Building Lean Muscle

Bodyweight training is one of the best ways to burn fat and build muscle. Unfortunately, most people believe (or are led to believe) they need a room full of equipment or an expensive gym membership in order to improve their physique. They completely overlook the fat burning and muscle building potential of bodyweight exercise. I hope this article opens your eyes to the possibilities of using the gym you were born with!

Heads up: at the end of the article I’m going to share with you one exercise that simultaneously builds muscle and burns fat.

It’s happened to all of us at one point or another (even me). We look in the mirror one day and we notice we are softer and fatter. While we weren’t paying attention, our muscle tone and strength has decreased, and our waist size has increased. This is when most of say, “It’s time to hit the gym”.

But hold on a minute. I agree, it is time to do something about your physique. But joining a gym does not have to be the answer. As a matter of fact, you can start burning fat and building muscle today to improve your physique.

Let me show you how bodyweight training can improve your physique in as little 15 minutes a day…

Instead of joining a gym, that you may or may not end up going to, start by adding a bodyweight training program to your daily schedule. Come on, it is easy to find 15 minutes to exercise. And 15 minutes is all you need to do to start feeling and looking better. Obviously, I’d like to see you exercise even more, but let’s keep it simple at 15 minutes for now.

So, you wake up in the morning and do 15 minutes of bodyweight calisthenics. By the way, you’ll find this more invigorating than swilling down cups of coffee. Do this every day. Yes, every day, and you will see great results.

Now, I can hear some of you saying, “I thought you were only supposed to exercise every other day, or 3 times a week!”

This is true, if you are on a high volume bodybuilding program! Bodybuilders need that extra day to recover from the huge amount of training they perform. But you are only doing 15 minutes of bodyweight exercise. This leaves you 1,440 minutes to recover between bodyweight training sessions. This is more than enough.

Now, if you do this every day for a week, you do 1 hour and 45 minutes of exercise. Do you think 1 hour and 45 minutes will start to tighten your muscles and burn off extra fat? You bet it does!

Now, for the skeptics that think bodyweight training is too “easy”, or that you can’t get a great muscle building, fat burning workout in 15 minutes, I’m going to share an exercise with you. (Remember, I promised to do this at the beginning of the article.)

This exercise is called the Burpee-Chin Up Combo.

Here is how you do it…

Stand under a chin up bar with your feet shoulders width apart and arms at your sides. Bend your knees and squat down, placing your hands on the floor in front of you. Kick your feet back so you are in the up position of the push up. Perform a push up. Jump your feet forward under your body… then explode up and grab the bar with palms facing you. Perform a chin up. Drop down and repeat.

Do this for a few minutes and your whole body will feel it, from your muscles to your heart and lungs, and you burn a lot of fat. Try to do as many as you can for a full 15 minutes, and I guarantee you’ll have a new appreciation for bodyweight exercise.

I hope this article has opened you eyes to the fantastic possibilities of bodyweight training. If you need to strengthen and tone your muscles and burn fat, start changing your physique today with your own bodyweight. Make a consistent effort every day and you’ll soon meet your goals.

You are not inspired for gym today? Are you maybe getting tired of not seeing results from your workouts? Despite you try hard to follow exercise routine and diet it seems you don’t advance fast. Many people are facing this exact same problem while trying to build muscle tone, burn that extra fat and gain muscle. I had hard time to find fast, effective method to build muscle tone and gain muscle. Here is how I came to the solution.

Sure, I tried so many things; internet is filled with “ultimate, best, magical” solutions in various forms. I don’t know why but results from different systems, supplements and methods I purchased were just to slow and weak. I’m sure you also work hard at the gym and you want to see results, needless to ask, isn’t it? After 16 months I really got frustrated and this gave me strong drive to get out from that stagnation and pain fast.

In my intense search for the solution I came across the study which was done several years ago. It showed that one of the best ways to build muscle tone fast is to change the speed at which you lift the weights during your weight training session. To get maximum results, one should slow down the weight lifting movements they say and here is how they explained why.

By slowing the speed and rate at which you move a weight, you reduce the natural momentum of the weight training movement which stimulates the muscles to work harder. In this way your muscles are forced to work more, you make faster gains in terms of building muscle tone and muscle mass. I tried implementing all I learned about this method and soon I found it really has strong impact on quality of my workouts. Soon I discovered that this type of weightlifting keep the heart rate up during weight training sessions which gives great cardiovascular benefits.

Quite few proponents of “slow resistance training” method for building muscle tone fast believe the cardiovascular benefits of this approach are superior to aerobic training. They also explain that this is one of the fastest ways to burn excess fat while building muscle tone and muscle mass. Well, I must admit there is a lot truth in this.

So how you can start with this super slow workout method?

You can use either free weights or machines, as you like. But, many experienced weight lifters emphasize that weight lifting machines are more time consuming and there is a need you master different safety features in order to work hard without getting injured. There are different levels but for the start best one is ten / four seconds one. It is suggested that you lift up the weight over the period of ten seconds and then lower it for a count of four seconds.

If your main goal is to build muscle tone best is you start with set of twelve repetitions for each exercise. Take care you have a full range of motion and good movement form. One good advice you may find very useful for maintaining good form, is that you lower the weight you normally use by about 20%. In that way you will be able to give your best. Watch for your breathing. Be sure to keep your breathing steady throughout each set.

When I switched to this “slow” method I finally started advancing. This method gave me great results in quite short time periods. But in few months I came to my first plateau level. I was so happy since my body really transformed so much but then I also started feeling there is something missing in my routines. I wanted to keep up with this advancement rate.

In order to make that happen I was forced to research more. Soon it became clear that I’m not the “only one” who is getting benefits of this method. There are experts who joined this and other methods together with proven principals and strategies all aimed at getting maximum build muscle tone results in shortest time possible.

Fortunately we live in this wonderful age of information’s where we can get to the things we want and need quite fast. Internet gives as power of knowledge and in my opinion it is just a question of learning to differentiate between genuine and false sources of knowledge which keeps us stagnating.