If you are into bodybuilding and want to get your muscles as big as possible then you need to have certain ingredients. Without these muscle building ingredients it is unlikely you will be able to make your ‘huge muscles cake’!

5 Ingredients for Big Muscles

These are some essential ingredients that you are going to need to use. Learn them well.

1. Quality protein
Don’t listen to people when they say the amount of protein is the only thing that matters. Sure you need a lot of protein but I have found that quality is more important than quantity. You need to get it from natural sources like raw milk and free range eggs. These are muscle building foods.

2. Heavy weights
Fiddling around with light weights isn’t going to tone your muscles and it isn’t going to make them grow big. You need to continually be adding weight so that your muscles are always challenged and always being forced to respond. This is the only way to get big.

Muscles grow when you are resting so give them ample time. This means have a few days off before re-training that muscle and 3. Lots of restget lots of sleep. If you overtrain you will not grow at all.

4. Perfect technique
If you lift with a bad technique your muscles will not be used the way they should be. You will not be stressing them enough to make them respond with growth and as such cheating with your reps should be avoided at all costs. Always study and learn how to do each exercise perfectly because it is one of the most important muscle building factors.

5. Compound movements
Forget the little isolation exercises. If you want to get really big focus on the big movements like the:

• Bench press
• Deadlift
• Chin up
• Squat
• Military Press

and any other exercise that works out multiple muscles at once. These are the ones that really make you grow.

Conclusion
Make these the basis and the core of your bodybuilding philosophy and you will find you grow fast and consistently.

After you have been bodybuilding for a while you will get to a point where you feel like you aren’t growing anymore. It is called a plateau and it sucks!

This post will give you several techniques to blast your way through it just like Rocky Balboa did in the Rocky movies.

How to blast your way through a muscle building plateau

The first thing you need to do is re-gain your confidence. Plateaus happen to everyone at some point in their lives and it is no reason to give up lifting weights. I know many people who couldn’t get through it and so they gave up. Wrong!

Here are some ways you can get through the plateau and get your muscles growing like a beginner again.

1. Change your exercise order
The first thing you need to do is change the order that you do your exercises. Many people do the same workout for years at a time and after a while their muscles become bored and stuck. Change the order you do your exercises. Even go so far as to chuck away some exercises for a few weeks and try something new. If you do a split change the muscles that you pair together.

Rocky did this when he had to learn to box with a different leading hand. He had to change the way he worked his muscle by changing the exercise order.

2. Change your lifting style
If you are one of those dudes at the gym who lifts his weights super fast and with plenty of energy then slow things down. Do every single repetiton as slow as possible. It might mean you only get out four or five but it will give your muscles a new way of training and force them to adapt to something new.

Rocky (in every movie!) kicks up a gear and goes from slow boring training to hard and fast lifting to really boost his muscle development. Maybe we need to do the reverse.

3. Take a few weeks off
At the end of every year I take off a few weeks from training. I still go for jogs and do some pushups occasionally but I don’t go to the gym and I don’t push my body too hard. This is one of the best secrets there is. Your body will recouperate, revive and you will find you grow and come back to training with more passion and energy than ever before. During my weeks off I eat well and take care of my system. Injuries recover and I feel like a new man. If you are stuck on a plateau maybe you are overtraining and your body can’t keep up anymore.

Rocky overtrained. No doubt about it. If you don’t take a few weeks off every now and then you will burn out. Once a year is plenty.

4. Clean things up
After a few years of lifting weights you can get into certain bad habits. Leaning back when you do a barbell curl, bouncing the bench press off your chest, etc. All these things lessen the amount of stress you put on the muscles and retard your progress. If you are stuck on a bodybuilding plateau try re-learning all the techniques and make sure you lift cleanly. Really hit those muscles you are targeting well.

Watch Rocky’s boxing style in episode one and compare it with episode three. Everything cleaned up and he became a huge, ripped and skilled fighting machine!

5. Find different ways of adding resistance
The absolute basic principle of bodybuilding is that you need to gradually increase the work you are doing so that your muscles keep responding and growing. If you are on a plateau it means you have stopped growing. Therefore, find new ways of adding resistance to your exercises so that your muscles are forced to respond. If you can’t add anymore weight to your bench press try doing pushups as soon as you finish your set; something your muscles aren’t used to. Or, instead of trying to add more weight take weight off each set so that your muscles get more of a “endurance” type workout. Be creative and find new ways to challenge your body. This tip is cash money!

Rocky ran stairs, chased chickens and did all sorts of things to develop his skills. Be creative!

Conclusion

The bodybuilding plateau is a scary and annoying time for any lifter. With a few minor changes, however, you can get your training and muscle growth back on track. Don’t be afraid to change your old habits to get some new results. Just like Rocky.

When you go to the gym there are certain dangers that many people aren’t aware of. If you don’t acknowledge and respect these dangers you could end up injured or worse.

5 things you should never do at the gym

Here are five of the worst things you can do at the gym. You should avoid these at all costs.

1. Never do a back or leg workout without warming up
The back and the legs need heavy weights to grow. The exercises can be potentially very dangerous and this is multiplied when you haven’t warmed up.

For example, the heavy squat can be dangerous you your legs, back, neck, etc. It is a very bad idea to go straight into a heavy squat rack without warming up all the muscles and joints correctly.

2. Never stare at a hot girl
Hot girls at the gym often have big boyfriends watching them from across the room. If you keep your eyes on the wrong spot for too long you might wind up with a serious injury.

3. Never workout without eating/drinking before
If you do a heavy weights workout without having some sugar and water in your body your muscles, heart, brain, etc. aren’t going to like it much. You will feel drowzy, tired and lazy. This is when a lot of injuries happen. Watch any sporting game - most of the injuries occur in the latter parts of the match when the players are tired. It makes micro-second responses that much slower.

4. Never do cardio after weights
If you want to build muscle you shouldn’t be doing cardio exercise after your weights session. After your weights your body needs protein and rest. If you get on the treadmill you will undo a lot of your good work. If you need to do cardio try doing it on a different day.

5. Never train more than an hour
This relates to both muscle gain and safety. After about an hour an acid starts to build up in your muscles which can be counter muscle gain. Also, by this time your technique will be getting sloppy and you will be more likely to do an injury.