The Infonian

In recent years, weight training has gone from the hobby of chisel-jawed Austrian celebrities to the staple form of exercise for people of all cultures and backgrounds. Its popularity is often a source of mystery for non-believers, who often see it as an excuse for vanity and massaging one’s own ego. Whilst this may be true for a certain percentage of the population (admittedly, in my time, I’ve seen my share of bicep flexing and posturing in front of the local gym’s more reflective surfaces) there are many health, fitness, and mental benefits associated with weight training. 1) The first and most obvious benefit is the increase in size and tone of the body’s musculature. By making small tears in the muscle fibers, the resistance-based movements trick the body into over-compensating when making its repairs so that in future it can more easily cope with the weight. This size increase will be accompanied by a strength gain also, which can be useful in day-to-day life (see: moving furniture).

2) Secondly, resistance exercises cause a metabolic “spike” that allows you to continue burning an above-normal amount of calories even after the exercise period has ended. For those who are unhappy with their body composition, this is a great solution to the problem of unsightly body fat.

3) Psychologically, any form of exercise is a good idea but weight training in particular is known to cause better self-confidence and esteem. Whether this is related to the size and strength gains, a release of endorphins while exercising or simply an increased feeling of well-being is undecided, but who cares! We could all use a more positive mental attitude from time to time. If you want to get an added edge in the gym you might also like to read more on training supplements like the Maximuscle Thermobol Review

4) My last argument to extol the virtues of weight training is the benefits it can provide to sports people. It’s often forgotten that full-body fitness is hugely important, even to athletes such as sprinters, who would appear only to need use of their legs to propel them forward at such a rate. This, like many assumptions, is incorrect. The truth is that upper body muscles (especially the biceps and triceps) are instrumental in creating momentum in the running motion and that without them runners would be unable to achieve such phenomenal speeds. So, next time you’re in the gym, step off the treadmill and pick up a dumbbell!

Author: Gary Bunn

Then you’re probably determined to get one. It’s that same determination that will be your struggle. The more you want it, the harder you want to work and the longer you want to stay in the gym. This is going to lead to overtraining which will stunt any strength gains you’ve made and delay any dreams of an even bigger bench.

How do you know if you’re at risk of overtraining? If you feel run down after a workout, notice that you aren’t making any gains, you always do forced reps, you’re not getting enough rest, your diet stinks, you have a bad attitude or you aren’t motivated you’re probably overtraining. Insomnia is another big sign. Put it this way, if a weight continually feels heavier than normal, chances are you haven’t gotten weaker, you just haven’t recovered from previous workouts.

There are three distinct stages of metabolism. The first is a state of equilibrium easily described as the fully recovered state where energy is neither being depleted and tissue is not being damaged or repaired. The second stage is catabolism. Catabolism is the stage you are in during a workout. Energy is being depleted and muscle tissue is being damaged. Your goals should be to keep catabolism in the gym, but many people that overtrain keep this stage going long after their workouts end and lose hard-earned muscle tissue to help the recovery. Finally the stage that usually doesn’t get much of a chance to kick in before we’re back in the gym for another session. The third stage is anabolism where energy is restored and tissue damage is being repaired. So after you lift you want to heal and reach a state of homeostasis, but instead many of us are back in the gym tearing our muscles and using energy when we haven’t even let the muscle fully recover from the previous workout. Never lift a muscle group that is still sore. I know it’s difficult but sometimes more isn’t better.

There is always the urge to overtrain thinking that if we just work harder the gains will come. How do we resist the urge? First off lets think, quality not quantity. If you lift each muscle group only once a week and spend less than 1 hr in the gym you’re on the right path. Although you don’t have to spend a lot of time in the gym the time spent must be intense. Every single exercise and rep should be performed with a passion and you will accomplish more in 45 minutes than most people do in two hours. If you are truly pushing yourself you should be exhausted at the end of the workout. After tearing your body apart, do you think it’s going to be ready to do it again in two to three days? I think not, try at least a week.

So all you benchers out there if you’re lifting heavy, workout after workout make sure that the reason you hit a plateau is not that you are trying too often. Let your body recover, heal, and grow before you start ripping it up again. When you hit each body part several times a week you don’t really try as hard because you know you’ll get another shot at it in a week. When you only lift each body part once per week you develop a sense of urgency. You know you better lift hard because you won’t get another chance to train it again for a week. Then as the week passes by you find yourself looking forward to your next chest day. Anyone that thinks they might be overtraining take a couple of days off and go back to the gym revived and motivated with the determination to train smarter and harder.

Author: Mike Westerdal

For some bodybuilders, achieving the perfect state of pump can best be described as being what nirvana is to a Buddhist. It’s everything they strive for when working out. So it’s no wonder that some of the world’s most famous bodybuilders-including Arnold Schwarzenegger-have described the pump as, “the greatest feeling you can get in the gym.”

Depending on who you talk to, you’re likely to get different opinions about the importance of the pump. For some guys, it’s kind of the “holy grail” of bodybuilding, but there are plenty of other bodybuilders who don’t pay much attention to it at all.

The guys on the “pro pump” side say that a good pump is what all bodybuilders should strive to achieve when they train. From their point of view, the pump signifies that you’re training with sufficient intensity.

They also say that achieving a good pump during a workout means that the systems are functioning properly and that you are delivering lots of nutrient-rich blood to the muscles, which in turn indicates that they are primed for growth. Furthermore, they say that when a bodybuilder is able to achieve a good pump quickly, it is a clear signal that his body is in an anabolic state, ready to grow.

Without getting too deep into the whole science of things, the pump is the result of both sarcoplasmic and mitochondrial hypertrophy, both of which generally occur at the highest levels through workouts that focus on medium or high rep sets. These types of hypertrophy result in an increase in the volume of the muscle, which gives the appearance of the pump. The downside to this is that this type of growth is temporary-it only lasts a short while and there is also no real increase in strength gains here either. This type of training is sometimes referred to as “form over function,” because while they may look good, the muscles are not nearly as strong as they appear.

Real muscle growth occurs through myofibrillar hypertrophy, which is the result of heavy training (heavy weight, lower reps). Myofibrillar hypertrophy is also the type of growth that brings about the big strength gains. The guys who focus on this type of hypertrophy are not only big, but they’re strong too. This is where you really get the explosive strength, but this type of hypertrophy does not result in much of a “pump.”

Which brings me to point of view of the guys who say that the pump isn’t all that it’s made out up to be. These are the guys who tend to focus not just on size but on strength as well. In other words, they don’t want to just look powerful, they want to be powerful too. When training, these guys focus on progressive overload and intensity, doing fewer reps with maximum weight.

In the gym, you’ll see them doing compound exercises like squats and deadlifts with heavy weight, not doing rep after rep of leg extensions with a light weight.

What you do is going to depend on what you want to achieve. One point of view isn’t right and the other wrong-they each just lead to different results. The decision is going to come down to a personal preference on your part. I will give you a tip though-you can have the best of both worlds. One way is to mix up your workouts, initially focus on high weight/low reps to get the myofibrillar hypertrophy going, and then afterwards move on to lower weight/higher rep sets to give you the pump. This will ensure that not only are your muscles primed for growth but they’ll get bigger and st

ronger too.

Author: Mike Westerdal