E21 Fitness News

May 1, 2011

Weight Loss Systems

When it comes to identifying the most effective weight loss systems, it it will really help if you completely understand the things that are typically a part of an effective weight loss plan. With a few thousand different weight loss plans hitting the market each year it’s not easy to pinpoint the good programs from the crappy ones. In this article, I’m going to point out the things that need to be present in any weight loss plan in order for it to be effective at natural and sustained body fat loss.

When it comes to losing weight safely, one of the most important things that must be present in any weight loss systems, is some sort of food journal.  While certainly not cutting edge stuff, nutrition journals will allow you to be able to monitor calories in verses calories out and help you maintain a negative calorie balance that will allow you to lose weight.  In my opinion this is the single most important element when it comes to losing weight. If you make it a habit to eat too many calories then you just won’t be able to lose fat, and you may actually start to gain body fat. On the other hand, if you make a habit out of eating too few calories, then your body will not be able to get the nutrients that it needs in order to maintain normal body function. If you get into the habit of tracking what you eat each day, you should be able to make intelligent decisions about what you eat.

The next thing that your weight loss program needs to be addressing is the amount and quality of the sleep that you are getting each night. While most people are aware that it’s important for their health to get a decent amount of sleep each night, studies conclusively highlight lack of high quality sleep with weight loss problems. Losing weight can be a big enough challenge as it is, so there’s no sense in making it any harder than it has to be. I like to teach people to get somewhere around 6 –10 hours of high quality restful sleep every night while they’re on a weight loss system.

Another critical factor in losing fat is incorporating some sort of fitness plan into your weight loss system. While you certainly can lose body fat by just eating fewer calories, there is a point of diminishing returns where you simply will not be able to cut any more calories. The best way to continue to create a negative calorie balance when this occurs is to simply burn more calories through some sort of fitness program. Don’t feel like you have to do anything overly advanced here, just try to fit in 20 – 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise, 2 – 5 times each week. Usually that’s enough exercise to really burn some calories and begin losing weight.

Take these fat loss tips and see if the weight loss system that you’re currently performing incorporates each of them. If it doesn’t, it’s a safe bet that the weight loss program may not be as effective as it otherwise could be. Remember that you can easily design your own weight loss program if you can’t find one that you like.

Filed under E21 Fitness News, Lose Abdominal Fat, Quick Weight Loss Tips, Weight Loss Nutrition Program, Weight Loss Systems by Fitness

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April 21, 2011

Weight Loss Systems Help

When it comes to dropping a few pounds, most people really believe that they absolutely have to buy one of the fancy weight loss programs that they see on the internet. While these fat melting plans can definitely be helpful,they aren’t a requirement for body fat reduction. A lot of people have gone the route of designing their own weight loss programs and they have been able to lose a serious amount of body fat. Here are a few fat loss tips that you can use today to start dropping weight quickly and naturally.

old jeansCreative Commons License photo credit: riverofgod

When it comes to real weight loss, the most critical thing that you can keep in mind is that tiny changes to your lifestyle are what will ultimately lead to lasting weight loss.  No fat burner pill or fad diet will allow you to drop weight and keep it off indefinitely. Lasting weight loss is often times more about developing the right mindset than it really is about dieting. I’ve noticed that the one thing that most people really wrestles with when it comets to weight loss and keeping to off is developing the right mindset. If you can get this portion of your weight loss systems all lined out from the start, then you can expect to be able to shed a bunch of weight quickly.

Once you create the right frame of mind to drop weight, then you should focus your energy on piecing together a program that will allow you to make incremental progress towards your goals.  Right off the bat, one of the things that you need to focus on is structuring their fat loss diet for long term success. In order to do this, you’ve got to have a plan that will allow you to eat less calories each day than your body expends. This will create what’s known as a calorie deficit.

Almost everybody tries to get overly aggressive when it comes to their diets and as a result, they tend to burn out and slip back into their old habits.  It’s very easy to create a small calorie deficit by just cutting back on extra sugars and junk food without having to get too restrictive with your diet. Whenever I work with clients who want to lose weight quickly, I almost always advise them to take it easy on their nutrition plans when they’re just starting out and just try to cut out 200 – 300 excess calories each day. That seems to be a reasonable number of calories to cut without having to completely stop eating and it’s usually a big enough cut that you should be able to see some real weight loss.

After you get your diet all lined out, it’s vital that you add some type of consistent workout program into your weight loss approach. While cleaning up your diet is great, it’s just not enough to allow you to lose a lot of fat initially. If you really want to keep the weight that you lose off for good, then you need to mix in some form of regular workout plan.

If you put in a few minutes of your time planning things out and thinking over your weight loss strategy, you can very quickly design an effective weight loss systems without having to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars in the process. After you get your weight loss plan ready to go, make sure to actually implement it, as that’s the only way to lose any weight at all.

Filed under E21 Fitness News, Quick Weight Loss Tips, Weight Loss Systems by Nick Andrade

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April 10, 2011

Are Your Bodybuilding Workouts Long Enough?

Is your bodybuilder workout structured appropriately for stimulating muscle growth?  While most people think that they’ve put together efficient bodybuilding workouts that will help them gain muscle mass, most of the time they wind up piecing together a marathon training session that requires them to stay in the gym for 1 – 2 hours at at time.

The primary focus of this article is to give you an idea of how long your bodybuilding workouts should be if you really want to create muscle growth. My goal is to convince you that it is realistic to actually spend less than an hour in the gym, gain more muscle mass and get you back to your everyday life as efficiently as possible.

It’s definitely true that if you want to build muscle mass you’re going to want to provide stimulation to your muscles with heavy and intense bodybuilding workouts. That said, you can definitely get into the gym and slam out an effective bodybuilding in less than an hour.

Sure the typical boring 60 – 180 minute free weight workouts performed at a tortoise’s pace may be ok if you’ve got no life outside of the gym and a sincere desire to make things more difficult. There is a much easier way to stimulate new muscle growth!

If you think that more is better, you should be very surprised to find that that’s not always how it works when it comes to gaining lean muscle mass. If you really want to make the most of your time in the gym by stimulating more muscle growth and taking advantage of your natural muscle building hormonal window of opportunity, you need to take a different approach to structuring your muscle building workouts.

I like to limit my muscle building workouts to under an hour of intense effort.  Anything much longer than an hour causes me to lose my focus quickly and leads to a much less effective workout. I definitely like to get into the gym, get on with my free weights workout and get back to my life outside of the gym as fast as possible.

A lot of bodybuilding guru’s argue that 60 minutes is not enough time for a “real” bodybuilder workout, I disagree. If you’re blasting through your muscle building workouts with the appropriate mindset – the same level that is required to force muscle growth, then you won’t be able to handle much more than 30 minutes of all-out bodybuilding effort.

Basically there really is no totally “optimal” workout time set in stone for everybody. A lot of people gain lean muscle mass by training 1 day a week, while others need to put in more workouts than that. The bottom line is that you really need to find out what works for you by incorporating a structured approach to your bodybuilding workouts. The length of your bodybuilder workout should be a constantly moving target just like each one of the pieces of your workouts.

  1. Workout intensity level
  2. Workout duration
  3. How Often You Hit The Gym
  4. How Long You Rest Between Sets

All of these different pieces will adjust based on your specific goals. During certain phases of your free weight workouts, you may be going over an hour of intense training, while other phases only require 10 – 15 minutes of effort.

Put in the time to figure out what approach give you the best result, then immediately get to work putting your plan into action. With some dedicated  effort and a solid well thought out training plan, you should begin to gain muscle and melt off fat faster than you ever thought you could.

Filed under bodybuilding workouts, E21 Fitness News by Nick Andrade

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Weight Loss Systems For You

A lot of people are buying the inclusive weight loss plans that they see either on the net or TV.  While most of these weight loss plans certainly can demonstrate an effective approach for lasting fat loss, the truth of the matter is that most men and women who shell out for these programs don’t lose any weight at all.  And the ones who do manage to lose some weight, gain it back as soon as they stop using the system. If lasting fat loss is your main goal, then you need to implement a fat loss strategy that you can live with for the rest of your life.

I really feel that the most effective way to go about figuring out a weight loss system for you is to uncover a program that you can identify with.  You should either like the style of the plan and really like using it or you need to at the very least be able to make yourself stick with it  on a regular basis. There isn’t anything that I can think of that’s easy about losing weight, so it only makes sense that you should try to incorporate workouts, exercises and foods that you really enjoy.

If you decide not to take this advice and you try to use a weight loss system that you just don’t like, it’s inevitable that you will eventually stop doing the things that you need to be doing in order to lose weight. Many people try to overdo it right from the start and wind up burning themselves out on the whole weight loss process in general. Instead of utilizing a few simple lifestyle changes, they go for it all right up front and get overly aggressive with their approach to either their diet or exercise program and because of that they melt down and stop doing anything at all.

I like to teach people that the most effective way to structure your weight loss programs is to simply put into practice one small strategy at a time.  The kicker here is that once you make a small change to your way of living, you need to hold on to that change and make it permanent.  If you adopt this strategy, you will be able to totally change your current lifestyle into one that is more friendly to weight loss and health. The compounding effect of this approach to weight loss is that you will be able to make big changes to your lifestyle over time, but you won’t burn yourself out in the process. You typically teach yourself how to live a healthier life one small change at a time until before you know it you weigh a lot less and you’re healthier.

If you think that that you need to spend a few thousand dollars on one of the weight loss systems that you’ve seen on the internet, make sure and do some research into the system before you buy it. If you take the time to really look it over before making a decision, then you’ll have a much better idea of whether or not you can implement the plan for the long haul.

Filed under E21 Fitness News, Quick Weight Loss Tips, Weight Loss Systems by Nick Andrade

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February 16, 2011

Muscle Gain Diet Tips

In the next few paragraphs I’m going to outline a no nonsense approach to your muscle mass gain diet that will help you to build more muscle mass without having to do too many fancy things.  Sure there are a lot of techniques that you can apply to your diet in order to build muscle mass, the bottom line is that in order to make it happen, you’ve got to have a really good muscle gain diet strategy in place.  The proven muscle gain diet fundamentals that seem like they’re out of date are typically the very same ones that will allow your body to gain muscle mass and keep it on for the long haul.

If you don’t think through your muscle gain diet, then you just won’t be able to build any muscle at all. You have to learn how to provide your muscles the nutrients that it has to have in order to gain new muscle mass at the right times over the course of the day.  If you can master this essential muscle building diet skill, then you will be putting yourself in a position to really grow some new muscle. If you get good at feeding your muscles for new growth, you’ll literally be able to build muscle mass when ever you want to.

The structure of your bodybuilding nutrition plan is the key to making it work well for you.  You need to take some time to think about your current lifestyle and also to think about the things that are critical  to your muscle gain diet in order for you to achieve your goals. If you try to plan out a bodybuilding diet that you really don’t like, then you will simply not be able to stick with it for long.  You will become frustrated and disappointed and over time give up on your goal of building muscle mass.

The design that I think works best for building muscle mass is to simply plan on eating 6 – 10 medium sized (but complete) whole food based meals every day spread over every 2-5 hours throughout the day.  This allows you to constantly replenish your muscles and supply your body with the foods that it needs in order to continue to repair damaged muscle cells and build even more muscle tissue.

When it comes to your muscle gain diet, this advice will take you a long way towards actually starting to achieve your goals without the frustration of having to work hard without anything to show for it. Just forget all of the distractions and crazy nutritional tips out there and design a muscle building diet plan that incorporates the time-tested nutritional strategies, then you will be able to gain more muscle mass than you ever thought you could.

Filed under E21 Fitness News, Muscle Gain Diet by Nick Andrade

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January 5, 2011

Muscle Gain Diet

A well structured bodybuilding diet is vital to your success if you want to gain muscle mass naturally.  To be sure your choice of workouts, your exercise selection and your rest and recovery program are all valuable parts of the muscle building process, you just won’t be able to build any lean muscle mass at all if your muscle building nutrition plan is not in the right order.

Today, I’m going to walk you through the critical components of any well designed muscle building diet program and show you how simple it can be to put it all together.  If you pay attention and learn how to customize your own muscle gain diet, you’ll be sure to gain some muscle mass, so pay attention!

Your Bodybuilding Nutrition Plan

If you’re ready to put together your ideal muscle gain nutrition plan, there are some things that you need to keep in mind.  It’s critical that you understand that the entire muscle building process depends upon the amount of calories that you take in every day.  If you don’t get this right your body simply won’t be able to build any new muscle mass, so it really helps to get it right from the start. If you’re just starting out with your muscle gain diet, an important thing for you to figure out is learning how to calculate your muscle building calorie target.

After you get your calorie target value all nailed down, then you need to plan out some sort of outline to get the appropriate quantities of each of the bodybuilding nutrients into your body spaced out throughout the day.  In order to create an effective muscle building diet, you’ll also want to learn about the muscle building nutrients; carbs, protein, fat and water. Any complete muscle building diet will incorporate all of these nutrients in the right amounts.

When you’ve got your caloric target all set and you have a good idea of each of the muscle building components, it’s time to grab a a sheet of paper and list exactly how many muscle building meals you intend to eat each day, exactly what foods are going to make up each of your meals, and when you are going to eat each of your muscle building meals.

In order to ensure that you are feeding your muscles the nutrients that it needs to repair and build muscle mass, it’s going to be important to make it a habit to eat between  5 – 10 bodybuilding meals each day. Each of these meals should contain ample amounts of protein as well as complex carbs and Veggies or fruits along with a lot of of water.

One strategy used by bodybuilders looking to strip off fat and uncover their abdominals is to make an effort to bracket your most energy intense parts of the day with the largest meals of the day.  So if you know that you’re going to be going on a 5 mile run through the woods, it might be a really good idea to eat a bigger meal before heading off so that your muscles have the energy they needs to power your activities.

If you’re serious about building muscle mass and gaining weight fast, then put these tips to work for you today. Not only will you start to pack on muscle mass and boost your strength levels, but you’ll also begin to notice that your fat will start to immediately decrease due to your efficient muscle gain diet. If you stick it out and make your muscle mass gain diet a lifestyle that you can stick with with, you’ll be able to achieve an amazing body in no time.

Filed under Bodybuilding Nutrition, E21 Fitness News, Featured Articles, Muscle Gain Diet by Nick Andrade

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November 15, 2010

Online Fitness Coaching

Can internet fitness coaching help you lose weight, build muscle mass and get into better shape for 1/4 of the cost of a off line trainer? Over the years, the traditional road map to building a better body typically meant joining a fitness studio and signing up for a few personal training sessions with the staff personal trainer.  While this old fashioned approach to fitness does work well for some, it can be extremely expensive just to figure out the fundamentals like, how to do certain movements correctly and how to work certain machines,not even getting into trying to get a grip on how to piece together an effective weight loss or muscle gain program. Fortunately there is a creative trend hitting the web that’s putting a new twist on getting into excellent physical shape at a reasonable price – web based fitness coaching.

How Working With A Personal Trainer Used To Be

With typical personal fitness training, you pay a per hour fee (usually somewhere in the area of $55 – $75 an hour) which would cover your time with a fitness trainer. During this hour, you can keep an eye on progress in your physique through measurements like body fat measurements, design future workouts or hit the gym for a one – on – one workout with your personal trainer.

While the usual personal trainer approach works, it’s easy to see how it can get costly quickly! With most muscle building programs requiring a lengthy commitment of at least 1 -2 months in order to see any serious changes to your body, you can probably expect to spend around $1200 just for the pleasure of visiting with your personal trainer 3 sessions a week for 2 months.  This cost does not even give you any type of customized fitness program or questions outside of your scheduled PT sessions sessions.

How Online Fitness Coaching Works

With online fitness coaching, you usually get access to a qualified trainer as well as custom designed workouts and nutrition advice for a fraction of the cost of traditional fitness training. While you don’t get to actually go to the gym with your personal trainer, you do get access to custom workouts and nutrition templates, watch exercise demonstration videos and ask your trainer any questions that you have about your workouts for a small price. Rather than paying per hour like you’d typically do in a traditional gym setting, you can typically ask any questions, have your trainer adjust your workout programs and sometimes even give your trainer a call for a small monthly fee. Basically, you’ll get access to your trainer 24 – 7. Fitness coaching is an awesome new way to get fitness and training help when you need it without having to spend thousands of dollars in the process.

Is Fitness Coaching Going To Be Effective For You?

It’s very difficult to identify whether fitness coaching is right for you, chances are are that if you simply want access to a personal trainer or fitness guru to answer your questions and create a professional training schedule for you without cost or inconvenience of one-on-one training appointments, then online fitness coaching may be a great opportunity for you.

Filed under E21 Fitness News, Online Fitness Coaching by Nick Andrade

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July 18, 2010

How To Lose Abdominal Fat Fast!

Do you know the simplest way to get rid of the fat on your mid section and get a chiseled mid section? With the goal of getting ripped abs awesome six pack abdominals at the top of nearly everybody’s list, it seems that everyone is dying to know the smartest way to go about uncovering their abs. While I can think of probably 5 things off of the top of my head that could be used to get you moving towards your goal of a firmer mid section, there is 1 big trick…

lose abdominal fatIf you want to get an awesome six pack, you’re going to have to lose the fat on your mid section!

There is definitely a bunch of information available that shoots to teach you how to melt off midsection fat and expose your six pack abs, the truth of the matter is that most guys don’t want to put in the work that’s required to make it happen. Putting the tips together in order to lose mid section fat is not an easy thing to do. It requires a lot of planning, hard work and dedication.

In order to move you towards your goal of awesome six pack abs, I’ve put together a quick list of tips that will help you solve the problem and allow you to burn ab fat without resorting to unhealthy diets, fat burner pills or any sort of unsafe techniques. If you start out by implementing these tips today, you will melt abdominal fat. That’s exactly how to get washboards abs quickly and naturally!

The Way To Burn Abdominal Fat

Here’s how to go about stripping off abdominal fat quickly and easily…

1.  Track what you eat every day for 7 days. If you want to lose abdominal fat, you’re going to have to pay close attention to what your eating so that you can create a calorie deficit. The only way to lose abdominal fat or body fat for that matter is to take in fewer calories than you expend each day. The only way to do this consistently is to keep a very careful eye on what you are eating.

2. Once you’ve tracked what you’re eating each day for some length of time, you need to total up the number of calories and cut back on your intake by about 300 calories per day (assuming you’re eating no less than 1200 calories at all times). This will start the fat burning process and help you instantly take charge of your calorie balance which will allow you to lose abdominal fat fast.

3. Next on the list if you’re serious about losing abdominal fat is to make it a habit to perform some form of free weight workout for 45 minutes 3 – 4 times each week, in conjunction with 3 – 5 sessions of cardiovascular exercises each week. Both weight training and cardiovascular exercise, burns calories and helps with the calorie deficit that you’re trying to create. As an added fat melting bonus, when you begin to pack on muscle mass to your body because of the weight training, your body begins to burn more calories at rest, this will allow you to lose abdominal fat faster than you otherwise would.

The bottom line is that in order to lose abdominal fat, you’ve got to learn how to create a calorie deficit through smart dieting and exercise. And you’ve got to make sure that you keep on top of all of your hard work. While it would be nice to think that it’s possible to get six pack abs in only a few weeks, it’s just not realistic.

Building a six pack is a process that almost always involves consistent effort and attention for weeks at a time. So don’t make the mistake of getting upset after only a few days of work. Put your head down and get back to work and over time you will burn abdominal fat and unearth an eye catching set of six pack abs!

Filed under Abs Work Out, E21 Fitness News, Good Ab Workouts, Lose Abdominal Fat by Nick Andrade

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July 8, 2010

Good Ab Workouts And Tips

Are you looking for a a few good ab workouts to help jump-start your ab workouts over the edge? If so, you’re definitely not all by yourself.  While the desire to get six pack abs is shared by everyone, it’s definitely true that most people don’t even know what’s going on when it comes to designing an effective abdominal work out.

In order to help out, I’ve listed a few simple yet effective abdominal programs that target each of the muscles in your mid section, ensuring that you’ll actually move closer to getting ripped and shredded abs you’ve always desired.

Before we get into the good ab workouts, it’s very important that you figure out right up front that it really doesn’t matter how you train your ab muscles, if you’re not going to focus on what you’re eating each day.  While you do need to work in a few abdominal workouts in order to build up your mid section, you’re just not going to be able to see them until you strip away the body fat that’s covering them up in the first place! The only way to make actually uncover your abdominal region is to get busy burning off body fat not just in your abs, but all over your entire body.

If you want to get rid of body fat, you’re going to need to pay close attention to what you’re taking in every day as well as performing free weights workouts that target the stronger muscle groups on your body. So definately be ready to swap around your diet a bit and focus on working on the most powerful muscle groups on your body like your; chest,shoulders, legs,back,etc. Focusing your workouts on the most powerful muscles burns more energy witch in turn allows you to melt off more body fat. The more fat you can get rid of, the more eye-catching your ripped abs will be!

The Good Ab Workouts

I really think that the ab workouts listed below are all you really need in order to build amazing six pack abs. If you focus the majority of your work on your dietary intake and total body workouts and you also make it a habit to fit in a few decent ab workouts each week, you will start to expose your abs and move towards your goal of a leaner and sexier waistline.

Don’t try and work your abdominals every day of the week! Not only is it a counter productive to your goals, but you’ll be negatively affecting the amount of body fat you’re able to burn – instead of focusing on the bigger muscles in your body, you’ll be training with exercises that don’t require nearly as much effort to get through.

Good Ab Workout #1

Hanging Knee Raises – 3 sets x 8-12 reps
Saxon Side Bends – 3 Sets x  8-12 reps
Weighted Crunches – 3 Sets x 8-12 reps

Good Ab Workout #2

Slant Board hip Thrusts – 3 sets x 8-12 reps
Dumbbell Russian Twists – 3 sets x 8-12 repetitions
Swiss Ball Crunches – 3 sets x 8-12 reps

Make sure and perform each of these “best ab exercises” with enough weight to give your ab muscles a reason to grow! Rest for 1 – 2 minutes between each set and try to focus on making sure the muscle contracts during each repetition. Perform each rep in complete control over the movement – do not use training weights that are overly heavy or use crappy form or you’ll eventually hurting yourself.

There you go…some really good ab workouts that are effective and simple. Pick one and find time for it in the beginning of the week, then move on to the next workout after some time to rest. Stick with the six pack abdominal workout tips listed above, (and make sure not to go crazy and work your abdominals each and every day!) and over time, you’ll be able to build an impressive mid section.

Filed under Abs Work Out, E21 Fitness News, Good Ab Workouts by Nick Andrade

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June 29, 2010

Fast And Easy Bicep Workout

Nearly everyone seems to be surfing the web for the ultimate bicep workout to help them increase the size of their arms fast.  Yes there are a lot of effective bicep routines available on the web, I really think that it’s important to prioritize your biceps training appropriately.  While it’s critical that you learn how to train your biceps in the right manner, you really shouldn’t spend too much of your gym time focusing on such a small muscle group. Not only will your overall physique suffer if you spend all of your time training your biceps, but your biceps themselves will not respond to this type of onslaught for long.   Eventually the muscle group that is dominating your attention and time in the gym will begin to actually atrophy and get smaller!

Hat & Biceps photo credit: mateoutah

In comparison to many of the bigger muscle groups on your body, the muscles in your biceps are tiny. Just because there is no other muscle on your body that will grab the attention of the ladies quite like a a muscular pair of biceps, one of the biggest downfalls of most guys is that they spend too much time to training their biceps and too little time focusing on the bigger muscle groups on their bodies.

if you really want to build bigger arms, then you’ve got to prioritize your training in the following manner (or at least pretty close to this). First off target the bigger muscles on your body and work your way down the list.

Stat by training your…

  1. Legs – (quads/glutes)
  2. Chest – (pecs)
  3. Back – (lats)
  4. Shoulders – (delts)
  5. Triceps
  6. Biceps
  7. Calves

You’ll want to devote a bunch of energy to hitting the larger muscle groups heavy and hard.  If you do this, what you’ll find is that your smaller muscles (like your triceps and biceps), will begin to get bigger incidentally without direct training due to the amount of muscle building hormones released by your body when you work your way through heavy sets for your bigger muscle groups. By focusing on the larger muscles first and making them the priority in your training program, you will begin to see an increase in the strength and size of your biceps.

Again keep in mind that when you perform many of the “pulling” exercises that are targeted to your back, you will be activating and incidentally training your arms (usually with a heavier weight than you usually would), so make sure to split up your back workouts and space them at least a day apart from your bicep workouts.

Now that you’ve got your muscle building program designed properly and everything is in check.  Then you’ll want to move forward and start working in a few basic bicep workouts.  Don’t make the mistake that nearly 90% of all guys in the gym make and work your arms non stop – it’s a bad idea that is actually counterproductive to your goal of bigger biceps.

If you want to build bigger biceps, you need to pair down your training efforts to 1 bicep workout per week.  That’s all you need to do to make your biceps grow!  If you work your biceps with intense workouts any more than this, they will begin to lose size – so try not to do it!

Now that you understand how to properly prioritize your workouts and how often you need to be hitting your biceps, here’s a quick bicep workout that can help you build size on your arms quickly without taking up too much of your time in the gym.

Start out with a few minutes of moderate to light intensity cardio.  I usually do 5 -10 minutes of light jogging. Followed by a full body flexibility routine. A lot of guys only stretch out the muscle groups that they train each day – I just like to stretch out the all of my muscles each day so that I can prevent any type of tightening up or injury.  After you get your stretching and warm up in, it’s time to jump into the weight lifting warm up sets below.

Killer Bicep Workout

Warm Up Set #1:

Exercise: Alternating Dumbbell Curl – 1 set x 10 reps

pick a training weight that allows you to move the weight quickly through a full range of motion.  I typically begin with 20 lb dumbbells.

Warm Up Set #2:

Exercise: Dumbbell Curl – 1 set x 8 reps

Again choose a weight that allows you to move the Dumbbells fairly quickly through a full range of motion, but make sure that it is heavier than what you started with. I like to jump up to 35 lb dumbbells here.

Rest for 1.5 minutes

Warm-Up Set 3:

Exercise: Alternating DB Curl – 1 set x 6 reps

*Perform this warm-up set with a weight that you can move though the full range of motion easily and under control, but this time begin to up the ante a bit. the goal is to complete 6 reps with a weight that is close to your workout weight, but light enough not to prematurely fatigue your biceps. I typically move up to 50 lb dumbbells for this set.

Take a 2 minute rest

Keep in mind the goal of the warm-up sets in this bicep workout is to simply get the blood pumping through your biceps and to warm up your tendons and ligaments.  That’s the only goal of the warm-up sets. Make sure that you do not prematurely fatigue your biceps muscles during the warm up sets by either using weights that are too heavy or by shortening the rest intervals. If you do this your arm workout will suffer and as a result you will not be able to stimulate as much bicep growth as You’d otherwise be able to!

Now we’ll jump into the training sets for the bicep workout.

Exercise #1: DB Curl

After completing your bicep workout warm-up…

*Complete 2 sets x 6-8 repetitions

**Make sure to use a weight that allows you to complete the exercise with decent form, but a weight that is heavy enough that you can’t perform more than 8 reps with!

*Rest for 2 – 3 minutes between sets

Bicep Exercise #2: – DB Incline Curls

*Complete 2 sets x 6-8 repetitions

Again make sure to use a weight that allows you to complete the exercise with decent form, but a weight that’s heavy enough that you can’t possibly perform more than 8 reps with.  that’s exactly how to get your biceps to grow.  If you train with a weight that’s too light, your biceps will not grow and if you train with a weight that’s too heavy you’re eventually going to hurt yourself.

When it comes to making your arms grow, that’s really all there is to it.  Learn how to prioritize your workouts to target the bigger muscle groups on your body first, and then move on to 1 solid bicep workout each week.  As long as your muscle building diet is set up appropriately and you get enough sleep each night, you will build muscle mass quickly and your biceps will increase in size!

Filed under bicep workout, E21 Fitness News by Nick Andrade

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