Build Muscle Without Weights

So what is a plyometrics workout? To develop strength and power, you need something great, something really efficient. A plyometrics workout is your way to go.  Follow me in the video above, and we’ll learn about how this great technique can build more muscle and strength.

So a little about plyometrics…what you’re using is extremely fast, explosive repetitions. Fast contractions designed to elicit more recruitment, and much more power and force generation.  Essentially what you have to have, though, is great strength and a great foundation in the basics: your push-ups, squats, lunges, and pull-ups.  If you don’t have that, don’t try this.

So the thing to remember about plyometrics is that you want to get an explosive contraction, you want to explode up off the floor as high as you can and land like a cat, make no sound.  And you want to do it continuously, so the rhythm is never broken, you never take a breather, you never take a break, you never land like a ton of bricks.  Push-ups, pull-ups, squats, and lunges – there’s a whole series of exercises waiting for you to check them out.

Give it a shot! And leave a comment below about what variations of plyometric workouts and exercises you’ve experimented with…

When you’re going for muscle gain and increased strength with body weight exercises, the constant challenge is finding ways to keep up the intensity, every rep, every, set.  It’s not like you can load up plates and blast out some heavy bangin’.  So the trick is all about technique, fellas.  In my previous posts I’ve covered destabilization and exercise sequencing, now it’s time to focus on repetition speed.

First, the principle: when you’re strong, “go blow” or “go slow”.  In other words, once you’ve mastered the form of a given exercise and have a good level of foundation strength, you want your reps to fall on one of the two ends of the speed scale: fast and explosive, or slow and deliberate.  This time around we’ll tackle go slow”.

The theory behind slow reps for muscle gain is simple: exaggerated, deliberately slow repetitions eliminate momentum so that the target muscles and their synergists are heavily stressed.  What matters here is doubling or tripling the time under tension (TUT).  In addition to generating more overall force, especially during negative reps (lowering your body more slowly actually requires more force than if you lowered it more quickly, which – you guessed it – increases strength faster), your muscles will also struggle to cope with the extra lactic acid created from a much greater number of muscle fibers recruited and cycled through to complete the set.  And high lactate tolerance and clearance is a big marker of strength, power, and endurance, so you want a lot of that.

There is a warning, though: this style of training is painful!  But it yields great results in strength and size.  Here’s how to get started:

For your pushing and squatting-type exercises, begin by doubling your normal rep time.  So if it takes you two seconds to drop into a squat, and two seconds to return to the top, double it to four seconds each phase.  Same with all your push-up variations: most guys do a full rep (positive / negative) in a little over a second, so try doing each phase for a full second (count “one-one-thousand” on the way down, and the same on the way up) and build from there.

With pull-ups you have a challenge.  You can easily perform Incline Chins with your feet elevated on a chair or bench and apply the technique as described.  But when doing full free-hang Chins, you might get only 2 or 3 positive reps before your arms are toast.  But this is no time for quitting!  Solution: 1) Have a chair handy and perform the remaining reps as pure negatives, taking a small hop to the top of the bar and slowly lowering.  2) If you’re using an adjustable chin-up bar, reposition it lower until you’re at a level where you’re able to assist with one leg to complete all the positive reps for the full set, then gradually raise it higher as your strength increases.

Training with slow reps will give you rapid gains in strength and a boost in muscle size, but it takes a lot of heart and attention to technique.  But, that’s what makes a bodyweight trainer a warrior.   Until next time, keep bangin’!

What’s the secret to losing fat and gaining muscle? It’s simple, and it’s powerful: it’s 80% diet, 20% training.

Read that again. 80% diet. 20% training. It’s all about consuming the right muscle building foods. This is especially true if you want to build mass with bodyweight exercises. Let’s say you workout like an animal for an hour, four times a week. You bang it out, rock your form, push until you’re pumped and dumped to death. And then when it’s over, it’s over.

Now how many hours a day would you estimate you digest food? 12 hours? 15 hours? Big difference!

Not only does your body spend far more time processing meals, but the composition of your diet will determine the success of the biochemical reactions (recovery) that give you the quick muscle gain you’re looking for. And to achieve this, you’ll need mental discipline every time you go grocery shopping, rent a movie and order food delivery, walk into a party, or sit on a bar stool. Because if you slack off, your muscles will, too.

The Program

In a nutshell, the best nutrition for building muscles is a diet composed of 3-5 meals a day of high protein, moderate fat, low starch, and high fiber carbohydrate. You’ll be spacing meals 3.5 – 4 hours apart to keep a steady supply of key nutrients available for repair and remodeling. But like everything, the Devil’s in the details. Read on…

Protein

In order to build muscles and decrease body fat your diet needs to provide adequate levels of high quality protein: 30-50g per meal every three to four hours. To determine how much you need, multiply your body weight in pounds by .8 and you’ll get the total daily intake in grams. Here are my figures:

195lbs. x .8 = 156g / day (156g / day) / (5 meals / day) = 31g / per meal.

Stick to organically produced eggs, milk, chicken, turkey, ostrich, beef, and seafood.

Carbohydrates

There’s a lot more room for debate here. Many fitness and diet authorities like to point to the Glycemic Index as a way to choose superior carbs, but unless you’re eating a “mono-meal” of carbs-only, this Index – a scale of the time it takes glucose to appear in the bloodstream – is not too valuable. Why? Because you’re going to be eating a mixture of foods at each meal; adding protein and fat to carbs slows their digestion and absorption rates to a level that’s perfectly acceptable to build muscle.

There is also some controversy surrounding how much carbohydrate you need. After years of working with clients and reading research studies, here’s my answer: you need just enough carbohydrates to fuel exercise, a quantity that is far less than you think – that is, if you’re interested in building muscle and not fat. A good rule of thumb: cut your starchy carbs into 1/3 servings, and eliminate them altogether after 10am (read: eat them for breakfast only). The exception to this rule: you can replenish a workout within two hours with starchy carbs without worry, but again, as long as you stick to 1/3 your “normal” portions.

Breakfast (or post-workout) Carbs: whole grains, pasta, potatoes, yams

All-Day Carbs: all fruit except dried fruit; all vegetables; all beans.

Fats

Here’s where a lot of people are surprised (and stoked!). Your body needs fat to grow your muscles bigger. Fats are critical to hormone production (testosterone, hGH), as well as being key in preventing the overeating of carbohydrates. New research also shows that some nutrients in vegetables cooked in fat are more bio-available. Translation: eat a little cheese, spread a bit o’ butter, and leave on that chicken skin. The principle here is moderation and common sense: don’t hollow out your bagel only to fill it in with cream cheese! Stick to modest portions to eat and cook with, eat small amounts of dairy, and you’re good to go.

Muscle-Building Fats: Organic butter, cheese, and yogurt (especially Greek yogurt, like the Fage brand); olive oil, coconut oil, sunflower oil, sesame oil; avocado.

And there you have it: a comprehensive, scientific program of muscle building foods which, if followed religiously, will help you push through any plateaus to support the bigger muscles that come from hard core workouts!

Until next time, keep bangin’!