Because the abs work as dynamic stabilizers for the body whenever movement takes place, you can use this principle to your advantage for getting a much stronger midsection. The exercises below will destabilize the body as best as possible so that every muscle tissue must contract to help maintain balance.

Add one or two of the following exercises to your program to eliminate the need for additional ab crunches at the end.

Single leg deadlift

The single leg deadlift is a very good way to challenge the hamstring muscles while also forcing the abs into action. These can be performed with either a set of dumbbells or a barbell, so you can do these at home as easily as you can at the gym. Since you are only on a single leg while executing them, you’ll find a much lighter weight will challenge you compared to the standard deadlift exercise.

To perform this movement, place the dumbbells or barbell down directly in front of your feet. From there, place one leg back up on a bench behind the body and reach down towards the barbell. Slowly rise up until you are back in a full standing position, keeping both legs as straight as possible throughout the movement. Pause at the top for a brief movement and lower again.

Because this exercise requires a lot of balance to execute it properly, this is where the abs are called into play.

Plank on an exercise ball

Another very good exercise to work the entire core is the plank on an exercise ball. The standard plank is well known for working the core, however, by adding the exercise ball to the mix, you boost the intensity so you can get more out of this movement.

To perform this, simply place your arms up on an exercise ball so that the forearms are resting on top. Extend your legs out back behind you so your body is in a straight but diagonal line and then hold this position for up to one minute.

Be sure while executing this option to keep your body as flat as possible throughout your core. If you start to form an arch or dip at any point, this is a signal that it’s time to come down and rest before finishing off the exercise.

Single leg raise with back on the ball

Another crunch-free exercise that incorporates the exercise ball is the single leg raise with your back on the ball. Since you are going to be reducing your base of support while doing this exercise, that’s what will increase the intensity that’s placed on the ab muscles.

To perform this, lie so that your back is flat against an exercise ball, with your legs out in front of you and your knees bent at 90 degrees. Your feet should be firmly planted on the ground.

Once you’ve found your balance, lift one leg up off the exercise ball and extend your knee so it’s perfectly straight. Hold this position for up to one minute before lowering the leg and switching sides.

If you find this too easy, you can increase the difficulty by extending the opposite arm, directly in front of your head, holding a five- to ten-pound dumbbell.

Hanging leg raise

Finally, the last crunch-free ab exercise is the hanging leg raise, which is great for working the abs and the hip flexors. When performing these, aim to keep your legs as straight as possible and your breathing pattern regular.

Get yourself into a hanging leg raise machine with your back pressed firmly into the pad. From there, lift both legs up while contracting from your abs and hold then at 90 degrees for a quick second before lowering them down again.

Just like your usual abdominal exercises, you’ll still want to perform these towards the end of your workout to ensure that your abs are not fatigued going into your major lifts, where you will need them for maximum stabilization purposes.

Source: Shannon Clark, AskMen

Hip exercises are the perfect example of this type of less-visible but highly functional focus. The hip flexors in particular are a small muscle group that play a big role in the body. They help to keep the hips in the correct position, and they’re working hard every time you step up a stair, do squats or just get out of a chair. Having strong hip muscles will also help prevent back problems: When the hips are in alignment, the spine is in alignment as well.

Here are some of the main hip exercises that will target the hip flexors and all the surrounding hip muscles.

Decline sit-up

While you may have always thought of decline sit-ups as stimulating the abdominal muscles, they also call the hip flexors into play. As you lean back past a 180-degree angle, your hip flexors are automatically going to start tensing, preventing the body from falling back completely.

Keep in mind that the hip flexors are generally a much weaker body muscle, so it’s not going to take all that much weight to get them stimulated and progressing. Aim to complete two to three sets of 10-15 reps.

Hanging leg raise

Another classic abdominal exercise is hanging leg raises, which make for another good hip exercise. To increase the intensity of this movement, wrap weights around your ankles or attach a cable to your ankles as you raise them through the air.

Maintaining the straight-leg position throughout the movement will be challenging enough at first, however, so be sure you’ve got that covered before adding any additional resistance. Perform one to two sets of 8-10 reps.

Cable single-leg raise

Cable machines offer a nice variety of resistance training options and are perfect for hip exercises. After attaching the cable to your ankle, select between 20-40 pounds, which is usually plenty to work your hip flexors.

From there, stand facing away from the weight stack with both legs straight and shoulder width apart. Begin to lift one knee up toward the chest, pausing for a second at the top before lowering again. Complete 10-12 reps on one leg and then switch sides for two sets total.

You can also do this movement with your leg going out to the side or back. The only difference is that you should maintain a straight-leg position rather than bending at the knee.

Lying leg raise

If you don’t have a cable available to you, another hip exercise option is a lying leg raise. To do this one, you will again attach an ankle weight, and lying on your back or side, lift your leg straight up into the air until it’s at a 60-degree angle with your body. Lower to complete the rep and switch sides to work both legs equally. Complete 15-20 reps on each side for two to three sets.

Stationary lunge stretch

After performing any hip exercises, you will want to ensure that you’re stretching thoroughly afterward because this muscle is prone to becoming tense.

One of the best stretches to perform for the hip flexors is a stationary lunge where you move into a lunge position, but allow your back knee to touch the ground. Once in that position, place your hands either on the floor in front of you or on your knee and slowly allow the body to rock forward gently until you feel a pull in the hip area. Hold that position for at least 10 seconds, and then switch legs and repeat two stretches for each side.

Stretch it out

The classic quad stretch will also stretch the hip if you think of pushing the hips forward slightly while pulling back on the knee that’s bent.

Doing these stretches regularly will keep the area lose and limber. Often hip flexors can also become tight from sitting all day at work, contributing to lower back pain. By stretching your hips every day you will help overcome hip and back pain.

Source: Jeff Bayer, AskMen

In some instances, it’s genetics that destines you to have a hard time building bigger calves, and in other cases it’s a lack of proper training that keeps the calves from taking shape.

Whatever situation you’re in, taking the time to learn some new training techniques and then implementing these into your regime will be vital to seeing increases in this muscle tissue and building bigger calves.

Training frequency

The first thing to consider when building bigger calves is your training frequency. Far too many people believe that the calves are an “endurance” muscle and thus, respond better to very frequent training in a much higher rep range.

While it is true that the calves will typically work any time you are standing or walking, the degree of muscular force generated with performing these activities is going to be much lower than when you are in the gym working them out.

Therefore, if you go into the gym and start training your calves four or more times a week, you will place a much different stimulus pattern on the muscles than regular daily activities do.

If your goal is building bigger calves, you will want to train them three days a week, being sure to allow for one full day of rest between each day you work them.

Designing the workout

Now that you have your frequency set for building bigger calves, it’s time to design the workout you will be using.

You should perform just one calf exercise variation each session, but be sure to switch your variation each week. The reason for this is because calves adapt very quickly to a given exercise stimulus; changing the stimulus, or workout variation, will force the calves to keep responding.

One big reason for a lack of growth in the calves for many men is because they perform the same calf raises each workout. You’re far better off using more variations but performing fewer sets. This allows you to really hit them hard and then allow for sufficient rest before hitting them again 48 hours later.

Exercise variations

When it comes to different calf exercise variations to perform, both seated and standing are good options. From there, you can also turn the feet slightly inward or outward to change the exact angle of force. Performing single-leg calf raises is also a smart move, as this will ensure that you are not overcompensating by using one leg more than the other.

Another additional move you can make for building bigger calves is to utilize a short rest period right at the bottom of the exercise. This will really increase the intensity of the exercise, stimulating the muscles further to grow larger.

To do so, take about two seconds to lower to the bottom (where the calf is fully stretched), hold for two seconds and take two more seconds to rise up again. This pause makes a dramatic difference in your calf workout.

Alternatively, yet another variation is to take a short pause at the top of the movement, which will again really increase the total intensity.

Progression

You should start out aiming to do three heavy sets for each session you perform, trying to increase the weight on each exercise each week.

Work across a variety of rep ranges throughout the week, shooting for a set of eight reps the first day (using the heaviest weight of the week), 12 reps the second day (adjusting the weight downward), and then 15 to 20 reps the third day of the week, using a slightly lighter weight. This third day will help train the muscles to deal with lactic acid.

After that week is completed, cycle on to a different exercise for the next week of training.

The stretch

Finally, be sure to stretch at the end of the workout. This is a common mistake that is made and will really stifle your progress. The reason the stretch is so vital is because not only does the stretch help to promote faster recovery between sessions so you can grow muscle faster, but it also increases your range of motion. As a result, when you are working through various exercises, you will be able to stimulate a higher number of muscle fibers.

Source: Jeff Bayer, AskMen

Many men don’t go about training their biceps in the right manner and wind up doing 10 different variations of curls until they feel the ”pump and burn.”

Remember that while a muscle pump may temporarily engorge your muscles with blood and make them appear larger to the eye (we talk about this in our article Fake A Beach Body), once the enhanced blood flow normalizes, you’re going to be right back where you started.

In order to really develop muscle size, you’ll want to combine very heavy weight training with exercises that increase vascularity. This pairing is what will smash your biceps and get you arms noticed.

The following workout, which will smash your biceps, should be performed twice a week for maximum benefits. Doing this workout twice a week is enough to develop larger muscle fibers while giving you a proper recovery period.

Reverse-grip bent-over dumbbell row with half a deadlift

The first exercise on our smash your biceps plan is the reverse-grip bent-over dumbbell row with half a deadlift. Changing the grip of this movement helps to place more stress on the biceps, while still working the back at the same time. Additionally, using the dumbbells rather than a barbell will help prevent one arm from working harder than the other to compensate for a weaker muscle, and thus preventing the possibility of a size imbalance.

Since most men can typically row more weight than they can curl, the reverse-grip bent-over dumbbell row is the perfect exercise to lead the smash your biceps workout. It’s also an exercise that leads to maximum strength development.

Finally, to add some advanced variation to the movement, once the dumbbells are in the upper position, perform half a deadlift action in order to call the lower-back muscles into play and give a more complete workout. Note that this should be one fluid movement and not done in a jerky fashion.

Incline dumbbell curls

The second exercise to add when you want to smash your biceps is incline dumbbell curls. The advantage of doing these on an incline bench is that it will reduce any momentum that takes place with standard curls, ensuring that you are only targeting that bicep muscle.

In addition to this, since your back is flat against the bench, you will not have to sacrifice strength due to a weak core if that is an issue for you.

When you are executing the movement, be sure that you are moving throughout the full range of motion to work all the muscle fibers to their full extent.

Dumbbell curls with a twist

As a variation on the standard dumbbell curl, performing a curl with a twist at the top gives the muscles a fresh stimulus that can boost results to the next level. You’ll want to focus on performing these slightly slower than your standard dumbbell curl to really feel the full impact of the movement and, if you can, try to use a short pause at the top before lowering.

Also, be careful that you’re not using momentum to help you complete the movement (the tendency to use momentum is high since you’re standing upright). Momentum can be avoided if you think to slightly stick out your chest and strictly moving from the elbow joint.

Straight dumbbell curls with triceps extension superset

Finally, the last way you can smash your biceps into growth is to start including some supersets in your workouts. Supersets will have you pairing two exercises back-to-back and will help to really pump up the arms as they fill with blood.

This is a great technique to use at the very end of your workout, as it will really finish off the muscles and help to considerably boost the temporary size increase you’ll experience.

Some people will choose to superset two different bicep exercises back-to-back, but for the purpose of this workout you want to superset a bicep exercise along with a triceps movement. This has the advantage of allowing you to lift a heavier weight with the bicep exercise, experiencing slightly better overall strength gains.

Be sure to keep rest periods between the two exercises as short as possible, and take about 30 seconds to 1 minute of rest between each superset. You should also aim to work into the slightly higher rep range with this type of setup, closer to 10 to 12 reps total to really get some lactic acid building up within the muscle tissues.

Source: Jeff Bayer, AskMen.Com

While it’s logical to want to train your chest and biceps (they’re the ones you see when you look at yourself in front of the mirror), overtraining these muscles can lead to a host of undesired postural changes and nagging injuries (especially at the shoulder). A better, or at least supplementary way of minimizing your WSR, improving your posture and consequently your appeal to the opposite sex is to build an iron back. The best way to jump-start your journey toward gorilla-back stature is to focus on these three exercises.

One-arm dumbbell rows

Set up with two feet on the ground, one hand on a bench and a dumbbell (DB) in the other. Bend over and pull your chest through so that your back is parallel to the ground with a slight inward arch. Extend your working arm fully, then row the DB toward your hip, thinking about pulling your shoulder blade back and down as you raise the DB. Control the weight as you lower the DB back down until your arm is fully extended, and repeat.

Like all the exercises in this article, the one-arm DB row is a multijoint exercise, meaning it trains multiple muscles (primarily the muscles of the upper back and upper arm in this case) in each repetition. By performing a one-arm row, instead of a standard bent-over row, you can lift a lot of weight, but minimize the load placed across your spine.

Chin-ups

Grab a high bar with an underhand grip (palms facing you) with your hands about shoulder width apart. Lower yourself all the way down so that your elbows are fully extended and your shoulder blades are spread apart. Pull yourself up until your upper chest reaches the bar. Lower yourself back down to the starting position under control and repeat.

Chin-ups train almost identical muscles as the one-arm DB row. By pulling in a vertical direction, a greater emphasis is placed on the muscles that pull your shoulder blades down (depression) opposed to back (retraction), which is emphasized in horizontal pulling. This variation will help keep your shoulders balanced and pain free. When you can do six or more chin-ups on your own, start adding external resistance with a belt (ideal), weight vest (OK) or by holding a DB between your feet (less desirable).

Deadlifts

Set up with your feet about hip width apart, with your toes lined up beneath the barbell. Stand up nice and tall and pull your shoulder blades back. Maintaining this “chest out” posture, push your hips back as you bend at the hips and knees toward the bar. Grab the bar slightly outside of your knees. While keeping your back flat, pull the bar up by extending your knees and pulling your hips through at the top.

The deadlift is by far the best way to build a strong back. It’s also one of the best full-body exercises you can do. Think about it: You’re initiating the movement with your leg and hip muscles, but all that force needs to be transferred through your trunk (strengthening the core) to your shoulder girdle, which has to transfer the force to the bar. Although the musculature of your upper back doesn’t move much in this exercise (so you won’t get that “squeeze” that you will with the other two exercises), they function to maintain a stable shoulder girdle and assist in pulling the bar off the floor.

Whether you want to improve the size or strength of your muscles, you need to create a stimulus worth adapting to. Once you get the form of a deadlift down, you can add weight very quickly. For any given repetition range, increasing the weight will increase the growth stimulus.

Note: Deadlifts are often regarded as bad for your back. This is true, if you perform them with the back posture of a frightened cat, the way most people do. If you maintain the inward arch of your entire back (chest out/shoulder blades back position), and don’t let your lower back round at all, you’re unlikely to suffer any back injuries. Remember that you should be pulling using your hips and upper back, not your lower back. I generally don’t recommend performing more than 5 reps in any set because many people have trouble maintaining correct form beyond this. I also recommend resetting before every rep.

Increased metabolic rate

The first reason weight lifting is a good option for fat loss is because it boosts metabolic rate both over the short term as well as over the long term. In the hours after an intense weight-lifting session you will experience an increase in metabolic rate. What’s more, weight lifting will help you maintain your total amount of lean muscle mass, creating a permanent increase in metabolism.

Cardio training will only cause a short rise in metabolic rate for an hour or two after the session, taking away from the overall calorie-burning benefits compared with resistance training.

Often, overdoing cardio will actually decrease your total lean body mass, so you could see a reduction in metabolism over time working against your fat loss efforts.

Altered Body Composition

The second reason to choose weight lifting for fat loss purposes is because, while cardio may make you lose weight, weight lifting will help you lose body fat, altering your body composition.

Many individuals who just hop on the treadmill to lose the pounds don’t end up looking much different — even if they do successfully lose 10 to 20 pounds. This is because they still have the same proportion of muscle mass to body fat; they are just “smaller.”

Weight training will help change the way you look completely, giving the impression that you’ve replaced fat with muscle and are actually working at improving your body and changing your body composition.

Design a Fat-Loss Training Program

While you aren’t going to be doing a completely different type of weight-lifting workout compared to if you were attempting to build muscle, there are some important alterations that do need to be made when you are weight lifting for fat loss.

Decrease Total Volume

Because you’ re no longer taking in as many calories, it’s important that you reduce the total volume of your program. Generally, you can reduce the total volume by ½ to 2/3s and not experience any decrease in strength.

This is important to do because if you attempt to maintain the same volume while taking in fewer carbohydrates, you are not going to recover from workout to workout as you used to, and will quickly see your performance levels drop.

Maintain Weight Intensity

It’s essential that you keep the same intensity on the bar by not reducing your total weight lifted. A big error many people make is to decrease the weight while bumping up the reps, thinking this will create a greater caloric burn.

While it is true that high-rep training does tend to burn more calories while you are actually doing it, it will not maintain your lean body mass as well, thus your overall metabolic rate will slow. Additionally, if you maintain the weight on the bar throughout the diet period, it’s going to be easier to pick up where you left off after your muscle-building cycle, should you choose to pursue another one.

Utilize Circuit-Style Lifting for Cardio

The last thing you may want to consider is utilizing circuit-style weight lifting to replace any cardio you are currently doing. This style of workout will be completely different than traditional weight-training programs, but can provide a much greater boost to your metabolism than plain cardio.

If you are going to do some circuit training using lighter weight, be sure you are still incorporating enough rest between that and your heavier weight-lifting sessions. Since you are still loading the muscles with weight, it’s critical you don’t perform too many sessions back to back, otherwise CNS or muscular overtraining will become an issue.

Circuit-training cardio workouts will work better for those who are utilizing a two-day, full-body workout program rather than something where they are only lifting heavy three to four days a week.

Source: Jeff Bayer, AskMen.com

In order to build bigger shoulders, you need to focus on the right types of movements and ensure that you’re taking in enough calories to support muscle growth. Keep in mind that it’s not just direct shoulder exercises that will build bigger shoulders, but a well-planned upper-body or full-body workout will help build shoulder mass while keeping the body in good proportion.

Below are some of the best exercises and techniques to use to help you build bigger shoulders.

Shoulder Press Variations

The shoulder press is a great exercise to build bigger shoulders and to develop strength. This is due to the fact that most people will be able to lift a much higher weight than they would with isolated shoulder exercises.

There are a few variations you can perform with the shoulder press, such as the front barbell press, behind the neck barbell press (both of which can also be done with dumbbells if you prefer) and Arnold presses.

It’s a good idea to alternate between these shoulder exercises over time to prevent plateaus and the development of any weak points in the shoulders.

You should keep the rep ranges lower for shoulder press exercises, within the 5 to 8 rep range, performing a total of 2 to 4 sets.

Upright Rows

Upright rows will work well for building the caps on the shoulders because they will primarily hit the lateral head of the deltoid. They will also give a nice rounded appearance to the shoulder muscle, making them appear fuller.

Watch when you do this shoulder exercise that you do not bring the weight higher than shoulder level as this places great stress on the shoulder joint and could lead to injury.

It may help if you’re just adding this exercise to perform it while sitting in an upright chair to make sure the back stays flat. Then, after you have the form down, move into a standing position so you can generate maximum force.

Aim for 10 reps per set and 2 to 3 sets per workout. If you’d like to boost the intensity and go for a good muscle pump, try incorporating drop sets with this shoulder exercise.

Shrugs

Shrugs are a great shoulder exercise to add for increasing the width of the upper back and building up your traps. These are simply performed by holding a set of dumbbells or a barbell in your hands with the arms relaxed at the side of the body. Then, proceed to shrug the shoulders up as high as possible, focusing on generating the movement from the mid-section of your upper body, right below the neck. Be sure to stretch the neck out after doing this exercise to prevent tightness from developing.

Aim for 12 to 15 reps per set and 2 sets per workout.

Lateral To Front Raises

To round out your shoulder, workout and isolate the medial and frontal head of the deltoid, and then add two sets of lateral and front raises.

Since the muscle will be much weaker when performing these exercises, don’t expect to lift as heavy a weight. Instead, focus on performing more reps into the 10 to 12 per set range using rest periods of only 30 seconds. This will help the muscle get used to clearing lactic acid so you don’t fatigue as easily with your other lifts.

Depending on what you’re doing during your back workout, you may also wish to add in some rear deltoid work; however, if you’re doing heavy bent-over rows, those will hit this muscle quite well already.

Good options if you do wish to include rear deltoid exercises include cable rear delt pulls and seated rear delt lateral raises. If you’re working out at a gym that allows you to do a reverse pec deck, that’s also an option for hitting this muscle group.

Source: Jeff Bayer, Fitness Specialist, AskMen.com

Now the question becomes: What equipment is necessary for a good home gym? Listed below, with #1 being the most important, are the pieces that you will need in order to be a successful home gym bodybuilder.

1. Adjustable Dumbbells

Adjustable dumbbells are the most important piece of equipment for your home gym. Dumbbells are versatile and allow for a wide range of exercises to be performed. In addition, exercises performed with dumbbells produce the greatest results as the body has to use an impressive amount of muscle fibers just to stabilize them. My favorite sets are the PowerBlocks and the IronMaster Quick-Lock Dumbbells as these save space and are easily adjustable.

2. Olympic Barbell Set

An Olympic Barbell set would be the second piece of equipment that I would get for a home gym. With a barbell you can perform some pretty heavy exercises in addition to adding variety to your workout routines.

3. Adjustable Bench With Leg Extension/Leg Curl Attachment

An adjustable bench in essential for long term home gym training. While barbells and dumbbells will get you far, the adjustable bench now gives you the ability to do incline bench presses, seated dumbbell shoulder presses, incline curls, leg extensions, leg curls, and a whole range of other free weight exercises. Also, if you get one with a pulldown bar attachment you can pretty much do almost every exercise there is available.

4. Adjustable Squat Rack with Chin-Up Bar

As you get more advanced, dumbbell squats will no longer cut it as you’ll be too strong for your set of dumbbells. This is the time to add a squat rack to your arsenal. With an adjustable squat rack you can perform some pretty heavy exercises as you can self spot yourself by adjusting the safety bars on the side to a height that will catch the bar and protect you should you fail to be able to lift it. Also with the chin-up bar you can start working on getting an even bigger back.

5. Dip Station

For a massive chest and powerful triceps, the dip station is king. Once you get to the advanced level, this piece of equipment has to become a permanent fixture in your home gym.

6. Standing Calf Raise Machine

For a while you’ll be able to get away with one legged dumbbell calf raises and barbell calf raises on the squat rack. However, in order to get enormous calves, a standing calf raise machine is really useful. Mine is loaded with free weights so I always have 1000 lbs on it. Because of the calf block on the machine, I can get a full stretch and a full contraction, which are absolutely necessary for complete calf development.

7. Miscellaneous Items

While the items mentioned above are the most essential, you can also buy other smaller items in order to add variety into your workouts. For instance, you can buy a single handle for your lat pulley so that you can do one-arm cable crossovers, high pulley rows and cable biceps curls. You can also get an e-z bar to work arms with a more comfortable grip. Also an exercise ball is the best abdominal piece of equipment that you can get so I would make that part of my home gym from the get go.

Source: Hugo Rivera, About.com

Remember that the forum is always there and we have tons of very experienced members that are willing to help you reach your goals. All it takes is a little effort and research and the rest of the help will come.

1. Over Training

A common mistake is that having sessions lasting hours long or performing tons of the same exercises several days a week will get you better gains. “Less is more” when it comes to weight training. Remember that your central nervous system and joints come into the picture, and suffer a lot more from the abuse of weight training then your muscles.

Your muscles grow when you are resting, not when you are at the gym. This is because when you lift weights, you create tears in the muscle tissue. When you rest, the muscle repairs itself and becomes larger than before. How long it takes to repair will depend largely on your diet and how much sleep you get per night.

To help avoid over training, use some of the routines already on this site, and remember not to take an intermediate or advanced workout routine until you have more experience. About 3 months before an intermediate routine and several years before an advanced routine. Remember that it is also recommended that about every 12 weeks, you take a week off of weight training to heal any of those little nagging injuries and to give your central nervous system a break.

2. Cheating

Cheating occurs when you are using a weight that is too heavy for you to lift, but you continue to lift the weight and sacrifice form to do it. You will see it all the time in gyms, people who lean back and throw their elbows foreword when doing bicep curls, people that bounce the bar off their chest when benching etc. This not only limits the gains you can make, but it also can lead to injury.

To help avoid cheating, learn how to properly perform an exercise, and train with that form using little to no weight to start. After you feel you have the form down, slowly bump up the weight until you can perform the exercise with the reps you need exactly the same way as you were performing with the little to no weight. Remember that although you should train to failure, you shouldn’t sacrifice form to do it.

If you want to maximize your training, you should know that on the fast concentric (positive) movement trains the nervous system; the slow eccentric (negative) movement trains the muscle. So you should perform the upward part of the movement fast, and the downward part of the movement slow. For example, when doing pull-ups, pull yourself up quickly, and slowly lower yourself down. This puts as much stress as possible on the muscle and teaches your nervous system how to lift a load.

Remember that cheating not only hinders your gains, but it makes you look foolish as well. Nobody likes to see some guy screaming as he hammer throws 70 pound dumbbells for his bicep routine.

3. Lifting Heavy Early

If you are under the age of 18, stick to the 8-12 rep range. Lifting weights higher then this can cause damage to growth. This is because as a teenager the growth plates on the end of the bones haven’t yet closed, and performing heavy maximum lifts can cause closure prematurely of these growth plates (epiphysis), and can also cause injuries to the bones themselves.

Combine this with the fact that most people starting out will not do well handling the immense load that is associated with low rep ranges, they will usually put themselves at risk of immediate danger, not only growth plate damage. Play it safe, and work with proper form and the results will come.

4. Using the low rep ranges to get big, training high reps to burn fat

This couldn’t be further from the truth. First off, diet plays the most important role in determining how shredded or how big you are. You can pound all the weight you want, if you eat crap you will look like crap. Second, to train for size, the 6-12 rep range is optimal. The low rep ranges train muscular strength, which helps little in increasing muscular size. Remember that fat burn is achieved mostly by cardio and high intensity weight training. This can mean low rest times, supersets etc.

5. Using a professional bodybuilder or power lifters routine

You might think that because a bodybuilder is huge and used a certain routine means that you will get huge using that same workout. This is not true. Bodybuilders have been training for years and their routines will most likely be far more advanced for you to attempt. You should also consider the fact that not everything will work for everybody. Just because a guy is big and got good results from doing something doesn’t mean that you will too.

6. Starving yourself in order to lose weight

Yes it sounds silly, but you would be surprised at the number of people that think this way. Dieting doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy food ever again, or that you will always be hungry. Split your meals up into 5-7 a day of smaller portions. This keeps your metabolism working and will help you be less hungry through the day.

Remember that when you starve yourself, your body holds onto any fat it has and you will lose muscle instead. This is very unhealthy.

Use this BMR Calculator to calculate your daily calorie needs, and then subtract 500 from that number if you want to lose about a pound per week. Combine this with exercise and you will lose fat and hold onto muscle. You will be surprised at the amount of calories you can eat as long as you exercise.

There are many great articles on this sight that already deal with construction your diet; I suggest you read them through carefully.

7. Relying too much on supplements to grow

Without proper diet and training supplements will get you nowhere. Remember they are called SUPPLEMENTS because they SUPPLEMENT your diet. If your diet is in check and you have done everything you can to ensure that real foods play the dominant role, only then should supplements be considered.

Remember that companies like Muscletech and BSN shell out tons of money to get bodybuilders like Ronnie Coleman and Jay Cutler to endorse their products. On labels of these supplements you will find statements such as “Gain 7 pounds of muscle in 3 weeks” etc. Remember that these claims are usually exaggerated.

Before you buy any supplements, do research and educate yourself on what’s worth it and what’s not. It will save you a lot of money in the long run.

8. Neglecting Carbohydrates and Fats in your diet

Carbs and fat are an essential part in any diet, even weight loss diets. This is because carbohydrates are our main source of fuel. Without carbohydrates, particularly complex carbohydrates, the body would begin to use other sources and this could cause problems, such as becoming easily fatigued due to lack of glycogen.

Fats are needed as well. Fat is essential to maintain good health. That being said, you should get your fat from healthy sources, such as olive oil and nuts. Remember that trans-fats are bad for you no matter what, and should be avoided at all costs.

Source: Muscle & Strength

Body image concerns affect both male bodybuilders who use steroids and those who don’t use the muscle-building drugs, new research has found.

In the study, an Arkansas researcher looked at the incidence of muscle dysmorphia among competitive bodybuilders, non-competitive weight trainers and collegiate football players. Muscle dysmorphia is a disorder characterized by excessive preoccupation with muscularity and body fat percentage.

The participants filled out a questionnaire designed to assess whether they had muscle dysmorphia and, if so, to what degree. The football players had the lowest scores. Males who used weight training to improve their physique, but weren’t bodybuilders, had some characteristics associated with muscle dysmorphia, including dissatisfaction with their size and symmetry.

“This is an important finding, because it shows that someone doesn’t have to be big and buff to have concerns about how muscular they are or how much body fat they have,” study author Timothy Baghurst, a visiting assistant professor of kinesiology at the University of Arkansas, said in a news release from the university.

For the study, published in the June issue of Body Image, Baghurst classified bodybuilders as natural or non-natural. In natural bodybuilding competitions, participants are drug-tested and must pass a lie detector test meant to confirm that they don’t use prohibited drugs. In non-natural competitions, participants aren’t drug tested and don’t have to pass a lie detector test.

“Most people will assume bodybuilders using steroids are those with muscle dysmorphia,” Baghurst said. “By separating natural and non-natural bodybuilders, I found that either group is equally likely to have all of the traits of muscle dysmorphia with the exception of pharmacological use.”