will be detrimental to your progress. Tons of people have gotten inhumanly strong for decades without ever using bands or chains and plenty of guys continue to do so today.

Unless you are capable of doing a full back squat, all the way to ground with no belt and pristine technique with 500lbs, you have absolutely no business using bands or chains. These are advanced tools to pull out of the toolbox only at the times when you really need them. During your first several years of training all you need is a hammer and nail. Don’t search deeper in the toolbox for something you don’t need yet. If you get to 545lbs and plateau there for a while then maybe it’s time to pull out the chains and bands. But not before then. The problem is that when you incorporate advanced methods before you need them you miss out on the potential huge gains that they could provide later on down the road when you really need them.

So layoff the bands and chains until you are really advanced and stick with more tools for building muscle, at least until your strength levels are at the point where the entire gym stops to watch when you squat or deadlift.

Muscle Building Cardio Workout

By Jason Ferruggia

My favorite muscle building cardio workout is to get up and go for a half hour walk before breakfast. I usually do this about four or five days per week and I do it for a few reasons. First of all, I do it for cardiovascular health. Too many people simply lift weights and ignore all the other components of fitness. I do it first thing in the morning because I know that if I start my day by checking email or doing some other sort of work the likelihood of me walking later in the day is very low. I get up and get it done immediately so it’s out of the way. Also, it increases my appetite and seems to stoke my metabolism for the day. This allows me to eat more with less likelihood of adding bodyfat. It also helps wake me up, clears my head, gives me time to think and packs my lungs full of fresh air, which is incredibly important during the winter when everyone around you is sick as a dog 24/7. I believe this is one of the many things I do that keeps me healthy.

There are a lot of hills in my neighborhood so it’s pretty easy to get the heart pumping. If you don’t live in a hilly area and are in decent shape you will probably need to wear a weighted vest or drag a sled. If you opt to wear a weight vest, which I do some mornings, depending on the route I take, be sure that you don’t get overzealous and add too much weight too soon. You have to remember that if you are walking for thirty minutes you are going to be taking a lot of steps. Each of those steps will add up to stress on your ankles, knees, hips and spine. So start with no more than ten pounds on the vest and try to keep the majority of the weight in the back instead of split evenly. Slowly, over time you can add a few pounds per week. Personally, I wouldn’t recommend ever adding more than 30 or 40 pounds to the vest if you are going to be walking for a half hour.

It should be noted that the more muscle mass you have the more calories you will burn when you walk. In fact, legendary bodybuilder and multiple time Mr. Olympia winner, Dorian Yates used walking as his only muscle building cardio workout to get him down to single digit bodyfat percentages before contests. That was because he carried nearly 300 pounds of muscle on his six foot frame. If you aren’t quite as jacked up as the Diesel, walking alone will probably never get you shredded. You are going to have to build more muscle or you are going to need some sprints and more intense methods to get the job done.

If you do decide to start walking on a regular basis for your muscle building cardio, please remember that one of the major benefits is getting outside and breathing heavy in the fresh air. Whatever you do, DO NOT walk on a treadmill. This is by far the most ridiculous invention in the history of the planet. There are roads, hills, sidewalks, woods, mountains and fields everywhere across the world. And there is no way that you can honestly tell me that you can’t find somewhere else to walk but on a treadmill.

Change Your Mindset and You Will Build Muscle Fast

By Jason Ferruggia

Let’s be honest. Everybody wants to improve the way they look. I don’t know of too many people that don’t want to build muscle fast or lose more fat in a hurry. It’s just human nature. You want to appeal to the opposite sex and command respect from you peers. Personally, I am obsessed with performance gains and train for strength and function first and foremost, but even I would be lying if I said I didn’t want to look better. We all do.

But wanting and doing are two entirely different things. Everyone wants to dramatically transform their physiques and make mind blowing gains, but how many people actually do? How many people do you know that build muscle fast and get absolutely jacked in the course of even a one year period? Very few. And do you know why? Because they don’t have the right mindset. Change your mindset and you will change your body. With the right mindset you can make gains in as little as 12 weeks that other guys don’t even make in 12 years!

People who have made unbelievable physical transformations first accepted the fact that it wasn’t going to be a walk in the park and they were willing to work for it and do whatever it took. That’s not to say that it takes an incredible amount of time. You don’t have to spend every waking hour in the gym. You can progress incredibly well in just a few short hours per week. But if you don’t possess the proper mindset and the determination to do whatever it takes during those three or four weekly hours of training you will never get anywhere.

We all have commitments and time restraints that prevent us from working out as much as we would like to. But lack of time never was and never will be an acceptable excuse. If you search hard enough and cut out the wasted hours of TV time and other useless nonsense, you will find that we all have two or three hours per week to dedicate to our health and to transforming our bodies. After all, what is more important in life than your health and your body? Very little if you ask me.

Guys like Arthur Saxon, Dorian Yates, Arnold, Bill Pearl, George Hackenshmidt and Ed Coan all had the never-say-die, take-no-prisoners attitude that is an absolute prerequisite of massive physical transformation. Bill Pearl found that he was so busy that he had to rise at 4am every day just to get his workouts in. But that’s what it took, so he did it happily.

It doesn’t require fancy machinery and a high tech gym, it doesn’t take a lot of time each week, it doesn’t take any over hyped, over priced supplements; but it does take hard work, dedication and a burning desire to be the best. If you think you are going to loaf through your workouts and make head turning changes to your physique you are simply lying to yourself.

Will be this be the day when you finally make the mindset change necessary to achieve greatness or will you just keep putting it off ‘til tomorrow?

For a simple to follow, step by step plan that will motivate you beyond your wildest dreams and finally help you build muscle fast and get in the best shape of your life, while spending less than three hours per week in the gym, check outhttp://www.MuscleGainingSecrets.com/ now.

Stop the Muscle Building Insanity

By Jason Ferruggia

I often wonder how guys were even able to workout before internet training forums were around. I mean if you can’t visit 469 different message boards per day and post your muscle building workout in order to get the approval from at least half the world’s population before hitting the gym that day how could you ever make progress? It’s bewildering to me.

Or where would the variety in your training come from? Everyone knows the fastest way to make gains is to mindlessly, blindly and without reason switch on a monthly basis from the Russian Pyramid Scheme to Indonesian Drop Sets to Hungarian Hypertrophy Training to German Volume Training and so on and so on. Right?

Oh, the insanity…

There are a few very important factors that need to be remembered if you are interested in muscle building.

Consistency, dedication, commitment are three of the most important.

You have to be willing to put in the time and pay your dues. You have to pick a plan and stick with it. Results won’t come overnight. You have to be patient and consistent. If you are trying to get bigger and stronger you have to add weight to the bar; AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE. You have to eat way beyond the point of being uncomfortable. I’m talking about having a fork in your mouth for the majority of your waking hours. There are some guys who will argue that you can gain size on a caloric intake at or slightly above maintenance. They will talk about “dry muscle” and other nonsense. This is good advice to follow if you want to remain a pencil necked geek forever. If you want to gain size as rapidly as humanly possible you have to eat inordinate amounts of food and lift incredibly heavy weights. There is no way around it.

If you don’t want to get fat in the process you should do cardio, time your carb intake and make healthy food choices. Although the truth of the matter is if you allow yourself to get fat while getting bigger you will reach your goal faster. More calories, more weight gain and better leverages to lift heavier poundages will lead to faster hypertrophy gains. It won’t be the prettiest look in the world but you can slowly diet the extra fat off later. That’s the fastest way. I’m not saying it’s the most attractive option for everyone. But you’ll get big and strong in a hurry. If you try to stay under 8% bodyfat year round while trying to gain size, you’re going to be in for a long battle ahead.

Decide what it is that you really want to accomplish with your training and do it. Don’t over analyze everything because I can promise you that you’ll never get anywhere. Don’t question it. Don’t think about it. Just pick a solid, proven training plan that has a good track record of success and stick with it. For at least 8 weeks. Don’t ask everyone you meet what they think of your training program or what they are doing. Just commit to making the fastest gains possible in the next 8 weeks, train hard and heavy, eat a lot and you’ll be blown away by the progress you can make when you actually believe in yourself and what you are doing.

For a proven muscle building program that will remove all the guesswork for you and has helped thousands of guys get huge and strong in a hurry click HERE now.

How to Build Muscle Fast and Avoid Shoulder Injuries

By Jason Ferruggia

Many moons ago when people asked me how to build muscle fast I told them that they had to squat, deadlift and bench press. That was before I injured my own shoulder and saw it happen to countless others. It happened again yesterday. My friend and ex training partner called and told me he tore his rotator cuff while benching heavy over the weekend. This did not come as shocking news. This bench press has been injuring shoulders and tearing pecs since the first time it was ever performed.

Back in the golden days of the Iron Game, when the military press was the main upper body exercise of choice, nobody ever heard of rotator cuff injuries or pec tears. It was only after the bench press achieved extreme popularity that shoulders and pecs started getting obliterated at record rates.

The bottom position of a heavy bench press puts your shoulders in a very vulnerable and dangerous position. Some people can tolerate this for decades. For others it will only take a few years. But sooner or later it’s bound to happen. It’s really not a question of if, but when. The flat bench press will eventually lead to some kind of shoulder problems or pec tear in the majority of lifters who do it heavy enough and long enough.

Like a lot of you, I have always been obsessed with learning more about how to build muscle fast, and the bench press has long been a staple in popular mass building programs. For years I proudly proclaimed it to be a great size and strength building lift and measure of upper body power. Nothing made me happier than helping one of my athletes add 50 pounds to his bench in the off season and watching him go to camp and destroy the competition.

But after 20 years in the game, having been witness to far too many injuries resulting from the flat bench press and getting my own shoulder cut open recently, I have finally had to look myself in the mirror and admit the truth that I have been hesitant to come to grips with for far too long…

Bench pressing sucks!

I have discussed this issue with many of the worlds top shoulder specialists in recent months and they are all in full agreement.

That’s not to say that you can never bench again. I know many of you will refuse to stop and I can relate to that mindset. If you get tested on the bench or compete in powerlifting, of course you have to do it. For the rest of you, who still love to press big weights and impress your friends and gym members I recommend you do so with extreme caution.

Make sure your technique is picture perfect and you bring the bar down to the right spot while properly activating your upper back and lat muscles. Secondly, don’t use the flat bench for more than 4-6 weeks without switching to a safer version of a barbell press like an incline or floor press.

The smartest route, however, is to get rid of this destructive exercise forever. There are far more effective movements that will build mind blowing strength and size in your chest, shoulders and triceps while saving you years of frustrating and costly injuries.

While the bench press is probably the most dangerous exercise most of you are doing on a regular basis, it is not the only harmful one. Unfortunately many of you are probably doing damage to other body parts without even realizing it.

To learn how to build muscle fast and to discover the most effective and safest exercises that will replace the bench press and many other useless movements, check outhttp://www.MuscleGainingSecrets.com/ today… before it’s too late.

Train smart,
Jason Ferruggia

Proper Tempo Prescriptions for Fast Muscle Gain

By Jason Ferruggia

I'm sure by now that many of you are familiar with the word tempo when it comes to training for fast muscle gain…Right?

No? Well, I wouldn’t feel left out or get too worried about it because it is a fairly useless concept. Tempo, in the training world, is the speed at which you perform your reps in a given set. Therefore, the correct terminology should actually be “rep speed.” It is typically displayed in a three-digit code. The first number represents the eccentric or lowering (also called the “negative”) portion of the rep, the second number represents an isometric contraction or pause, if there is one, and the third number represents the concentric or lifting (“positive”) portion of the rep. For example, if you lowered the weight in three seconds, took a two-second pause, and then lifted it in one second, this would be represented by a 321 tempo. A 404 would mean that you lowered the weight in four seconds, did not pause, and then lifted it in four seconds.

The concept of “tempo” was first brought to light back in the early 90’s. Plenty of people got suckered and jumped on the bandwagon. Since then, many trainers and strength coaches have written in great lengths about “tempo” and have suggested that different “tempos” induce different training effects. They have also suggested that “tempo” is something that should be manipulated frequently.

Here’s the truth…

Giving “tempo” prescriptions for mass building workouts and hoping that it will lead to fast muscle gain is a complete waste of time.

Changing the speed at which you perform your reps on a regular basis never lets you know if you are making progress or not. This is actually a great trick that some trainers use. They don't know how to get their clients stronger, so they just change the “tempo” and hope there is no way their clients will ever catch on to this ingenious little scheme. In January, you are benching with a rep speed of 505, and then in March, a 402 rep speed. Come June it's 323, etc., etc. Because the “tempo” keeps changing, so does the weight you’re able to use. But how do you know if you are ever getting stronger? It's just like using way too many exercises—there is just too much variety to keep track of. There are certain variables that need to remain constant in any experiment, and that's what your training program basically is-- an experiment. You are always testing what you are doing and you need to see if it's working, meaning that you’re getting bigger and stronger. If your bench goes up, is it because your “tempo” was different or did you really improve your strength? With varying rep speeds, you never really know. That is one of the major reasons why the “tempo” concept is completely useless.

So the next time you see a workout program with any kind of “tempo” prescription included in it, run the other way in a hurry; there far better ways to waste your time.

For more myth-busting information and to discover the real secrets of fast muscle gain, click HERE now.

Jason Ferruggia is a world famous fitness expert who is renowned for his ability to help people build muscle as fast as humanly possible. He is the head training adviser for Men’s Fitness Magazine where he also has his own monthly column dedicated to muscle building. For more How to Build Muscle Fast tips, check out http://www.musclegainingsecrets.com/

How To Build Muscle Fast by Spending Less Time In The Gym

By Jason Ferruggia

I’ll never forget my first encounter with “Big Joe.” I had just gotten my driver’s license about a week before, so I was 17 at the time. Up until my 17th birthday, I had been training at our crappy high-school weight room and was counting the days until I could drive myself to the real gym about 15 minutes down the road. I had been training for a few years at that point and was really starting to get obsessed and read everything I could about how to build muscle fast. Of course, I had been doing everything wrong up until that point, but I didn’t know any better. I was convinced that when I was finally able to join Main Street Gym, I would start to grow like a weed.

During my second week there, I saw Big Joe for the first time. I was about halfway through my workout when he walked in. He was massive from neck to calves with a thick goatee, long sideburns, and a mop of curly brown hair. Big Joe stood about 6’4” and had to have weighed close to 300 pounds. At the time, he was in his late 30’s or early 40’s and walked with a slight hitch—I would later find out that it was from an old football injury—but he continued to squat and deadlift on a regular basis.

He was doing standing military presses that day and throwing around 275 like the bar was empty. I couldn’t help but stare as he hoisted the weights up with ease. After every set I did, I would walk to the water fountain just to get a closer look at one of the most jacked guys I had ever seen in person.

Eventually, we crossed paths and he nodded. That was it.

All the gym vets seemed to know him and every few minutes I heard one of them acknowledging his presence.

“What’s up, Big Joe?”

“Big Joe, what’s happening, my man?”

I had to move to another section of the gym to complete the rest of my workout, but I figured I would see Big Joe again when I was done. I was wrong. When I finished my workout, I looked around the gym and Big Joe was gone.

It was about two weeks before I saw Big Joe again. He came in the door right behind me one night and thanked me when I held the door for him. We both went about our business and started our workouts. He was doing bent-over barbell rows that night and had worked up to 405 for a few sets of six.

About halfway through my workout, I had to run to the locker room to get my straps out of my gym bag. When I returned Big Joe, was gone again.

Over time, I started to see Big Joe more and more and began to notice a trend- he was in and out of the gym before most guys were even halfway done with their workouts. He was so much bigger and stronger than everyone else that I figured there had to be something to what he was doing.

Finally, I worked up the courage one day to go up to Big Joe and ask him about his short workouts. I wanted to learn more about how to build muscle fast and I just knew Big Joe was the one to help me.

“Uh, excuse me,” I said.

“What’s up, big man?” Big Joe replied.

“I just wanted to ask you a few questions about training. I notice that your workouts are way shorter than anyone else’s in this entire gym, yet you are bigger and stronger than everyone,” I said.

“Finally caught on there, huh, diesel? That’s the secret right there. If you keep your workouts short, you never overtrain, you recover faster, and you constantly make progress,” Big Joe explained. “Your testosterone output peaks about a half hour into your workout and is completely shot within 45 minutes. So get in and get out in 45 minutes or less and you will get huge. That right there is one of the most important things I can ever teach you about how to build muscle fast.”

From that day on I have kept all my workouts short and have always done so with all of my clients. The results have been nothing short of spectacular. There is no reason to spend your life in the gym. Hit it hard and get out. And get ready for guys to start stepping aside when they see you coming.

Time-Under-Tension for Fast Muscle Gain

By Jason Ferruggia

One of the supposed rules of fast muscle gain is that in order for a muscle to grow it has to be exposed to a certain load (e.g. under tension) for 40–70 seconds at a given time. This simply means that every set you do should last somewhere between 40 and 70 seconds. If you have never heard this nonsense before, I will give you a second to pick yourself up off the floor and stop laughing. To disprove this theory, I will point to the immeasurable number of lifters who have grown to enormous proportions without ever adhering to this rule. Taking 40–70 seconds to do a set of 6–8 reps is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard of. Lifting at this slow speed severely limits the amount of weight you can use and thus decreases the effectiveness of the set. The only thing that long time-under-tension sets do is increase lactic acid production. This results in the burn feeling and may be what people are confusing with effective training. You can get a great burn by going for a swim or a long bike ride or by doing 1,000 crunches, but everyone knows this isn’t going to do a single thing to help you build muscle.

Fast twitch muscle fibers are the ones that have the greatest potential for growth and are only stimulated when the load is heavy, the reps are fairly low and the set lasts about twenty seconds or so. So sets of five or six reps with 80% or more of your one rep max (1RM) are far more productive at eliciting fast muscle gain than sets of 10-20 reps with 50-60% of your 1RM done at slower speeds. That’s not to say that you should never do slightly higher reps or use less than 80% of your 1RM but that that type of training should never be the main focus of your program.

I hate to admit this, but back when time under tension was first discussed and brought to popularity, I did extensive experiments with this concept in my own private training center. Yes, I got suckered. After reading everything I could about time under tension, I immediately modified every one of my clients’ training programs. We experimented with longer time under tension sets of 40-70 seconds for over a year.

The results? Nearly every single client, to a man, got smaller and weaker. Those that didn’t remained the same size and strength or made marginal gains, at best, that were far inferior to anything we had previously done. I admit it was a huge mistake, but trying things, making mistakes and adapting is the best way to learn.

The good news is that I have already done the experiments and made the mistakes for you. Learn from my misfortunes, avoid these deadly mistakes and you will be on the road to fast muscle gain in no time.

For a more effective approach to building muscle, click HEREnow.

Choosing the Right Exercises for Fast Muscle Gai

Choosing the Right Exercises for Fast Muscle Gain

By Jason Ferruggia

When I first started training, I didn’t know any better so I went to the gym and did all the machine exercises and isolation movements that I saw everyone else doing. I figured these would all lead to fast muscle gain and I would be huge in no time.

My dad knew a steroid-using Italian guy named Tony who owned a gym and competed in several bodybuilding shows. He asked Tony if he could write me a program and Tony obliged. I was bursting with excitement and thought this would be the difference maker in my training. I met with Tony at his office one day, and in a scene that could have been straight out of an episode of The Sopranos, he interrogated me about my muscle building program. I gave him a piece of paper with my workout on it and he took a long, hard look at it.

“Here’s whatcha gonna do. And I don’t wan any a’guments. You do dis and you’ll grow. Ya undastand me?”

“Yeah, definitely. No problem.”

He pulled out a legal pad and scrawled out my new training program. It was loaded with all of the exercises that all the top name bodybuilders in the magazines were always shown doing. Stiff arm pullovers, concentration curls, leg extensions, cable flyes, you name it—they were included.

I took my new program, thanked Tony, and left. The next few weeks would surely be an amazing time for me, I thought. The growth that I was about to experience would be dramatic, I just knew it.

But nothing happened.

You know why? Because those exercises suck, that’s why. Sure, the volume was too high for my limited recovery ability at the time, but if he had me doing the right exercises, I might have experienced some kind of gains.

Choosing the right exercises could ultimately be the difference between lightening fast muscle gain and absolutely no muscle gain whatsoever. No matter how well thought out your workout plan is, if you use the wrong exercises, it will be completely useless. Even a bad training program will yield some results if you are using the right exercises. For these reasons, exercise selection is one of the most important components of any muscle building system.

So how do you choose the best exercises?

The best mass building exercises are always multi joint, free weight, compound exercises that use as much muscle mass as possible and allow you to use heavy weights. This includes movements like squats, deadlifts, chin ups, dips, overhead presses and rows. If you are desperately seeking fast muscle gain, the last thing you should ever waste your time doing is using machine or isolation exercises during your workouts. These exercises are great at producing that burning feeling that so many people love and can often lead to a great pump, but they do very little to pack on massive size or build real world, functional strength.

For a very unique, scientifically advanced rating system which gives you a complete list of the best exercises on the planet, proven to lead to insanely fast muscle gain and mind blowing strength visit MuscleGainingSecrets.com now.

How to Gain Muscle Fast with the Proper Rest Intervals

By Jason Ferruggia

My Uncle Rory from Scotland was the only guy on either side of my family who could be considered big. Neither of my parents has ever weighed more than 140 pounds and nobody on either side, except me and my brother, ever even made it past 185. But Uncle Rory was different. He was not only big, but he was massive. He also taught me quite a bit about how to gain muscle fast.

My family and I went to Uncle Rory’s house for a backyard barbecue one summer day, as we had a million times before. When we arrived I went out to the garage gym looking for him and found Uncle Rory in the midst of his workout. He had just done a set of deadlifts and was pumped up to even larger proportions than normal.

“Haallo wee’yan. How ye gittin’ on?”

I was set to enter high school the following month but I was still the “wee’yan” (little one) to Uncle Rory. Come to think of it, anyone was little compared to Uncle Rory.

We sat and talked for five minutes or so and he then excused himself to do another set. He banged out a set with 515 pounds for five reps and again sat down to chat some more. Four or five minutes later, he did another set. At that point he sat down to tell me a story and I assumed his workout was over. Several minutes later, and after his point was made, he did his final set of the day and began stripping the weights.

“Sorry to hold up your workout, Uncle Rory; I thought you were done.”

“Ye did’nae hold up my workoot.”

“Yeah, but I made you rest way longer than you’re supposed to between sets.”

“Then you’re supposed tae? How long are ye supposed tae rest between sets?”

“I don’t know; aren’t you supposed to do a set and then wait a few seconds and then do another? I thought you were supposed to really be breathing hard and sweating. I didn’t see you doing either.”

“That’s rubbish, lad. That’s nae how ye git big and strong. Ye need to take a good long rest between sets so ye can lift heavy weights. It’s the only way to dae it. Ye can’nae lift heavy weights withoot resting properly.”

“Oh. But I read something about how to gain muscle fast, and thought that to get in shape you were supposed to keep your heart rate up and keep moving for 30-60 minutes straight without resting.”

“Aye, but I’m no trying tae get in shape; I’m trying tae get bloody well big and strong.”

And with that, Uncle Rory delivered one of the most important points about how to gain muscle fast that I have ever learned. The weight room is the place where you get big and strong. Like Uncle Rory said; it is not the place where you “get in shape.” You do that through proper diet and cardio work. Don’t try to turn your workouts into marathon conditioning sessions or try to burn more calories with high-rep, low-rest nonsense. All that will do is leave you looking pathetically small and weak. While you may have seen videos of your favorite pro bodybuilders doing set after set during their pre contest preparation while only resting 30-45 seconds, I can tell you that that approach will leave you small and weak… and it won’t take long to happen.

You need to rest long enough to perform high quality sets with heavy weights. That is usually somewhere between one to three minutes depending on the exercise, weight being used, how much training experience you have, what you weigh and a variety of other factors too numerous to discuss here. Heavy weights with adequate rest periods should be the main focus of your workout. If you do that you can still add in some low rest periods and higher rep, pump style training from time to time in order to get the best of both worlds.

To learn more about the exact science of selecting proper rest intervals, and countless other critical factors that make up the optimal muscle building program, click HERE now.

Another Reason Your Muscle Building Program Sucks

By Jason Ferruggia

One of the most popular, faulty and dangerous myths espoused in nearly every muscle building program is that you must use a full range of motion on every exercise in order to achieve maximal growth. Supposedly you have to take each movement to the fully stretched position and then finish in the fully “peak” contracted position. If you don’t you will never get huge… or so they say.

Without getting all technical and scientific let’s just look at a few real world examples to see if this advice makes any sense at all.

Starting from the ground up let’s begin with calves. All fat guys have big calves. They walk around all day with a lot of weigh on their calves but never once achieve a full stretch or contraction. It’s simply high loads, tension, volume and frequency. The same can be said for a lot of runners and bikers. And when the Olympics start today you will surely be awestruck by the calf development of the female gymnasts, who do spend a lot of time in the fully contracted position while walking on their toes but no time in the fully stretched position.

And speaking of the Olympics, not only will you notice that many 15 year old female gymnasts (with minimal testosterone levels) have calves bigger than the average guy but they also have thighs bigger than a lot of guys who spend several hours per month on the leg press. Yet, very rarely in their gymnastics training do they achieve a full squat position. There is actually very little, if any, full range of motion training done for their thighs, but they all have completely jacked legs.

Baseball players, rock climbers, mechanics and other manual laborers have huge, muscular forearms. But do you think that development is brought about by these guys consciously trying to achieve a full stretch and contraction throughout their game or work day? Of course not.

Powerlifters have huge legs yet only squat to parallel most of the time. Not a full range of motion movement. They also have huge traps which are mostly due to a lot of heavy deadlifts. There is NO range of motion for the traps on a deadlift. They contract, but don’t actively move from a full stretch position to the peak contraction position.

Not only is the deadlift the best trap building exercise there is, it’s also probably the best overall mass building exercise there is for the entire body. It has been heralded as such since the beginning of time from guys like Paul Anderson to Arnold to Ronnie Coleman. But name me one muscle group that is taken through a full range of motion on the deadlift. There is not a one!

So how can some experts espouse the value of full range of motion training while simultaneously listing the deadlift as one of the top exercises in any muscle building program? Ditto for the clean, clean and press, snatch, jerk, etc.

Not only is this myth incorrect but it can also be dangerous advice to adhere to. Achieving a full range of motion for the pecs would entail bringing your arms all the way behind your back to start the exercise and then crossing them all the way across your body in the front. First of all, that would destroy your shoulder. Second of all, it’s impossible and impractical.

Some guys try to really go for the deep stretch on dumbbell presses and allow their elbows to drop way below the bench. Others drop down into the deepest stretch possible on the dip bars. They have been led to believe that this extreme, loaded pre-stretch is needed for maximal muscle growth. The truth is that they will probably be seeing an orthopedic surgeon long before they get mistaken for Mr. Olympia.

Leg presses are another exercise where guys commonly push the stretch position way too far. If you bury your knees in your chest on a leg press, like many bodybuilders and coaches recommend, and allow your spine to round and your butt to come up off the pad you will surely have back problems that may plague you for quite some time.

Not only is going into the fully stretched position not recommended, but a lot of exercises have no tension whatsoever in the fully contracted position, which therefore makes that recommendation somewhat useless as well. If you want to target your chest and shoulders and not your triceps, most pressing movements should actually be done with a partial range of motion; stopping a few inches shy of lockout. A ¾ range of motion there is more beneficial than a full range. Think Lou Ferrigno doing military presses in Pumping Iron.

There are numerous other exercises where partial ranges of motion are far more effective and safer than full range movements. However, covering them all is beyond the scope of this article.

But hopefully by now you realize what a ridiculous recommendation this full range of motion nonsense truly is and will stop following it blindly without rational thought as soon as possible.

To learn the target range of motion for each and every exercise in your muscle building program and finally maximize your growth potential, avoid inevitable injuries, and uncover more mind blowing myths that you are probably following right now, visit http://www.musclegainingsecrets.com today.

5 Muscle Building Tips

By Jason Ferruggia

Here are 5 random muscle building tips that may make a big difference in your training.

– Don’t exceed 5-6 reps on most of your warm up sets. Your first set could consist of a very light weight for 10-20 reps just to get loosened up and get the blood flowing but beyond that you want to keep the reps low. The reason for this is that you don’t want to build up too much lactic acid or accumulate too much fatigue with your warm ups.

– Don’t stretch before your workout in the hopes of preventing injury. This doesn’t work. The only benefit of stretching before a workout is to help you get into positions you might not be able to reach (such as a full squat) because you are tight in specific areas (such as the hamstrings and hip flexors). But stretching for the sake of injury prevention is an outdated idea and doesn’t really work.

– Don’t over-analyze and over-think everything you do in the gym. This never gets you anywhere. Don’t worry if the incline of the bench is supposed to be 50 degrees or 55 degrees. Don’t worry that if you don’t supinate at exactly the right time that you won’t activate your biceps optimally. Don’t stress out about the exact grip width on the bar. If someone tells you that a 16? grip on the bench press hits your triceps better than anything else, but because of an injury or anatomical difference you can only comfortably use an 18? grip, don’t sweat it. People over-think themselves to death and they never get anywhere because of it. Go to the gym, get stronger, go home, eat, sleep and repeat. Don’t turn it into advanced calculus. That is one of the best muscle building tips I can give you.

– Always train both sides of the joint with equal volume. Therefore if you do six sets per week of pressing exercises you need to do six sets per week of pulling exercises. If you do two sets of curls you should do two sets of triceps work. And so on and so on…

– If you can’t get your forearms to grow, try hitting them with more frequency than other muscle groups. They can easily be trained three times per week and recover without any problem. Also, try to hold the bottom stretched position of wrist curls for 3-5 seconds per rep. When you finish training the forearms, hit them with a deep stretch for both the extensors and flexors for 30-60 seconds. These muscle building tips should get the forearms to grow.

For more incredible muscle building tips please visitMuscleGainingSecrets.com.

How To Build Muscle on a Vegetarian Diet

By Jason Ferruggia

There are usually four to five reasons why someone would become a vegetarian and they are:

- The negative effect on the environment and the contribution to global warming.
- The contribution to world hunger.
- The cruelty to animals issue.
- The fact that the thought of eating animal carcasses grosses them out.
- Health reasons.

The question that plaques many of us, however is, “how to build muscle on a vegetarian diet?” People often wonder if it can be done but I am here to tell you that it absolutely can.

So, how does being a vegetarian affect your ability to build muscle?

Probably a lot less than you would think or have been led to believe.

First of all, man was probably actually intended to be an herbivore and not a carnivore. Physiologically speaking, man has all the characteristics of an herbivore and none of the characteristics of a carnivore. We have the teeth, jaws, digestive enzymes, stomach acidity, and small intestine length of herbivores. Probably the most disturbing and nauseating of those is the small intestine length. Carnivores have a small intestine that is 3-6 times body length. This is because meat rots very quickly and needs to pass through the body very rapidly. Unfortunately, humans have a small intestine length of 10-11 times body length. What this means is that long after the meat has gone rotten, it’s still in your body decaying and contributing to untold number of diseases.

When you add in all the chemicals and other unhealthy substances that our meat contains these days you can see that eating meat might actually not be the best option for those interested in remaining healthy long into the future.

With that out of the way let’s get to the question of how to build muscle on a vegetarian diet. As I have mentioned plenty of times in the past, high protein diets are a scam. You don’t need all that much protein to build muscle. Although many people thought he was insane, Mike Mentzer first told me that during a phone conversation back in the mid 90’s. I asked him his thoughts on protein intake and he screamed at me “That’s the biggest scam under the sun! Nobody needs that much protein. Muscles are 70% water. The only reason you read about the benefits of high protein area because that’s what everybody sells! It’s all a lie, Jason!”

Say what you will about Mike Mentzer, but I think he was ahead of his time on that one and you have to respect his rebelliousness.

In all honesty, being a vegetarian will not affect your strength gains AT ALL. In fact it shouldn’t really affect your size gains that much either. As you know, you need a caloric surplus to build muscle. To do this as a vegetarian, you need to focus on good fats like nuts, oils and avocadoes, starchy carbs like oatmeal, sweet potatoes, pasta and brown rice and for protein sources you will be limited to dairy and fish (if you eat those things) or if you are a true vegan- beans, legumes, quinoa, soy, hemp protein, nuts, etc. Even though your protein will be lower than that of most meat eaters you can still build plenty of muscle.

Look at guys in prison. Walk into any state pen and take a look at the weight pit. You will see some of the biggest, most jacked guys you have ever seen. How many grams of high quality ion exchange protein do you think they eat per day? Very, very little, I can assure you that. Someone I know used to be a prison guard and told me of how big and strong the guys were. “How are they getting so big with no protein” I asked (this was back in the days when I was still brainwashed). He told me that he had no idea because all they had to eat was grits, fake potatoes, rice and a small serving or two a day of very low quality meat or a meat substitute. So maybe they were getting 90 grams of protein per day. Yet they were huge.

You simply do not need high protein diets to build muscle.

When it comes to adding muscle while maintaining bodyfat, this is the only place you may have difficulty. Because it will be impossible to get all the calories you need from veggies and fruits you are going to really need to pile down the starchy carbs like rice and bread. If you are lean, this shouldn’t be a problem. But since your insulin sensitivity is lower when you are fatter, you may have trouble staying lean by eating all those starchy carbs. This may slow down your size gains because you may end up looking like a fat slob in no time.

To combat this problem, I would recommend carb cycling the way a normal meat eater would do it. Have super high carbs on training days and limit your starchy carbs on non training days. Maybe one day per week, only have vegetables as your carbs and eat nuts, and beans and fish and eggs that day.

Building a great physique as a vegetarian is definitely possible. Bill Pearl and Clarence Bass were vegetarians and a couple other legendary bodybuilders were as well. My friend and colleague, Robert Dos Remedios, is vegetarian and is a lean 240 pounds and in incredible shape. Jon Hinds is a vegan, in his mid 40’s and is jacked and strong as could be. The greatest tight end in NFL history, Tony Gonzalez is also a vegetarian and obviously it hasn’t hurt him in the least.

Like the great Chuck D once said, don’t believe the hype. You don’t need 400 grams of protein per day to grow. You will progress just fine as a vegetarian. Good luck and train hard.

For more information on how to build muscle visitMuscleGainingSecrets.com

Muscle Building Misconceptions

By Jason Ferruggia

I was asked recently about some of the biggest misconceptions and excuses that exist when it comes to muscle building. Read on for my answers…

Question: There is a lot of conflicting training advice out there online, in books, on TV and especially in magazines. What do you think the top myths or misconceptions regarding weight training are?

Answer: That you need a high volume of training. This is a myth that has been passed down from one generation to the next and people continue to blindly follow this protocol without thinking rationally. There is no hard evidence anywhere that you need to use high volume training to get bigger and stronger. Sure lots of guys with great genetics and/or a great pharmacist make progress on high volume training but that doesn’t mean it’s the right way to train.

That you need to hit muscles from a multitude of angles for full development.

That you need a full dynamic warm up before weight training. You don’t. Before sprinting, yes; before lifting, no.

That bodypart splits are the most effective way to train.

Another misconception is that you need a boatload of supplements to make great progress. The bottom line truth is that most supplements suck and do nothing but drain your wallet.

Another sad misconception is that you can’t make great progress without steroids. This is a self defeatist attitude and is simply not true.

Question: Other comments that I have heard coaches say are that the only way to put on any muscle size, is really going to be based on genetics. So they are saying for example that skinny kids can’t and will never be able to put on size.
Answer: That’s the biggest copout under the sun and an excuse that really makes me sick. Genetics are responsible for how far you may eventually go but the fact of the matter is most people will never truly reach their genetic potential. If you use this excuse it shows the world that you have no heart whatsoever and are destined for failure. Using the hard-gainer excuse as a crutch will guarantee you sub par results in your training from now til eternity.

I have some of the worst muscle building genetics imaginable but I never let that hold me back. I have also trained some genetic misfits who made incredible progress and eventually were getting asked what steroids they were on. This is because they had the balls to train like they needed to and had the dedication to eat and rest as much as was needed. Most people simply don’t have what it takes; so the only genetic capacity they may be missing is mental toughness.

For a coach or trainer to say or write that is even worse than just the average trainee or athlete saying that. Making a comment like that shows that you have no heart and no balls, and in that case you should never, EVER be coaching or training ANYONE!

Question: It has been said as you get older it get harder and harder to put on size and strength. Some even say that it can’t be done. What do you say to older athletes or even coaches that say this?
Answer: This is just like the hard-gainer excuse; it’s nonsense. One of my good friends is named Mark Crook (his brother Paul played guitar in Anthrax for seven years and is now lead guitarist for Meatloaf) and we first met right after his 40th birthday when he came to me to help him get bigger and stronger. He took his bench from 155 to 275 in one year and gained over 20lbs of muscle. Mark’s enthusiasm led to a friend of his coming in to my gym a year later and he experienced similar gains. I have had several guys in their 40’s and 50’s experience tremendous gains in size and strength over the years.

It may not happen as fast and as easily as it does for a 20 year old but it can be done. You just have to take into account that your recovery ability may be a bit lower and as such you need to keep your volume lower and be very smart with your training.

Also, you have to remember that most guys don’t even hit their strength peak til sometime around 30 or so. Most of the biggest and strongest guys I know are all in their mid to late 30’s. So the day you hit 40, this doesn’t just do a complete 180 and you shouldn’t be on your training deathbed at 50. Just keep training hard and if you believe you will get stronger then you will.
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For real muscle building info without the nonsense, go HEREnow.