Building Muscle

What Causes Muscle Growth

April 26, 2010 by Allen Elliott

There are many factors that influence muscle growth including:

Genetic predisposition

Age

Training Program

Training Status (beginner vs advanced)

Injuries

Pain Tolerance

Drug Use

You’ll notice that nutrition isn’t one of the factors. Once you’ve hit your daily require of how much protein you need to gain muscle then there is little nutrition can do for muscle growth, but this fact is largely ignored by the supplement and bodybuilding community hence the ‘eat to get big’ mantra.

In this podcast we’ll discuss:

What causes muscle growth

The main drivers to muscle growth

The misinterpretation of calories for muscle growth and the limited role nutrition plays.

How to properly view muscle growth (balloons not bricks)

John

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Satisfaction With Your Body Starts With the Right Goals

January 25, 2010 by Allen Elliott

Many people have a desire to change the look and shape of their body, and so they set a new body image goal.

In many cases the goal we choose for our body image is not attainable and should have never been chosen as our goal in the first place…so how do so many of us end up with such unrealistic goals anyway?

We tend to build an image of what we think we ‘should’ look like using pictures of athletes, bodybuilders, fitness models and celebrities. We seem to pool these images into an idealized form we think we can build and then pursue it never once questioning if it’s even possible. In many cases there is also a specific bodyweight associated with this goal body look.

This however can be a recipe for years of frustration and disappointment if we cannot somehow build the body we thought we could. Once you accept a more realistic and achievable goal, the frustration can disappear and a new sense of calm confidence will set in.

And make no mistake, I’m not talking about a lowered expectation for an unimpressive body. I’m simply talking about realigning the goal of your new body image with reality.

In this podcast we will talk about:

1. Setting realistic goals

2. Why a specific bodyweight should never be your sole goal

3. Why you can’t ‘cheat’ your genetics (with training or diet) and what happens when you try to

4. Focusing on the advantage your genetics gave you instead of the shortcomings

This podcast features an interview with our BUILD category winner Pierre Farine who will teach us many of these lessons and more.

Pierre also shares an extraordinary thing that happened to him during his transformation.

John

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Filed Under: Featured Articles, Podcasts Tagged With: Building Muscle, goal setting, muscle building

Can You Eat Your Way To Bigger Muscles?

January 11, 2010 by Allen Elliott

Browsing the fitness section of the magazine stand will reveal dozens of headlines that seem to be the answer to your fitness and dieting questions.

I went to my local book store and browsed the fitness magazine section. Here is a sample of the headlines I found:

“709 Tips to get you Jacked”

“Get abs you’ve always wanted in less than 1 hour per week”

“16 Rules of fitness you MUST follow”

“Low carb diet risk”

“9 Biggest training traps to avoid”

“15 Foods that fight fat”

“78 simple ways to swap flab for brawn”

This is just a small sample of all the headlines I found.

It would probably take you the entire year to implement all of the “rules” and “tips” in these articles…and these are just the articles I found in the January issues! There are 11 months of magazines with “tips” “rules” and “tricks” to go for the rest of 2010.

This is an example of how the fitness/diet industry has to keep you guessing and thinking that you’re missing something important. All of this is in an effort to get you to buy this months magazine with the promise that you’ll find the right tips to get you the results you’re looking for. And of course, next months issue will have just as many tips tricks and secrets.

Within this ongoing flood of tips and rules is the dogma of eating to get bigger muscles. This is one of the most persistent fallacies of the fitness industry.

In this podcast we will deconstruct fitness headlines and get to the bottom of the eating to get bigger muscles fallacy.

John