Water in Bodybuilding

There is one simple rule that says: "If you do not know how much water you are drinking then there is a big chance it is not enough for your body!". Lack of water immediately transforms in a less effective nutrition plan. When on a diet water is the most important ingredient you need to look at and so few people understand this. Many individuals start counting calories, fat grams, protein take in but fail to know how much water they drink. As mentioned above this means they are not drinking enough. It is very important in nutrition and bodybuilding in general to know how much water you consume.

You also need to know some other facts as well. First, if you are thirsty it does not mean you are dehydrated. On the contrary, knowing how much water to drink depends on how thirsty you are. Secondly, it is said that if your urine is dark then you are dehydrated. That can not be considered to in bodybuilding or in any other sport because there are many factors that can change urine color to dark. The last myth you have to understand refers to caffeine. Many individuals belive that it dehydrates the body. Well, studies proved that it actually hydrates people that are used to caffeine and together with teas and sodas they can even be useful in hydration for some bodybuilders.

As mentioned above, drinking water should be done when you are thirsty. There is a chance to overdue it though and it has to be avoided. Let us keep it simple. Before a workout be sure you are hydrated and drink a glass or two of water. Then, every 15 minutes you spend at the gym should translate in another glass of water, especially if you are sweating a lot. Do not neglect water in bodybuilding, fitness or any other sport. It can help out!

Great Body - Eugen Sandow

Now I am sure that most bodybuilders today have no ideea who Eugen Sandow was and that is why I decided to pick him as today's Great Body of the Day. Eugen Sandow was born Friederich Wilhelm Mueller on April 2 1867. He died on the 14th of October 1925 but he is the individual that people refer to as the "Father of Modern Bodybuilding". We basically have to thank this guy as much as we have to thank Weider or Arnold for promoting this sport.

Sandow loved Greek and Roman statues of gladiators together with other statues of heroes. He loved them so much that he considered the physique depicted in them to be how a man should look like. By the tender age of 19 he had already reached part of his goals and was performing stunts in different side shows. People din not care about how much he lifted, they were amazed of how he looked. That is when a famous promoter, Florenz Ziegfeld, became his manager and had him perform shows in which Sandow showed off his body. They were called "muscle display performances". This can be considered the "father" of bodybuilding shows and competitions as later on in time a competition was also organized, the first ever bodybuilding competition. Eugen Sandow even built the first ever line of equipment and was among the first people in history to market a product by using as brand his own name.

Eugen Sandow did a lot for this sport and so few people know about him that I just had to let at least some know about him.

Use a Balanced Fat Burning Diet for Abs

By now you have to know that you can not get those sexy abs you are looking for this summer by doing hundreds of crunches and that you have to work hard in the kitchen as well. A bodybuilding diet is a must have if training and wanting to loose weight together with getting sexy, hot abs. If you do not burn that extra fat you have there over your muscles there is no way you can achieve your goal.

Here is another news flash if you need it! Everybody out there has great abs. Human anatomy can prove this. You have great abs there but they are covered with a layer of fat and water. The only thing you need to get to see your abs is reducing the body fat covering it and making it low enough for the muscles to show. In most cases this will happen when body fat falls below 10% for men and 13% for women. If you want those abs to show even better you need to lower it even more to get a defined aspect until around 6% for men and 11% for women. Yes, for women it is a lot easier but men usually throw more motivation behind it. We all love a woman with a flat stomach, those defined "six packs" are not really necessary. For a man we must agree that he looks better if the abs look better.

The basics for a fat burning diet stands in 40% proteins, 40% carbs and 20% good fats. This means that fruits and dairy products need to be eliminates because they have simple carbs that can slow down fat loss. Talking about carbs now you have to know that they must come from complex slow releasing ingredients like brown rice, sweat potatoes, oatmeal in a combination with sources full of fibres like broccoli (yes I know most people hate broccoli I do too) or green beans. Your proteins must come from lean red meat, tuna, chicken or turkey. The main sources of fat should be extra virgin olive oil or flax seed oil. There is no great philosophy to have a good balanced fat burning diet for abs. You just have to be motivated and stick in there!

Quadriceps Training

Have you ever seen great bodies that simply look very good from the waste up but simply do not have legs that are as big as their upper body? I'm sure you did and these "chicken legs" are definitely not looking good from a symmetry standpoint. So many individuals think that if you start running, go for hikes or ride a bicycle they will get big and strong legs. Well, they are simply making a huge bodybuilding mistake.

The quadriceps are the muscles located right at the front of the leg. They are very important as they extend it at the knee and help to flex the hip. Four big muscles make up the quadriceps and they are all important for the body and how it looks. For a professional bodybuilder, having a perfect upper body and bad legs is just competition suicide.

Most bodybuilders use the same exercises to train the quadriceps. The Free Bar Squat is the one that actually helps out muscle growth in this area the most and it also stimulates the upper body too because in order to perform the lift part of the exercise you have to use upper body muscles as well. When keeping the bar squat on your back the upper body muscles have to hold a static contraction in order to just keep it in place. Such stress you get from this free bar squat actually stimulates hormone secretion in the biggest way possible during training. A hard squat session will not only prove to be the best exercise for your quadriceps but can also help out the entire body. Do not neglect it and always have a partner ready to help out as injuries tend to appear the most in this exercise. The reason behind it is that novice bodybuilders tend to do it wrong and a partner can point that out and help you out if something bad is about to happen.

Replacing Leg Curls

For a bodybuilder the leg curl motion is one that can not be neglected. The need of a leg curl machine is quite big if you want to have good legs. There is also a variation that I found to be very interesting. Instead of doing a leg curl on a regular leg curl machine try this approach! Use a flat bench and position yourself on it facedown. Make sure your knees are above the bottom ledge and ask a friend to help you out next. Take a dumbell and ask your partner to position it on the bottom side of the top plates, resting just on your feet. Now you can do a leg curl by holding your legs together and paying attention that the weight does not fall. The exercise will not feel like a regular leg curl but will help you out in your workout once in a while. Your calves are also involved in the movement adding more strength at the end of the session! Try it out! It is quite a nice variation!

Train your clients at home

This post here goes to all the bodybuilding and fitness trainers that are struggling to make a living and there are so many out there that this entire situation is quite sad. People, you need to wake up, the real money making opportunity in trining individuals is training them at home and not at a GYM. People will pay you at least $50-$60 per hour to train them in the comfort of their homes and you are making a lot less when employed by a GYM. I am basically too lazy to go to everybody's home and train them but I did this at some point in my life too. The money is too good to deny. Now I am not training people at home anymore because my business is going too well and I have the freedom of having a lot of free time. This is why I started this blog, to help out at least like this if I am not training people anymore or even training myself that much to be honest. I am now weighing in at 300 pounds and it is not pure muscle belive me.

Leaving that aside let us get back to the subject at hand. You need to start training people at home if you are a trainer that really wants to gain money. The problem is that all you learnt is directly linked to training people in the surroundings of a GYM. I know it is so because I probably took similar classes as you did to get my license. When you train people at home the advanced techniques you learnt will do you no good and you will start to work on learning again.

Luckily I found something that helped out a friend of mine a lot. He was fired from a GYM and I was browsing the Internet to try and find him a job. He is a very good trainer and quite motivational. In return I found a webpage that was basically selling a package dealing with training clients at home. I recommended it to him, he was desperate and bought it and now he is gaining around $300 per day by training people in the comfort of their homes. That is interesting and when I found out yesterday that it helped him out like that I just had to share this site.

What I liked is what you get: a special ebook telling you what to do, a DVD filled with exercises you can do, another DVD with exercises using portable equipment, 2 DVDs of example training sessions with some clients, a CD Rom with all the legal documentation you need, a copy of another book that tells you how to sell yourself as a personal trainer, a list of sites that offer training insurance, another ebook that tells you how to mold to every type of client you might have, a 10% discount at PerformBetter.com, an exercise package that shows the basic exercises everybody can do at home with illustrations and a whole lot more. This is basically a package that is worth somewhere around $900-$1100 if you buy everything individually. You can get it here for $297 with a 60 days money back guarantee and this is a huge sale and an opportuinty for success that most not be missed by any trainer out there. Hope this proves to be usefull and make you enough money to live the healthy life you want for yourself and your family.

Workout Routines for Women

Most women are always looking for a killer body and want to be more physically appealing. Out of them only few succeed because they do not realize that the real key to it all is just finding a regime that is effective and sticking with it. It does not matter if it is swimming, fitness, jogging, biking, there are many ways to suceed in this task.

The goal is always the same. It does not matter what method is used. The problem with it all is that the workout that works best for a woman is not the same one that works for a man. There is a need to adopt a different approach. Bodybuilding and weights training is usually not considered by most women. They don't even think about this although this is a wrong approach. Women always want toned legs and a flat abdomen. Only after that they think about biceps, triceps and other muscles. The approach is of course suitable but free weight training must not be ignored. In fact, such training is essential in building a great body.

Women have to build muscles in order to have a good body and you have to realize that week arms make you look unbalanced and there is no symetry there so it does not look good basically. Any trainer out there will tell you that the best workout is one that offers diversity and you need to look at the whole body and not just your belly or butt.

Be sure to include weight training exercises in your routine as they are as important as your cardio regime. If you are not sure on how to do this you can find the information online on hundreds of websites so there is no excuse in being lazy.

Bodybuilder mentality

I started thinking today as I went to the gym about how bodybuilders think about themselves. I am sure you saw a lot of examples of great bodies that had louzy attitudes. The fact is simple, if you have a good body and you can give lessons to others that's what you should do not boast about your physique. Bodybuilding is not about convincing yourself and others how good you are and this attitude is often the difference between a champion and just a great body with no prospects nor friends. There are many professional bodybuilders out there that have some success but don't even have a training partner because of their mentality. Bodybuilding should be a lifestyle as so many people say. You practice this sport to become a mature and better person and get healthy not just to look good. If bodybuilding becomes an obsession of making you the best possible then it is no longer a lifestyle and obsessions are definitely not good.

Bodybuilding Helps You Loose Weight

Right before I go to sleep there is one thing I want to point out here! Bodybuilding is a great way to loose weight even if you might not realize it! In such a resistance/bodybuilding workout you do burn more calories than you think and if hit with a simple and proper diet and good sleep you WILL be loosing weight in no time!

Common Mistakes in Bodybuilding

There are a lot of mistakes that one can do when working out and the list is quite big and can take months if not years until a bodybuilder can achieve the proper discipline to practice this sport. It is always a good thing to know what the most common mistakes are and should be a reality in training for novices and professionals.

First of all there is a need to talk about cardio workout. Most of us know that you can not loose waith and get a great waist without cardio. The problem is that a lof of people overdo it and this has a bad effect just as with any excess in one's life. The best way to handle this situation is analyzing your workout. If you are lean but do not look lean and cardio is not doing anything you should cut all cardio workout to 50% of what you normally do for some time. If results appear then this is your problem. A lot of people fail to understand this.

Carbs are vital to your workout. Starting a diet with small quantities of carbs can lower your metabolism because this is how the body reacts to the lack of carbohydrates. If you take on this type of a diet you have to realize that carbs are important and you should take in some shakes with high carbs as they are the ones that give you energy. If you do not have energy for your heavy workout the body can only suffer!

Many individuals (when trying to loose weight) will use lighter weights. In order to achieve your goal you have to maintain the same standard of training and using lighter weights will not help you loose pounds. Keep on training hard and work on your diet and supplements rather than lowering your workout!

Summer snacks

Summer is just right down the alley and everyone will be looking for food that does not add up too much. Summer diets start just about know and everyone is looking forward to looking his/her best when at the beach. Anyone involved in bodybuilding or fitness is in this situation. The problems also appear because there are a lot of outdoor barbecues and parties that do not serve that good of meals for one's body! If you want to approach the situation with health in mind maybe you would want to try out changing some snacks.

Why not start out with a fish burger instead of the regular burger served at barbecues? By doing this you immediately bring down saturated fat. Few people think about making a fish burger but bodybuilders will tell you that it is quite a treat and offers a different taste and is also nutritionally high. You can also try out barbecue beans, a Banana Colada Smoothie or some Peanut Butter Popcorn with a twist.

What to do when hangover is unavoidable?

Ok so hangovers are avoidable because you can always not drink but if you have to you need to minimize the damage. The previous post told you about the negatives of consuming alchool when mixed with bodybuilding. We need to be honest! Most of the visitors that will get to this site will be young and I am young and this means we all enjoy a drink or two once in a while. We do go to parties thinking about getting as much alcohool in as possible although we never admit this. With this in mind let us try and think about what to do when such a thing is sure to happen.

First of all think about dehidration. At least 2 litres of water need to wait for you by your bed for when you get back home. This simple task of leaving water there and driking it when you get home will aid your muscle a great deal by hydrating them and will prevent hangover. If you end up with a girl in the room (or man depending on your sex) be sure to make her go away as fast as possible because you will never get your buddies off your shoulders after this incident. This does not mean being rude, just speed up the process. Also, when getting himbe sure to drink a protein shake before going to bed. You can even mix it with the water that was waiting for you (that is if you can still stand). The last thing that needs to be done is having a big healthy breakfast rich in calcium, protein, iron and phosphorus.

The are just hints to do when you get to drink alcohool but the best thing would be to avoid it as much as possible, especially if you want to practice bodybuilding at a professional level!

Alcohol and Bodybuilding

If you are young there is a big chance at some points in time (for some more than others) a party will pop up. What are parties all about? Alcohool! That sweet liquid that gives you imense powers and helps everybody loosen up together with making couple hooking up a lot easier. The only question that comes up in this blog entry here is: does alcohool and bodybuilding mix? If you want an answer to this question you can only find one: NO! I am a drinker, I love getting heavily under the influence at parties but then again I am not into professional bodybuilding. A bodybuilder works hard to gain muscle and alochool does not mix well with this.

There are three main reasons why alcohol is not good for a bodybuilder. First of all it is made out of empty calories. It has no nutrients, just 7 calories per gram. If you per chance drink one shot of vodka you will take in around 100 calories. With teens like me one shot of vodka is usually just a beginning. Just try to think about how many calories you put in your body when you get that lovely dizzy feeling most people look for. It also slows down our metabolism so this also has to be considered.

The second thing that needs to be mentioned is that muscle growth is affected by drinking alcohool. The biggest effect is that protein synthesis is lowered by around 20% and the morning hangover also lowers training intensity. There are many negative body mass growth influences but these are the two that are the most important and easy to understand.

The last thing that should be mentioned is that alcohool will decrease testosterone and increase estrogen. This is also bad! Alcohool and bodybuilding do not mix!

The Importance of Sleep

Few people adequately understand the importance of sleep. A bodybuilder or an athlete in general must know that sleep is quite crucial in his workout. The most important two reasons why this is a fact are that the body will synthesise protein better when resting and the human mind will recharge for the following training session. Growth hormone and testosterone are also manufactured faster when the body is sleeping. The only real problem is that a bodybuilder really needs to sleep more than 8 hours each day and this means that during this time he will not be eating. An immediate effect of this is a decay in muscle because of the natural need our bodies have to consume in order to regain maximum power. Before going to bed every lifter, bodybuilder or fitness practitioner needs to eat high protein meals right before going to sleep.

One Gram of Protein per pound

Today's athletes and mostly bodybuilders are aware of the importance of protein in their raily diets. This is a very good thing to notice as I can see many individuals that start going to the gym who are interested in nutrition facts. One of the real problems that appear is closely linked to protein as few people realize the correct amount a body really needs. Some will continue to state that 70-80 grams of protein per day is enough. It has been proven to be wrong. A bodybuilder will put more stress on his muscles than a regular athlete and this causes an immediate need for extra nutrients. Eating food that is rich in protein like eggs, milk, red meat and chicken is the second most important thing in bodybuilding training after the workout itself. A good starting point for every begginer and some more experienced bodybuilders is to apply a simple formula of 1 gram of protein for 1 pound of bodyweight (although there is a need for even more with pros taking even double the amount in their organisms). For instance, if you weigh 100 Kg. you should have 220 grams of protein in your daily diet. For an average bodybuilder the grams of protein needed rise to 375.

Learning the Mandatory Budybuilding poses

There are a lot of individuals that ask around the gym how to do the mandatory bodybuilding poses. Few will actually explain them properly so I thought about finding a video online that can show everything. Well I did and this is it! Enjoy and learn your first steps in professional bodybuilding!

Jay Cutler is Mr. Olympia

I'm sure you allo know by now but it is important to mention again: Ronnie Coleman's Mr Olympia throne was taken by Jay Cutler. After dominating the bodybuilding industry for 8 years in a row Ronnie had to settle for second best. Jay Cutler is Mr Olympia. As you could of expected it was a pretty close competition and nobody could have predicted it or not. Last year showed us an impressive Jay Cutler but he wasn't number 1 material then. He now is (or is Ronnie dropping?) A lot of questions have risen and people are already speculating on the outcome of Mr Olympia 2007. It will be whole year until that. Meanwhile Jay Cutler will enjoy his reign. The official standings of Mr Olympia 2006 are:

1. Jay Cutler

2. Ronnie Coleman

3. Victor Martinez

4. Dexter Jackson

5. Melvin Anthony

6. Gustavo Badell

7. Toney Freeman

8. Markus Ruhl

9. Dennis James

10. Günter Schlierkamp

11. Vince Taylor

12. Branch Warren

13. Johnnie O. Jackson

14. Dareem Charles

15. Troy Alves

I should mention the other winners as well:

- Mrs. Olympia -> Iris Kylie

- Figure Olympia -> Jenny Linn

- Fitness Olympia -> Adela Garcia

We wish them all the best and the runner ups need to keep on fighting.

Ronnie Coleman is in danger

Ronnie Coleman is in danger but not of loosing his Mr. Olympia rain. He is in danger of loosing the number one spot in a unofficial Best Biceps ranking. The one that is about to beat him is young Daryl Gee. Just as Ronnie Coleman he has massive and cut biceps from one edge to the other. The only real difference is that Daryl's are bigger and that is very important in bodybuilding as we all know. I think Daryl will go a long way with the help of these biceps. All around he looks pretty good but he still has a lot of work before challenging the top bodybuilders in the game. Gee is already getting noticed and specialists are taking a closer look at him every day.

Rachel McLish is 48 years old

The lovely Rachel McLish has just got to the age of 48. If this scares most women today for her it's nothing as she still looks as well as 26 years ago. That's when she won Miss Olympia, in the first year if its existance. As you can see from the picture the standards of female bodybuilding were definitely different. This is the main cause, at least from my point of view why this side of bodybuilding is constantly dropping in fans. It is a shame that women forget that they are women and it is an even bigger shame that influent people in this sport encourage this attitude. Most men today say that they really like a woman with a hot body but there is simply too much muscle on today's bodybuilding models. It's one thing to look at Trish Stratus for instance and another one to look at a woman that looks exactly as a man from the back. Leaving that aside, Happy Birthday Rachel and may your life be as beautiful as it was until now.

Weight Lifting helps women to counter Middle Age Spread

A recent study has been conducted at The University of Pennsylvania's Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics. It concluded that women that lift weights two times per week have a lower chance to get the Middle Age Spread that most women are afraid of. Kathryn H. Schmitz, one of the people responsabile with the study declared:

"This study shows that strength training can prevent increases in body fat percentage and attenuate increases in the fat depot most closely associated with heart disease. While an annual weight gain of one to two pounds doesn't sound like much, over 10 to 20 years the gain is significant."