Can you answer Jay H’s question about Bodybuilding?:

I’ve looked at stemulite but I can’t seem to find any where I live. I don’t want to take creatine or roids.

Weight Lifting Equipment

In the light of recent steroid scandals, professional sports are under the spotlight. No one likes a cheater, and since many professional athletes are role models for the youth, professional organizations have come under scrutiny for not keeping their players clean, and for defiling the name of athletics in general. However, while Major League Baseball may be testifying before Congress, and while the FBI hopes to investigate the National Football League soon, no sport has a worse reputation for the use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs than bodybuilding. The constant pressure to be the biggest and the best, to push the body to its limits and beyond, has left many professional bodybuilders with no choice but to cheat; if everyone else in the competition is pumped with steroids, the only way to win is to pump harder.

Natural bodybuilding is a sport, a competition, but also a movement toward a cleaner, healthier lifestyle. Athletes and organizations involved in natural bodybuilding hope to approach the sport the way it should be approached: legally. Sadly, many of these athletes would be unable to compete with more mainstream bodybuilders, as the use of steroids and human growth hormone does significantly increase the synthesis of protein and the growth of muscle.

Defining Natural

For the most part, natural bodybuilding refers to bodybuilding without the use of illegal drugs, such as anabolic steroids, human growth hormone, prohormones, diuretics or non-prescription insulin. More broadly, however, it refers to the sport of bodybuilding performed the way it has always been intended, with nutrition, training and rest. In natural bodybuilding contests, competitors are always tested for illegal substances; if athletes test positive, they are banned from all future competitions. Testing is performed using urine samples or polygraph tests.

The definition of illegal substances is rather fluid. In the realm of natural bodybuilding, however, an illegal substance is one prohibited by any regulatory body, even if that body is international. In other words, a substance legal in the country of the competition will still be illegal in the competition if it is banned in any other countries.

The North American Natural Bodybuilding Federation, the Natural Physique Association, the World Natural Bodybuilding Federation, the International Natural Bodybuilding Association and the Organization of Competitive Bodybuilders are natural bodybuilding organizations that focus on competition plus a healthy lifestyle, not just simply winning. While the International Federation of Bodybuilders, the largest bodybuilding association in the world, is not a natural event, natural bodybuilding organizations still offer incentives to their athletes. Competitors can earn rankings as natural bodybuilders, along with prize money, sponsorships and endorsements.



Thanks to Benjamin Brook for contributing this article to our Bodybuilding blog:

Good Bodybuilding Diet

Spotting is an important aspect of weightlifting safety, yet it’s not something that is ever taught to gymgoers. Having a spotter gives you security and a little extra help to push yourself harder.

Here are some guidelines and rules-of-thumb, both for spotters and for lifters, that will make you a much better (and much safer) spotter.

1. Ask how the person you are spotting wants to be spotted. Some people, when doing dumbell exercises such as the bench press, prefer to be spotted at the elbows by pushing up from underneath with their elbows in your palms, while others prefer the wrists (pulling up on them). Neither way is necessarily right or wrong, it is a matter of preference.

2. Determine the rep range the person is going to be working in. If you start spotting at five reps and they’re doing ten, you’ve just ruined a set. If, on the other hand, you had to start spotting at five and they said ten, they may be expecting another five forced reps out of you.

3. Never take the weight away from the person (unless they really need it taken away for safety reasons). This is especially true on barbell exercises when you’re spotting on the bar. Do not pull or push so hard on the bar (unless they ask) that it takes the tension off the muscles. Good spotting means you just add enough force to keep the bar moving. When spotting exercises such as curls, spot by placing your hands under the lifters hands and pushing up on their hands rather than lifting on the bar itself. This will ensure you don’t take the weight away as you spot.

4. Find out if the person is going to do any set extension techniques, e.g. negatives, drop sets, forced reps, etc. You should know exactly what’s going on so you can be prepared for it. You don’t want to mistake an intensity technique for muscular failure that requires a spot.

5. Don’t scream encouragement at the person without first making sure they want that kind of thing. It can be very distracting and not everyone likes it or needs it.

6. When spotting on bench press, be sure to wipe the sweat off your face beforehand so you don’t drip on the person during their set (not a nice thing to experience). Also, don’t lean over them excessively. This can be distracting.

7. As well on bench, ask if the person wants help lifting the bar off the rack. Also, do not spot with one arm in a sort of one arm deadlift. This is a poor balance point and the pull is often uneven. This unbalancing can cause failure for the person lifting the weight.

8. Spot around the waist on squats, not on the bar. Lower yourself as they go down and follow them up. Help them rack the bar if they need help but never push them forward if they’re not ready to move.

9. When it is possible for you to spot yourself (e.g. 1 arm exercises, standing on a chair for chins, etc.), do it. You know better then anyone how much help you need. On the other hand, if you have a tendency to go easy on yourself and bail out too soon, get a spotter to force you to work.

10. When spotting on dumbell bench press, do not push inward on the elbows or the dumbells may cave in on their chest. Always push up.

11. There are exercises where you shouldn’t spot people, e.g. deadlifts, hyperextensions, crunches, power cleans, etc. If someone asks you to spot them on these, politely decline.

12. Sometimes a person may ask you to hand them a dumbell on exercises like dumbell bench, incline presses, shoulder presses, etc. Pick up the dumbell with your hands on the weight plate, not the handle itself. If you pick the weight up by the handle and try to hand it over that way, you and the lifter will have to try and somehow trade hand positions on the handle before they can lift the weight. This is not safe at all even with light weights but especially with maximal weights. An easy way to lift a heavy dumbell up to your shoulder level so you can hand it over is to pick it up first on the outside of the plates with both hands, then deadlift it to a standing position. Now rest the handle of the dumbell on one of your thighs, kick that leg up, throwing the dumbell up to your upper chest. Set it in their hand from there.

13. On some machines such as the pec deck, for example, it is better to spot by lifting the weight stack itself (watch your hands!). This keeps the tension on the muscle far better during the set. Do not place your hands underneath the plates, however. Just grasp the weight plates on the sides and push up to help. This should only be used for light help, not for full-power forced reps.

14. When using two spotters (e.g. for heavy squats or bench), have one at each end of the bar and ensure they pull up simultaneously. An unbalanced load can mean trouble.

15. If you need a spotter on every set of every exercise you do, you are either working too hard or not hard enough. On one hand, doing too many forced reps will rapidly overtrain you, while on the other hand, letting the spotter do much of the work will prevent progress. Try doing a few sets completely on your own (without any spot at all) to see if you are actually doing all the work. It is not good to be overly dependent on spotting outside of what is necessary for safety reasons. If you can’t lift the weight by yourself then you shouldn’t be doing it at all. The exception to this is negative training and legitimate forced reps.

16. A good spotting technique is the finger spot. If, for example, you are spotting someone on bench press and the bar is slowing down and almost stopped, use only your two index fingers underneath the bar. This is often more of a mental boost for the lifter than an actual spot. At this point, apply just enough pressure to keep the bar moving. If the fingers aren’t enough, grip the bar and continue to help just enough to keep it moving. This will make the lifter do much more of the work themselves. They’ll either love your spotting or never ask you to do it again!

17. When spotting, ease up as the lifter moves past the sticking point and into the stronger range of motion. For example, when spotting on bench, help just through the sticking point, then, as the leverage improves, reduce your help as the bar comes up, letting up completely as the bar comes to the top. To increase the value of the set, you may even want to lean on the bar a little as it comes to the top (check with your lifter first before doing this). This will help increase lockout power.

18. If you see someone struggling with a weight, don’t run over and yank the weight up. This can be dangerous for the trainer and tends to make people angry. Make your presence known but don’t help until the trainer signals you for help. If you see someone being crushed under a bench press, however, that is when you should run over and help without asking.

19. When spotting, focus all your attention on the set, no matter who walks by or who talks to you. You are responsible for ensuring the safety of the lifter.

20. Don’t spot until it is absolutely necessary. The most productive part of a set is near the end where the lifter is struggling with the weight. By helping too soon, you will reduce the effectiveness of the set.

21. Don’t base the amount weight you use totally on the strength of your spotter. You should be using your own strength for your sets. This is not to say you shouldn’t have a strong spotter, though. Another exception is dumbell spotting where the spotter must hand the weight to you. Obviously, you’ll need to find someone strong enough to be able to do that effectively.

22. Machines that have foot levers to help you get the weight into position can be used to spot yourself. If you can get the coordination right, you can use the lever to catapult the weight out of the bottom position.

23. Spotting is okay for beginners learning form and limitations but only for safety, not for excess reps. This is one of the major mistakes beginning trainers make when starting a training program. Overuse of forced reps, i.e. unnecessary spotting, can lead to burnout and excessive soreness. In these cases, spotting should only be used to keep the lifter safe, not to push them harder.

As you can see, there’s more to spotting than simply pulling on a bar or pushing on the elbows. A good spot should maximize the results and safety of the lifter. Remember these guidelines the next time someone asks you for a spot or the next you ask someone else for a spot!



Thanks to Nick Nilsson for contributing this article to our Bodybuilding blog:

Body Building Clothing

There’s nothing worse than going to the gym and getting workout advice from someone smaller or less developed than yourself. If you want to learn bodybuilding techniques, the trick is to get them from those who have developed the physiques you’re striving for. You can get bodybuilding techniques from talking to others in the gym that you look up to, you can read bodybuilding magazines and you can read lots of books. However, not everybody’s body responds the same way to all bodybuilding techniques so you should always find what works best for you. By taking all the bodybuilding techniques that you learn and experimenting with them to see what works for you, you should be able to attain every bodybuilding goal you strive for.

Fellow Gym Members

Some people don’t feel right asking other people in the gym for bodybuilding techniques. They don’t want to bother them during their workouts or disturb them when they’re in the zone. You should be able to judge, though, when people are willing to talk and when they don’t want to be disturbed. Most gym members will be more than willing to teach you bodybuilding techniques if you ask. They were once where you are, and they were once inquisitive as to what bodybuilding techniques work and which are a waste of time. Asking your fellow gym members, especially the ones bigger and more developed than you, can be a great way to learn bodybuilding techniques in order to achieve your goals.

Bodybuilding Magazines

Another great way to learn bodybuilding techniques is to pick up one of the many bodybuilding magazines on your local store shelves. These magazines have routines galore, complete with the required numbers of repetitions, sets and how weight you should try it with. Again, however, tailor the bodybuilding techniques to work for your body and skill level. These magazines also have pictures and diagrams which are great for learning the correct form for each of the techniques you’ll learn.

Books

Bodybuilding techniques can also be learned from books written by former and current bodybuilders. If these techniques worked for these bodybuilders, after all, they will surely work for you. Pay close attention to form and the exercises you’re taught and you should see results in no time at all. The great thing about bodybuilding is that the techniques they taught in the seventies and eighties haven’t really changed through today so no matter when the book was published, it should work fine for your bodybuilding efforts.



Thanks to Benjamin Brook for contributing this article to our Bodybuilding blog:

Burn Fat Build Muscle

According to the first Mr. Olympia, Larry Scott, there is a vast treasure of strength training secrets just waiting to be discovered that go beyond current bodybuilding routines.

When bodybuilding and strength training are properly applied, possibilities open up to breaking through training plateaus. It also helps prevent injuries while the same time increasing strength resulting in a muscular physique that is better defined. The combination of modern scientific breakthroughs and the wisdom of past experience will further enhance bodybuilder and strength training than either of the two separately.

The Never Ending Struggle to Overcome Conflicting Forces

The essence of bodybuilding and strength training is the story of the perpetual fight to master conflicting forces, which are reflected in ancient times when strength was equaled to survival. These circumstances carry on into modern goals of excellence in terms of competition as well as how our culture treats the physical form of humans.

This ongoing battle to master our bodies from limitations while achieving maximum performance has spurred mankind on to attain greater results. The human body in general does not easily welcome change in its many forms and it does its best to resist as well as sabotage this change.

Bodybuilding and strength training means continual adaptation and engagement in a guerrilla type campaign formulated to deceive as well as utilize creative methods designed to overcome obstinate body processes that resist change. Along this road is your fair share of small victories, periodic setbacks as well as sudden breakthroughs that appear never-ending. When it looks like the glass ceiling is unbreakable the literature released by author Pavel introduces the practice of bodybuilding and strength training.

A combination of strength and power training furnishes the bodybuilder with a physique that encompasses the definition of raw power. An individual can lift like a bodybuilder and train as a power lifter. Despite the fact that bodybuilding and strength training are on divergent paths and well-known bodybuilders such as Park, Grimek and Schwarzenegger have trained heavy and lift it hard, nowadays bodybuilding is much more specific. For example, comparing competitive power lifters such as Flex Wheeler and Ronnie Coleman, to the well-trained eye Ronnie’s physique accentuates raw power.

Bodybuilding and strength training has a tendency to assist in adding size to the physique with the incorporation of strength training moves such as classic lifts such as squat, dead lifts, rows, and bench presses. In this respect, the bodybuilder should be technically proficient with these exercises and the objective should be to add weight in a progressive manner and, at the same time, not at the expense of form.

Additionally, whether completing dead lifts, bench presses, squatting or rowing they should be completed similar to how bodybuilders do it, which means sticking to lifting with a strict form and proper movement, while also adding more weight over time. It also does not make sense to over train, particularly when training to become stronger.

Enough recovery time is essential when bodybuilding and strength training, however that does not mean any lessening of the intensity of strength training. Additionally, the total number of sets done by the bodybuilder should be kept to a minimum as well as being prepared to grind out the workouts because training at high levels of strength coupled with muscle development surely requires quite a bit of hard work. Grinding out that extra single rep on the edge of exhaustion is what bodybuilding and strength training is all about.



Thanks to Corbin Newlyn for contributing this article to our Bodybuilding blog:

Body Building Workout Routine