Are you trying to get buff this summer? Okay, first of all, let me inform you that this can indeed be a process.

Don't expect to hit the gym a few times and see some significant results. For some odd reason this always bothers me. People go to the gym for a mere week and expect to be ripped like Van Dam. That's just nonsense. However, with the right weight training program and the correct body building diets, you can see a great difference in a couple of months. You see, it's all about how hard you train and how well you eat. If you are one of those folks who consume fast food twice a day, you'd better get ready to make some drastic changes. This will sadly get you nowhere. In order to get stacked you'll need to start one of the many recommended body building diets. I'm talking about a lot of protein, vitamins and minerals, but hardly any fat, sugar, and salt. Remember, you truly are what you eat. Just take a gander at the American population.

Are you currently searching for decent body building diets? These are easy to come by in this super age of technology and cyberspace. I too was looking to gain muscle a few months back. Although I'm not looking to acquire a body builder physique by any means, I do prefer some decent muscle mass. My first thought when it came to body building diets and weight training regimes was to hop online. I knew that the World-Wide-Web would have much to offer. After about an hour of surfing and reading, I had come to the conclusion that Whey protein is the bomb right now. We're talking it's all the rage in the body building circuits. Therefore I decided to weigh the options at hand. Because when it comes to contemporary whey protein, there are many products to choose from. In the end I purchased a whey protein mix from Wal-Mart. Go figure! Anyway, this nuance to the modern-day body building diets is basically an all-natural source of high quality protein. You can get a whopping 26 grams of it with one 8 ounce glass of milk. That's a hefty dose of the muscle building stuff if you ask me. Do this three times a day in addition to your weight training and you should surely see results soon. Now, when it comes to body building diets, you can't disregard you regular three meals. Make sure you consume healthy meals containing all of your daily vitamins. The collaboration of health food and whey protein is a sure win. It's time to get pumped.

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Every guy who steps into the gym dreams of achieving that great classical V-shaped upper body that commands respect and attention. Many have trained for months, if not years and yet that V-shaped upper body just isn't forth coming. Ever wondered why?

Before I show you various ways to achieve that glorious 'V', you must also be aware that the 'V' shape is also an illusion. If you have a wide thick back with a powerful chest, coupled with boulder-like deltoids, your 'V' will show up commandingly because those attributes will make your waist look small and thus accentuating the 'V' illusion.

To have a stupendous upper body, you MUST train your lower body. V-shapes will just be an ugly upper body shape if your legs are like bamboo poles. The excellent full body shape is called the X-frame. Just like those super heroes you see in comic books. If you don't train legs, you are missing out on training the largest muscle mass. When training legs, many other upper body muscles especially the back and abs will be involved. This gives you the most muscle mass trained in one go. And because you are training so many muscles at one go, you secrete tons of growth hormones when you sleep, further enhancing overall muscle development for that perfect X-frame.

Another muscle group many people fail to pay attention to is the back. The back must be trained for thickness as well as width. Many back exercises also develop the rear deltoids and the trapezius which are very important to getting that 'V'. When your back is thick, you will look powerful and with the width, it will make your waist look narrower, thus making the 'V' more pronounced. Do bar-bell row, deadlifts for a thick and powerful back. Chin-ups and push-ups (weighted and doing them in a slow controlled motion) will provide you the width or more commonly called 'wings'.

Another very obvious V-shape illusion creator are your triceps. But most people pay more attention to the biceps than triceps. Why triceps then? Because your triceps, as the name 'tri' suggests, has three 'heads' and each 'head' must be dealt with when you exercise them. They are also 1/3 bigger than your biceps. By training the triceps hard, your upper arms will grow bigger faster, giving more berth to your upper body and again creating a narrow waistline illusion.

The best illusion-shapers are your deltoids. Your delts have 3 'heads'. However, most of the time, I see people only working out the front delts. When you develop your delts well, they will be round and boulder-like, and they make your shoulder wide and strong. Now, close your eyes and have a mental image of yourself with a wide thick back, big strong triceps… now, do you see that 'V'? Add lateral raise, bent-over lat-raisers and upright rows to your routine.

How to have a beautiful 'V' if your abs are flabby? Forget the side crunches and side bends. It will only make your waistline thicker. Go on a lose fat program by combining weight lifting, cardio exercises and eating correctly. Your abs will show in no time.

Ahh… to finally stamp your authority in the gym and at the beach, a wide and powerful gladiator's chest will put you ahead of the pack! Train your chest heavy with dumbbells, barbells and cables machines. Use incline benches rather than flat or declining ones. You want to build the upper chest and not targeting the lower chest in case it gets you the droop or saggy chest which we call 'bitch tits'. Although the pec is one huge muscle, it can be targeted at different places to recruit different fibres to shape it.

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In an earlier article we concluded that muscles must be worked to failure if an adequate hypertrophic response is to occur. Whether this involves one or more sets is irrelevant as in either scenario the muscles must be worked to failure and beyond. This causes significant microscopic damage to the muscle tissues and it is during the period of recovery that protein synthesis undertakes the repair process that results in bigger muscle fibers.

But how long does this process take and when is it safe to expose those same muscles to further intensive exercise? Scientific studies suggest that muscle fiber degradation takes approximately five to seven days to repair and recover. Any further exposure of the affected muscle to intensive activity will interfere with the recovery process and actually prevent it from achieving maximum growth. However, using the muscle to assist in exercising other body parts or even taking part in low intensity aerobic exercise will not prevent recovery.

It follows therefore that each muscle group should be trained intensively only once each week in order to allow full recovery. This can be achieved by incorportating a split training regime that allows you to work out several times each week but still exercise each muscle group intensively only once every seven days.

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Muscle is an amazing tissue of the body. It is the very part of our body that gives us the control that we want and need in life. The mind is a useless thing often if it doesn't have muscle to put thought into action. It is also a major part of our body's defense mechanism. It protects things structurally (joints, bones, etc.) and metabolically, and physically whether by means of escape or defense from the dangers both human and non that we encounter. I want to talk more specifically about these things that I have mentioned in order to help you to understand that it is good to gain muscle.

Protection is the first area to mention when discussing why you should gain muscle and is true in so many different ways. Muscles are major protectors of the joints and bones in our body. Strong muscles that span joints serve as braces for the forces that would otherwise separate and render these joints useless. The same goes for muscles that support long bones. If we didn't have muscles that were able to absorb the impact of forces that we experience every day than we would always be dealing with fractures and immobility. In fact the activities that promote muscle building are the very same activities that increase bone mineral density, which is especially important for women later in life after menopause. Muscles also help us to maintain our balance protecting us from falls. Muscle tissue is also huge regulator when it comes to blood pressure, and thus has indirect protection of many different major organs including the heart, brain, kidneys, and eyes.

Metabolically muscle is very important in maintaining a healthy weight and absorbing the harmful effect of the typical American diet. This is not to say that if you work out and gain muscle that you are automatically at a healthy weight and can eat whatever you want. But it does mean that those people who spend good amounts of time every week doing weight bearing exercises are less prone to things like diabetes, hypertension, cancer, heart disease, and atherosclerosis–all things that come with obesity–because muscle is a very good metabolizer of the extra fuel (glucose and fat) that we have every day in the typical "unhealthy diet."

Lastly for this article I want to talk to you about the importance of doing things that only having strong muscle will allow you to do. I am talking especially about your mental health here. Basically if you aren't strong than you likely aren't active (they go hand in hand) and if you aren't active than you are so much more prone to things like inactivity and depression its not funny. So take my advice and start lifting weights to gain muscle which is one of the most precious commodities that you have on your body.

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Ask any body builder and everyone will say they will feel light headed, nauseous and even sometimes even puke when they train big muscle groups with exercises such as squats and dead lifts. Some great bodybuilders even take pride that they puke after an intensive bout of weightlifting as an indication that they have had a fantastic workout. But to many, these symptoms are unpleasant, disruptive and could be even be dangerous and cause injuries. Perhaps, you may also have experienced these symptoms as well.

What happened? Well, there could be several causes.

* First of all, you may have eaten or drunk too much before your gym workout. So you blood is channeled to your digestive organs for your digestive process. But when you begin to exercise intensively especially on big muscle groups, a lot of blood is channeled away from your digestive organs to the muscles. When that happens, food is now in your digestive system left unattended and therefore undigested and thus causing you to feel nauseous.

* Your blood sugar level may be low. This could happen when you are on a low carbohydrate caloric restriction diet or have not eaten for sometime and is now lifting heavy weights. You will feel giddy, tired and may even develop a headache and suffering muscular weakness. It simply boils down to a decreased of energy level for not having enough energy nutrients prior to your workout.

* The most common cause of nausea when weight lifting is low blood pressure. It could be inherent that you have low blood pressure and if not, it is caused by change of body position. Have you ever felt giddy when you are sitting stationary for sometime then suddenly gotten up and stretch? Well, if you have had that experience, then the same logic and science applies. The sudden fall of blood pressure happens when you are in a squatting position and then suddenly bursting upwards to a standing position with the blood pooled in your lower body and not sending the blood fast enough to your upper body and your brain.

These are some of the reasons why many of us will experience giddiness, nausea and even puke when we do exercises like squats and dead lifts with heavy weights and when working on big muscle groups.

Now that we know the reasons, we can avoid these unpleasant symptoms by taking necessary precautions during our gym workout on heavy weight days.

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The more work you put into something, the better results you will achieve. This has always been a widely accepted truth that applies to many areas of life. The harder you study, the better grades you will achieve. The more time you spend fine-tuning your athletic skills, the better athlete you will become. The longer you spend learning to play an instrument, the better musician you will become. Therefore, it only makes sense that the more time you spend in the gym, the stronger and more muscular your physique will become, correct? Contrary to what you might think, the answer to this question is a gigantic, definite, absolute no! It is in this area of bodybuilding that conventional wisdom goes straight out the window, down the street and around the corner.

I know what you might be asking yourself…

"What? Spending less time in the gym will actually make me bigger and stronger?"

Yes! It really will, and when we examine the muscle-growth process from its most basic roots, it becomes quite clear why this is the case.

Every single process that occurs within the human body is centered around keeping you alive and healthy. Through thousands of years of evolution the human body has become quite a fine-tuned organism that can adapt well to the specific conditions that are placed upon it. We become uncomfortable when we are hungry or thirsty, we acquire a suntan when high amounts of UV rays are present, we build calluses to protect our skin, etc. So what happens when we break down muscle tissue in the gym? If you answered something to the effect of "the muscles get bigger and stronger", then congratulations! You are absolutely correct. By battling against resistance beyond the muscle's present capacity we have posed a threat to the musculature. The body recognizes this as potentially harmful and as a natural adaptive response the muscles will hypertrophy (increase in size) to protect the body against this threat. As we consistently increase the resistance from week to week the body will continue to adapt and grow.

Sound simple? Ultimately it is, but the most important thing to realize in relation to all of this is that the muscles can only grow bigger and stronger if they are provided with sufficient recovery time. Without the proper recovery time, the muscle growth process simply cannot take place.

Your goal in the gym should be to train with the minimum amount of volume needed to yield an adaptive response. Once you have pushed your muscles beyond their present capacity and have triggered your thousand-year-old evolutionary alarm system, you have done your job. Any further stress to the body will simply increase your recovery time, weaken the immune system and send your body into catabolic overdrive.

Most people train way too often and with far more sets than they really need to. High intensity weight training is much more stressful to the body than most people think. The majority of people structure their workout programs in a manner that actually hinders their gains and prevents them from making the progress that they deserve. Here are 3 basic guidelines that you should follow if you want to achieve maximum gains:

1) Train no more than 3 days per week.2) Do not let your workouts last for longer then 1 hour. 3) Perform 5-8 sets for large muscle groups (chest, back, thighs) and 2-4 sets for smaller muscle groups (shoulders, biceps, triceps, calves, abs).

Take all sets to the point of muscular failure and focus on progressing in either weight or reps each week. If you truly train hard and are consistent, training more often or any longer than this will be counterproductive to your gains!

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