Testosterone Test

Testosterone. Test. The Big T. Whatever you call it, as a bodybuilder, you need more of it in your system. The equation is unfortunately simple — if your body isn’t releasing an adequate amount of T, you flat out won’t grow. Now the good news. By manipulating your training and diet, you can naturally escalate your levels of this anabolic male hormone. Intrigued? If you call yourself a bodybuilder, you’d better be.

UNLEASH THE BEAST – A natural increase in your testosterone levels can have a dramatic impact on your ability to add muscle mass, improving your physique through several different mechanisms: by stimulating protein synthesis, it helps to increase muscle mass; by encouraging fat cells to store less fat and pull more from storage, it promotes fat loss; and by enhancing the firing of motor nerves that supply muscle fibers, it immediately increases muscle strength.

Of course, higher levels of testosterone are also associated with aggression in male athletes. Often, this is portrayed as a negative, but to a point, it can be a huge positive for bodybuilders seeking to improve results and performance in the gym. Both strength and aggression can be important tools for your workouts — if you train when your strength and aggression are highest, your intensity and your results will be magnified. Increasing testosterone is one of the best ways to get more from your bodybuilding program. With that in mind, FLEX designed this six-week training, diet and supplementation regimen to boost your testosterone levels and, ultimately, your bodybuilding results.

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General Nutrition: 7 Basics You Need To Succeed

1 Eat balanced meals

If you think it’s all about protein, think again. Bodybuilding nutrition is about providing your body with the optimal balance of foods at every meal. In fact, your body can handle only so much protein for muscle building. Once you reach this saturation point, protein is torn down and used for energy, an inefficient, cost-ineffective process. Instead, consume a balanced diet of healthy fats, complex carbs, protein and vegetables.

2 Keep nutrients steady through the day

Part of the reason for eating several meals a day is to provide your body with a steady stream of nutrients. It’s important to eat five to seven meals a day, and to eat healthy fats, quality protein and complex carbs at every meal for a continuous supply of macronutrients to keep your body growing.

3 Consume adequate protein

Bodybuilders must eat quality protein. Without protein, you simply aren’t providing your body with the most rudimentary tool for muscle building. Consume at least one gram of protein per pound of bodyweight every day.

4 Eat complex carbs

Bodybuilders often avoid carbohydrates for fear they will add too much bodyfat. Most amateur bodybuilders eat plenty of carbs, but they eat simple or starchy carbs at the expense of the more beneficial complex kind. Emphasize foods such as yams, oatmeal, brown rice and whole-grain breads in your diet. These foods, coupled with protein, are the ones that most encourage muscle growth.

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Big and Lean Muscle Machine

Nine sure bets for packing in mass while staying lean

1 LOAD UP ON LOW-FAT CARBS We all know we need to increase protein and carb intake for muscle growth and recovery to occur. The daily parameters are 1-1.25 grams (g) of complete protein per pound of bodyweight and 2.5-3.5 g of carbs per pound of bodyweight. When pushing the carb envelope into the 3.5 g neighborhood, switch to fat-free sources of protein, such as fish, egg whites, protein powders, skinless chicken breasts, nonfat cheese and nonfat cottage cheese.

2 DUMP CARBS AS FAT INCREASES To build trainloads of muscle, add red meat to your diet. Muscle-building red meat is high in B vitamins and iron. The need for omega-3 fatty acids — responsible for enhancing glycogen formation, retarding muscle breakdown and promoting hormone production — mandates eating salmon, steak or flaxseed oil four days per week. During those steak and salmon days, lower carb intake to 2.5 g per pound of bodyweight to prevent an increase in bodyfat.

3 OPT FOR SLOW-BURNING CARBS IF YOU’RE A HEAVYWEIGHT If you tend to be on the heavy side of the bodyweight equation, stick with natural slow-burning carbs. Yams, oats, rye bread, Cream of Rye cereal, peaches and apples all yield smaller insulin bursts, thereby helping to discourage the accumulation of bodyfat.

4 CHOOSE ANY CARB IF YOU’RE LEAN If your percentage of bodyfat tends to be low, you can chow down any type of carb. Leaner athletes release less net insulin than their heavier brothers and sisters. Less insulin means lower bodyfat. Bagels, rice, pasta, fruit and low-fat cookies are all legit.

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An Apple A Day Keeps Muscle Loss Away

If you’re a serious bodybuilder who wants to gain and maintain size, you should consume a variety of fruits and vegetables. While we often push protein because it’s the most critical macronutrient category for bodybuilders, regardless of the type of diet, we also emphasize the value of mixed meals based around whole high-protein foods. Powders are great and can make it easier and more convenient to consume large amounts of protein (without extra fat and carbs), and thus achieve your maximal potential, but they are not essential for developing a massive and monstrously strong physique. Remember, food forms the basis of your nutrition plan and supplements enhance a balanced diet. Fruits and veggies are typically promoted because of their content of fiber, phytochemicals, vitamins and minerals, as well as their direct and indirect influence on metabolism and overall health. The benefits are many and potentially quite significant, especially in the long run. Fiber has significant “gut building” (as in the lining of the intestines, not your waistline) effects that, among other things, help process and utilize protein more efficiently. One very important but little-publicized reason for bodybuilders to hit fruits and veggies hard is the potential anticatabolic effect of these foods–their ability to help maintain muscle and bone.

PROTEIN AND METABOLIC ACIDOSIS

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7 Carb Secrets For Success

With all the hype floating around the Internet and the banter flooding TV talk shows about the wonders of high-protein diets, you might think carbs are useless except for producing fat. You might also think that if you consume carbohydrates, they will undermine your attempts at building a better physique.

The fascination with high-protein diets is nothing new; the recent onslaught of carb bashing that has gone along with it, though, is both ignorant and counterproductive to building a healthy diet that is ideally suited to complement hardcore training.

Let’s ditch the hype in favor of a concrete analysis of applying carbs to building muscle mass. Here are seven tips for incorporating these unfairly maligned nutritional nuggets into your muscle-building program.

1 HIGH CARBS + HIGH PROTEIN = MORE MUSCLE
Consume plenty of carbs and protein when you are trying to build muscle mass. A carb deficiency during mass-building mode leads to protein degradation — dietary protein is utilized for energy instead of muscle building. Mass gainers need at least 2.5 grams (g) of carbs for every pound of bodyweight to enable protein to be truly anabolic. When in mass-building mode, make sure you are taking in 1 to 1.5 g of protein per pound of bodyweight.

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Four Fail-Safe Perks Of Protein

Here are a few fail-safe perks of protein to prove once and for all that there’s more to this provocative subject than you’ll get from the chicken heads clucking in the gym. Let’s set aside the fat and focus on the sizzle of the great protein debate.

1 LEAN BEEF AND WHEY GET YOU RIPPED

Leaning out dictates that you limit daily fat intake to 10% or less of total daily calories, increase aerobic activity and go the low-carb route. As carbs are decreased, the calories lost must be replaced with calories from protein. Whey is the ideal choice to fill that void, as it is dense in branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) and readily used as fuel when the body is in low-carb mode. Lean beef, another viable protein option during dieting, is packed with alanine, a vital amino acid that, when converted into glucose, can be used as an energy source. In this way, the protein-based calories targeted for muscle building are not instead burned as fuel when carbs are low.

2 MIX PROTEIN AND CARBS AFTER TRAINING

The name of the game is “spiking” insulin, the anabolic hormone that increases glycogen formation and protein synthesis. A great way to spike is to add a protein powder drink to your posttraining meal. For ideal mass building in the metabolic golden hour after training, consume your carbs and protein in a 3:1 ratio. If you take in 30 g of protein, for instance, also consume 90 g of carbs in the same meal.

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Main mistakes made by bodybuilders

mag-subscribe-650x250 1. Big weights.
Perhaps it is the most common mistake among athletes, regardless of trained level. Even bodybuilders with experience and newcomers, from time to time exaggerate their capabilities, trying to lift too much weight in an attempt to impress his friends, individuals of the opposite sex or more experienced athletes.

First, you should not do this, because in moments of super-heavy lifting for you weight, there is a high probability of serious injury of joints or muscles. Secondly, most chicks no matter how much you can raise on the biceps. And finally, an experienced bodybuilder only smiles at your vain attempts; because he knows that large weights to

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Increased muscle mass without adding fat.

6-pack-abs Many athletes wish to increase their muscle mass without adding fat layer. But many of them fail to achieve its aim because of different reasons: lack of information, lifestyle, physical inactivity, etc. To increase muscle mass it is necessary to consume more calories than you burn. It is very difficult to determine for how many calories a person needs during the day, but it can be calculated approximately.
1. Calories should be qualitative, but not “empty”. You must exclude all simple carbohydrates (sugars). Also flour products should be the suspended or at worst reduced as quantities (pasta, white bread, rolls with jam, etc.). You should choose nutrient quality products, for example, one kg of milk(15% fat) contains 15 gr. saturated fat and 1 kg of milk of 2.5% – 25 gr. fat, so we choose milk with fat content as less. From carbohydrates we choose only complex ones (rice, potatoes, oatmeal, vegetables) and we avoid the simple ones (sweets, sugar, fruits in large quantities). We choose unsaturated and polyunsaturated fats and saturated fats should be minimized. We choose skimmed milk, diet poultry meat, lean pork and skimmed milk products.

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Pomegranate For a Pump

Drink eight ounces of pomegranate juice with 20 g of whey protein before workouts for a better pump

Every hardcore bodybuilder knows to take nitric oxide boosters like arginine, not just for the pump they deliver, but for muscle growth and strength gains as well. Few may realize, though, that to help protect their increased NO level, they should consider reaching for a cold refreshing glass of pomegranate juice.

Researchers at UCLA have recently reported — in the aptly named journal Nitric Oxide — that pomegranate juice was effective at protecting NO against oxidative destruction. In laboratory tests, the scientists compared the effects of the juice on NO destruction and NO action to other antioxidant-rich sources, such as Concord grape juice, blueberry juice, red wine and vitamins C and E.

Pomegranate was found to be more effective at protecting and augmenting NO than all the others. In some cases, it was more than 300 times as powerful. The researchers determined that the potent antioxidant activity is responsible for the juice’s benefits on NO.

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Get Ripped And Pumped

Stack these two supplements to get ripped and pumped

CITRUS AURANTIUM
Commonly referred to as bitter orange, this plant contains the active ingredient synephrine. Synephrine is similar chemically to ephedrine yet it does not raise heart rate and blood pressure as ephedrine can. Synephrine mimics the actions of norepinephrine. This neurohormone works to increase metabolic rates. Synephrine also stimulates receptors on fat cells that increase lipolysis — the release of fat from the fat cells to be burned for fuel. In addition, synephrine has even been found to decrease appetite.

ARGININE
This amino acid is readily converted in the body to nitric oxide. NO is responsible for countless processes in the body, including the dilation of blood vessels — the most critical to bodybuilders. This widening of the blood vessels allows more blood to flow through and reach tissues such as muscle fibers, which enables more oxygen, nutrients, anabolic hormones and supplements to reach them. NO also appears to have its own ability to encourage fat burning. French scientists have discovered that NO enhances lipolysis, making more bodyfat available to be burned as fuel.

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Goodbye Knee Pain?

Pycnogenol’s dual benefits make it an ideal bodybuilding supplement

Looking for another line of defense against that knee or shoulder pain that’s been bothering you? A patented compound from the bark of the French maritime pine tree (Pinus pinaster) may be the answer.

The bioflavonoids and polyphenols that are within Pycnogenol are similar to the compounds in red wine that contribute to its ability to improve heart health. Studies have found the compound to have a variety of benefits, including decreasing blood pressure and improving skin health. Several recent studies report that Pycnogenol can also decrease joint pain while improving joint function. This makes it an excellent choice for bodybuilders suffering from pain in their knees, shoulders or other joints that have been overworked from years of heavy lifting.

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