Muscle Building Training Tucson AZ

By Nick Nilsson

'Tis the season to stuff yourself full of food! Find out how to turn the tables and turn your holiday weight gain into holiday muscle gain.

You know you're going to do it. You know you want to do it. It's what makes the holidays the holidays. What is it? Eating piles of holiday food.

This article is not about how to minimize holiday weight gain. That topic has been addressed many times before and will no doubt be addressed many more times to come. What I'm talking about here is how to use your increased holiday eating to your advantage in your training.

For many trainers (myself included), it's just no fun being good at the buffet table all the time. It's very easy to take the joy out of the holidays by restricting yourself too much.

I propose something different. Rather than forcing yourself to eat plain potatoes and dry turkey when your whole family is sitting down to a big holiday dinner, join in. I'm going to tell you how to make it work for you, not against you.

#1 - Forgive yourself in advance

If you're the type who feels guilty when you eat foods that aren't the greatest for you, try to set that aside. This is going to be a positive, guilt-free experience.

#2 - Reduce your calories BEFORE your big meals

By reducing your caloric intake before the big meals, it's much more likely that your body will use those excess calories to rebuild depleted stores rather than add to the ones that are already there. Don't starve yourself or your body will panic and try to store everything it gets as fat - just reduce.

#3 - Do a hard, heavy workout as close to mealtime as you can

Immediately after a hard workout, your body is desperate for raw materials to rebuild with. This effect lasts for about 3 to 4 hours. During this time, your body is primed for muscle growth. By doing your workout just before a big holiday dinner, all that food is going to go towards helping your body rebuild and recover from the workout. Very little, if any, of the excess calories you eat will be stored as fat under these conditions.

#4 - Try to focus on foods with some nutritional value

Feel free to load your plate with turkey and mashed potatoes. These foods have a great deal of nutritional value to a trainer. Don't hold back on them.

#5 - Increase your training volume

What this basically means is do more sets for each muscle group. You may have to decrease your rest periods or perhaps increase the number of training sessions you do in order to increase the volume but doing more sets (at least temporarily) will give your metabolism a kick-start. It will be especially effective if you're doing a fairly low volume training program before switching. Your body will be desperate for food to rebuild with and a big holiday meal is just what the doctor ordered.

#6 - Don't go to sleep after you eat

I know it's going to be hard but you'r...

By Nick Nilsson

If gaining weight is something YOU got into weight training for, THIS is the info for you. Learn my four powerful "no fail" principles for putting on mass no matter what your metabolism or body type!

I got into weight training to gain mass and put on weight so believe me when I tell you…when it comes to wanting mass I know EXACTLY where you're coming from. Because when I started training, I weighed 145 lbs soaking wet. Today, I'm a lean 210 lbs (at a height of 5'10")!

I've got four "no fail" principles that I recommend to people who are trying to build muscle mass and gain some weight.

And I'll tell you right up front - these principles are NOT rocket science…these are the basic things you SHOULD be doing if you want to gain mass, yet I see plenty of people only doing one or two of them and wondering why they can't put on any mass!

Combining these four principles consistently will definitely get the job done!

1. Train Heavy and Just SHORT of Muscular Failure

In order to gain muscle mass, you need to give your muscles a REASON to grow. Training with heavy weights (relatively speaking, of course - what's heavy for one person may be light for another) to just short of muscular failure is the stimulus that starts the process.

And by muscular failure, I mean the point where you physically can't perform another rep WITH GOOD FORM - reps done with terrible form don't count! The best rep range to train for muscle growth, in my experience, is between 6 to 10 repetitions per set. Training in the range below that (1 to 5 reps) will primarily lead to strength gains rather than muscle gains. Training in the higher rep ranges (for the most part, unless you're using specialized high-rep techniques) will primarily work on muscular endurance with minimal effects on muscle mass.

Training to just short muscular failure is VERY important for muscle gain. The reason we want to stay just short of total failure is that this is very hard on the nervous system. By keeping that do-or-die rep in you, you still get the benefits of the heavy training but without the nervous system burnout.

Muscles will not grow unless they are pushed beyond what they're used to. Doing your sets only up to a certain number of reps and stopping on that number regardless of whether the muscle has been worked or not is a very common mistake made by both men and women alike. Counting reps and stopping on an arbitrary number will NOT work the muscles fully and will hamper weight gain.

Even though you're not pushing to total failure, you still want to be pushing HARD!

So to train for optimum muscle gain, select a weight that will cause you to reach just short of muscular failure in the 6 to 10 rep range.

2. Utilize Basic Exercises for Most of Your Training

Dumbell tricep kick-backs will NOT help you gain weight...