- To build muscle mass successfully, you need to be in an anabolic state. Anabolic means building up – hence the term anabolic steroids. Laziman’s muscle mass. The opposite of anabolic is catabolic which is tearing down.
- Testosterone is critical. It is strongly anabolic. Zinc builds testosterone – the zinc must be bound to an amino acid. So zinc citrate will do very little.
- In the first 20 mins of a weight workout, testosterone rises and you are at your most anabolic. After that peak, it slowly drops off and the stress hormone, cortisol, rises. Cortisol is strongly catabolic. After an hour of working out, cortisol levels exceed testosterone levels and any work done beyond an hour gets increasingly counterproductive.
- Enough sleep is critical. During sleep, we make growth hormone, but the sleep should be both plentiful and uninterrupted for this to happen. So a trip to the loo in the middle of the night undoes muscle growth. We are programmed to not wet the bed, so, unless we are daft and drink a litre of water immediately before bed, we can make it through the night without the need for a piss. If we are getting up regularly, then this is the body chatting away to us and telling us all is not right. A wise man listens then acts.
- Eat and digest plenty of protein at each meal, including breakfast. Toast is for wimps, the weak of tummy and the woolly minded. No breakfast at all – you cannot be serious.
- Eat regularly throughout the day. Snack on protein, not biscuits! Emergency snack – nuts. Regular noshing keeps the blood sugar and energy levels stable. Result – less stress = more anabolic and less catabolic.
- Take the best quality supplementation. ((Quite frankly, this has to be the Poliquin brand since this whole brand was built using top level athletes as guinea pigs. Yes, some say there were not enough double blind studies done. But Charles Poliquin has an amazing track record of success and if you use a dud supplement, that is not going to get your athlete the gold. )) And the supplementation should be comprehensive: digestion, multi vit, vitamins D3, ZINC – the essential building block of testosterone, fish oils, B vits, magnesium, Co Q10 if over 40. I sell the Poliquin brand – and far more cheaply than it can be bought on line. Contact me for more details. If you don’t want to take supplements but want to build muscle, then the best thing to do is to move to the Dominican Republic or Cuba since there the food still has the nutritional content ours once had.
- Take the best quality protein shake post workout along with an enormous handful of BCAAs. Whey is the best shake, followed by pea, then rice. If you’ve really gone for it, the next meal should contain protein and some starchy carbs to punch the muscle growth into action.
- Drink water. Your body weight in kgs x .044. The water is either plain or with lemon/lime. ((Lime or lemon water – it helps alkalise you and is anti-oestrogenic. Oestrogen, the female hormone, is plentiful here in the UK – it is found in plastics, unfiltered tap water and pesticides. Do everything possible to reduce the intake of these oestrogens. If male, you will grow a fine set of wobbly Moobs, if female, thunder thighs and cellulite.)) Its fine to drink tea and coffee, but stop at 4pm or sleep will be disrupted. Green tea is excellent along with plain water.
- If you eat eggs, eat the whole egg and don’t nonce about with egg whites and chicken breasts. Eat steak!! Even better, get into wild meats. There is such a load of bollocks floating about about what to eat. Wild meat, loads of vegetables and fats like coconut oil, butter, lard, goose fat and olive oil. Starchy carbs if you are carb tolerant and lean.
- Reduce stress levels. If you eat well, exercise well, sleep well and address nutritional deficiencies with supplements, then you will build muscles. Stress levels will naturally drop. Anything else you do to help reduce stress levels is a bonus.
- Do not mix weights with cardio in the same workout. Doing a 20 min jog on the treadmill will completely undo any attempts at growing a decent set of arms. A sprint for under a minute is a fine warm up – note the time difference – 30 secs v 30 minutes. It is fine to do both weights and cardio, but make sure there is about 4 hours between the two workouts.
- You can only be as strong as you are stable. If joints are sitting in the wrong place, then you will hit an unsuperable plateau – the moment you creep over the edge by even a small weight increase, injury will follow. Z health is critical here. Its OK to stretch, but the main stretching event happens away from the workout to avoid injury. Better to do a decent set of eye drills first.
Building muscles may not be easy, but knowing what to do makes it a lot easier.Do not neglect your diet either. By putting in a lot of effort, it’s upsetting if you fail to achieve your goal.
Indeed.