Try drinking green tea. This can inhibit the enzyme that inhibits nor-epinephrine which mean that you should experience raised levels of this muscle building metabolic hormone which can also aid in weight loss. It is also full of anti-oxidants and can help significantly in terms of post workout recovery and also general health.

Take on board healthy fats. These are critical to the safe functioning of many part sof the body such as the heart, brain, energy production and hormone regulation. Oily fish, natural peanut butter, avocado and oily dressings are all excellent sources of this.

Ingest casein protein. This type of protein takes a greater length of time to digest so therefore it creates an ongoing release of protein. This is great news if you consume it just before sleeping because your body can then make use of it in order to build muscle up whilst you sleep.

Consume 20 grams or more of whey protein immediately upon rising. Immediately on waking up drink a protein shake. This will put a stop to the catabolic state of your body that you may have been in during your sleep and give you a good start on hitting your protein target for the day.

On body parts you find difficult to grow try using dropsets. This is a severely intense technique that can trigger muscle growth even in very hard to grow muscles. Simply do your set as normal and when you have squeezed out your last rep reduce the weight by 10 percent and do more reps, then reduce the weight once more. Continue repeating this process as many times as you can bear but the next day you are likely to experience significant muscle soreness and a tremendous burn at the time.

Drink water. Don’t underestimate the beneficial effects of remaining well hydrated throughout the day. water is critical for many reactions in the body especially muscle building ones.

Continue to learn and educate yourself. There are a great deal of different methods to stimulating muscle growth. try different things and fidn out what works best for your body and leave the rest.

So, by applying some of the above weight gain tips you should be able to build muscle mass even faster than before. Good luck.

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So precisely what is this well kept secret? A new miracle pill or something?

No definitly not. It has been ignored by many a weightrainer even though it has been known about for a long time.

Exactly what is cortisol?

Cortisol is a hormone released by the body steadily throughout the day and is produced in response to stress such as weight lifting. Cortisol levels decrease gradually throughout the day from their highest point in the morning.

What is its role exactly?

Well it enhances your short term memory, aids in regulation of blood sugar levels and helps detox the liver. However it can raise blood pressure and decrease bone density if your cortisol levels get too high, however this would be unusual. However critically it does diminish muscle because it aids in the body using muscle for energy rather than fat. This is why your workouts should not be more than one hour in duration. They will actually be reducing their progress and not increasing it after this time!

Here are a few guidelines to ensure that you are not wasting your time trying to build muscle up:

1) limit your cardio workouts, too much cardio causes the body to release cortisol which as explained is not what we need.

2) Try to not drink too much caffeine as this can also cause corisol levels to rise.

3) Keep your workouts down to one hour in the gym. Stay focussed wear headphones if you need to avoid talking to people.

4) Chill out an take it easy as cortisol is produced in response to stres.

5) Consume small frequent meals as infrequent meals make the body assume it is starving and will thus try and use muscle mass as a form of energy before it makes use of fat reserves by releasing more cortisol.

6) Sleep. This is when your muscle building hormones peak and your cortisol levels are highest so shot for 8 hours sleep.

With those building muscle tips in mind you should be able to give your workouts a great boost and help you to build muscle mass more efficiently.

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Whilst they are very effective your body needs to be constantly challenged in new and different ways if your goal is building lean muscle mass. For some reason theses following exercises are often overlooked which is surprising as they are real mass builders. For variety every now and then try and include them in to your routines. Variety provides new stimulus for your muscles to grow and prevents you from getting bored.

why not try using a jump rope and skipping, running on the beach or donkey raises for stimulating muscle growth. Running on the sand is very taxing and the bouncing motion in skipping will provide a real burn. because the muscles in your calves are normally made use of in activities that are largely endurance based such as walking they often grow more when stimulated using higher rep ranges. Donkey raises are when you place your toes on the edge of a 3-4 inch high block bend over to 90 degrees at the waist and rest your hands on a bard or bench at that height. A training partner or two then jump on to your back and you raise your body up and down by flexing your calf muscles. This exercise is more difficult than the usual machine calve exercises as you have to use stabiliser muscles to keep you steady whilst performing them.

When was the last time you hit your chest muscles with dips? The entire chest region and triceps can be hit by doing dips. Many older gyms have installed parallel bars for when this exercise was really popular in the past. Often a v shape is formed which provides scope for different grips. This enables you to train a specific part of your chest muscle or tricep muscle really well.

Try performing stiff legged deadlifts to nail your hamstrings. This exercise is really effective for the hamstrings yet used very little. Simply do deadlifts but you legs have to remain straight throughout meaning you bend at the waist and keep a straight back to lift the barbell or dumbbell. Maintain control of the weight by keeping it close to your legs whilst raising it and be warned that this exercise can leave your hamstrings very sore the next day.

Experiment with hammer curls for bicep growth! These are the same as regular dumb bell curls only you keep the palm of your hand facing in towards the body throughout. This directs much stress on to an inner bicep muscle giving it both thickness and size throughout and is named the brachialis muscle, the exercise also hits the main bicep muscle too.Stand with your back against the corner of a wall whilst curling to prevent yourself from swinging the bar.

Can you remember that last time you did lunges or indeed saw anyone else doing them? These are particularly good for giving your quads mass and shape. With a dumb bell in either hand take a good stride straight ahead and then bend both knees down to around 90 degress, step backwards returning to the start position and repeat on the other side. A great option if you do not want to squat.

For developing muscle definition and for a great cardio workout how about trying boxing padwork great for the upper body or uphill sprints for your legs or hitting an exercise bike for uphill intervals after a leg workout. That is a real killer of a mass builder!

with those group of classic exercises in your thoughts change your routine around a bit to build more lean muscle mass.

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1) Progressive Overload. Well really you should be doing this as a matter of course. You may either keep increasing the amount of weight you lift or try to do more reps. A combination of the two is fine also

2) Giant sets. This is when you do one exercise set and then follow this immediately with another exercise for the same muscle group. For example, squats followed immediately by leg extensions. You ought then rest for a minute or two and the repeat.

3) A superset is where you do one regular set immediately followed by an exercise for the opposing muscle group. This often produces a really great pump in those muscles. Such as, rows after bench presses, barbell curls after doing tricep extensions.

4) Reps that are forced. On a regular set, rather than failing on the last rep you basically get a partner to aid you in doing the final repetition and then allow them to continue to assist you in completing a further 2 or 3 repetitions. The aid ough to be very minimal and only just enough to allow you to finish the repetitions.

5) Negatives. This is when you complete a regular set to failure and then with the assistance of a buddy do another rep but subsequently you lower the weight with no help and under complete control on your own.

6) Drop sets. Do a regular set until failure, lower the amount on the bar and do a few more repetitions, decrease the amount of weight lifted once more and continue doing more reps and keep doing this. This is a very intense technique that creates a real burn and can help build muscle mass a great deal.

This is just a start on the different varieties of exercise that can be done to build muscles mass but be warned these can leave you feeling quite sore for the next few days so always ensure that you allow sufficient rest between exercises.

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Well often you will read that in order to build muscles fastest you should keep cardio workouts to a minimum. This is said because cardio workouts do two main things that work against muscle building, they are: 1) use up a lot of calories 2) increase the speed of your metabolism. Not getting enough calories on board is the problem that is added too by both of these two things. This leads to the question of how many calories should I therefore be eating?

Well, to maintain weight each day you must eat enough calories to cover the energy expenditures of your body as if it were at rest (this is known as the basal metabolic rate), then consume enough extra calories to cover the exercise that you will do. Each day you need to eat a further 500 calories if you wish to build muscle mass.

Can I work this number out?

Yes, there definitely is and one way of finding this total is by following the Katch-McArdle formula (BMR based on lean body weight). Here it is:

Men: BMR = 66 + (13.7 X wght in kg) + (5 X hght in cm) – (6.8 X age in years)

Women: BMR = 655 + (9.6 X wt in kg) + (1.8 X hght in cm) – (4.7 X age in years)

Once you have gotten this figure you should then multiply it by one of the following to allow for your daily activity levels:

Sedentary = BMR X 1.2 (desk job, little or no exercise)
Lightly active equals BMR X 1.375 (1-3 days/wk sports/light exercise )
Mod. active equals BMR X 1.55 (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/wk)
Very active equals BMR X 1.725 (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days/wk)
Extr. active equals BMR X 1.{9 (hard daily exercise/sports & physical job or 2X day training, i}.e marathon, competition etc).

So, if you are doing cardio and weights frequently then you should multiply this by at least 1.725. Your daily energy needs will be safely covered by this amount. This amount then needs to be altered to suit your goals. Assuming your goal is muscle building a further 500 calories each day need to be added to this amount.

So, for arguments sake lets say the number you figure out is 3000 calories then that would mean 6 meals everyday which each contain 500 calories. Each meal would then be made up of 62 grams of carbohydrate, 37 grams of protein and 11 grams of fat. This is calculated as so because one gram of fat equals 9 calories as opposed to one gram of protein or carbohydrate which is worth 4 grams.

Correct muscle building nutrition and working out your calorie needs like this is what is going to ensure you build muscles fastest, not any miracle new exercise!

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1) Eat frequently and often. If you are new to trying to bulk up and increase your muscles mass then you may find it difficult to eat enough food to build muscle. Eat between 5 and 7 meals and snacks each day and try to eat double your previous portions this will help overcome the problem.

2) Get heaps of rest. You need to rest muscles in order to let them grow. They don’t grow in the gym. So just as you should workout to build muscle mass you should also rest a lot to get big.

3) Restrict your training to less than 45 minutes a workout. A hormone that is detrimental to muscle building is released at around this time marker. Finishing your training after more than 30 to 45 minutes means that your body’s hormones are at the perfect level to support muscle building.

4) Maintain a logbook of your training. tracking your progress provides information on what workouts work well for you. You can then save them for future use-age. They also mean that you can have positive targets to aim at in each gym session this enhances your motivation and shows that you are making progress.

5) Use supplements to improve your overall diet. If you have cash spare use the following supplements to improve your development: essential fatty acids, whey protein, multivitamins and possibly creatine. If you cannot afford this then do not worry, you can still make excellent progress with decent muscle building nutrition.

6) Train with determination, focus and intensity. Keep intensity levels as high as possible in your training sessions by using techniques such as: drop sets, negatives, super sets and giant sets.

7) Don’t ever give in! You are in this for the long haul. Of course you want to build huge muscles mass as soon as you can but don’t forget the journey is half of the fun. So with those brutally effective building muscle tips in mind go out and get huge.

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The RAV works alongside the visual parts of our brain and directs our attention to certain things that our sub conscious has programmed into it, to be important to achieve our goals. The day to day actions, sights, sounds, preferences and so on that we get daily are all because of our sub conscious thought process that is continually operating.

Neuroscientists have now proven the vaildity of positive thinking and the law of attraction through various skeptic proof experiments. If you have never heard of the law of attraction before it is basically the asumption that ‘what you think about, you bring about’ or ‘thoughts become things’. Now previously this was considered a bit to new agey for most people however there is a growing acceptance of this approach worldwide.

Now it doesn’t really matter if you adopt the neuro-scientists point of view about it or the new age approach to this as it will still work. So by reprogramming the software of our mind like this it is then possible for us to identify an pick out more clearly the paththat we need to take to reach our goals faster. Some people will come across strange co-incidences that will help there progress which is not uncommon and often gives this ‘law of attraction’ an unearthly feel whereas the truth is those things were probably there waiting to be found all along!

So how exactly is a bodybuilder meant to benefit from this? Well consider now your present thought patterns. Precisely what is it that you are running through your mind on a daily basis. Are they thoughts such as ‘losing weight is impossible for me’ or ‘My muscles won’t grow’ for if they are then that is precisely what your RAV system is selecting for you to notice and take action upon on a day to day basis. It is therefore your sub conscious thought patterns that you need to change to positive muscle building patterns such as: ‘muscle gains come quickly and easily’ or ‘I am getting ripped fast’ and so on.

How can these thought patterns be altered? Here are a couple of things to try:

1)       Visualisation: first you need to set aside 5 minutes or so each day to do this. Very simply find a quiet spot and close your eyes and paint a realistic and crystal clear picture of precisely how you desire your physique to be. Large biceps, huge chest muscle, enormous thighs and so on, ensure that you can see as clearly as possible this vision and keep it in your minds eye with a sense of strong self belief.’

2)       Speak out aloud clearly and confidently simple statements like: I am extremely fit and healthy, I am huge and muscular, I am growing more and more each day and so on.

Go through these everyday. Normally it takes up to 30 days for this new way of thinking to bed in. Following that, keep doing them in order to continually reaffirm your new beliefs and thought programming.

If you doubt that this is effective then I suggest that you take a look at a few sportsmens autobiographies or sports studies books, I gaurantee that you will find these processes talked about in depth, especially visualisation which is an awesomely effective technique that deserves daily usage!

Ok with these positive thoughts and feelings in mind, go build muscle mass!

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In an ideal world this preworkout snack ought to be something that you are used to and that you know won’t make you feel heavy and bloated as you want to be feeling your best to give your all in the gym. You should try to include some slow burning energy such as oatmeal but make sure that you have some protein first. If you don’t eat protein first then you are putting yourself at risk of becoming tired. This happens because both the protein and carbohydrate cause the body to release certain chemicals that affect the brain. Protein stimulates the release of tyrosine which signals your brain to be alert and energetic as opposed to the carbohydrate that stimulates the release of tryptophan which instructs the brain to make you feel lethargic. Therefore always eat the protein first.

If you really want to know how to build muscle fast then great advice is to drink a protein and carbohydrate shake about half an hour before you workout. This will really boost your energy levels for your gym session. Ingredients might include whey protein, maltodextrin, wxymaize or dextrose. The total drink should have around 25 grams of protein and about forty grams of carbs. Doing this will raise your insulin levels which is one of the bodies strongest and most effective muscle building hormones. Furthermore it will also cut down the amount of cortisol that is produced by your body which has a negative impact on muscle building.

Remember working out when you are already hungry and tired is not a good thing, you certainly won’t be breaking any personal bests. Always try to have fruit or meal replacement powders or bars handy should you not have time for a proper pre-workout meal.

As regards caffeine why not try get your hit from a nice antioxidant loaded green tea it provides less caffeine but is also a good deal better for you in many ways. Finally, don’t forget to keep drinking water throughout the day also. Ok bear those things in mind and you’ll be hitting the gym in peak mode for an awesome muscle stimulating workout which you will be able to grow from because you will have had the correct muscle building nutrition.

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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 is possible that under developed triceps are limiting your bench press total. The best exercises to build muscle mass on your triceps are using barbells and dumbells: close grip bench-presses and skull crushers. Isolation exercises are not as good as they isolate the muscle completely. They should definitely help notch up your bench press.

Experiment with training your triceps completely seperately. Commonly, hitting the chest muscles is advised to be done in the same workout as tricep training. 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 over a number of weeks and see how much more weight 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. Overtraining your chest muscles means it takes longer for them to recover and develop. Do not focus on quantity rather go for intensity and quality instead. A short intense workout is much more effective than a long drawn out one.

Solid rest. Your muscles don’t grow in the fitnes centre! They grow when they are at rest. You won’t grow if you don’t allow enough time to grow. Of course do not workout again when your muscles are still, a fair rule of thumb is to limit yourself to 6-9 sets each workout for each muscle group, any more and you may be at risk overtraining.

Take a break from training. Try taking a break if you reach a training plateau. Allow your body to fully recuperate and eradicate all the strains and return a week or so later doubly motivated.

Give your chest muscles a much more intense hit by doing negatives. Negatives are when you find two spotters to intially aid you to press the weight but who then let you take the full weight and lower it by yourself under slow complete control. This is done because people are able to lower more than they can lift. Therefore if we are able to make the body lower more weight it is probable that this will aid us for the lifting phase too. The lowering/negative phase also stimulates more muscle growth than the effort phase.

Double check your diet. Are you consuming around 6 meals a day with at least 1 gram of protein for each pound of bodyweight that you have? If you are not then it may well be the case that you are limiting your gains by not following a muscle building diet strictly enough. In each meal try to get them divided as follows: 50% carbohydrate, 30% protein and the remainder can be compiled 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.

By following the guidelines above you will be giving yourself the best chance to build muscle mass on your chest fast. Go get them!

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1) Are you consuming enough calories? Many hardgainers are simply under eaters. As this is a major reason for poor muscle growth. Consuming frequent high calorie meals is the key to build muscle mass! Consuming food every two hours is a very useful guideline that will help you intake the required amount of calories. Make sure you snack lots on food such as: dried fruit and nuts, yoghurt, cottage cheese,  cereal and milk, protein bars, fresh fruit, and protein shakes, etc

2) Are you getting enough protein? To build muscle mass fast you should aim for 1.Every day you should consume per pound of body weight 5 grams of protein. Excellent protein sources include: chicken, fish, turkey as well as dairy products. Eat everything don’t worry so much about eating low fat products, that will make it harder to get all the calories you need in order to bulk up. Sure you need quality calories but make your life easier and eat everything, remember you can go through a cutting up stage in a few months time. making use of whey protein shakes is an excellent way to increase your protein intake, the larger tubs of course are normally better value of money.

3) Have your routines ceased to be useful? If you are able to say aloud your routine without thinking too much it could well be that you have been doing it for too long. If you are not provoking your body to grow in new and different ways then it simply is not going to grow. Trying playing around with things like drop sets, partials, negatives, aided lifts and such like. You may just try doing the same routine only backwards and se how that change works, how about doing 10 sets consisting of 10 reps for just one exercise like the benchpress (get ready to be sore!) how about taking a week off from your session to allow your body to completely recover. As you can see there are endless variations, make sure you use them.

4) Are you getting enough down time? Have you ever witnessed someone go to the gym and then come out with more muscle than when they entered? Never. So, clearly your muscles don’t grow when your pumping iron, they grow when you are resting. You will certainly be limiting your muscle growth if you are not getting enough rest time. If anything you ought to be giving yourself too much time to grow rather than too little. Try limiting your workouts to one muscle group per week. Also decreasing the amount of sets done for each body part, try just 3-5 intense sets per bodypart per workout. Think that is not nearly enough, give them a go and see what happens!

5) Are you consuming enough water? If you are skimping on the water then you really are limiting your progress. In order to grow, your muscles need copious amounts of water. Carry a bottle with you in the car and never stop drinking from it.

So the original question: ‘Why am I not getting bigger?’as you now know has potentially many answers. Answer the list of question in this article and if you need to adjust something then start doing it today. If you are not meeting just one of the above points then you may well have found the reason for your limited growth. Change is required if more than one of these points is not being addressed by your bodybuilding lifestyle. Certainly there are a huge variety of reasons why you aren’t building muscle mass fast but they are the typical probelms. Now hit the gym and go get massive!

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