Muscle Building Aritcles

Training With Muscle Soreness - Should You Do It? And Can It Actually Help You Get BETTER Results?

By Nick Nilsson

Muscle soreness is something that every trainer has experienced. The typical advice is to wait until you're not

sore to train that muscle again. But what if you can actually get BETTER results by training when sore!

It's safe to say that muscle soreness is something EVERY trainer has experienced at some point in their career. Severity of muscle soreness (known as Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness or DOMS for short) can range from mild discomfort when you move to the point of being almost crippling.

One of the most frequent questions I am asked is "should you train when your muscles are still sore?" The answer is not quite as simple as some people make it out to be, though. Many trainers will tell you "if the muscle is still sore, don't train it." And, in truth, for many people that's the safest answer.

But, in fact, by NOT training when you're sore, you could actually be missing out on results AND slowing down your recovery!

So what is muscle soreness? Muscle soreness is basically damage to the muscle fibers as a result of training. Without going into great detail on how it happens and how the recovery process occurs (which is beyond the scope of this article), muscle soreness is your body telling you that it's in need of repair.

Now how can it possibly be GOOD for you to train a muscle again while it's still sore? Here's where we get into a contentious area. After reading this, you may choose to agree with me or disagree with me (if you've read my articles before, you know I'm anything BUT conventional) but all I ask is that you consider my arguments...

Now, if you've never trained a muscle hard two days in a row or trained it while it was still quite sore, you're going to be in for a shock at how unique a stimulus it can actually be. Sure there are arguments against doing that, e.g. the muscle hasn't fully recovered and you'll be tearing it down even more.

But consider this...from an adapatation standpoint, of the following two scenarios, what would give your body the greater stimulus for growth?

If you train the muscle hard once, you'll get a good growth stimulus. Your body immediately starts sending nutrients to the damaged area and starts rebuilding. When the muscle is fully recovered and is no longer sore, you train the muscle again and restart the process. This is the standard way of training and it usually means directly training a muscle twice a week with at least 2 or 3 days in between sessions for that specific muscle.

In the next scenario, you train the muscle hard then the next day, train it hard again. Recovery is nowhere near complete and the muscle is sore when you train it on the second day.

Here's the key...if you think about it, would the body see this second scenario as a greater threat to its survival? Would the body then ramp up its recovery processes to try and prepare for the next challenge, which it (from its recent experience of being hit with the same hard stimulus two days in a row) thinks is coming again very soon?

In my experience, this absolutely happens. The body's response to training is a very simple "stimulus-response" system, but your body is also fully capable of sending more resources where more resources are perceived as being needed.

When you eat, your body sends more blood to the digestive system. Your brain doesn't tell it to do that, it just happens. When you get hot, your body produces perspiration. The same thing happens with training. For example, when you train your biceps, your body sends blood and nutrients to the biceps for recovery. It doesn't send it to the calves if the calves haven't been worked.

If you train your biceps hard two days in a row, your body sees this as a big threat to the biceps and will ramp up recovery processes to specifically protect the biceps. If the biceps are still sore... VERY big threat! THEN you allow the biceps to recover. The two days of training has built much greater recovery momentum, getting more results out of your training.

Here's yet another advantage to training a muscle when it's still sore...even if you don't train it hard, you will still be sending blood (and therefore nutrients) to that muscle, helping it to recover faster than if you didn't train it at all. So even if you're not up for a hard workout for a sore muscle, even giving it some light to moderate work will still help with recovery.

So I've talked about training a muscle two days in a row...what about when you're scheduled to train it a couple of days later and it's still sore at that point? The same concepts apply - your body will STILL perceive that as a greater threat and increase recovery.

The only times I would NOT recommend training when sore is if the soreness causes you to use poor form in your exercises or if the soreness is so bad that it makes the exercises too painful to do.

For instance, if you just did deadlifts for the first time in your life and the next day, you have a VERY hard time sitting down without falling down into the seat, you may want to wait a bit before doing deadlifts again. Your form will change because of the pain and it could lead to injury.

But if your muscles are a bit stiff or sore, go ahead and train them. Your body will ramp up your recovery processes in response.

How do I know training the body with this frequency can be effective? I'll give the best example I know (WARNING - if you're a proponent of high-intensity, very infrequent training, this will make you shiver in your boots!). This is NOT a program I would recommend lightly to anyone because at this time, being on vacation from work, I was basically only eating, sleeping and training...no stress, no extraneous activity.

This was one of the most extraordinary programs I ever put myself on, not only in terms of workload but results as well. It involved doing total body workouts twice a day, six days a week. This meant 12 total-body workouts per week, increasing the workload every week.

I used partial training, negative training, low reps and high reps. For the entire first week, I was EXTREMELY sore but I stuck with it and trained everything twice a day, no matter how sore I was.

After 3 weeks of this training, I backed off, still doing 12 training sessions per week but splitting the body in half - I was still working my whole body every single day and doing partials and negatives.

During the back-off phase, my recovery processes were practically unstoppable! NOTHING I did could make me sore (and believe me, I tried!) and my strength and muscle mass shot way up.

Conventional wisdom would believe I would be completely totaled at the end of a program like this, overtrained, small and weak. My results? In 6 weeks, I went from 208 lbs in bodyweight to 228 lbs. I went from a 295 bench press for 1 rep to 350 lbs for 1 rep. I did a partial top-range lockout squat with 1100 lbs for 150 reps (not a typo!).

This is a VERY extreme example of training through muscle soreness and using maximum workout frequency. But the take-home lesson from it is this: you CAN get great results by training even when you're sore! Your body will react to the stress and ramp up recovery in response.

One quick tip: if you want to decrease post-workout soreness, try taking 500 mg of Vitamin C about an hour before your workout. This helps protect against muscle soreness.

Nick Nilsson is Vice-President of the online personal training company BetterU, Inc. He has a degree in Physical Education and Psychology and has been inventing new training techniques for more than 16 years. Nick is the author of a number of bodybuilding eBooks including "Metabolic Surge - Rapid Fat Loss," "The Best Exercises You've Never Heard Of," "Gluteus to the Maximus - Build a Bigger Butt NOW!" and "The Best Abdominal Exercises You've Never Heard Of" all available at (http://hop.clickbank.net/?fitrition/betteru). He can be contacted at betteru@fitstep.com.

The Most Critical Lessons I Learned In My Very First Year of Training That Can Help YOU Maximize Muscle and Fat Loss

By Nick Nilsson

Get a step-by-step catalog of THE most important things

that I learned about fat loss and muscle and strength-

building from my first year of weight training. It will open

your eyes!

As a long-time trainer, I've learned a LOT of lessons about building muscle and losing fat. But nothing beats the learning curve of my first year of training. I didn't always make good progress. In my first year of training, I made a lot of mistakes and learned a lot of things the hard way. I also did some things quite right completely by accident! Have a read through some of the most critical lessons I learned in the very first year of my training career.

IN THE BEGINNING...

I wanted nothing more than to get big and strong. I had been an endurance athlete all through high school (cross-country running, speed skating, skiing) but wanted to make a change. I was 17 years old and skinny and jumped into weight training with both feet. I saved up some money, bought the Cybergenics supplement program (mistake #1! - basically that was just an expensive multivitamin) and started training. It was June of 1991, just heading into summer.

I had a good program and I started getting stronger right away but wasn't really gaining much muscle. I was, however, getting absolutely ripped to the bone!

By the end of the summer, I still weighed about 150 lbs soaking wet (right where I started 4 months earlier) but I swear I was about 4 or 5% bodyfat. When you can see the division line between your upper pecs and lower pecs without flexing the chest, you know you're at low bodyfat!

LESSON #1

I wasn't eating NEARLY enough or frequently enough and wasn't getting enough protein. I would rollerblade or bike to the gym first thing in the morning and do my workout, eating NOTHING immediately after training. I would rollerblade home then eat a bowl of cereal. Then I would go to work as a lifeguard the rest of the day, eating maybe once or twice more that day with my largest meal being dinner.

THEN IT WAS OFF TO UNIVERSITY...

Having just graduated from high school, I enrolled in university that fall. I had learned my lesson about not eating enough and I was determined to make up for it.

And make up for it I did...with cafeteria food! Some people drink too much their first year of college - I ate too much.

Not to knock the food service there, but I'm just sure they deep-fried the salad. To show you my knowledge of nutrition at the time, I would (in the interest of trying to keep fat levels in my diet down) order fried eggs and cut out the yolks, eating only the whites (which were shiny with overused cooking oil). All this never realizing that I would have been better off cutting off the whites and eating the yolks (that's where the fat-emulsifying lecithin and the majority of the good nutrients in the egg are!).

Eight months later, at the end of my first year of school, I was 70 pounds heavier, probably about half of which was actually muscle mass. At one point, I sat down and calculated my caloric intake on some of my "big eating" days and found it to be almost 9,000 calories per day!

LESSON #2

When I learned my lesson about eating more to gain muscle, I didn't learn the lesson that you can eat WAY too much and you can easily eat the wrong types of foods. Sure, I got big and strong, but I probably went from 5% bodyfat to 15 to 20% bodyfat at the same time. NOT the results I was looking for! What I needed to do was eat more, certainly, but also eat a better quality of food.

That, plus I'm sure all the "Weight Gain 3000" type of supplements I was taking didn't help matters! Looking back on the ingredients, it was mostly cheap milk protein and maltodextrin (a high glycemic, cheap carb source).

TRAINING AT UNIVERSITY...

As I was eating more at University, I also ramped up my training. I would try and do more and more sets and use more and more weight. Because I was eating so much more, I was still making great progress! Plus, being then 18 years old, I could beat the tar out of myself in the gym and still recover from it pretty much without a problem.

I was seeing increases in strength and bodyweight on almost a daily basis. But then something happened...something that opened up my eyes...one workout I was in the gym for almost 2 and a half hours!

LESSON #3

I was training WAY too long and with too many sets. I was still making progress but only because I was eating so much. Little did I know, I could actually make BETTER progress by cutting my training time WAY down. From that day on, I always stopped my workouts at the 1 hour mark, no matter where I was at in the program. And it did wonders for my results. I think the week after I started cutting back, my strength shot up and my bodyweight went up 10 pounds. THAT opened my eyes.

In the Spring Semester, I tried a program that, if you've been training awhile, may be familiar with: Serious Growth by Leo Costa. At that point, I started training twice a day, six days a week, but only 45 minutes per session, at the most. Still eating a ton of food every day, I made excellent progress with this system and learned about the benefits of keeping your eyes on (and cycling) training volume.

BUT I TOTALLY NEGLECTED CARDIO TRAINING...

At the start of the eight months when I was furiously trying to increase my bodyweight, I had read that when trying to gain muscle, you should reduce cardio training. The aerobic work could burn up calories that could be used by the body for building muscle and might interfere physiologically with the muscle-building process.

Well, I took that a little too far and cut cardio training completely out. My thought was, I was doing cardio in the summer (blading to the gym and back) and didn't gain any muscle. When I was endurance training, I didn't gain any muscle. So maybe cutting it out was necessary. So I didn't even hardly walk up flights of stairs unless I had to.

LESSON #4

Too much cardio training (especially long-duration cardio training) CAN interfere with muscle growth, sure, but as I've learned since that time, SOME cardio training should always be a part of any mass-building program. The key is to do the RIGHT kind of cardio training (i.e. interval training, which can actually help the muscle-building process).

Let me put it this way, it's nice to be big and strong but when you're big and fat and strong and lose your breath going up a flight of stairs, you're not exactly at the pinnacle of health. Plus, think of it is this way...you NEED good cardiovascular functioning when training for muscle mass. What pumps blood and nutrients to the muscles? What helps you recover faster in between sets?

Cardio and muscle-building are not mutually exclusive concepts. I include it in ALL my muscle-building programs now.

WHAT HAPPENED AT THE END OF THE SCHOOL YEAR?

Well, at that point, being big and strong but big and fat, I decided I needed to burn off of the excess (the old bulk-and-cut concept). But then I made a HUGE mistake. I went back to similar habits that got me lean the previous summer. I didn't eat nearly enough to support the muscle mass that I had built and I didn't eat enough protein.

I also started running again, which at this point having not done any cardio training for 8 months, was a HARD lesson to learn. Imagine going from being a 150 lb cross-country runner who could do 5 km in about 15 minutes to being a 220 lb weightlifter who couldn't even jog slowly for more than 3 minutes straight!

Now, even though I was TRYING to do long-duration cardio, it actually resembled interval training more than anything because I had to stop and walk every few minutes. As I got in better cardio shape, I started running longer distances straight through (I would have been better off sticking with the intervals - little did I know!).

And I did lose weight and did lose some fat but I lost a LOT of muscle along with it. Nothing is more depressing than losing what you've worked so hard to build. I didn't lose all of my muscle and strength but it was enough to set me back.

LESSON #5

What you should eat and how you should train are actually fairly similar when you're trying to build muscle or burn fat. The main differences lie in how much you're eating and training variables such as rest periods and cardio frequency. You still need to eat a lot of protein regardless of your goals and you still need to lift heavy, even when on a fat loss program (it's how you tell your body that it needs to hold onto muscle).

Increasing cardio frequency, eating fewer calories and decreasing rest periods in between sets will get the fat burning process moving in the right direction. Don't starve yourself or go nuts by dramatically increasing your training workload.

SO WHAT HAPPENED IN MY SECOND YEAR OF TRAINING?

That's a story for another day...it involves going so far in the opposite direction of my first year of training that I actually made my roommate throw out a pot of water he was boiling for spaghetti because he added a pinch of salt (never mind that the sauce we were using had about 20 times that much salt in it already)!

Look for Year Two in the future, but in the meantime, check out more information on fat loss and muscle and strength-building here:

http://hop.clickbank.net/?fitrition/betteru&l=1039

http://hop.clickbank.net/?fitrition/betteru&l=1040

Training Frequency - How Often Can You or SHOULD You Train To Maximize Your Results?

By Nick Nilsson

How often should you train? How long do you need to rest

between training sessions? How much is too much and how much

is too little? The answers may surprise you and even change how

you train!

One of the most basic questions in weight training is "how many times a week should I train for best results?" EVERYBODY has wondered this at some point in their training career, from the complete beginner to the most advanced professional.

The answer could very well change the way you train forever! And the answer is simple... it depends!

Now, this is an answer that ALWAYS leads immediately to the next question... depends on what?

At this point, most instructors or training manuals will go right to the stock response of "train each bodypart twice a week" or something to that effect. It's easy to believe that this is the best answer because that generally works okay for most people. It's a safe answer.

But it's not the BEST answer. Learning what IS the best answer will help you cast out preconceived notions and determine what REALLY works best for your body.

There are a number of factors that influence how often you should train your muscles. Each single factor plays a part in how often you should train and they ALL interact with each other. I will go through the factors then give you real-world examples of how these factors come together to help you determine how often you should train.

1. Training Volume

Training volume is basically how much you are doing for each bodypart. It's the number of reps and the number of sets you are doing.

The more sets you do for a bodypart, the less frequently you should train the bodypart to give it a chance to recover. If you do fewer sets, you can train more frequently and recover from it.

2. Training Intensity

This is not the scientific definition of intensity (i.e. how close the weight you are using is to your one rep max for that exercise) but rather your effort intensity. Basically, it's how hard you're working your muscles.

The harder you push yourself in your sets, the less frequent your training should be as this will tax your recovery systems more strongly.

3. Nutrition

How much you eat and, more importantly, WHAT you eat plays a critical role in how often you can and should train. Don't think nutrition plays a big role in training frequency? Eat nothing but Pop Tarts for a week and see how often you're able to train...

The higher the quality of the food you eat and, to some degree, the more food you eat, the better you'll be able to recover and the more often you'll be able to train.

4. Recovery

When it comes to recovery, everybody is different...some people recover slowly while some recover very quickly. This difference can be heightened by outside activities and stresses to the body. For instance, a construction worker, who has a physical job, will need more recovery time than an office worker. Playing intense sports will also affect recovery ability.

Therefore, the slower your recovery rate and/or the more outside activities you do, the more time you will need between training sessions.

5. Exercise Selection

Which exercise is most demanding to the thighs and the whole body in general... a barbell squat or a leg extension? The squat, of course, because the more demanding the exercises are on a bodypart (or the whole body), the less frequently you can effectively train that bodypart.

6. Bodypart Size

The bigger the bodypart, e.g. back, thighs and chest, the more recovery time it needs. All things being equal, smaller bodyparts can be worked more frequently because they have less muscle mass that needs repair.

7. Type of Training You Do

Partials, negatives and other intensity techniques are going to affect how frequently you can effectively train a bodypart. These styles take more recovery time for the muscles and will require a decrease in training frequency.

TRAINING FREQUENCY RULES OF THUMB

These simple lists will show you the directions in which each factor will take you. All the factors interact to give you the best solution as to how often you should train.

You Can Train At a Higher Frequency If You Have:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A better recovery rate

Good nutrition and supplementation

Lower training volume

Lower training intensity

Easier exercises

Smaller bodyparts

Fewer intensity techniques

You Should Train At a Lower Frequency If You Have:

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A slower recovery rate

Poor nutrition and supplementation

Higher training volume

Higher training intensity

Tougher exercises

Larger bodyparts

More intensity techniques

How It All Fits Together:

These are the major factors that determine optimum training frequency. Though the interaction of all these factors may seem complex, when you get right down to it, it's actually quite intuitive.

A good way to demonstrate this is by using myself as an example in different phases of training that I've been through. You will see, according to all the different factors, how I changed my training frequency and training schedules to maximize results.

You will also see that the common conceptions and "rules" that you have been told you must stick to in terms of training frequency (e.g. twice a week) are based only on simple assumptions, not on actual situations.

EXAMPLE #1 - Heavy manual labor, limited access to quality food

Because of the specific job conditions I was in at the time, I reduced the frequency of my training to three sessions per week and reduced my total training volume. I did total body workouts on each of the three days (Monday, Wednesday and Friday), using the heaviest exercises for each bodypart for 3 sets of 8 to 10 reps each (e.g. squats, bench press, bent-over rows).

I didn't push my muscles to complete failure in my training so that I didn't beat myself down too much in addition to the heavy manual labor job.

It was a simple program but very effective. It gave me enough recovery time because the volume was low and the intensity was moderate, even though the frequency for each bodypart was three times a week.

EXAMPLE #2 - In-home vacation, unlimited access to food and recovery, no demanding outside activities or work.

A number of years ago, I worked on cruise ships as a sports director. I would work 8 to 10 months straight (every single day) then have a few months completely off. During this time off, I had access to a gym, food and plenty of sleep.

To maximize results, I would dramatically increase my training volume and frequency and utilize intensity techniques regularly.

The catch? Since I was basically only eating, sleeping and training, I was able to recover from this high frequency and make excellent gains in strength and muscle mass.

As an extreme example of the frequency I was able to work with at this point, I was in the gym 6 days a week, twice a day, doing total-body workouts EVERY SINGLE TIME. This amounted to 12 total-body workouts a week, in addition to intensity techniques. The actual training volume (number of sets) in each workout was fairly low (3 or 4 sets per bodypart), which also allowed me to get results from that very high frequency.

I used a "controlled-overtraining" program similar in concept to the one that I wrote about in a previous issue of BetterU News here:

Training on the Edge - Learn How Overtraining on Purpose Can Get You Maximum Results FAST!

http://hop.clickbank.net/?fitrition/betteru&l=1014

Because I was able to recover from it, the high frequency of training worked in my favor and allowed me to get great results. But would I recommend this type of program to someone working a physical job or without optimum nutrition in quality or amount? No chance.

EXAMPLE #3 - Extremely busy work schedule, office job, meals determined by work breaks but workouts may have to be put off until the next day to accommodate overtime.

Having an office job meant that it wasn't physically demanding, allowing for good recovery. Nutrition, however, was often hit-or-miss due to busy scheduling. There were times, when work demanded, that I needed to put in hours after regular time, which forced me to push workouts back to the next day.

To maximize the results with this situation, I changed to a "one bodypart per day" training system. I would do a single bodypart in a workout, working it with high volume and high intensity. The next day I would do a different bodypart, rotating continuously through all the major bodyparts.

Because I was working only one bodypart at a time, the training frequency was very low, basically working the target bodypart once every 7 to 8 days. This, of course, would increase if I had to bump a workout back a day.

Even though I would basically "destroy" the single bodypart in its workout, this low training frequency gave my body enough time to recover and rebuild the muscle. It would take that much time for the part to recover. Also, when you work one bodypart, other bodyparts area invariably involved, allowing for indirect stimulation of the other muscles more frequently, e.g. when you bench press for the chest, the triceps are also involved.

This plan gave me the flexibility to easily change workout schedules without compromising results while allowing my less-than-perfect nutrition to still allow me to recover enough between workouts and get results.

CONCLUSION:

As you can see, optimum training frequency is nothing as simple as "work each bodypart twice a week." The give and take between a number of different factors in your life and schedule will help you determine how often you should be training and the type of training you should be doing for best results.

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Secret Training Tip #734 - How One Single Set of One Single Rep of One Single Exercise Can Build Massive, Strong Biceps

By Nick Nilsson

Learn the secret, extremely simple bicep exercise that

has the potential to put inches on your arms.

What's the first muscle that you think of when you think of bodybuilding? The biceps! Having big, well-developed biceps marks you as a serious trainer.

But what do you do if your biceps lag behind in development? Or if you simply want to build them as large and strong as possible as quickly as possible?

I'm going to share with you the secret exercise technique that helped me go from 13 1/2-inch arms to 18-inch arms in my first year of training. And all it takes is one single rep!

Let me just start by telling you that, personally, my biceps have always been among my weakest and slowest-to-develop bodyparts. Some people have the genetics to easily build big, strong biceps. Not me! I've had to come up with training techniques to blast past these limitations and have had to fight for every inch on my arms. The point of me telling you this is that I'm not somebody for which just anything will build big biceps. The training techniques have to be really powerful for me to see results.

The technique I'm about to share with you works the biceps so thoroughly and so powerfully, your biceps will have no choice but to get bigger and stronger.

After all this build-up, you're probably wondering just what kind of complicated exercise technique this is!

The fact is, this technique is so simple as to be downright elegant in its simplicity. What is this exercise? It's the Flexed Arm Hang.

The Flexed Arm Hang is not complex, but it provides you with a number of very powerful benefits that make it an ideal exercise for piling muscle mass on the biceps.

To fully understand the benefits of the exercise, you must first learn how to do it to properly focus on the biceps.

How To Do It:

In a nutshell, you will be simply holding the top position of a chin-up for as long as possible! Here's the procedure in detail...

1. Grasp a chin-up bar with a palms-facing-you grip. Your

hands should be about 6 inches apart on the bar. You want

to keep them fairly close together to maximize the tension

on the biceps.

2. Next, you will need to get yourself into the top position

of a chin-up. You can do this by standing on a bench or

pulling yourself up into position. My preference is to

start by standing on a bench. This allows you to get set

up very precisely and deliberately.

3. For body position to maximize bicep work, you will want to

have your eyes level with the bar, with your face very close

to the bar (almost touching it, in fact). Keep your body

as vertical as possible and try not to let your body lean

backwards. The more vertical you stay, the more tension

will go onto the biceps rather than the back.

4. Now comes the work...hold that position for as long as you

can! Contract your biceps hard and hold that position until

your biceps start to weaken. Now fight gravity ALL the way

down. Don't let your body drop quickly but try your very

best to hold your position as gravity pulls you down. Even

when you're almost at the very bottom with your arms almost

straight, still try your best to keep holding. Go until you

can't even hang onto the bar anymore!

That's the exercise. Not too complicated! If you're familiar with X-Rep or Static Contraction training, this concept is essentially the same...hold the contracted position of an exercise for as long as possible! Here are the benefits:

1. Holding the contracted position of this exercise for as

long as you can recruits almost every available muscle

fiber in the biceps. It's an emergency situation to the body

and it will fire every fiber it can. The fully-contracted

position engages the most muscle fibers.

2. This exercise places continuous tension on the biceps for

the entire duration of the exercise. Continuous high-level

tension will work wonders on your biceps.

3. The exercise uses your bodyweight and moves your body around

the resistance on the way down (like a chin-up) rather than

the resistance around your body (like a barbell curl).

Exercises that move your body have been shown to activate

more muscle fibers than exercises that move the resistance.

4. The highly intense, multiple-muscle nature of this exercise

stimulates far more growth in the biceps than exercises that

work the biceps in isolation (which most bicep exercises do,

even the gold standard barbell curl).

5. It requires almost NO equipment and can basically be done

anywhere you can grip on and hang from.

If you combine all 5 of these powerful benefits, you have an exercise that stimulates the maximum number of muscle fibers, with continuous tension, using a compound exercise that moves your bodyweight, and requires very minimal equipment.

So how do you take FULL advantage of this extremely powerful biceps-building exercise? Finish every workout with one single rep of the Flexed Arm Hang. One rep is all you need as that one rep will work the majority of your bicep muscle fibers.

You can also add resistance by holding a dumbell in between your feet or by using weighted dip belt. The potential gains in size and strength are tremendous!

If you make a habit to do one single intense rep of this technique at the end of each and every workout, I guarantee you will see excellent bicep growth and development.

When you've done one good rep of this exercise, you'll know you've squeezed out every last drop of bicep growth from your body!

To view pictures of this exercise in action, please click on the following link:

http://hop.clickbank.net/?fitrition/betteru&l=1007

Nick Nilsson is Vice-President of the online personal training company BetterU, Inc. He has a degree in Physical Education and Psychology and has been inventing new training techniques for more than 16 years. Nick is the author of a number of bodybuilding eBooks including "Metabolic Surge - Rapid Fat Loss," "The Best Exercises You've Never Heard Of," "Gluteus to the Maximus - Build a Bigger Butt NOW!" and "The Best Abdominal Exercises You've Never Heard Of" all available at (http://hop.clickbank.net/?mfactor/betteru). He can be contacted at betteru@fitstep.com.

When One Side Of a Muscle Group Is Smaller Than The Other - How To Train to Fix It

By Nick Nilsson

Have a left bicep that's noticeably smaller than the right?

Is your chest significantly more developed on one side? Find

out how to even out your muscles now!

Everybody's got them. Sometimes you notice them, sometimes you don't. But there is nothing strange about having one side smaller or less developed than the other! It can happen for a variety of reasons, including genetics, reduced circulation or innervation (which is basically the amount of nerves going to the muscle) to the smaller muscle, previous injuries, or even small anatomical differences.

If you've got a significant size or strength difference between sides, this information is for you. The following techniques will help you to even out those lagging bodyparts once and for all!

These techniques can be incorporated into your regular workouts very easily, allowing you to quickly bring up those smaller, less-developed bodyparts. Several of the techniques work by increasing training volume, some work by increasing resistance, while others work by targeting the specific physiological causes of the difference (circulation and innervation).

1. "One and Two and One" Reps

This is a dumbell technique that increases the training volume for the smaller muscle. For this technique, you'll use the same dumbells in both hands.

Start with one rep with the one arm of the smaller part. For example, if you're doing curls, do one dumbell curl with your left arm. Now do a single rep with BOTH arms (right and left) at the same time. Immediately do another rep with the smaller arm again. Your smaller bodypart will end up getting 50% more work than the larger side.

2. "One and Two and One" Sets

This approach is very similar to the rep technique explained above. This time, however, you will do one set of an exercise for just that single side, rest, then do a set that works both sides. Then you'll go back and do a set with just the smaller side again. This will also increase the "smaller-side" workload by about 50%. This approach also utilizes dumbells rather than barbells in order to allow for single-limb movements. This "staggered set" approach is more effective for leg exercises than the "staggered rep" technique explained above simply because it's tough to find an exercise that you can do the "rep" technique effectively with. For legs, you will follow the exact same routine, doing a single-leg set, then a double-leg set, then a single leg set.

3. Uneven Weights

To do this technique, hold a dumbell that is somewhat heavier in the hand of your weaker side. This can be a 5 to 10 pound or more difference, depending on the exercise. Do your set as you normally would but stop completely when your weak side can't continue.

This technique increases the resistance on the weaker side, helping to bring it up to the level of the stronger side. Stopping the exercise when the weak side is fatigued ensures that the strong side does not get stimulated as much. This allows the weaker side to more easily catch up.

4. Use Dumbells For All Your Exercises

Dumbells force each side of the body to take full responsibility for their part in the movement. When using machines or barbells, the strong side can have a tendency to take over the movement and assist the weak side, limiting its development.

Simply switching to completely dumbell-based training for a period of time can help bring up the lagging part quickly without even having to use these special techniques.

5. Targeted Negatives

Finish each bodypart workout with a single set of negative training for the weak side limb. For example, if your left bicep is weaker, when you've finished your regular bicep workout, do one set of negative-only training for the left bicep.

One of my favorite ways to do negative training for biceps is using the Preacher Bench. The bench allows you to stabilize your upper arm more effectively than if you are standing.

Sit in the bench and hold a heavy dumbell in one hand (the weight should just a little higher than your 1 rep max). Now use your other arm to help with the "up" phase of the movement.

Once you're at the top, start to lower the weight down. Fight gravity all the way down - don't just try and slow the weight down...actively try and lift it up while gravity is forcing it down. This is the most effective way to execute negative training. Have your free hand ready to slow the dumbell to keep it from slamming your arm down if you lose strength.

This technique will help to build strength in the target muscle, helping to address the innervation issues that may be causing the lagging development.

6. Targeted High-Rep Training

Start each bodypart workout with one light, high-rep set for the weak side muscle. For example, for a smaller or weaker right tricep, start each tricep workout with one set of high-rep single-arm pushdowns. High-rep in this case means 50 reps.

This very high rep set will help to increase circulation to the target muscle, improving its ability to gain mass. This increase in circulation means more available blood, which means more nutrients get to the muscle, which means more muscle growth!

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If you've got a lesser-developed muscle on one side of your body, give these training techniques a try. They can help you rapidly even out differences between your two sides.

How Stretching Can Explode Your Muscle Growth

By Nick Nilsson

Not only is stretching important for flexibility,

it is CRITICAL for massive, rapid muscle growth.

When you think about gaining muscle, stretching is probably not the first thing that pops into your head. But did you know that stretching plays a critical role in building muscle?

Every muscle in your body is enclosed in a bag of tough connective tissue known as fascia. Fascia is important for holding your muscles in their proper place in your body.

But your fascia may also be holding back your muscle growth. Think for a moment about your muscles. You train them and feed them properly. They want to grow and will grow but something is holding them back. They have no room to grow!

Because fascia is so tough, it doesn't allow the muscle room to expand. It is like stuffing a large pillow into a small pillowcase. The size of the muscle won't change regardless of how hard you train or how well you eat because the connective tissue around your muscles is constricting the muscles within.

The best example of this is the calf muscle. The lower leg is riddled with fascia because of its tremendous weight-bearing duties in the body. It is because of this fascia that many trainers have great difficulty developing their calves.

The solution: stretching.

Using the pillowcase example from above, imagine you can expand the size of the pillowcase by stretching it. Suddenly, the pillow within has more room and will expand to fill that new space.

By stretching your muscles under specific conditions, you can actually stretch your fascia and give your muscles more room to grow.

The key to effective fascial stretching is the pump. The best time to stretch to expand the bags that are holding in your muscles is when your muscles are pumped up full of blood.

When your muscles are fully pumped up, they are pressing against the fascia. By stretching hard at that time, you increase that pressure on the fascia greatly, which can lead to expansion of the fascia.

One of the major reasons Arnold Schwarzenegger had such incredible chest development was that he finished his chest workouts with dumbell flyes, an exercise that emphasizes the stretched position of the pectoral muscles. He would pump his chest up full of blood during the workout then do flyes, holding the stretch at the bottom of the flye. This gave his chest room to grow to amazing proportions.

Fascial stretching is more rigorous than regular stretching but the results can be amazing. When you stretch hard enough to cause the fascia to expand, you will really feel it! When you are stretching the fascia, you should feel a powerful pulling sensation and pressure as the muscle works against the fascia to expand it.

Be sure you do not stretch so hard that you cause the muscle to tear or cause injury to yourself. You will rapidly learn to distinguish the difference between a good stretch and a bad stretch. You should not feel any sharp pain, just a steady pull.

Hold each stretch for at least 20 to 30 seconds as you must give your fascia time to be affected by the stretch. Stretch hard like this only when you have a fully pumped muscle as you must give your fascia a reason to expand. If your muscles aren't pumped, just stretch normally.

You can find instructions for stretching at:

http://hop.clickbank.net/?fitrition/betteru&l=1011

One set of hard stretching after each set you do for a muscle group, besides the obvious benefits of increased flexibility, can have an incredible effect on the size of your muscles and their further ability to grow.

Training to Maximize Your Muscle Fiber Types

By Nick Nilsson

Your muscles are made of 2 different types of fibers.

Find out what they are, what your personal fiber make-up

is and how to train for maximum results.

Knowing your personal muscle fiber make-up can be an invaluable aid when it comes to properly targeting your training program. If you're working your muscles in the wrong way, you'll be cheating yourself out of hard-earned results.

Every muscle in your body is made up of a bundle of small fibers. In each bundle, you have two main types of fibers: slow twitch and fast twitch. I will explain exactly what these are in a moment. The percentages of these different fiber types that your muscles are made of can help you determine exactly how you should train each particular muscle group in your body.

Slow Twitch: These are also known as Type I or red muscle fibers. They are responsible for long-duration, low intensity activity such as walking or any other aerobic activity.

Fast Twitch: These are known as Type 2 or white muscle fibers (divided further into A and B). They are responsible for short-duration, high intensity activity. Type 2B fibers are built for explosive, very short-duration activity such as Olympic lifts. Type 2A fibers are designed for short-to-moderate duration, moderate-to-high intensity work, as is seen in most weight training activities.

By looking at elite athletes in different sports, you can see extreme examples of each make-up of muscle fiber. At the slow twitch end is the endurance athlete, such as the marathon runner. These athletes can have up to 80% or more of slow twitch muscle fibers in their bodies, making them extremely efficient over long distances. At the fast twitch end is the sprinter. World-class sprinters can have up to 80% or more of fast twitch muscle fibers in their body, making them extremely fast, strong and powerful but with limited endurance.

How to Find Your Muscle Fiber Type:

To find the predominant fiber type in a particular muscle in your body, we need to test the repetition limits of a muscle compared to its maximum strength. Keep in mind, these limits can be altered by your training and are, therefore, just rough estimates.

First, determine your one rep max (known as the 1 RM) for an isolation exercise for that muscle group, e.g. the dumbell curl. Find the weight you can only do one rep with. You want to use an isolation exercise because any exercise that uses any other muscle groups will skew the results.

Once you've figured out your one rep max, take a weight that is 80% of it (multiply your max weight by 0.8 to get this) and do as many reps as possible with it.

- If you can do only 4 to 7 reps with 80% of your 1 RM, you

have mostly fast twitch fibers in that muscle.

The reason you will only be able to do 4 to 7 reps with

80% of your 1 RM is that fast twitch muscle fibers are

strong but don't have great endurance. You will be able

to lift more weight but you be able to do as many reps

with it.

- The ability to get approximately ten reps with 80% of

your 1 RM is the typical fiber-type mix for a muscle.

This works out to about a 50/50 split between fiber types.

- If you can do 12 to 15 or more reps with 80% of your 1 RM,

your fiber make-up is probably mostly slow twitch fibers.

Slow-twitch fibers are not as strong but have excellent

endurance. This means you won't be able to lift quite as

much but you'll be able to do a lot more reps with it.

Repeat this procedure for each muscle group you wish to determine a type for (it will vary from muscle to muscle). By knowing what type of muscle fibers you have, you can tailor your training towards developing them to their maximum potential.

Though there are always differences in individuals, there are some general similarities in fiber types in muscle groups from person to person.

For example, in most people, the outer, visible muscle of the calf (the gastrocnemius) is primarily made of slow twitch fibers while the soleus (which lies underneath the gastrocnemius) has a higher percentage of fast twitch fibers.

Two more examples of this similarity between people include the abdominals and the hamstrings. These two muscle groups are both generally made primarily of fast twitch fibers.

How to Train Your Muscle Fiber Type:

When you're training with weights, your goal is to work as many muscle fibers as possible. Affecting more muscle fibers means greater gains in strength and muscle mass.

If your fibers in a particular muscle consist primarily of slow twitch fibers, in order to affect the greatest number of those muscle fibers, you'll need to train that muscle with higher reps, shorter rest periods and higher volume. This is because they take longer to fatigue, they recover quickly and they require more work to maximize growth.

Unfortunately, slow twitch muscle fibers are limited in their potential for growth so even if a muscle group is primarily slow twitch, you should definitely include some lower rep training to maximize the fast twitch fibers you've got in that muscle.

If you find you have a hard time gaining size in a particular muscle, it could be because it has a predominance of slow twitch muscle fibers. Higher reps (e.g. 12 to 15 reps), higher volume (more sets) and shorter rest periods (30 seconds to a minute between sets) can help you to maximize those muscles. This doesn't mean you should use light weight, though. You should still strive to use weights that are as heavy as possible that will cause you to reach failure in those higher rep ranges. If you don't use heavy weights, you won't give your muscles a reason to grow.

If your fibers in a particular muscle group consist primarily of fast twitch muscle fibers, you're one of the lucky ones. You'll have a much easier time building mass in that muscle - fast twitch muscle fibers have greater potential for size than slow twitch. The more fast twitch fibers you've got, the greater your ultimate muscle size can be. These muscles are most likely your strongest and quickest to develop.

To maximize your muscles with fast twitch fibers, you'll need to train with low to moderate reps (e.g. 4 to 8 reps), rest periods of around 1 to 2 minutes and a moderate training volume (too much volume will compromise recovery).

If your muscles have a fairly even mix of fibers, you can evenly divide your training between focusing on the lower-rep, fast twitch fiber training and the higher-rep, slow twitch fiber training. This will help you to develop all the fibers in your muscles, maximizing your ultimate development.

Training your muscles according to their fiber type makes sense. It will help you to get better results from your training by allowing you to more specifically target your training according to the exact specifications of your muscles.

How I Gained 25 Pounds in One Week

By Nick Nilsson

This is a story of how I personally went from 192 pounds

to 217 pounds in bodyweight in only 7 days. Learn every

little secret technique I used to accomplish this mind-

blowing weight gain.

It started as a challenge to myself. If I took all the knowledge I had about weight gain and put it to work all at once, how much weight could I add to myself in one week? What would my upper limit be? I had some vacation time coming up where I could do nothing but eat, sleep and train so I decided to do it. This is my story...

I knew from the start that this weight gain certainly wouldn't be all muscle. In fact, it's impossible to gain that much weight in muscle in only one week (unless you're a baby elephant!). I was going to gain a combination of muscle, water and most likely some fat as well. That rapid of a weight gain, however, was going to force a lot of nutrients into my muscles quickly, resulting in some permanent muscle gains.

To start my maximal weight gain adventure, I first had to set myself up for it by dieting down. Why diet down to gain weight? Your body adapts most rapidly to extreme changes in environment. I knew I wanted to gain weight quickly, therefore I had to first subject myself to a restricted-calorie diet. When I would reverse my goals and begin to feed myself again, my body would react by rapidly sucking up every available calorie and holding onto it.

To further set myself up, the diet I went on was a two-week carbohydrate-restricted plan, much like the Atkins Diet. For two weeks, I ate less than 30 grams of carbs per day, sticking to meats, eggs, cheese and vegetables. This cleared out all the glycogen I had stored in my body as well as reducing the amount of water I was carrying (water attaches itself to carbs in your body - when you clear out the carbs, several pounds or more of water will be flushed out with it). It was kind of like squeezing out a sponge - you can fit more water into a sponge that's been squeezed totally dry than a sponge that's already moist.

It's important to note that I didn't restrict my water intake at all. That will give you exactly the wrong effect. If you restrict your water intake while dieting, your body will actually hold onto more water. If you give your body plenty of water, it will have no reason to hold onto every drop you give it and will flush it out regularly.

For training during this phase, I did three high-intensity cardio sessions per week for about 20 minutes each. This cardio was extremely tough and designed to burn as many calories as possible as quickly as possible. This would make my body extremely hungry for nutrients and ready to absorb as much as possible. I did high-volume, high-rep weight training (12 to 15 reps per set), 6 sessions per week with very short rest periods to further set up this effect.

After 2 weeks of this training and dieting, I was ready to start my weight gain. On Saturday evening, after my final training session for the week, I weighed in at 192 pounds.

On Sunday morning, I woke up and immediately took my first serving of creatine and glutamine. My focus on this day was to eat as much as possible, load up on creatine and glutamine and drink as much water as possible. Both of these supplements are excellent for forcing water into the muscles. Taking creatine alone can result in a 5 to 10 pound increase in weight over the loading phase of 5 days. To further maximize this effect, I had been off creatine for 3 months prior to this.

I took 4 servings of creatine and glutamine this day, along with eating as much as I could (for example, eggs, oatmeal, meats, potatoes, fruits, rice, etc.) and drinking buckets of water. I would continue loading creatine for the next 4 days, taking glutamine only after each workout from then on rather than with my creatine loading. I would start my weight training program on Monday. I was going to be doing a very demanding program, doing 12 total-body training sessions over the next 6 days.

My theory with doing multiple total-body training sessions is this: every single bodypart was going to get as much breakdown and stimulation as possible to maximize the amount of nutrients being taken up over my whole body. I would do more sets for the larger parts like chest, back and thighs and fewer sets for the other smaller parts. Every part would get worked twice a day for six days straight. This type of training is not appropriate for a long-term program as it would rapidly lead to overtraining in a matter of weeks. This was a one-week shot for me and I was putting everything into it.

After taking my creatine, I made breakfast, which consisted of 10 eggs and a bowl of oatmeal that would feed a family of 4. For flavor, I mixed in some fruit yogurt. To gain weight effectively, you really need to eat big.

I got to the gym for my first session that day and weighed myself. I had gained 10 pounds in the first day. Not a bad start! All that eating, drinking water and supplementation was paying off. My body was extremely primed for gaining.

My training session lasted about 45 minutes, during which I worked every bodypart. After the workout, I immediately took a mixture of whey protein (40 grams), creatine (5 grams), glutamine (10 grams) and Tang (sugary powdered drink mix) as well as some vitamins and minerals (multi-vitamin, calcium, magnesium, vitamin C, and an anti-oxidant). It's critical to provide your body with nutrients and raw materials to rebuild with as quickly as possible after training otherwise your body will just be breaking itself down.

I got home and set to work making lunch, which consisted of 2 large chicken breasts and a big bucket of spaghetti and meat sauce. Several hours later, I had a couple of cans of tuna, a sandwich and some ice cream. Please note, these meals are just samples of what I ate and not specifically what you should eat.

All during the day and evening, I was constantly drinking water. When I say constantly, I mean I got up every 10 to 15 minutes and drank a full glass of water over the course of the whole day. I was very well-hydrated, which is extremely important for weight gain. If your muscles don't have enough water, they simply can't grow.

My evening training session was also a total-body workout. At this point, my body was so flooded with carbs and water from having come off a low-carb diet, everything I did was giving my muscles an incredible pump. I was focusing on heavy weights for sets of 6 to 10 reps during my sessions and stretching out thoroughly after.

After the workout, I had another supplement and vitamin mix then went home. I had 4 eggs and a bowl of cereal for a post-workout meal, then a protein shake right before bed. I mixed up a protein shake and set it beside my bed so if, in the middle of the night, I woke up, I could drink a protein shake. This would provide extra calories and protein and reduce the amount of time I went without food during the night. And believe me, with the amount of water I was drinking during the day and during my training, waking up during the night was a given!

I repeated this type of schedule over the next days, continuing with my creatine loading, food loading and water loading. By the end of the second day, I had gained 15 pounds of bodyweight. By the end of the third day, I was up 18 pounds.

When I finished my creatine loading after the fifth day, I began taking a protein shake first thing in the morning instead. Taking protein immediately upon waking is the best way to start the day. It instantly reverses the catabolic state your body is in after fasting during sleep.

My training was going well and my body was sucking up everything I was putting into it. My strength gains were rapid and my fat gains were actually quite minimal. I was in the home stretch now. On Saturday afternoon, I went over to a friend's house and had a huge meal of Shepherd's Pie, which is basically a big pile of ground beef, potatoes and corn. Great weight gain food.

I went to the gym that night for my final training session of my weight gain week and tipped the scales at 217 pounds. In only one week, to give you an idea of the amazing strength and size gains I got, I was able to increase the amount of weight I could bench press for 8 reps by 30 pounds and I had added a full inch to my arms.

The best part is, this rapid weight gain was excellent for stretching the fascia of my muscles, giving them more room to grow (see link below for more information on fascia and stretching the fascia for increased muscle growth), leading to permanent gains in muscle size and potential muscle size.

Using all the knowledge and techniques (and appetite) for weight gain at my disposal, I had gained 25 pounds of bodyweight in only one week!

[Fascial Stretching - How Stretching Can Explode Your Muscle Growth]

http://hop.clickbank.net/?fitrition/betteru&l=1030

Daily Specialization Training - Transform Your Weakest Bodyparts Into Your STRONGEST Bodyparts!

By Nick Nilsson

Experience the power of extremely targeted, high-frequency

training. It literally has the power to turn your weakest

bodyparts into your best!

Everybody has them but nobody wants them. What are they? Stubborn, hard-to-develop bodyparts. For me, it's shoulders, calves and biceps. For you, it may be chest and triceps or perhaps hamstrings and quadriceps. No matter what the part, the solution to it remains the same: specialization!

Specialization is a technique that provides highly-targeted training overload to one or more bodyparts. This can be in the form of additional training volume and/or training frequency, i.e. do more sets for it and/or train it more often. Just like medical doctors specialize in certain areas of medicine, you will learn how to specialize on a particular bodypart and excel with it.

I'm going to show you a particular specialization program that I've found to be EXTREMELY useful for developing stubborn bodyparts. It's not hard to do and it doesn't take long to do but it has the potential to shatter plateaus in hard-to-develop bodyparts like a brick through a plate glass window.

How To Do Daily Specialization:

The name of the program is Daily Specialization and, as the name implies, it's done on a daily basis. In a nutshell, you will do just 1 set of 1 exercise for 1 bodypart twice a day, every day. It's very simple but very powerful and it can be done with any bodypart you like!

I will use dips as an example here but you can use any exercise you like. Choose an exercise you can do at home for your selected bodypart to make it easier and more convenient to do (chances are, you're not going to be going to the gym twice a day to do 1 set of 1 exercise!).

If you have weights at home, it will broaden your selection but I find that bodyweight exercises (that use your bodyweight for resistance, e.g. dips, chin-ups, push-ups, etc.) are most effective.

Using dips as the example, on Day 1, very soon after you wake up, do as many dips as you can. Go to failure, doing as many reps as you can then stop. That's your morning workout. You're done.

Do everything else in your day as you normally would, even your regular workouts for that bodypart if they're on your schedule. This program exists completely outside your regular workout schedule.

At night before you go to bed, do another set of dips to failure. That's it. When you wake up the next day, do another set of dips to failure, just like on Day 1. Keep this up for as long as you like - anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, depending on the results you want and whether you want to switch to another bodypart or not.

This is the entire program! As a quick note, you can add a third set in the middle of the day on non-training days in order to speed results. It will give your body a little extra stimulus for that bodypart. Also, do only one bodypart at a time with this program. If you add in more parts, you will dilute the training stress and diminish the effects of the program.

The key to success with this program is consistency. You MUST do it consistently every day, twice a day, without fail to provide that constant training stimulus to the body. Even if you don't feel like it, do it. Even if you're tired and you don't get nearly as many reps as usual, do it. Even if your muscles are sore, do it. The only exception to this rule is if you're sick or injured. Do this, and you WILL get results.

Why It Works:

Physiologically speaking, the body becomes its function. If you run long distances, your body will have a tendency to become smaller and lighter to be better able to cope with the stress. If you lift weights, your body will have a tendency to become more muscular in order to deal with the resistance.

We target this highly-efficient adaptation process by training stubborn bodyparts with very high frequency. Your body quickly learns it needs to build up that bodypart in response to this constant workload. Your body will very quickly start allocating recovery resources towards rebuilding that part bigger and stronger.

You keep working it and your body will keep building it. This program harnesses the adaptive power of your body and channels it into a specific bodypart for maximum results. The results are consistent and phenomenal!

Let me give you my experience with Daily Specialization. I used this program for my shoulders, doing handstand push-ups. At a bodyweight of 200 pounds, when I started I couldn't do a single full rep, only a few partial reps.

After 12 weeks of consistently doing handstand push-ups morning and night, I was able to perform 40 full reps at the very same bodyweight. If you think about this for a moment, it's actually quite shocking! Could you imagine barely being able to bench press your bodyweight one day then, 3 months later, being able to press it 40 times!

The results came little by little but on a consistent and daily basis. Over the 3 months (which were going to go by anyway, regardless of whether I did this program or not) this resulted in HUGE gains in muscle development and also carried over to strength in exercises such as shoulder press and bench press.

You can easily achieve powerful results like this with the Daily Specialization Program.

One of the greatest benefits I found with this program wasn't even the improvement in strength and muscle development. Working the stubborn bodypart twice a day to failure actually made my stubborn shoulders not stubborn anymore!

The constant workload, in addition to building strength and muscle mass, also greatly increased the circulation/capillarization in the muscles. Poor blood circulation is one of the biggest causes of lagging muscle development. This greatly-improved circulation meant more nutrients could get into the muscles more easily, which means easier muscle growth in the long-term.

Not a bad result for a few minutes of effort every day!

I want you to pick a lagging bodypart, pick an exercise for it and try this program for yourself. I guarantee you will see consistent results. Your body will simply have no choice!

Interested in learning more about other Specialization Programs and how you can use them to shatter training plateaus? Click this link now to find out about other highly-targeted Specialization Programs.

http://hop.clickbank.net/?fitrition/betteru&l=300

Training on the Edge - Learn How Overtraining on Purpose Can Get You Maximum Results FAST!

By Nick Nilsson

We've always been told that it's bad to overtrain. Guess

what? Overtraining on purpose is where the REAL results are.

Overtraining is NOT evil. Overtraining can be exactly what you need to achieve continuous and rapid results in your training.

But first, what is overtraining? Overtraining is, most simply, training too much. Your body is unable to recover from the volume or frequency of training and begins to break down. You not only lose motivation to train, you become more susceptible to injury and illness, and you may even start to go backwards in your training, getting smaller and weaker on almost a daily basis.

So how can overtraining possibly be good for you? I'll tell you.

It all begins with the incredible adaptive power of your body. As you become more advanced in weight training, you will generally notice that you cannot make consistent gains for a long period of time on one training system. Your body quickly adapts to whatever training system you're using and hits a plateau. To get around this, it's usually recommended that you change your program every three to six weeks.

The question now is how to use this adaptive ability to your advantage.

It's really quite simple. You gradually build up to a state of temporary overtraining, then, when you're overtrained and your adaptive processes are working to their fullest capacity for recovery, you back off. This backing off results in what is called overcompensation.

Imagine you're driving a car and climbing a hill with the gas pedal to the floor. You're giving it everything you've got but you're still going up slowly. This is similar to overtraining. When you reach the top, the going gets a lot easier. If you keep the gas pedal on the floor when you go over the top and head down, you're going to go a lot faster very quickly. This is overcompensation and this is where the results are.

On a normal program, you work a bodypart, it becomes temporarily weaker, then becomes stronger as it overcompensates so you can lift more next time. What a normal program does on a small, local basis, this overtraining program does on a full body, systemic basis.

Sound good? We're not done. Now we're going to harness the power of overtraining by using what I call "Controlled Overtraining."

The overtraining or ramping phase of this Controlled Overtraining program lasts three weeks, which is about the time it takes the body to adapt to a training program. It then backs off to a fairly easy phase for three weeks.

Notes:

- Take all sets to failure. The rep ranges are simply guidelines - if you can get more reps, do them.

- Be sure to keep your workout time to less than 45 minutes for best results. Much longer and you will break yourself down too much.

- Use a timer or stopwatch to time your rest between sets. It is critical to the success of the program to keep your rest periods consistent.

Visit the following link for a day-to-day, set-by-set outline of how this training program works. Reading through the program will give you a good idea of how it all comes together.

http://hop.clickbank.net/?fitrition/betteru&l=1063

As you can see, you start out doing 3 sets for your bodyparts the first week, 4 sets the second week, and 5 sets the third week. While you're increasing the volume, you're simultaneously decreasing the rest period. This gradually builds you up to overtraining.

For the next three weeks, you decrease the sets and reps and increase the rest periods. This allows you to recover from the overtraining and take advantage of the overcompensation that occurs when the body is still working at dealing with the hard work and then you cut the hard work. Though it may feel like you're hardly doing anything at all, you should see some great results.

Continue this lower-volume training for at least three weeks. If, at the end of those three weeks, you are still making progress, keep going! Don't cut yourself off from any results. This phase could last as long as 6 weeks or more. When you start to slow down, however, it's time to ramp back up to overtraining. Keeping up this cycling of volume and intensity is a strategy that gives consistent results over long periods of time.

The first time you do the program, keep it exactly as it is. This will give you the best, practical experience as to how the program feels.

After that, you can try playing with the numbers a little following this general outline, perhaps starting at 3 minutes rest for the first week, 90 seconds the second week, and then dropping down to 30 seconds by the third week.

If you do decide to play with the numbers, be absolutely certain to reduce your training volume and increase your rest periods for the second three-week phase. If you don't, you will continue to overtrain yourself and you will break down.

The program that I've outlined uses a rep system called Micro-Periodization (Periodization is the cycling of rep ranges. It is traditionally conducted over a period of months, e.g. three months high reps, three months, medium reps, three months low reps.). Dividing the week into three separate phases, such as in this program, is called Micro-Periodization. It is an extremely effective format for building strength and muscle mass.

As you can see, overtraining is not always the horrible thing it's often made out to be. Training on the edge is where the real results are. Those who shy away from it will never make as good of progress as those who embrace it!

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