My first article will be dedicated to bodybuilding nutrition and muscle building basics before I start writing about detailed exercises, workout programs for different muscle groups and specific nutrition / diet needs for bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts.
Nutrition - I think nutrition and is atleast 70% of muscle building process. The reason behind it is that human body has "adapted" over thousands of years to save as much as it can for starvation periods, because remember the hunting lifestyle of our ancestors didn't allow for regular/constant food availability. So, if human body "feels" that not enough calories are going in, it simply halts muscle building process. This also means that body starts storing all calories that it gets, aka fat gains and a big tummy complete with love handles!
Now,on the other hand when we eat more, body "feels" that enough food is available so it "decides" to start storing less and using more of the already stored food for energy. Yes, we are talking about fat burning or weight loss effect of increased food intake. This is also what is called a metabolic shift from lower metabolsim to higher metabolism. So, as counter intuitive it seems, eating more can actually help with weight loss too while building quality muscles!! As for specific details regarding what to eat, when to eat, how much to eat, when not to eat and most importantly what to eat when will be coming in the upcoming posts!
Muscle building basics - How and when does body know that it should build muscle? This is a tricky one but the general answer is that body tries to adapt to the stress it is under in. So, basically, if body is under a type of stress that requires it to "lift" heavy weights, it will try to adapt to it by improving weight lifting mechanism aka muscles. This is just in accordance with the overall goal to survive and keep surviving by not letting anything kill you - so if a too much weight is regularly "falling" on our head and the only way to survive is to be able to lift it overhead and throw it away then the body with try to get better at "surviving" by building stronger shoulders. Needless to say size comes with strength (atleast for beginners), the stronger the muscle, is the bigger it have to be (again for biginners to intermediate weight trainees). So in other words, the stronger you are the bigger your muscles will be as long as you are in beginners to intermediate levels of bodybuilding or powerlifting or olympic lifting training.
Other important factors are the time for which the weights are lifted, rest given between consecutive lifts in the same session, rest given between consecutive sessions, speed at which the weights are lifted, duration for which it was held, muscle building hormone levels, type of rest, type of weight lifted and much more that I will be covering in the upcoming posts!
Keep reading!
I'll explain more in the next post....
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