Tag: muscle growth

Top 3 Mistakes In Gaining Muscle Mass

Post author By Remson
Post date May 6, 2017

Tribe By Noire

Top 3 Mistakes In Gaining Muscle Mass

I want to talk about the top 3 mistakes in gaining muscle mass. I get questions all the time about how to gain muscle mass and what the best rep scheme is. Understand that there isn’t a one size fits all kinda program, but there are certain key mistakes that most people make that hurt progress the most.

How Muscle Growth Works

The brain sends an electrical impulse down the spine and through the nervous system.
The nervous system then commands muscle to contract.
That contraction then produces force and creates resistance.

THE 2 REASONS FOR MUSCLE GROWTH

To produce force in order to move the body or other objects in a given environment.
To resist against force from external objects and gravity.

TRAIN & HUMAN ADAPTATION

One thing that the human body does extremely well is adapt to a given environment or lifestyle. These adaptations are a biological survival mechanism that make it easier for us to do what we do. The whole premise of training is to intentionally create these adaptations to get a desired result, like muscle growth.

TRAINING TO IMPROVE FORCE PRODUCTION & RESISTANCE CAUSES MUSCLE GROWTH

In order to facilitate maximal force production and resistance, the body increases the size of its muscle. When you look at the purpose of muscle, it becomes obvious that strength training is the key to muscle growth.

Now that we’ve got that squared aware, let’s talk about the 3 biggest muscle mass killers.

1. Over Training

You want to work hard in the gym and challenge the body to grow, but you can definitely overdue it. This can be doing too many reps and it can also be lifting too much weight. The biggest causes of this is over zealousness and poor or no programming.

Strength training should be tested, calculated, tested, and then recalculated. It shouldn’t be a string of randomly chosen days where you just go to the gym and try to lift as heavy as possible. Get a good strength training program that is no less than 4 weeks and stick to it all the way through. Document the final results and continue from there.

For more on over training, read 6 signs of over training

2. Poor Eating Habits

There are so many different theories on how to eat, when to eat, and what to eat, but I want to dispel some myths about diet in regards to muscle growth.

YOU DO NOT NEED 1 GRAM OF PROTEIN PER POUND OF BODY WEIGHT, OR EVEN HALF THAT

The myth that you need to eat so much protein is straight up bro science and its dangerous. Too much protein intake causes fat gain, kidney disease, cancer growth, and other issues.

In order to calculate your protein intake you need to find out what your lean mass index is. You typically need 1.5 – 1.8 grams of protein per kilogram of lean mass per day.

This is a big part of the reason why I recommend following a vegan diet because meat, dairy, and egg eating tends to result in excessive fat and protein intake which results in all of the health issues we have today.

YOU CAN NOT SPEED UP MUSCLE GAIN BY EATING AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE

Muscle gain happens when you’re in a caloric surplus, but excessive eating causes an increase in body fat. The key is to slowly increase your caloric intake. For example, if you’re consuming 1800 calories per day to maintain your current body weight, increase it to a solid 2000 – 2100 calories for four weeks and document your results.

Typically you’ll gain an average of 1 lb of lean mass per month. Anymore than that is more than likely water and fat. When taking measurements, I would recommend circumference measurements, a skin-fold test with calipers, and obviously stepping on the scale.

JUNK FOOD DOES NOT HELP MUSCLE GROWTH

Eating junk food can inhibit muscle growth by bogging down your gut with toxins. Poor gut health hinders nutrients absorption and creates inflammation which leads to excess soreness, and low energy levels. All of your calories should come from nutrient dense foods.

For more info on how to improve gut health, read Fix your gut and lose fat with prebiotics

3. Lack Of Sleep

Muscle does not grow in the gym, it grows at rest. The training in the gym is only to stimulate the muscle to spark the process of adaptation, but the building and repairing of muscle happens in bed with a good night’s sleep.

Lack of sleep disrupts homeostasis which is the body’s natural state of balance. If this balance is disrupted, the body will reduce or even shutdown muscle growth in order to prioritize getting back that natural state of balance. This ultimately leads to over training, so they pretty much go hand in hand.

From what I’ve seen in my own personal journey as well as my clients, is that going to bed in between the hours of 8 and 10pm and waking up between 4 and 6am yields the most results. While following this type of sleep pattern, you may notice that you have twice as much energy as usual, a higher sex drive, more mental clarity, increased fat loss, and an increase of muscle size and strength.

Avoid These Pitfalls By Prioritizing Stress Management

Train with a mindset of self love and gratitude rather than a mindset driven by frustration and discomfort. Learn to enjoy the process and stay focused on all the positive changes you will experience in the future.

Eat foods that heal and cleanse the body and avoid toxic foods at all costs. Take control of your diet by cooking all of your own foods. Take time to be aware of what you eat and have an honest dialogue with yourself about your lifestyle. That is how you begin to break bad habits.

For more on breaking habits, read How to rid yourself of bad habits

Manage your time as best as possible by scheduling out your days. Schedule everything! Set a limit to how much work you’re willing to take on in a given day and set a reoccurring bedtime. Setting boundaries is a great way of reducing the stress in your life.

For more on reducing stress and even reducing negativity, read 7 ways to cut negativity out of your life

Thanks for reading, I appreciate you!

-Remson

Tribe By Noire

I’ve created this platform to help you become the most powerful version of yourself through fitness, plant based nutrition, and mindset coaching.

Tags bodybuilding, fitness tips, muscle growth, training strategies

Fitness & Training

The Truth About Squat Depth

Post author By Remson
Post date May 5, 2017

Tribe By Noire

The Truth About Squat Depth

How deep should you squat? This is a question I get very often and its also a pretty loaded question. There is an ideal form of squat depth, but you also have to work within the confines of your mobility all while working to improve your mobility. So let’s dive a bit deeper into the truth about squat depth.

3 Things You Need To Know About Squat Depth

1. We all have the same parts, but we also have those parts in different measurements. Our proportions range differently from person to person which means our squat depth should as well. Even though our depth will range from person to person, it does not serve as an excuse to squat shallow.

2. Ultimately you should be able to sit in a squat position comfortably, pretty much how a toddler normally would. When did we lose our ability to sit in a proper squat position? Probably when we started spending most of our days sitting in a chair. That 90 degree knee bend, inherited from the chair has now become most people’s standard for squat depth.

3. Squatting to full depth is only bad for your knees if you have imbalances like, weak glutes, overly developed quadriceps, and/ or limited ankle limited ankle mobility. If your bottom position feels uncomfortable, mobility is definitely an issue and needs to be addressed on a daily basis.

Learn To Squat Like A Toddler

Watch a one year old squat down to grasp something from the floor. Their feet stay roughly at hip distance, their knees abduct from their mid-line, and their hips drop to a full knee bend. Try to copy it and make note of where you feel the most discomfort.

Rounding of the back and falling backwards is usually a sign of limited ankle flexion. Push your knees out more and lean forward. If you can’t push your knees apart, it means you need to stretch the muscles in the inner thighs.

Grab hold of a door frame, or a pole fixture of some kind and use it to hold yourself up while you practice sitting in that bottom squat position. It may be tedious at first, but if you’re serious about getting good at squatting, you’ll stay consistent and work at this habitually.

Here’s a look at what the technical anatomy of your squat should look like. When working on improving your squat depth, record yourself in video form and see how close to this illustration you get.

Tribe By Noire

I’ve created this platform to help you become the most powerful version of yourself through fitness, plant based nutrition, and mindset coaching.

Tags bodybuilding, fitness tips, muscle growth, power building, powerlifting, training strategies, weightlifting

Fitness & Training

2 Reasons Why You Should Use Unilateral Exercises

Post author By Remson
Post date May 5, 2017

Tribe By Noire

2 Reasons Why You Should Use Unilateral Exercises

Unilateral training is absolutely essential in the gym. In fact, not using unilateral exercises in your training at all can be detrimental. In this article I’m going to explain what unilateral exercises are and 2 reasons why you should use unilateral exercises.

What Are Unilateral Exercises?

Unilateral is basically a technical term used to describe something as one sided. This can be any exercise that is performed using only one arm or leg like a split squat or single arm press. These exercises are more time consuming and often more difficult, but the benefits far outweigh the cons.

2 Main Benefits Of Unilateral Exercises

1. IMPROVE CORE STRENGTH & TORSO STABILITY

During a unilateral exercise, the load or weight is distributed unevenly causing a greater challenge to maintain balance. This means that all of the muscles in your torso now have to work harder thus causing greater strength adaptions and a more define core.

2. IMPROVE SHOULDER, WRIST, HIP, AND ANKLE STABILITY

Working one side at a time allows for greater concentration on the muscles you are targeting on that side. I’ve had clients who have only trained bilaterally (both sides) for so long that they’ve developed some serious imbalances that hindered their progress in some major way.

One side ended up being way stronger than the other and even way bigger than the other. I’ve seen size difference of up to an inch and a half! This is a huge tell because if the muscle on one side is way bigger, this means that side is working a lot more and this often causes injury to the dominant side.

Unilateral training fixes this imbalance over time when implemented consistently. It allows you to more specifically train your central nervous system (CNS) in regards to a movement pattern on a given side. The results I’ve seen from this are

A more proportionate look
Over coming strength plateaus
Reduction or elimination of injury and/or joint pain

When Should You Do Unilateral Exercises?

You don’t have to do unilateral exercises every time you train, but I would advise you to incorporate them into your routine on deload periods, or on weekly intervals like every 3, 4, or 6 weeks as maintenance. However, if you have some major imbalances, you should be working on them daily.

Simple as that Tribe!

Drop a comment below and let me know if you’ve found this helpful, or if you have any other questions on this topic.

Thanks reading! I appreciate you

-Remson

Tribe By Noire

I’ve created this platform to help you become the most powerful version of yourself through fitness, plant based nutrition, and mindset coaching.

Tags fitness tips, muscle growth, training strategies

Fitness & Training

3 Essentials To Building A Strong Functional Back

Post author By Remson
Post date May 5, 2017

Tribe By Noire

3 Essentials To Building A Strong Functional Back

Building your back is vital to developing a strong and balanced body, yet so many people neglect it. Its common for people to train the muscles they see the most, like chest, arms, and abs, but understand that your back muscles are just as important and in some cases, should be trained more often than the muscles on the front. Moving forward I’m going to explain the 3 essentials to building a strong functional back.

Some Perks Of Training Back

Training your back will change your posture in a way that will make you stand more upright which will cause you to appear more confident and strong. Your posture actually effects how people behave toward you which is why this is so important in terms of social encounters. Weak back muscles lead to a hunched look that can cause you to look weak and timid.

Developing a strong back can relieve shoulder and neck tension by strengthening the muscles that pull your shoulders down and back in to place. Weak back muscles lead to overactive upper trapezius muscles and this greatly contributes to stress headaches and bunch of other issues.

Improving the strength of your back muscles will increase the integrity of your spine and greatly improve your joint function. This means that you greatly decrease your chances of slipping a disc, or getting a shoulder impingement.

Obviously there is a major aesthetic appeal to developing a strong sexy back. Whether you’re a woman who wants to wear that new backless dress, or a guy who wants that broad shoulder look with the V Taper, I’d advise you to get to pulling.

1st Essential - Horizontal Pulling

Horizontal pulling is basically any kind of rowing motion. The key elements here are scapula retraction and shoulder depression. Good cues to keep in your head for these kinds of movements are to keep your chest out and your shoulders down as you pull towards your belly. Make a double chin throughout the movement to keep from sticking your neck out.

2nd Essential - Vertical Pulling

Vertical pulling is basically any kind of movement where you pull against resistance from an overhead position. The key elements here are scapula retraction/downward rotation, and shoulder depression. This can be pull ups, lat pull downs, high rows, etc. Again, keep your chest out and your shoulders down and make a double chin, but this time you’ll be pulling to your upper chest.

3rd Essential - Spinal Extension & Stabilization

Good examples of spinal extension and/or stabilization would be deadlifts, goodmornings, prone extensions, etc. The unique thing about these kinds of movements is that their primary function in regards to the back is to strengthen the spinal erectors and this requires little to no movement of the arms.

Putting A Back Routine Together

Putting together a back routine is fairly simple. Typically what I’d do is take 1-2 exercises from each of the 3 categories. The weight and reps would be set depending on the current goals of the program.

As long as you structure your workout around the essentials, you’ll be able to put together an effective and balanced back workout.

You can also add unilateral training to your workout structure as well. For more on that topic, give this article a look. 2 reasons why you should use unilateral exercises

Thanks for reading! Get to pulling!

Tribe By Noire

I’ve created this platform to help you become the most powerful version of yourself through fitness, plant based nutrition, and mindset coaching.

Tags bodybuilding, fitness tips, muscle growth, training strategies

Fitness & Training

3 Keys To Building Muscle And Burning Fat At The Same Time

Post author By Remson
Post date May 1, 2017

3 Keys To Building Muscle And Burning Fat At The Same Time

One of the biggest myths in fitness today is the belief that you can’t build muscle and drop body fat at the same time, atleast not a substantial amount. Because of this belief, it is a common practice to alternate between 3 different phases known as bulking, cutting, and maintenance. My goal here in this article is to simplify the process and explain the 3 keys to building muscle and burning fat at the same time.

The Vicious Cycle Of Cutting & Bulking

This vicious cycle will have you bouncing back and forth from one extreme to the next. You want to get lean and sexy, so you neurotically cut calories in efforts to drop weight fast. You drop the weight, and a clothing size or two. You feel good about it for a bit, but the feeling fades when you realize you look flat. You’ve gotta put some muscle on, and add some shape to this now thinned out physique. Popular opinion says you’ve gotta eat big to get big, so you begin doing just that, over eating. You hit it hard in the gym and pack on some good size, but only a small portion of it being actual lean mass. Ladies and gentlemen, the vicious cycle of bulking and cutting.

Debunking the calorie myth

Before we go any further I need to clarify what calorie is and is not. A calorie is not a form of nutrients, it is actually a measure of thermo energy. To be specific it is the energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water through 1 °C. Basically food works in the body much like how gas works in your car. The fuel heats up creating a caloric output (energy use). The more “calories” we consume, the more potential caloric output we have.

Understanding that, we can now see that the only purpose for increasing calorie intake is to have more usable energy. Whatever potential energy we have left over is stored in either the liver, muscle tissue, or fat cells. If you have your calorie surplus too high, you’ll gain body fat. If your calorie deficit is too low, you’ll lose muscle. Sounds simple enough, but this is actually where calorie counting falls on its face.

Are all calories created equal?
Does it matter where the calories come from?
How do you calculate how many calories you need?

I’ve often had clients drop body fat and increase muscle mass by increasing their food intake, so what’s the missing link here?

Quality Over Quantity

When thinking about food, quality comes first. The quality of your food is its macro and micro nutrient balance. A good example of this would be fruit vs cake.

Cake has little to no nutritional value, and very high in “calories”. Cake is known to be fattening because not only is it high in “calories, its also low in fiber, so you end up eating way too much of it before actually feeling full.

Fruit is low in “calories” but loaded with vitamins, minerals, and fiber which greatly improve energy, recovery, and digestion. This means more muscle growth and fat burn.

The 3 Keys To The Right Gains & Losses

1. NITROGEN SURPLUS

Consuming protein increases the nitrogen levels in your body. This nitrogen is what builds the muscle tissue in the body. Simply put, you will build muscle as long as you have a nitrogen surplus in the body during recovery. Studies show that the optimal consumption of protein per day for muscle building is 1.5 to 1.8 grams per kilogram of lean body mass.

2. TRAIN INTENSE & TIME EFFICIENT

Your training sessions should be fairly quick and intense, typically within 40 – 45 minutes. Having long drawn out training sessions can drastically reduce performance and inhibit your recover because of over use to the nervous system. Your body only has but so much fuel available at a given time so make every minute count.

3. RECOVERY

The body builds muscle at rest almost entirely when you sleep, which is why the best thing you can do for muscle growth is sleep. The body also metabolizes the most fat at rest in order to generate and stabilize your hormones and other functions. Its pretty much impossible to get the results you want without sufficient recovery.

Leave a comment below! Let me know what info you’ve found most useful here and feel free to ask if you have any further questions. Thanks for reading!

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Nutrition & Supplements

6 Key Benefits Of Fasting

Post author By Remson
Post date April 30, 2017

Tribe By Noire

6 Key Benefits Of Fasting

Fasting is one of those things that are really beneficial to us, but is often confused with starvation and regarded as unrealistical and dangerous, so I want to clear some things up and tell you about the 6 key benefits of fasting.

Fasting Vs Starving

Let’s establish the difference between fasting and starving here because there is a huge difference. Just because you feel hungry doesn’t mean you’re starving. Starving basically means undernourished. When you’re starving you’re not getting the nutrition that your body needs which causes some pretty serious health issues.

Ironically in my years of coaching I’ve come to learn that a great deal of people are undernourished even though they eat consistently. There are two main reasons for this.

Your diet does not contain enough of the nutrients you need.
You have digestive issues that keep your body from absorbing and using the nutrients you consume.

On the flip side there is fasting that acts as solution to these problems. Fasting does not necessarily restrict what you eat, but restricts when you eat. You basically set a time frame of when you don’t eat, but there are ways to consume enough nutrients without breaking your fast. The nutrients I’m referring to is micro nutrients, meaning vitamins and minerals.

6 Key Benefits Of Fasting

1. FASTING HELPS WITH FAT LOSS

Fasting is an extremely effective way to lower your body fat percentage. The way this works is there are 2 main sources of energy that your body uses called fat and carbs. Both of the energy sources get broken down into a simpler form called glucose which is what your body operates on. Carbs are the body’s preferred source of energy because its easier to convert into available energy. Fasting allows the body to burn through all of the carbs, and start converting and using fat as energy at a much higher rate.

2. FASTING HELPS IMPROVE INSULIN SENSATIVITY

Insulin sensitivity is major factor in maintaining an efficient energy balance and body fat percentage. Basically insulin sensitivity is the rate out how effective your body is at utilizing blood glucose for energy. The pancreas releases insulin into the bloodstream to collect glucose and transport it to where its needed. Fasting increases the efficiency of this process, which comes as a great benefit to people struggling with fatigue, weight gain, and diabetes.

3. FASTING IMPROVES THE METABOLISM

Its a common belief that not eating for long periods of time can slow down your metabolism, but fasting actually does the complete opposite. Eating constantly creates a lot of work for your digestive tract which over time can cause a slowdown or even a complete burnout. Fasting gives your digestive tract a break from the constant workload thus giving it a jump start to work much more efficiently.

4. FASTING IMPROVES BRAIN FUNCTION

There have been many scientific studies that show Fasting improves brain function because it boosts the production of a protein called brain derived neurotrophic factor or BDNF. BDNF triggers brain stem cells to convert into new neurons, and triggers numerous other chemicals that promote neural health. This protein also protects your brain cells from diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

5. FASTING IMPROVES THE IMMUNE SYSTEM

fasting improves the immune system by reducing free radical damage, regulating inflammatory conditions in the body and starves off cancer cell formations. It is very difficult for the body to focus on both digestion and recovery which is why when you get sick, your appetite diminishes. Fasting allows the body to concentrate on recovery much more effectively.

6. FASTING PROMOTES LONGEVITY

Contrary to popular belief, the less you eat, the longer you live. Numerous scientific studies show that in both animals and humans, a reduction in food intake results in an increased lifespan. Aging is caused by a slow metabolism and a lack of recovery from cellular damage. The combination of all of the previously listed perks of fasting result in a body that stays younger for longer.

Tribe By Noire

I’ve created this platform to help you become the most powerful version of yourself through fitness, plant based nutrition, and mindset coaching.

Tags diet strategies, fat loss, fitness tips, muscle growth, weight loss