Starting Your Training Programme

"I really need to lose this belly." "I want a six pack." "I really need to work on my legs." These are all the internal conversations we have with ourselves before we decide to embark on a training programme. I have also had some conversations with myself along the years and the one thing that I have learned is that those conversations were very short sighted. I wanted a quick fix for an area which I considered a problem area. So with a new found motivation and gusto I would hit the gym or start a home workout routine and after 2 weeks I'd give up. Why? I was thinking and training short term and our bodies are not geared for short term results, they are designed for the long term.

So when we approach a training routine we need to have a goal that is at least 6 months in length. Why? Let me answer that with another question. The current condition that you find yourself in, did it take a month or even two months to get where you are? Now unless there are special conditions that have taken place in your life the chances are that it has been a gradual process of inactivity that has brought you to your current condition. If you agree with me then read on.

Remember that our bodies are always looking for balance, for a state of homeostasis, so as we gradually get more and more inactive and continue to just eat and drink what we want our bodies adapt to our new lifestyle gradually. Think of one person that you know that got to a stage of being overweight in a week, or a month. So why do we think that we can undo months of neglect on a quick fix programme when it took months and in some cases years for us to end up where we are?

Now with that in mind, let me say this: our bodies are incredible works of art. They are a fantastic mechanism of biology. If you were active earlier in your life, your body remembers that. It's called muscle memory and it means that your body will adapt very quickly to get you back to a stage where you were in optimum health. Does that mean that if you've led a failry sedentary lifestyle that you will take longer to see results? Not in the least. The new stress that your body is going to be exposed to will be foreign to your body and in order to find equilibrium your body will respond quite quickly to training as well.

That's great news for all of us right? Whether we were active at one stage and stopped or whether we have never been active, everyone will see results and fast. I will add this one quick note in here and say that genetics have and always will play a part in our response to training but that does not mean that some won't get results. It just means that some will get results faster or even get better results than others. Once we can accept this and move on we are ready to start this life changing process.

If you follow the principles outlined in this blog you will achieve the body of your body's capabilities. You can only become what you genetic potential determines. I personally will never be an Arnold Schwarzenegger, I don't have the genes for it but I can and will continue to train to achieve my genetic potential. We all can have six packs, that is just a matter of body fat and we all can have well defined muscles as that is a matter of correct training.

In conclusion let me end with this. You are the only person standing between a healthy, well defined physique and where you currently find yourself, provided that your current position is something that you want to change. Be brave. You owe it to yourself to try it out at least once. Believe me, when you start to see and feel the changes in your body, you will be armed with a new zeal for your life.

The Science of Building Muscle

Yes, you read the post title correctly: building muscle is a science. It is something that must be done in an intelligent and orderly manner and must be measurable. Building muscle is like building a house. There are certain laws that apply when building a house and likewise there are laws that apply when building muscle. We'll cover these in this post.

Let's start by looking firstly at what muscle is. The body is made up of three main types of muscle: cardiac, which is the heart muscle, smooth muscle which is the soft tissue inside the body like the organs and then skeletal muscles which are the ones we're going to train.

Now the various muscle types serve different functions and it's just great to know what they do although they don't directly affect your training regimen in any way. The cardiac muscle pumps blood through the body at an amazing force. The smooth muscles assist with digestion and other bodily functions and the skeletal muscles keep us upright, enable us to walk and carry things etc.

Now before we get into the specifics of building muscle there is something about the body that we need to understand. Our bodies are always looking for equilibrium. They will always change in order to make sure that a balance throughout the body is maintained. This is called homeostasis. Now that we know that the body will do all it can to find a balance we can move on to why it is important to build muscle correctly.

So how does one go about building muscle? Do we just start lifting weights, heavy weights, or light weights for many reps? What do we do to build muscle? By the end of this article I'm trusting that you will have a good grasp of the science of building muscle.

Let's go back to that word homestasis. The body always wants to be in balance which means that it will only expend the minimal amount of energy needed to do a task. So what does this mean for building muscle? How are we going to  get the body to grow muscle when it's first instinct is to preserve the muscle mass that it has. Now comes the science.

In order to build larger muscles, we have to push our bodies past a point of comfort into a place of stress. Why do we do this? It's quite interesting really. The body wants to preserve what it has right? So when we push our bodies to a point of stress the body does not like it and is forced to adapt to ensure that it does not feel that stress again. By lifting weights, we put the body under stress which it does not like. What the body then does to keep homeostasis, or stay in balance is to grow larger muscles so that the next time we lift weights it will not be so stressful.

And there you have it in a nutshell ladies and gentleman. What we will do as we progress is to look at specific ways of ensuring that we are continually stressing the body so that it grows. We will also look at another important aspect of training and that is recuperation or recovery after training. While training is very important, recovery is equally imortant.

So now that we understand why building muscle is a science, let's look at some programmes that are out there and see if they fit the criteria.