10 Weight Loss Breakfast Meals

When your alarm clock jangles, do you smack the snooze button until the final instant that you have to haul your sorry carcass out of bed, jump into your clothes, and race to work?

Bad idea. While you sleep, your blood sugar levels nosedive. If you don’t replenish them by breaking your fast (breakfast, pretty clever, huh?), chances are that the day’s demands will break you. You won’t have enough energy to even compete in the rat race, much less win it.

A good, nutritional breakfast is essential to the Hard-Body Plan. And it’s strategic. Because you burn food more efficiently in the morning, you’ll start the day with foods that are most quickly converted into energy: carbohydrates and proteins. If you consistently eat a Hard-Body breakfast of cereals, fruits, and fat-free milk instead of a Homer Simpson breakfast of doughnuts, bacon, and half-and-half, you’ll look less and less like the Pillsbury Doughboy and more like the stud muffin that nature intended you to be.

Remember, these breakfasts are for our 175-pound, 5-foot-10-inch reference man. You will need to adjust portions up or down a bit relative to your own weight and goals. Also if you can’t find some of these items in your area, feel free to make healthy substitutions. (more…)

Training, Weight Loss | 04.23.10 | No Comments

Building Huge Pecs

So you want to make your pectoral muscles so big that your shirt can’t hide them? Can’t blame you. Everybody loves to see a big, wide chest on a man. It’s a symbol of power and strength, and yeah, girls love it too.

There are a number of excellent exercises that help you in building huge pecs and give you the big-build look that you want. Do them with dedication and regularity and soon just a look at you will be enough to put people in awe of you. You can get started on building huge pecs after reading through this article. We have listed all the exercises you need to do for building huge pecs, so go ahead. (more…)

Training | 04.23.10 | No Comments

Tricep Training – Hitting All Three Heads

When training triceps, many bodybuilders forget one of the most important considerations for this muscle group: namely, all three heads must be worked.

My favorite approach is to use a different exercise for each head, hitting it with lots of weight, few sets and high intensity. This allows me to train my triceps twice a week following chest and shoulders. Keep in mind that my triceps have already been warmed up during those two previous sessions. A common mistake among bodybuilders is to spend an inordinate amount of time on triceps; in addition, they do not work all three heads adequately. I feel that anything more than 15 to 20 sets is overtraining. (more…)

Training | 04.23.10 | No Comments

4 Day Advanced Split Training Workout

The choices can seem endless when it comes to splitting up your workouts. Although no perfect split routine exists, an optimum split can be selected based upon factors like your time availability, genetics, exercise experience, and fitness goals. Therefore, how you split your routine boils down to preference as much as it does science. Some people get great results on a full-body training routine and others on a four-day split.

Upper/Lower Body Split
Frequency: four days per week
Workout time: approximately 45 minutes
Rest: 60-90 seconds between sets, 2-3 minutes between exercises
Training tempo: 2 counts for the concentric action, 3 counts for the eccentric action Upper Body (Chest, Back and Shoulders)

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Training | 04.23.10 | No Comments

Massive Calves In Six Weeks

How much can you calf raise? Has anyone ever asked you that? I didn’t think so. It’s not the usual bodybuilding question. People might ask, “How much can you bench?” or “How big are your arms?” or, if they know you and want to bust your chops, “How small are your arms?” The fact is, the major attention-grabbing muscle groups in and out of the sport of bodybuilding tend to be chest, arms and abs. Not that many people are impressed with or even notice great calves. It’s too bad. Calves should be noticed.

A good pair of calves, even if they aren’t the heart of the physique, certainly lend a great deal to it, whether they belong to a competitive bodybuilder or a serious hardcore bodybuilder who competes against his or her own limits. The unique potential for size and flare of the muscle group, with its vastly different appearance from all angles, can set off an otherwise average physique and make it look really great. It can also help make a bodybuilder a champion. (more…)

Training | 04.23.10 | No Comments

Building a Massive Chest

A powerful chest always gets respect. The chest is also one of the first noticed attributes about a bodybuilder. So, lets try to make yours as powerful and respected as possible. It’s actually one of the easier muscles to work as long as you do the basics.

The basic chest exercises are the flat bench press, incline press, flat bench fly, incline bench fly and dips.

The flat bench press is the one chest exercise everyone knows about, primarily because it works so well. It is used to build mass.

The incline press works the most neglected area of many peoples’ chest, the upper chest. Just be careful what angle your bench is set at. The higher the angle of the bench the more you will use your shoulders. Since the purpose is to work your chest, I don’t recommend an angle greater than 30 degrees for upper chest development. (more…)

Training | 04.23.10 | No Comments

German Volume Training

You should give the “German Volume Training” technique a try if you are at a plateau in your training or would just like to attempt something different. The technique is easy to follow – you do only one compound exercise per body part. Some good exercises include:

Day One
Chest	Barbell or dumbbell bench press 10×10 Chin-ups 10×10 Dumbbell pullovers 3×10
Back	Barbell rows or cable rows 3×10
Day Two
Abdominals	Leg lifts 3×15 Reverse crunches 3×15 Side crunch 3×15 Double crunch 3×15 Crunch 3×15 Hyperextensions 3×15
Day Three
Legs	Squats or leg press 10×10 Deadlifts 10×10 Seated calf raises 3×15 Standing calf raises 3×15
Day Four
Abdominals	Same as Day Two
Day Five
Arms and Shoulders	Parallel dip bars 10×10 Preacher curls 10×10 Arnold presses 3×10 Side bench raises 3×10

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Training | 04.23.10 | No Comments

Complete Guide to Squatting

Frank Lloyd Wright is famous for the proclamation that form follows function. He was referring to architecture, but his words ring as true fur the human body. Your form in many exercises will determine the precise training effect you receive, and therefore the functional capacity and appearance of the affected muscles. The same holds true for squatting.

How you squat (reps, sets, speed, frequency, load, technique) will affect your legs in different but predictable ways. That the guesswork has been taken out of squatting technique isn’t generally known, considering the incredible array of squatting styles and beliefs that persist around the world of iron. Even many orthopedic specialists continue to insist that squatting is bad for your knees, back, hips or whatever. Their arguments are often very convincing, given the growing number of patients they see with bad knees from exercising improperly. (more…)

Training | 04.23.10 | No Comments

Building Massive Lats

Lat training is no different from the training of any other body part. There are dozens of different exercises and techniques that will widen your lats. Almost every lat routine out there tells you to perform bent over rows, dumbbell rows, pull downs, chins, “T” bar rows, and seated cable rows. These are the basic lat exercises that you will need to use to develop your massive lats. The movements are not the problem, it’s the technique used, or in this case not used, and that presents the problem for most trainers.

For many great bodybuilders, proper feel and technique in performing lat exercises comes later on in their training. Unfortunately, for most of us it is much later. Although thickness is obtained, the width and flair of the lats lag behind. The problem is due to not employing the correct technique in performing the various movements used to widen the lats. The technique is not really natural in nature and requires understanding, and a great deal of practice to master. The biceps come into play heavily while performing any movements for the back, especially the lats. You can’t work the lats without the biceps becoming involved to a very large degree. The secret is to limit the involvement of the biceps as much as possible. Most beginners use almost only bicep

strength in performing lat exercises and this limits the results they can expect to receive. The biceps, forearms, and grip must be secondary muscle actions while performing lat movements… not foremost.

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Training | 04.23.10 | No Comments

Build Mass With A Full Body Workout

Ask yourself this: Is training all your bodyparts over a 4-7-clay period the only way to pack on quality mass? Truth is, many people who use a training split that requires daily trips to the gym aren’t satisfied with the results. Furthermore, heading off to the gym each day often places a greater demand on your time than a lot of us working stiffs can’t afford. If you’re looking for a new approach to get the most out of your time and effort in the gym, the full-body blast may be the ticket.

The idea of working your whole body in one training session has received a bum rap. Most people envision a lightweight circuit workout designed to develop (or build) muscle for general fitness. The full-body routine I propose, however, saves time in the gym, requires maximal muscle contraction by employing heavy weights, allows for full recovery so you can grow and train at a high intensity, and prevents muscle loss by avoiding the overtraining trap. In fact, you can expect big gains when you perform this program to the letter. (more…)

Training | 04.23.10 | No Comments