Womens Bodybuilding Blog

I’ve been getting a lot of this blogs post ideas by going to forums and seeing the questions people are asking. It helps me get out of my bodybuilding world and into the world where people are a little less experienced at this. One of the questions I heard was about eating protein when you have a day off at the gym. This answer is simple for me, but I thought that maybe my readers don’t understand fully.

You have to take the same amount of protein on your on days as your off days. There’s no reason to change them at all. When you rip muscle fiber it takes roughly 48hours for that tissue to fully repair and that means you’re going to constantly need protein to meet that repair.

If you’re taking a day off, than you’re still going to be in that 48 hour range, so you need it.

But there’s also another side of the coin. Protein also maintains lean body mass. If you cut back on your protein, you run the risk of losing the muscle tissue you’ve already gained. That’s obviously something that you don’t want to do.

The answer is simple – eat the same amount of protein everyday because it is required for an incremental process over time, rather than some instant fix on the day you workout.

This is a place that all of you have been at or will eventually get to. The plateau is probably one of the most frustrating places to be because no matter how hard you try, you don’t seem to go forward. It maybe something that happens with your body weight or your lifting weight. It’s a lack of progression plain and simple, but there are ways to get around it.

Identify What Is Holding You Up

Typically there is a muscle holding you up. If you plateau with your bench press, often it is some little part of the movement that is getting you and working it out can really help. I don’t recall the exercise, but I believe it’s called the 4 box bench press. It’s where you have a box on your chest and you bench press with it like that. You can’t bring the bar all the way down, so you only end up working a tiny portion of your tricep to make it strong.

Shake Things Up

Plateauing can happen because your body gets too good at compensating for muscles. You always have to shake things up because your body adapts to make things tolerable and that will leave you plateauing.

If you’re having problem with your barbell bench press, start doing it at an incline or using dumbbells. Throw your body a curve ball, so it has to adapt toward that. After a few weeks of that, go back to the old exercise.

I hope these ideas help you blow through your plateau because there is absolutely no reason for you to have to suffer through these problems.

I don’t think most people really get how long a workout should be. I think it can be quite misleading because you see people on television talking about it and they’re in the gym for a few hours each day. I see people at the gym that are there when I start and are still there after I leave. It is sort of sad. I don’t think people really get it, so I thought it was about time that I tell my readers how it should work.

I’m a fan of having shorter workouts. I’m not saying so short that you don’t get anything done, but short enough. The problem is that our body doesn’t have an infinite amount of resources to dedicate to weight lifting. As soon as you life that first weight, hormones start decreasing and nutrients start being used.

The fact is that the first 30 minutes will be more effective than the next 30 minutes. The reason is that the next 30 minutes is you lifting weights without any nutrients or hormones (like testosterone) to give you any results. You’re just wasting time at that point.

My ideal workout time is under 30 minutes. If you’re someone that has been working out for an hour, you might find it hard to fit into that time frame, but you need to do that. Think of it this way, you’re wasting time after the 30 minute mark. You’re in the gym, your lifting weights, but you’re not going to get any results, so what is the point? Make it fit the 30 minute time line.

I was on a forum recently and I was reading a topic on the amount of dietary fat needed in a diet for bulking up. Basically this guy held some very horrible misconceptions and what was worse is that he had friends that were into bodybuilding that held very similar misconceptions.

I’ll point out that you can be successful and get results going down the wrong path. The wrong path takes longer, is less healthy and completely inefficient, but it will produce results – so don’t always trust someone that has achieved success because it could of took them a long time.

Basically this guy was afraid of putting on a ton of fat while he was putting on muscle and he was eating around 10% fat in his diet. He wanted to know how much he should be eating. Just to note, this guy obviously wasn’t looking for an answer, but something to back up what he wanted. People tend to do that. They ask a question, not for an answer, but to validate their thinking. This person obviously wanted to cut their fat intake to as low as possible. That is wrong…

Dietary Fat isn’t Body Fat

This is the first misconception, the fat you eat doesn’t equal the fat on your body. It doesn’t work that way. If you’re eating EFAs, you’ll actually boost your metabolism and end up burning more calories.

Fat Doesn’t Clogs Your Arteries

Saturated fat and high cholesterol is what clogs up your arteries. EFAs actually breakdown these clogs and makes your body a well oiled machine.

Fat Helps Produce Hormones

If you’re not getting enough fat intake, you won’t be able to properly produce hormones. The most precious hormone in this case would be testosterone.

LOW FAT = HAIR FALL OUT

The fat you eat, produces the hair you grow. If you’re not getting enough fat, than your hair will start to fall out. Not the most encouraging thing.

A very common problem that all of us run into from time to time is getting sick. This will usually interfere with our training schedule and a lot of people don’t want to lose any of their results. Workout when sick? Well, I have a few opinions on this and the answer really depends on the type of person you are. I guess the question you should be asking yourself is what you do while you’re sick outside the gym.

I learned from my dad how to deal with colds – stay in bed. A lot of people can’t do that. They just need to be doing things or they’ll go nuts. I understand it. For me, I’m in bed for one day and I’m completely cured. I do nothing, but I get a good rest and my body is cured.

For the rest of you, it depends on what you do with your time. If you’re going to go to your stressed out job, doing a lot of stuff – regardless of the fact that you’re sick, the cold will drag on.

Here’s the deal…

If you’re going to sleep in bed all day, than definitely skip the gym. It’ll be a day (or two at the most) and you’ll be back at the gym.

Working out at the gym whenever you’re sick prolongs it. You’re basically diverting resources that fight the cold to the workout. If you’re going to have an active lifestyle regardless of the cold, than you might as well workout because you’re likely to be sick for a week.

You should know which path to take.

I know there are a lot of women out there that would like to have anonymous bodybuilding because it is still pretty taboo for a woman to be putting on muscle. It just seems like society hasn’t got to that point yet and it is still frowned upon. It is sort of sad, but it is the truth.

I know many of you are looking for things that you can do from home that wouldn’t require you to actually go out in public and do this. It probably makes things easier if you have children to look after and can’t get the time away to just workout for an hour.

There are some bodyweight exercises that you can do that work pretty well, the problem is that they’re not good enough. You need some sort of resistance because you’re going to improve pretty fast and your bodyweight won’t be good enough. If you can get yourself a pull up bar, you can achieve a lot. Also a resistance band for training would help too, since weights tend to be pretty expensive.

As for bodyweight exercises, I suggest the typical push ups, which everyone should know how to do. If you’re new, you might not have that upper body strength and need to do them with your knees on the ground. That’s fine, but always remember to improve and get your knees off the ground.

Another great one is a burpees. It’s a full body exercise which starts from the standing position and ends up into a push up.

There are many others you can do and I highly suggest that you Google bodyweight exercises. You can find a lot of anonymous bodybuilding methods that don’t require you to be under the scrutiny of society.

I hope that helps and good luck.

I wanted to talk to you about some of the smart things that you should be doing that are sort of small and off the scale of most bodybuilders. There is much more to the process than eating properly and lifting. I wish it was that simple, but it is not.

Get A Full 9 Hours

In today’s society, this isn’t an easy task. With work and kids, most of us are pushed to our limits and it is rough on us. Most of your bodies repairs will occur while you sleep, so that is the most obvious reason why you need a full 9 hours. The second and least obvious reason is stress. When you start lacking sleep, your body doesn’t produce enough stress reducing hormones. The reason stress is so bad is that it’s going to lead to cheating and even quiting when things get tough. Stress has away of doing that. We’ll eventually get to a point where we can’t take it anymore.

Always get your sleep.

Vitamins

Vitamins play an essential role and you might not be getting enough through your diet. I wish our diets were perfect, but to get the wide variety of vitamins needed, we have to have a diet that is quite diverse.

Specific vitamins will help your body metabolize fat, become better at producing energy and increase your metabolism.

High Carbs Before Workout

I’m sure you’ve been to the gym where you were surprised at how much energy and strength you had. We have those days where we just seem to be doing awesome. We have those other days where we can’t even lift as much as a week ago.

The key is energy and carbs are your energy. By having a high carbs meal a few hours before you go to the gym, you’ll increase your chances of having these amazing days where you’re just full of energy and strength.

I’m going to talk to you about cutting the fat efficiently so you can start getting ripped. Bodybuilding is a cyclical process that involves bulking and cutting. When we see bodybuilders at competitions, they’re pretty much at the lowest body fat percentage they’ll ever be at. It’s not healthy, nor is it good for building muscle at that body fat percentage. When your body fat percentage is up, you are more able to put on muscle at a much faster pace. Hence is why the bulk cycle was created.

Cutting is the process of taking off fat while leaving as much muscle as possible. There is a few reason why a person would want to do this. The first is that you’ve been bulking for a while and you need to get rid of some of the fat. The other reason is that you have a competition coming up, so you need to cut to the optimal body fat percentage by the time you’re set to compete.

I’ve got this down to a practical science, so it’s pretty easy as long as you have everything else going fine. You don’t have to change your routine at the gym at all. You change your diet nothing else. If you need to, you can add in a little HIIT, but changing your diet is sufficient.

You’ll want to eat 500 calories less below your maintenance everyday. This works out to roughly 3500 calories, which equals about 1lb of fat. To make sure the fat on your body is targeted, rather than your muscle you have to have a good breakdown on food. I typically eat 50% protein, 30% carbs and 20% fat. That gives me a good balance and allows my body to target mainly fat to make up the difference in lost calories.

I’m often asked by people how they can stay motivated or how they can be driven to succeed. And well, being motivated and driven is good, the problem is that it never lasts. A lot of people don’t like hearing that. They’ve read “The Secret” and have a pile of self help books telling them that positive thinking is what they need to do. I’m sorry, it’s not going to help you.

Here’s the deal…

When you try something new or in a long process your emotions will go through a roller coaster. You’ll have highs that will make you feel like no one can stop you and lows where you don’t want to do anything. This roller coaster has been experienced by me no matter what I do.

When you’re looking to get motivated or driven, you’re actually waiting for your emotions to get that way. That actually makes you dependent on them. This makes you more susceptible to the problems of the roller coaster. When you’re on the highs, you’ll be motivated and driven, but on those lows you’ll have nothing to get you out of bed.

Don’t play the roller coaster game

I don’t look to my emotions to get me going to do the things that make up bodybuilding. I know that if I choose that path I’ll be on a roller coaster. What I’ve learned is that habit is how you get successful. This is what will lead to consistent bodybuilding.

You have to train your mind and body to do bodybuilding regardless of how you feel. It’s sort of like brushing your teeth everyday. You do it regardless of your emotional state. It doesn’t matter if you lost your job or you got a promotion, you’re going to brush your teeth tonight. This is what we want to happen for bodybuilding.

The key to building a habit is repetitive behaviors over approximately 21 days. It has been proven that if you do something everyday for 21 days, it’ll turn into a habit. It might take a little longer for bodybuilding since you won’t be at the gym each day. The key is to take advantage of that momentum when you first start and remain consistent for a least a few months. After that point, it’s become a habit and you’ll do it regardless of how you feel.

I’m often asked this question. Cane you bodybuild fast? I have to say yes and no.

The fact is that your body can only product so much muscle at a time. There is just too many limitations, so you can only product so much of it. The reality of the situation is that people don’t have their body really running at peak muscle building performance, so there is definitely room to build faster.

My belief is that most people can improve the speed in which things happen, but there’s a limit to how fast you really can go.

To make things fast, you need to take advantage of all those little biological functions that you can. Use the momentum whatever to build muscle. That’s what it is all about. Taking advantage of everything your body offers you.

You need a full night of sleep, but you also need protein to build muscle while you sleep. The solution is cottage cheese. It’s high in fat and protein. The fat slows down digestion, so the protein will digest as you sleep all night.

You need to stress your muscles to stimulate growth. Don’t waste your time doing petty little exercises. Start doing the big ones. Deadlifts and squats will change the way your body builds muscles, for the better.

There are so many little things you can take advantage of that will help you achieve this. Can you bodybuild fast? Yes, if you turn yourself into a well running machine.