How To Go To The Weights Gym and Not Be Scared

Don't act tough, just get buff!

If the idea of going to the gym leaves you trembling at the knees you may well have avoided going despite a desire to get buff. The grunt of several large sweaty goliaths, gurning their way to big guns and the clunk of huge piles of iron hitting the floor may have stopped you making the start on those abs you have always wanted.

You will be relieved to hear that this is a common fear among men. They worry about being ridiculed if they can't lift even the smallest weight, they are scared of not knowing what to do, they are scared of bumping into a particularly large fellow and starting a fight with a man shaped bull, but above they are scared of the idea that they are destined to be flabby or weedy their whole life. With this in mind, here are some tips to help you overcome your fear and get yourself on the big gun train!

Clientele

Before you go in, remind yourself that every one of those blokes was standing where you are now at some point. No muscle, scared of going in and not sure what to do. When you enter and some turn to look at your, think of the fact that they are probably all worried that you are judging them. After all you are all obviously conscious enough of your looks to want to go to the gym. Try breaking the ice by asking some advice or by asking someone to spot you. (If you don't know what that is yet don't worry.)

Gym Buddy

A great way to help you overcome this fear is to go with a friend. Ideally someone that can help you get the hang of the machines and other equipment. But if you don't have a friend like that, any friend will do. Once you get into the swing of going to the gym and start to get competitive with yourself it will help to have a friend to bounce off and to help motivate you to keep coming back.

List

If you do go on your own, take two things with you to help you stay focused and to help you forget about being scared. An MP3 player is great for keeping a rhythm when running or when lifting weights and for blocking out the room. The other thing is a small notepad. Use this to note down every exercise you do, how many repetitions you do and how heavy the weight was each time. This way when you come next time you will know what you have to do and what you are aiming to beat so your muscles get bigger.

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Gym Basics - What Are Straps, Chalk and Weightlifting Belts For?

There are many different types of lifting aids used within the gym environment. You may have seen various muscle bound gym-goers using Figure 6's, Figure 8's and chalk to assist in lifting heavy weights? Have you ever wondered what each one is designed for? What do they do and which ones would suit you and your type of training?

Straps: 
The 2 most common straps used in the gym are the figure 6's and figure 8's.

When training muscles such as back or traps the forearm muscles play a vital role in being able to grip or hang onto a barbell or dumbbell. But in some cases halfway through a session the forearms become so pumped resulting in the fingers not being able hold onto a barbell or dumbbell.

When training with straps the load is reduced considerably because instead of the forearms taking all the weight it is distributed through the strap and wrist resulting in your forearms not getting fatigued as quickly.

Exercises where Figure 6's and figure 8's are needed are exercises such as farmers walk, chin ups, dead-lifts, rows and shrugs.

There are two distinct differences with the 6's and 8's.

Figure 6's are designed so that you not only use more of your forearm muscles, but if the weight is too heavy and you must drop it, the weight will slide out from the strap. On the other hand when using figure 8's you stimulate even less forearm strength and rely on the figure 8 strap to hold the weight. Not only this but if you drop the weight, the strap will remain leaving your arm connected to whatever it was you were lifting. This can become dangerous if performing some exercises.

I recommend using figure 6's for all lift but if you like using figure 8's do not use them with dead-lifts and rows, in case you drop the weight.

Chalk: 
Chalk is used mostly by powerlifters and weightlifters. A lot of gyms don't allow the use of chalk because it can cause quite a mess on the floor as well as get all over the weight plates and barbells.

Chalk is mainly used on rope climbing, deadlifts, power cleans, snatch and squats. Its main role is for the trainer to be able to grip as easily as possible while still using natural grip strength.

The benefit with using chalk is that the trainer can lift heavy weights (mostly on deadlifts) and continue to use the muscles in the fingers and forearms without having to rely on straps (which tend to take a lot of the load off the grip.)

Knee wraps: 
Knee wraps are designed to push your patella down firmly making it easier to glide up and down. Power-lifters believe by doing this they will be able to lift more weight when squatting. Knee wraps also help you at the bottom of the squat by causing a 'bounce' out of the bottom position, which to some is the hardest position.

I recommend to be careful with using knee wraps because if you use them too much they can cause slight tears beneath the kneecap on the patella tendon.

In conclusion, most trainers do not need to use lifting aides. These will help you lift a little bit more weight but this is not necessarily a good thing. Superior technique and good nutrition is the best way to not only achieve your strength and fitness goals, but also live a healthy lifestyle.

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Why You Need Creatine and Why You Need It Now

Some people look at creatine as some sort of steroid. They see it as an unnatural substance and if one uses it they look at them as cheaters. When in fact the people who are using creatine are not cheaters but smart people who want to look and be at their best. Also, Creatine as a substance is actually more natural to the human body than processed grains or sugars. Supplementation with creatine will not only increase lean muscle mass but will also increase testosterone levels as well. So take a step back and watch and learn why you need creatine and why you need it now!

What is Creatine:

Creatine is a natural substance that is present in almost all vertebrates. Creatine is a very important key component in skeletal muscle metabolism. Not to mention creatine has many scientific studies behind it meaning that it is proven to work and it is one of the most researched and respected bodybuilding supplement right after protein powder.

How Creatine Works and Why You Need It:

Creatine works immediately right after digestion. Right away it binds to a phosphate molecule to form creatine phosphate and this acts as storage reservoir for regenerating ATP. ATP is the chemical source of energy for all muscles in terms of muscle contraction and quick short bursts of energy. Creatine phosphate is an important source of ATP energy in muscle tissues and countless studies have shown that creatine works too.

If you're a bodybuilder, sprinter or any kind of athlete you will need creatine because it increases the power output of short bursts. Also, like I said in the above paragraph creatine will increase lean muscle mass and increase protein synthesis.

Creatine and Testosterone:

You will also need creatine because it is proven to increase testosterone levels. It does this by converting into dihydro-testosterone. Now, dihydro-testosterone is the strongest known androgen known to man and as a bonus it won't even convert into estrogen.

Don't believe me well check this out a recent study done in 2010 on rugby players showed that creatine increased dihydro-testosterone by a whopping 56%. Thats not to bad, and remember this, the more testosterone flowing through your veins the merrier!

Get Your Creatine Online:

- Creatine comes in two forms, it can either come as capsules that you consume once a day or you can have it as a powder that you mix with water.

- This link is the creatine capsules that we recommend

- This link in the creatine powder that we recommend 

Get your creatine online because buying creatine online is cheaper than buying from your local health store. Not to mention you will have a larger variety of different types of it online than in your local health store.

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Myths about women building muscle VIDEO

 

How to Increase Your Bench Press and Build Muscle Mass Fast

Everyone knows to build muscle mass one of the best exercises for the upper body is the bench press. One of the first questions you are likely to be asked by another bodybuilder is 'how much can you bench press?' Whilst it may not be the best measure of overall strength it does have a certain macho feel to it and a big bench press is certainly very impressive. So lets cut to the chase and find out how we can get a bigger bench press:

Grow your triceps. Your triceps are a crucial muscle in performing the bench press and make up two thirds of the muscle mass on your arm. It may well be that under-developed triceps are restricting your bench press progress. The best exercises to build muscle mass on your triceps are using barbells and dumbells: close grip bench-presses and skull crushers. Isolation exercises like tricep press-downs are less effective. They should definitely help notch up your bench press.

Try training your triceps separately. More often than not muscle building programs will suggest that you train the triceps along with the chest. Try training them on their own for a change. Doing this allows you to attack them when they are fresh and really concentrate and focus on hammering them to stimulate growth. Do this for a number of weeks and see how much more poundage you can press.

Variety. have you been following the same routine for a number of weeks or months? time to mix it up then. After your muscles have done the same workout a few times, they have already adapted to it and therefore the need to grow has been removed. Keep changing things, they can be subtle changes like altering the grip width or reversing the order of your routine or they can be larger changes like doing super sets, compound sets and so on, these will give you a real pump by the way.

Make sure you are not doing too much! While with most things in life more is better, in muscle building this is not quite true. If you do too much and overtrain your chest then it can struggle to recover and find it hard to grow more. Instead of focussing on quantity, focus on technique and intensity. A short intense workout is much more effective than a long drawn out one.

Quality rest. Your muscles do not grow on the weight bench! They grow when they are at rest. If you don't allow then enough time to recover they ain't going to get bigger. Of course, never train when your muscles are sore and a good guideline is only do 6-9 sets each session for the chest, more than this risks over training.

Take some time-off. if you have hit a chest muscle mass building plateau then have a break. let your body fully recover, get rid of all the niggles aches and pains and then comeback fresh a week or two later with renewed energy and motivation.

Use negatives as a form of pushing your chest muscle harder during a bench press workout. Negatives are when two spotters (gym partners) help you press the weight up but then let you lower it under full control. We do this because you can actually lower more weight than you can lift. So if we can get the body used to lowering more weight this will help you get stronger for the lifting/effort phase. The lowering/negative phase also stimulates more muscle growth than the effort phase.

Check your diet. Are you eating 5-7 meals a day with approximately 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight? If not then you may be restricting your progress by not following an effective muscle building diet. Each meal should be roughly 50% carbohydrate, 30% protein and the rest made-up of fats. Use supplements if you can such as whey protein, essential fatty acids and multi-vitamins.

Focus on your technique. Are you pressing correctly. Poor technique can shift the focus away from the chest muscles and can also put you at increased risk of injury. Make sure you are not lifting your feet off the ground and that your hands are not too close together, these are two very common errors.

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Reasons Why New Year's Fitness and Weight Loss Resolutions Fail

Every year millions, if not billions of people make New Year's Resolutions to eat right, get fit & lose weight - and most have abandoned them by March 31st at the latest. Here are the top reasons for their failure and how YOU can avoid making these same mistakes year after year.

1) Fitness, Health & Nutritional Habits 
Before you even set your fitness goals or weight loss goals for the new year, you first need to understand how you got into the shape you're currently in. Unless you have a chronic condition or have suffered a major accident, you're not a victim of anything - and no one else caused you to be out of shape or overweight.

It's imperative that you understand it's your personal habits that led you to your current state. You made choices all along the way, and the choices you made over and over became your default - your habits. Your habits led to your current lifestyle - what you eat, how much and how often you exercise, and what bodyweight and fat percentage you're willing to carry around with you every day.

That's the bad news, so now here's the good news: YOU created those habits, and YOU can change them starting right now, today! Changing your exercise habits or nutritional habits starts with small choices - and over time those choices add up. Plus, when repeated over and over they become your new habits. Yes, this means you need to put a little more thought into routine daily tasks. But you're not satisfied with your current state of health, your fitness or your current bodyfat levels or you wouldn't be making these New Year's Resolutions. So put in that extra thought and make the choices that help you keep these promises to yourself!

2) Not MAKING Time To Exercise 
When it comes to working out you don't take the time - you MAKE the time. One of the few universal values we all share is that we all have the same 168 hours per week, and we all get to choose what we do with those 168 hours. Think of people Like Donald Trump, Richard Branson, Tony Robbins, Louise L. Hay or Les Brown and all they accomplish in any given week - yet they only have the same number of hours that week as you do. The busiest and laziest people you know have 168 hours a week too.

The only difference between them and you is priorities - you use your time in proportion to the importance you give each activity. So if getting in shape, being healthy and weight loss are sufficiently important to you you WILL make the time for sufficient exercise to accomplish your goal of getting back in shape and staying in shape.

Don't try to tell me you don't have enough time - we all have the same amount of time, and you already know people in your situation who have time to hit the gym, go for a run or take exercise classes, don't you? What you really mean is your current activities already fill your schedule, right?

And that's the biggest reason exercise resolutions get broken year after year - trying to fit 3 - 5 workouts a week into an already over-crowded schedule. It's like trying to pour another cup of water into a full glass - it won't go in, but instead will make a mess, right? And that's what happens when people try to add in exercise time to a full schedule - it makes a mess of their week.

So how do you solve this one? Simple. Decide what to take out of your schedule to make time to exercise. Look for the obvious time-hogs first: watching television, spending too much time on the Internet, playing computer games, hitting the bars and clubs, etc. Everyone I know spends time at at least one of those four, and I assume the same can be said about you, right? So now you have to decide where you'll trim the time for 3 or more exercise sessions per week.

Remember, the decisions need to be made based on your priorities - is your health more important to you than those reality shows, time on Facebook and Google+, beating the next level of WOW or knocking back a few drinks at the bar quite so often? For best results, don't eliminate anything you truly love to do, or you'll harbour resentment towards your workouts and your own subconscious will sabotage your workouts.

Instead, cut out what you really don't care about and if you need to make more time still then trim back the activities you enjoy just enough to free up the time you need. Taking just 20 minutes a day from each of 3 leisure pastimes gives you that hour a day, as does skipping a single TV show a day. You already have the time... Now just free up enough of it for your exercising - and decide in advance where the time's coming from so there's no conflict each week.

3) Not Setting A Realistic Pace 
Let's look at a common pair of weight loss and fitness goals: losing 20 pounds of bodyfat next year and adding 20 pounds of muscle next year. Either one can make a major change in your health and body image while boosting your self-confidence and energy levels. The biggest problem is far too many people suddenly jump into the gym and start lifting weights life a fiend to build muscle fast, or drastically cut their calorie intake thinking they need to drop all 20 pounds in the first month or two. If you did either of these last year, how did you measure up at the start of this year? If you're like most people, you were even further from your goals this year than last.

The issue here isn't your goals - both are reasonably achievable. The issue is a sudden change in your diet and/or exercise routine. Why the rush? In most cases it took years to get to the shape you're currently in, so don't try to change it overnight! To lose 20 pounds next year, start with a single small change to a healthier diet each week. To add 20 pounds of muscle, start light with the 7 compound exercises and add 1 more rep to each set each week and add 1 new exercise a month. Even if you didn't start to see any weight loss or muscle gain in the first 7 months, you'd still only need to drop 1 pound of fat or gain 1 pound of muscle per week from August on to still meet your goals for the year. Put another way, gaining or losing just 1/2 a pound a week throughout the year would be 26 pounds for the year - you'd have surpassed your goal by 30%. Getting and keeping a healthy lifestyle is a life-long pursuit, so remember that health, fitness and weight maintenance are marathons, not sprints.

4) Not Setting Reasonable Goals 
Sure, every woman at some point wants to be a size 0 and every guy wants to become a Herculean champion. But for most people that's just not going to happen no matter what they do. We're all born with pre-set genetics that, to one extent or another, predetermine what our ultimate limits are. But the good news is everyone can still do an awful lot to improve themselves before hitting those top limits - in fact, very few people, including pro athletes, never reach the point where they find out what their limits are.

So set reasonable goals, based on where you're at now. If you're planning to lose weight, find out what your bodyfat levels are and plan to lose 10% or 25% of that over the year. Notice I didn't say a percentage of your weight, but a percentage of your bodyfat. This is important because your body has a lot of weight it needs - muscles, organs, skeletal bones, blood, brain and the like. So for example if you have 30% bodyfat and you weigh 250 pounds, your fat weighs 75 pounds and your goal would be to lose 7.5 to 19 pounds over the year. If you weigh 120 pounds with 30% bodyfat, your fat weighs 36 pounds and your goal would be to burn off 3.6 to 9 pounds.

If you're lifting weights to build muscle or build strength, the idea is even simpler. Don't say 'I want to gain X pounds of lean muscle' or 'I want to squat/deadlift/bench X pounds'. Instead, aim for the best gains you can safely and reasonably achieve. The best you can do with no drugs, proper form, strict lifting without using momentum, etc. To build the muscle, try to add 1 rep to each set each week while increasing the weight you're using once a month. To build strength, add a bit more weight to each of your work sets any time you can while still maintaining proper form. Either way, don't get hung up on the weight being used or drawn into comparisons with others - focus just on your personal progress as the year progresses.

5) Not Enough Self-Confidence 
When one sets realistic goals to build muscles or lose weight and truly believes they can achieve and over-reach those goals it's easier for them to stay on track. For others, though, it's common for them to seek refuge in the 'knowledge' that they couldn't reach their goals no matter what they did. How often have you heard someone say "I've tried everything and nothing works!"? The truth is NO ONE has tried EVERYTHING.

Overcoming this one is tougher since your self-talk programs your subconscious, which in turn controls your urges and confidence. If you're one of these people, find an accountability coach such as a weight loss coach or a personal trainer. Knowing they'll give you a hard time if you miss a session, that they'll be expecting you to show up and that you'll be paying for their time whether you show up or not will greatly increase the chances you'll stay on track.

Another option is to find someone with similar goals to lose weight or build muscle and keep each other on track. You'll still need some self-discipline to show up when they don't - don't use their actions as permission to slack off yourself! And be prepared to replace your partner, or add in another person, if you find they're not as committed as you are - no one but YOU should be setting your pace or be in charge of your results.

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