Carb Cycling, the Secret to Lean Muscle Gains

ByRichard A Knight

What is Carb Cycling?

Carb cycling is a dietary method of altering your daily carb intake. It is primarily used for gaining muscle, and the idea is to consume a higher level of carbs on your training days in order to provide your body with a surplus of calories (a must for any form of muscle gain).

Benefits of Carb Cycling over traditional diets

In order for ANYONE to gain muscle, there must be a surplus of calorie intake (meaning you need to eat more calories than your body requires for day-to-day functionality). Without this surplus, your body doesn't have the resources to build muscle and can actually break down muscle if your calorie intake is below your personal "maintenance" intake.

Carb cycling is different from traditional muscle gaining diets in that it is designed to only provide a caloric surplus on training days, rather than all days of the week. Carb cycling reaps the benefits of taking in extra calories to gain muscle, but regulates the caloric surplus which can help limit fat gain and leave you with lean muscle growth.

Things to be careful of when Carb Cycling

Don't get the wrong impression, when carb cycling you are given certain days (training days) when you can increase your carb intake, but this must be performed in moderation. Running out and going on a carb or calorie binge will certainly work against your goals and could lead to an unwanted fat gain. You'll want to shoot for a 10 to 20 percent caloric surplus on training days to find that sweet spot. Adjustments should be made depending on your body type.

Example - if you're caloric maintenance level is 3000 calories per day, that is what you'll consume on your rest days. On training days you would consume between 3300 (10% surplus) and 3600 (20% surplus).

Another thing to be aware of during carb cycling are your food choices. There is a wide assortment of carbs out there, but there are healthy and not-so-healthy choices when it comes to carbs. Whole grains, vegetables and fruits, seeds and beans, and low fat dairy are all great healthy sources of carbs. Sweets, desserts, soda, pastries, and anything made with refined flour are not-so-healthy. You don't have to cut these completely out (unless your planning on competitive body building), but like with anything in life - moderation is key.

Not all people are created equal

As with any diet, carb cycling needs to be custom adapted to you - your body type and lifestyle. There's no cookie-cutter plan that works for everyone, but you should now have an idea of the framework to base your personal diet around.

Once you develop your plan, it's always best to re-evaluate your diet and goals every couple months. Make adjustments as necessary to ensure you're getting the most out of your diet as well as your training.

Carb Cycling Summary

For those of you who want the quick and dirty breakdown of carb cycling for muscle gain, here's the summarized low-down:

- Carb cycling is increasing your carb intake on training days to provide your body with a surplus of calories (necessary to gain muscle)

- Carb cycling gives you the benefits of a caloric surplus (muscle gain) but limits the negative side effects (fat gain)

- Don't go crazy with carb consumption. A little goes a long way...

- Be smart in making your carb choices

- Do - whole grains, fruit and vegetables, seeds and beans, and low fat dairy

- Don't - Sugars, sodas, candy, pastries, or anything with refined flour (white breads, pastas, etc..)

- Re-evaluate your progress and adjust your plan as necessary.

Richard Knight is a former skinny guy who gained 42 Lbs in 4 months and teaches average Joes how to build muscle. If your goal is to build lean muscle (without the traditional fat gains) then Richard highly recommends you check out programs that are specifically designed to accomplish this. If you don't know where to start, check out his Somanabolic Muscle Maximizer Review at: http://www.buildmusclechallenge.com/somanabolic-muscle-maximizer-review as a starting point of what to expect from these kinds of programs.

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Health and Fitness: Build-Muscle
Richard A Knight

Email Address:SubscribeBuild Muscle Article FeedFind More ArticlesSearchSimilar ArticlesGain Lean Muscle - It's All About Your Diet!How to Gain Lean Muscle Mass - Gain 10 to 15 Pounds of Lean Muscle Mass Within WeeksHow to Build Muscle Fast - Gain Weight and Look Great!Carb Cycling - How to Get Big and Stay LeanGain Muscles Without Gaining FatThe Different Days in Low Carb Cycling For Weight LossCarb Cycling: How To Use The Foods You Love To Burn FatBurn Fat and Add Muscle at the Same Time?How to Gain Muscle Mass Without Bulking With Extra FatBuilding Muscles Diets - What to Eat to Cut Fat From Your Body and Build Muscle QuicklyRecent ArticlesOptimize Your Bodybuilding Efforts With Whey Protein PowderThose Pesky Little Calf Muscles - What You May Be Doing Wrong, And How To Make Them EpicThe Ten Things I Love About Weight TrainingWhat Percentage of Body Fat Will I See A Six Pack?Best Nutrition for Building Muscle - 6 Tips for a Muscle Gain DietTop Ten Superfoods for Perfect AbsHow a Six Pack Can Make You FamousBest Ways to Build Muscle7 Useful Guidelines for Skinny Guys on How to Build Muscle FastQuick Guide To Mastering The Muscle-UpSubmitted On March 13, 2012. Viewed 47 times. Word count: 613.

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Knight, Richard A.".".13 Mar. 2012EzineArticles.com.22 Mar. 2012 .APA Style Citation:
Knight, R. A. (2012, March 13). . Retrieved March 22, 2012, from http://ezinearticles.com/?Carb-­Cycling,-­the-­Secret-­to-­Lean-­Muscle-­Gains&id=6938159Chicago Style Citation:
Knight, Richard A. "." EzineArticles.com. http://ezinearticles.com/?Carb-­Cycling,-­the-­Secret-­to-­Lean-­Muscle-­Gains&id=6938159EzineArticles.com© 2012 EzineArticles.com
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How to Gain Weight Fast For Women - 4 Crucial Tips to Building A Curvy Body

ByJohn Graham Baines

"Weight" is always a sensitive subject for the majority of women. While most women are trying to lose weight, some women are trying to gain weight. This obstacle of trying to gain weight is further compounded by unsolicited sometimes dangerous advice from jealous women who wished they were thin as well as advice from dodgy sources from the Internet. This article will reveal how to gain weight fast for women using these 4 crucial tips to building a curvy body.

Write Up A Weight Gain Plan

The first step towards achieving a sexy, curvy body is to write up a weight gain plan. This plan is crucial since it will guide you towards your goal. This plan will motivate you in times of adversity, to destroy procrastination and will keep you focused and on track if you get distracted. Within your weight gain plan you will need to list down how much weight you would like to gain, a time frame to reinforce that urgency, what foods to consume to bulk up, which exercises to build muscle, how frequently you train per week and when you plan to go to bed. These individual factors play a crucial role in the development of a curvier and more feminine body. If you mess up with any of these factors you will slow down your progress. I urge all women to write up a weight gain plan immediately upon reading this article to reinforce their commitment of achieving their dream body.

Choose Nutrient Dense Meals

Nutrition plays a vital role in how your body looks. Women who are trying to lose weight often say that nutrition is the hardest part of their weight loss program since they are faced with many temptations which could jeopardise their efforts in losing weight. The same applies for women trying to gain weight. You may consider than since you're skinny you're free to eat whatever's in sight. This flawed thinking will only set you up for unhealthy eating habits later in life. Foods you should consume include brown rice, whole grain bread, rolled oats, pasta, chicken, turkey, salmon, full-cream milk, cheese, cottage cheese, yoghurt, eggs as well as high calorie fruits and vegetables. You should consume around four to six smaller meals throughout the day to provide a steady flow of nutrients for your muscles to grow.

Choose Compound Resistance Exercises

In addition to consuming nutrient dense meals one should incorporate compound resistance exercises into their workouts to build muscle to give that curvy look. You should focus your efforts on increasing the size of your hips, thighs and legs to give that curvy appearance. Exercises to use include deadlifts, barbell/dumbbell squats and leg press. You should also use other exercises to balance out your body so that no single muscle group is too strong or too weak in relation to other muscle groups. These exercises include push ups, pull ups, chin ups, dips and bench press. Muscle groups that are too weak or too strong in relation to others will cause bad posture and greater chances of injuries. Combine a selection of these exercises in your workout program and train around three to four times per week for quick results.

Recovery

Recovery is often overlooked simply because it doesn't involve much effort. We are led to believe that building muscle requires only strenuous effort with little if any emphasis on resting. In fact we spend more time resting than we do exercising so we should in fact be placing more emphasis on recovery. We should be getting around six to eight hours of sleep every night however the majority of people simply don't have enough time, how can we fix this? We can allocate more time in our lives by getting rid of time wasters such as watching TV or surfing the Net. These two notorious activities are the reasons why we don't have enough time.

On average we watch about two to four hours of TV per day. In a week this gives us 14 to 28 hours that are lost. Add to that the time we spend on the computer each day. Typically we spend at least one hour per day online so that's an additional seven hours of time wasted. All together around 21 to 35 hours of time is wasted, equivalent to a part-time job, If we seriously want to achieve our goal of a better body we must prioritise our goal of gaining weight above watching TV or surfing the net. When it comes to getting six to eight hours of sleep per night it is best to go to bed early and wake up early for optimum results. The best time to go to bed in my opinion is before 10pm since hormones are released between the hours of 11pm and 1am, the window of opportunity for transforming your body.

Get A Good Workout Program

Building a curvy body is more than just working out in the gym and counting reps and sets; a lot more. Working out is intense, the mental aspect of lifting weights is equally intense, and there is a host of information that you absolutely need to know if you plan to succeed. The best thing is to learn it from someone who's been there. Visit Skinny To Muscles and check out No-Nonsense Muscle Building by Canadian Fitness Model Champion, Vince DelMonte. No-Nonsense Muscle Building will teach you everything there is to know about building a curvy body for skinny women inside and out and you won't find a better resource to give yourself an edge.

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Health and Fitness: Build-Muscle
John Graham Baines

Email Address:SubscribeBuild Muscle Article FeedFind More ArticlesSearchSimilar ArticlesHow to Get Skinny Fast - Top 3 Reasons Women Want to Lose Weight Fast (Find Out How to Do it)!How to Lose Weight Fast and Easy - 3 Concepts That Can Give You Back Your Confidence!How To Gain Weight Fast For Girls - 3 Tips For A Curvy Hourglass FigureCan You Lose Weight Fast? The Metabolism Diet - Truth Or Fiction?How to Lose Baby Weight Fast - Pregnancy Weight Gain and Anxiety!How to Gain Weight Fast - Healthy Weight Gain for WomenHow to Gain Muscles Fast, Gain More Weight and Become StrongerWays To Gain Weight Fast For Women - Adding The Pounds To Your Body That You WantA Weight Gaining System For Women That Really Works - Gain Curves Fast and EasyLose Weight Quick For Women - 20 Quick Ways to Lose Weight FastRecent ArticlesOptimize Your Bodybuilding Efforts With Whey Protein PowderThose Pesky Little Calf Muscles - What You May Be Doing Wrong, And How To Make Them EpicThe Ten Things I Love About Weight TrainingWhat Percentage of Body Fat Will I See A Six Pack?Best Nutrition for Building Muscle - 6 Tips for a Muscle Gain DietTop Ten Superfoods for Perfect AbsHow a Six Pack Can Make You FamousBest Ways to Build Muscle7 Useful Guidelines for Skinny Guys on How to Build Muscle FastQuick Guide To Mastering The Muscle-UpSubmitted On March 11, 2012. Viewed 45 times. Word count: 811.

MLA Style Citation:
Baines, John G.".".11 Mar. 2012EzineArticles.com.22 Mar. 2012 .APA Style Citation:
Baines, J. G. (2012, March 11). . Retrieved March 22, 2012, from http://ezinearticles.com/?How-­to-­Gain-­Weight-­Fast-­For-­Women-­-­-­4-­Crucial-­Tips-­to-­Building-­A-­Curvy-­Body&id=6933281Chicago Style Citation:
Baines, John G. "." EzineArticles.com. http://ezinearticles.com/?How-­to-­Gain-­Weight-­Fast-­For-­Women-­-­-­4-­Crucial-­Tips-­to-­Building-­A-­Curvy-­Body&id=6933281EzineArticles.com© 2012 EzineArticles.com
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The Many Benefits Of Sandbag Training

ByRex F Wheeler

As a youth, I spent a lot of time in Africa. One thing I used to admire was the kind of physique builders and construction workers had. They never had a lot of muscle mass but they were extremely ripped. Their physiques were very defined and proportional. Their work was hard as they did not have any access to sophisticated machines like diggers and caterpillars. This was manual labor at its toughest and they put their bodies through hell day in and day out virtually every day of the year.

One such way of training to replicate this has been popular with alternative personal trainers and competitive athletes for many years. It's known as 'sandbag training'. Sandbag training is so foreign and unusual that you'll be firing up muscle groups you never knew you had and so you might find it a little tough.

1. Bigger & stronger forearms - Sandbags are a little unwieldy. The sand is always shifting around and there isn't really a proper place for you to grab a hold of. This makes them difficult to work with but also hellish on your forearms. You are constantly adjusting your grip to prevent the sandbag from sliding out of your hands and different parts of your forearms keep getting fired up. There is no better way to exercise your forearms than this dynamic exercise. An exercise like the sandbag swing will really prove tough for your forearms.

2. Bigger Shoulders & traps - Sandbag tosses, whereby you lift it above your head and throw it as far away as you can, as quickly as you can are not only great cardiovascular conditioning exercises, but excellent shoulder wreckers. Once again, all the credit is given to the constantly shifting sand which means you havent got any stability. this forces you to constantly adjust your grasp and your positioning which fires up multiple muscle groups at once.

3. Core - Constantly having to adjust and balance yourself makes for a strong core in the long run. The stability you gain from sandbag training is unmatched by regular traditional exercise.

4. Cheap - Regular construction sandbags are cheap but they are generally sold in bulk and you can only get them at certain weights (10kg, 20kg, 25kg, 50kg, 100kg). You can buy sandbags which are specially made for fitness work. They have multiple handles and are adjustable as you can add and remove the sand as you wish. While they are costlier to purchase initially, they work out cheaper in the long run since you don't need to keep purchasing different sized sandbags. Also, a single bag is better for storage.

5. Flexible - The commercial fitness sandbags come with multiple grips and handles which allow you to perform a gamut of different exercises. In fact, if you are creative enough, a large sandbag is all you need to get seriously ripped. Unfortunately, the shape and size of the sandbag can prevent you from doing more intricate, targeted isolation exercises but for general mass development, there are few ways to do it better.

To ensure you get the most out of your sandbag training, we recommend you do a bit of work on your forearms and working with a constantly shifting sandbag demands a strong grip. Check out our forearm exercise tips to achieve this. We also have a lot of other material on bodybuilding and fitness for your benefit.

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Health and Fitness: Build-Muscle
Rex F Wheeler

Email Address:SubscribeBuild Muscle Article FeedFind More ArticlesSearchSimilar ArticlesHow to Get Bigger Biceps - 4 Tips to Get Big Huge GunsHow to Get Bigger Forearms - Small Steps to Huge ForearmsBenefits Of Grip Strength and How To Improve ItDevelop Forearms Strong Enough To Crush ApplesTop Mass Building Workouts You Should Be Doing NowMy Top 15 Non-Traditional, Muscle Building, Fat Scorching Workouts3 Best Exercises to Build Huge Chest Muscle FastBuild Bigger Arms by Working Out Less!Personal Trainer - Motivation to Get You Where You Need to Be in Life - The New Fitness CoachesIncrease Bicep Size and Build Huge Arms Now!Recent ArticlesOptimize Your Bodybuilding Efforts With Whey Protein PowderThose Pesky Little Calf Muscles - What You May Be Doing Wrong, And How To Make Them EpicThe Ten Things I Love About Weight TrainingWhat Percentage of Body Fat Will I See A Six Pack?Best Nutrition for Building Muscle - 6 Tips for a Muscle Gain DietTop Ten Superfoods for Perfect AbsHow a Six Pack Can Make You FamousBest Ways to Build Muscle7 Useful Guidelines for Skinny Guys on How to Build Muscle FastQuick Guide To Mastering The Muscle-UpSubmitted On March 20, 2012. Viewed 7 times. Word count: 511.

MLA Style Citation:
Wheeler, Rex F.".".20 Mar. 2012EzineArticles.com.22 Mar. 2012 .APA Style Citation:
Wheeler, R. F. (2012, March 20). . Retrieved March 22, 2012, from http://ezinearticles.com/?The-­Many-­Benefits-­Of-­Sandbag-­Training&id=6951320Chicago Style Citation:
Wheeler, Rex F. "." EzineArticles.com. http://ezinearticles.com/?The-­Many-­Benefits-­Of-­Sandbag-­Training&id=6951320EzineArticles.com© 2012 EzineArticles.com
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