Your Can Have Your Own Gym, In Your Own Home

I receive emails everyday from aspiring lifters all over the world, and one of the most common questions I’m asked is “Do I have to join a gym in order to build a strong, muscular body?” The answer, my friend, is no. With the right equipment and planning you can follow an equally effective bodybuilding program from the comfort of your home without ever having to set foot in a gym.

You may have a lot of reasons to not want to go to a gym. It doesn’t matters. Whatever your reason, there are still a lot of options if you want to workout and have huge muscles. And, as I told you, your home may be the best gym for you.

Actually, there are a lot of people who think that there’s no better place to workout than their own houses. You don’t waste your time going to the gym and back. All you have to do is walk the stairs anytime you feel in the mood for some exercise.

I could listen to whatever music I wanted to, as loud as I wanted to without having to worry about those around me. I could grunt, yelp and scream through my sets if I was in the mood without disturbing anyone (hey, squatting to failure isn’t easy okay?) or train shirtless if I felt like it.

The best is, when you finished the hard work, you don’t have to spend more time driving home. That’s the last thing you want after all the effort your workout needed.

OK, there’s not only good news. It’s almost impossible to have in your home to have certain pieces of machinery such as a leg press or calf machine. And because of that, there will be some exercises you could not do there.

The good news is that planning out a proper bodybuilding routine does not require the use of any fancy equipment, and all of the machine exercises that you would regularly perform can be swapped for free weight substitutions.

There are some basic equipment that you must have at your home gym, like: An adjustable barbell with free weight plates, adjustable dumbbells, a bench with incline adjustments, a chin-up bar and a squat rack.

So there you have it; the 5 pieces of basic equipment that are needed to set up a home gym. As long as you have these basic tools in your arsenal you can perform an equally effective workout without ever having to join a traditional gym.

All Your Effort Gone In 60 Seconds

The margin of time that determines muscle building success or failure in the gym is a heck of a lot shorter than you might think. Just as fraction-of-a-second moments during a 100 metre dash will make or break a sprinters race, fraction-of-a-second moments will also make or break your body’s muscle growth response in the gym.

That’s right, your workout session maybe lasts for about an hour, but there’s a small fraction of time in your session that really matters and that’s something you have to know in order to achieve the best results. How you handle that seconds would mean poor, mediocre or great results.

Let me try to explain. Every set of exercises that you perform in the gym will give you benefits on the last 1-2 reps. Why? Because muscles respond to stress, so, the first reps you perform are nothing but a mechanism to trigger the stress your muscles need to grow.

Then, reps 1-4 are only performed in order to get to reps 5 and 6, the ones that really matter in the bodybuilding process. The first ones, do very little in terms of stimulating muscular growth.

In other words, it is only the very last 1-2 reps that will ultimately yield a muscle building response from the body. The longer you can push yourself to battle the weights during this small time frame at the end of each set, the greater results you will achieve.

The best way to trigger your body’s adaptive responses is training until your muscles cannot move the weight another inch. Drop the weight some seconds before the guy next to you and you will see the difference between his and your muscles after some weeks.

So, if you perform 10 sets per workout, and the last six seconds are the ones that mean success or failure, there you have that 60 seconds I’ve been talking about. That crucial 60 second will give you, or not, the muscular growth you’re looking for.

Well, if we assume that you perform 10 total all out sets per workout and have a margin of 6 seconds between success/failure per set, this gives you 60 seconds of total time per workout to either battle through with full effort or to surrender and settle for mediocre results.

As long as you can force yourself to train to all out muscular failure, you’ll see the best possible results. If you drop the weight 3 or 10 seconds before muscular failure, it will mean a great difference in muscular growth terms.

Training your muscles to muscular failure is the way to achieve betters results. If you drop the weight before you reach it you are compromising the results.

You must train hard and with full effort at all times. When the weight feels heavy and your muscles ache and burn with discomfort, you must push through and continue until true muscular failure is reached.

Every time you give up and take a rest, even if it’s just for a couple of seconds, you compromise your gains. Keeping this in mind at all times in the gym and will give you the better results than ever before.

Some Fat Burning Tips For You

At this time of year, we can use every last tip to help avoid holiday weight gain. So here are 5 Fat Loss tips for beginner & advanced readers.

1) Don’t drink liquid calories.

Please, no juices, sodas or sports drinks. Liquid sugar is your worst enemy when you are trying to lose fat.

Limit your alcohol intake (and don’t mix drinks, that is a double calorie bomb!).

2) No fast food.

Eating at fast foods restaurants means nothing but one thing: fat. You will not find healthy food at a fast food restaurant.

The kind of food you’ll find there is fast and cheap because of the poor quality of the food ingredients (especially the protein).

The politically-incorrect truth is that it’s going to take time and effort to eat properly. You will have to plan, shop, and prepare healthy meals. You will have to spend time cleaning, cutting, and cooking your food. That’s the truth.

But believe me, it will taste so much better than fast food, and healthy eating will make you more alert. Eating fast food will make you feel terrible, and will make you want to have an afternoon nap at your desk.

In order to be healthier than the previous day all you have to do is one small improvement to your nutrition everyday for the rest of your life.

3) Eat more vegetables and fruits.

If you are eating 2 servings per day, then go up to 4 servings per day by the end of the week. And even if you think you are doing great by having 5 servings per day, you still need to double that (take 2-3 weeks to work your way up to 10 servings per day).

Stick with fiber-rich fruits and vegetables – organic if possible.

Nuts are also a good choice, but not the roasted in oils ones (they may be source of trans fats). Stick to natural or dry-roasted nuts.

Small amounts of nuts will fill you up and help you lose weight, it will not be enough to make you fat.

5) No pain, no gain.

And make sure the workouts are efficient and effective. To make it easy for you to follow, stick with the Turbulence Training fat burning workout system.

Just train consistently, it doesn’t matter if you train in the morning before or after breakfast, or at night before or after dinner, or at 1pm on days when the moon is in line with Saturn…don’t worry about the details.

6) EXTRA TIP:

After anytime you eat a big meal, the best you can do is to go for a walk any movement is better than sitting around watching the TV, and it will help you in the fat burning process and to control your triglycerides and cholesterol.

Fat Loss Diet Program in 6 Simple Steps

When you want to start a fitness program, you may feel intimidated and confused. But it doesn’t have to be that way. To tell the truth, getting fit is one of the most direct task you can attempt. You only need two things: discipline (that you have to provide) and a straightforward guideline (that I am happy to provide).

First, you should arrange for a full physical examination from your physician. This is mandatory for people that have high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, or are obese. Once you have your doctor’s approval to begin a fitness program, you should schedule a fitness assessment with a health professional at your gym.

Maybe these can be annoying for you, but they are essential to your well-being and success. The benefit are obvious when you visit your doctor, specially if you have any of the mentioned conditions and can also help your doctor check your lifestyle. Always include your doctor as part of your fat loss and health team, along with your health coach at the gym.

The real benefits of the fitness assessment aren’t finding out how much body fat you have or how many minutes you can last on the treadmill, but rather getting a better understanding of your strengths and weaknesses. If you want to avoid injury and actually achieve your goals this year, get to know your strengths and weaknesses.

The next secret is to walk, don’t run, to fitness success. If you want to pick up your University running workouts where you left them 10 years ago, that’s fine. But I guarantee you won’t last 10 days. And then it’ll be a dreary 355 days until you’re ready to try exercise again.

The hidden benefit of a good fitness assessment is that it will actually serve as a nice introductory workout to your return to fitness. It will buffer your delusions of fitness grandeur from the reality of what your body actually can do. After the fitness assessment teaches your body a lesson and awakens your muscles from their winter slumber, only then will you realize your limits that you must respect in subsequent workouts.

The fourth secret is to set your goals. It’s more effective to have a plan and commit to it than trying to lose weight ach year. Set some realistic goals and workout under your routine. If you don’t do any exercises presently and haven’t done so for some time now, start very slowly. Don’t try to start at a high level. That beer-belly didn’t grow overnight, and it won’t disappear overnight.

Limit your initial workouts to 1 set per muscle group. In week 2, you should be ready to add another set. And if you want to build up to 3 sets, then do so in week 3. Slowly increase the weight and stay within your desired repetition range. At no time should you be too sore to function. And runners should also heed this advice. Too much running will guarantee shin splints in the early going. Avoid running on back to back days for the first two weeks and keep the distance short. Sore muscles are guaranteed when you lift. So keep the volume low.

And now for 2 super secrets that will help keep you committed and consistent with your workouts and will finally help you lose fat for good.

First, get a social support team. This can be your family (like your spouse, kids, parents and brother) or your close friends. Don’t try to do it alone. They are part of your success. People respond better when they report to a person instead of a machine.

You also need to know that nutrition is the second most important factor for success in fat loss rograms. That’s why you don’t need to train like a world-class athlete when you are starting to lose fat. Most of the fat you’ll lose in the early going is because you have chosen to make better nutritional choices. And if you don’t make better nutritional choices, even the best exercise program in the world isn’t going to help you achieve your fat loss goals.

Nutrition is not difficult. Just don’t push it. Check with your doctor or nutritionist and remember what mom told you. Don’t eat sugar or corn syrup and keep a log of your food intake.

If you are consistent with this plan you will success at your fat loss lan this time. Make this your year to get back in shape.

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