Nina Redza asked:


As a woman, I have never hesitated to walk into a free weight room, pick up a set of 25lbs dumbbell, stand there right in the middle of the badly lit floor and just start lifting. Never mind the stares I get all around me (95% are usually men). My focus is to get my muscles pumped, walk out of the room with a tight body and take pride in the discipline that I have developed over the years. It’s a solitary sport and not many can take the repetitive motion of this chosen path but for those few who have, it is an extremely rewarding path to take. Extremely rewarding.

What exactly is strength training? According to Wikipedia, it is “the use of resistance to muscular contraction to build the strength, anaerobic endurance and size of skeletal muscles”. Basically, it means that when you lift weight, your muscles will get stronger and grow in size. How much they grow depends on a number of factors such as: how heavy you lift, how often you lift in a week, how well you plan your diet and most importantly, how much rest you get.

How does a muscle grow bigger? When you lift a weight that the body is not accustomed to and create muscular contractions, you cause microscopic tears (microtrauma) to the muscle fibres. When this happens, the body repairs itself within a period of 1-3 days by adding more fibres in anticipation of another ‘traumatic’ session of weight training. The result is known as hypertrophy. During the repair phase, it is crucial that you consume sufficient nutrients like complete proteins and carbohydrates (simple and complex) to speed up the healing and growth process. Training without good nutrition will not get you the results you want.

The beauty of strength training is its ability to shape your body according you your goals and desires within your genetic limitation, of course. Why would you get into weight training?

These are some of the common reasons:

1. To build strength in general

2. To firm flabby body parts (for most women: the “batwings” and thighs)

3. To assist an athlete’s perfomance in his or her chosen sport

4. To assist in fat loss

5. To build confidence

6. To add sufficient muscle tone without looking like a bodybuilder

7. To be a bodybuilder

8. For medical reasons (physiotherapy)

There are many other reasons but the 8 mentioned above are pretty much the general reasons for picking up a dumbell. It is usually easier to convince a man to start training with weights than it is a woman. Why? Because many women have been fed the notion that lifting dumbells will cause them to hypertrophy beyond recognition. The most common answer you will even hear is “Oh, I don’t want to lift weights because I don’t want to grow big muscles.”

This is a myth that has been circulating for many years and has been passed down from generation to generation. The truth is, women do NOT have enough of the growth hormone (testosterone) that is required to build the muscle size that a man is capable of. Women’s ovaries and adrenal glands produce only about one-seventh of the amount of testosterone that men do. Biologically and chemically, it is virtually impossible for women to attain even a third of the strength and muscle development that men possess. So why do women bodybuilders have large muscle development?

Many of these women have exceptional genetic ability to develop their bodies they way they have. Even then, with strict dieting and heavy training, they can never equal the level of their male counterpart. For many female bodybuilders who look like men, the have resorted to ingesting steroids, which are basically testosterone, to enhance their muscle development in an unnatural way. These women will eventually develop ****** hair, enlarged voice boxes and aggression.

For the rest of us, strength training will give us the curves and **** shape that make us look like the women we see in fitness magazines. For the men, having a set of visible six pack abs will not only protect you from the many cardiovascular diseases that are associated with excess belly fat, as a bonus, you will also look aesthetically pleasing. Ladies love **** abs on their men!



Muscle Gain

Michael Crockett asked:


The rules of weight training are the same as the rules of strength training, and involves changing the number of repetitions, sets, tempo, exercise type and how much weight is lifted to cause increases in strength, endurance, size or shape.

The specific combinations of reps, sets, exercises and weight depends upon the aims of the individual performing the exercise, sets with fewer reps can be performed with heavier weights.

In addition to the basic principles of strength training, a further consideration added by weight training is the equipment used. Types of equipment include barbells, dumbbells, pulleys and stacks in the form of weight machines or the body’s own weight in the case of chin-ups and push-ups. Different types of weights will give different types of resistance, and often the same absolute weight can have different relative weights depending on the type of equipment used. For example, lifting 20 pounds using a dumbbell requires significantly more force than moving 20 pounds on a weight stack due to the use of pulleys.

When you are strength or weight training you must use good form, defining good form is doing the movements with the appropriate muscle group, and not transferring the weight to different body parts in order to move greater weight. When you don’t use good form it can result in injury or a failure to meet training goals, since the desired muscle group is not challenged sufficiently, the muscle group is not pushed so the muscle will not gain the strength you are trying to achieve.

The benefits of weight training overall are comparable to most other types of strength training increased muscle, tendon and ligament strength, bone density, flexibility, tone, metabolic rate and postural support. There are benefits and limitations to weight training as compared to other types of strength training.

Resistance training involves the use of elastic or hydraulic resistance to contraction rather than gravity. Weight training provides the majority of the resistance at the beginning, initiation joint angle of the movement, when the muscle must overcome the inertia of the weight’s mass. After this point the overall resistance alters depending on the angle of the joint. In comparison, hydraulic resistance provides a fixed amount of resistance throughout the range of motion, depending on the speed of the movement. Elastic resistance provides the greatest resistance at the end of the motion, when the elastic element is stretched to the greatest extent.

Isometric exercise provides a fixed amount of resistance based on the force output of the muscle. This strengthens the muscle at the specific joint angle at which the isometric exercise occurs.

Although weight training is similar to body building, they have different objectives. Body builders compete in body building competitions; they train to maximize their muscular size and develop extremely low levels of body fat In contrast, most weight trainers train to improve their strength and anaerobic endurance while not giving special attention to reducing body fat below normal.

Weight trainers tend to focus on compound exercises to build basic strength, whereas bodybuilders often use isolation exercises to visually separate their muscles and to improve muscular tone.

However, the bodybuilding community has been the source of many of weight training’s principles, techniques, vocabulary, and customs.

Weight training does allow tremendous flexibility in exercises and weights which can allow bodybuilders to target specific muscles and muscle groups, as well as attain specific goals.



Muscle Growth

Jim Smith asked:


ng>Massive Muscle Building for Your Biceps

Welcome to The Gun Show! No, I do not mean the one where you see a lot of Battle Dress Uniform’s or old men with beards down to their chest, looking at a Luger that Rommel had strapped around his ankle. I mean The Gun Show were the armory consists of your GUNS! That’s right, your biceps and your triceps!

When you fist started to lift weights, chances are the first exercises you did where:

1. Barbell Curls

2. Barbell Triceps Extensions.

While these are fine exercises, there is much more to building huge guns. Read on and I will tell you how to turn your .22’s in to .50 caliber Desert Eagles.

1. Train Compound Movements: I don’t know if I can say anything else that hasn’t already been said about compound movements. They use a ton of muscle and they get you thick and strong. You train your legs and upper body with compound movements, so your arm training should be no different. Also, before we get on a roll here, remember that the triceps account for about 2/3 of all of your upper arm size, so prioritize accordingly. For the biceps I like to use chin ups. When you do curls (barbell or dumbbell) it is a single joint movement. We kick this up a notch when we do chins, especially close grip chins. Action is taking place at the elbow joint (elbow flexion) as well as the shoulder joint (shoulder flexion). Few biceps movements allow this to occur. Also, when doing chins you are using your body weight which is probably more than you could ever curl with a barbell or a dumbbell. Added to that, you can externally load the movement to increase it’s difficulty. For triceps, I have found that close grip 3 or 4 Board presses are excellent strength and mass builders. For big triceps just press and extended and do it heavy!

2. PUMP IT UP!: After you blast your biceps and triceps with heavy compound movements, get some blood pumping through the muscles with some basic single joint movement exercises. DB curls, DB hammer curls, Incline DB Curls, triceps push downs, DB extensions, single arm cable extensions etc., all work well to get blood rushing into your muscles. This helps with growth and recovery. By getting blood moving through the muscle you promote recovery via oxygen and nutrient rich blood, and you also promote growth via cross sectional increases to the muscle fibers. Think high rep stuff here.

3. Form is everything: Just like any other exercise, form is everything when doing Gun Show work. One of the reasons I like doing chins for the biceps is that it is impossible to cheat. You cannot hyperextend your back to get extra reps. It’s either you get it or you don’t. Either way, when doing bicep and tricep work, make sure to pinch your shoulders together and keep your wrists and elbows in-line. Do not cheat for the sake of handling more weight. Remember, you can’t get big Guns if you are injured.

I hope this gives you some insight on how to train your arms for the Gun Show. Follow the sample below and watch your Guns become something that will make Dirty Harry’s Day.

Sample Vanity Work Day:

1. Chins: 5 sets of max reps (2 min rest)

2. Close Grip 3 Board Press: 5 x 5

3. DB Incline Curls: 3 x 12

4. Band Triceps Pushdown: 3 x 20



Muscle Gain