5 Things You Need to Know About Building Muscle and Burning Fat

1. Understand Basic Body Building

You build muscle by lifting heavy weights and training hard. As your muscles grow and strengthen, they require more fuel to sustain the growth. This is where nutrition comes in. In order to build muscle and burn fat, choose your foods carefully. Rest days are crucial to muscle growth, as the mechanics behind muscle building include tiny tears in the fibers in your muscles that need a good 24 to 48 hours to repair before being trained again.

2. Get Higher Calories Need From Clean Sources

It's true that your body requires more calories when you're building muscle, but if you're not careful about what those calories are made of, you may be adding bulk in the form of fat rather than muscle. Choose foods like whole grains and lean proteins in order to keep your diet low in fat and as nutritious as possible. In other words, skip the processed junk foods. Focus your nutrition on getting enough protein--1 to one 1.5g of protein per pound of your body is a good starting point.

3. Eat the Right Way for the Best Results

When you're training hard, you need to eat small meals frequently throughout the day. Divide your calories up over the course of the day so that one meal is not substantially larger than another is. Eat every 2 to 3 hours to keep your metabolism going strong. Fuel up before a workout and eat again shortly after your work out to promote fat burn. To determine how many calories you need to build mass, multiply your weight by 20. If you weigh 175 lbs., eat 3,500 wholesome calories a day.

4. Lift Hard and Heavy

If you want to get bigger and stronger, you have to lift hard and heavy weights. The most efficient way to build muscle is to use compound lifting in your workout routine. Compound movements use several muscle groups at one time. Push-ups, bench press and hack squats are examples of exercises that use several joints and muscle groups at once in a compound movement. Lifting heavy means that you do fewer repetitions with heavier weights. If you lift more than eight reps comfortably, add more weight.

5. Build Your Six Pack Abs

Don't forget to train your abdominal muscles. Basic crunches, bicycle crunches and planks are some solid basics to incorporate into your routine. In order to reveal your ab muscles, your body fat percentage has to be very low. In general, this number is around 8 to 15 percent body fat. It varies from person to person and is different for men and women. Keep your body fat low by eating only the calories you need to sustain growth.

Last updated on: Nov 18, 2009

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