Most people say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. However, if you are a bodybuilder, the Post Exercise Nutrition… the meal you eat right after your workout, is the most important. That is the time when the muscles are in dying need of nutrition and they need it fast. Just not any thing will do. You need protein and you need proteins that will absorb in your system fast.

There is a time limit of when you can have your post workout meal. This time restriction is one hour after the workout. This is because after that one hour grace period, your body is finding other methods of repairing the muscles and it wont be as effective as if you have the proper nutrition. There are three main things you need to take after your workout. And they are…

• Water
• Whey Protein
• Some kind of fruit (I recommend banana’s)

Drinking plenty of water is essential for the health of the body. After an extreme workout, your body has used a lot of water. You need to replenish your water supply so you will not get dehydrated. Water also help flush out your system and keeps your body balanced.

Whey protein is one of the best thing to eat after your workout. It is basically pure protein that is absorbed into the body very fast. This will help repair the muscles that you have just damaged in your workout and that is how the muscles grows. Whey protein is also great because it has no fat and helps deliver nitrogen to the muscle cells which aids in anabolic response.

Fruits like banana’s help carry that protein even faster into the muscles cells. After a workout, it is all about recovery and helping repair those damage muscles faster, which will help muscle growth.

There are other methods and nutrition you can take after a workout, but this is great for the beginner and many professionals do this very method. They might be taking a higher volume of whey protein, but they do twice the amount of weight and effort, so their bodies are craving it. If you are just starting out, try not to take more then 20 grams of whey protein. It also depends on how hard you worked out your muscles and how much you weight.

There are different types of Bodybuilding and Fitness Exercises that will get you into shape. All these exercises are good for your health and will help you reduce your weight. Most people just workout with one kind of exercise. Whether it is aerobic or weight lifting, most people don’t realize there are so many different kinds of fitness exercises available which they are missing out on. Why should you just do one type of exercise when you can mix different types, making it interesting. Most people get bored with doing the same exercise day in and day out. This is the main reason people give up and never see results. With a variety of different workout programs, you will never get bored.

At first, try out fitness exercises you are familiar with or the ones that are easy to perform. Later on, change up your routine and try new types of exercises. This will renew your motivation and you will never get bored because you are always changing your routine. Plus, this will confuse your muscles and help them grow.

The Following Exercises Will Help You Get Into The Best Possible Shape

Stretching

Stretching will help prevent injury and will help more blood get to the muscles after weight lifting exercise. Stretching should be done before and after each workout. It gives the muscle a chance to warm up before the exercise and cool down afterwards. Even if you don’t workout that day, you should stretch every day because flexibility is easily lost once you stop.

Free Weight Workouts

This is not only for bodybuilding, free weights are great for fitness exercises. In my opinion, this is the best way to lift weights. You have to use more muscles to stabilize the free weights and you will burn more calories. Free weights are also harder while using good form. But, once you have perfected the form and built up those stabilizer muscles, free weights are way better then machines and cable exercises.

Free weights gives you the advantage of using the full range of motion, which means you will be using the entire muscle in the workout. This will give you a good pump. You will also have a variety of different types of exercises for each muscle group. If your goal is to gain muscle mass and you can choice between free weights and a machine, free weight is the way to go.

Machine Workouts

I know you just read what I wrote about Free Weight Workouts vs Machine Workouts but, there are advantages and disadvantages to everything and free weights and machines are no exception.

The advantage for using machine workouts is that they are a great tool for beginners of bodybuilding and fitness exercises. It limits the range of motion which prevents injury. You can also change the weight faster on the machine then you can on the free weights.

The disadvantages of machine workouts is what I mentioned above. By not maximizing the use of your muscles to stabilize the free weights, you will not strengthen them as quickly.

Cable Workouts

This falls between Free Weight Workouts and Machine Workouts which is an advantage in itself. Cable Workouts are a great option for both bodybuilding and fitness exercises when you want to add a little variety into your workout routine. Sometimes the muscles get accustomed to the free weights and you need to change up your exercise routine to confuse your body. Cables are a great way, especially for bodybuilding to lift heavy weights and confuse the muscles into a new activity.

Isolation Workouts

These exercises should be done later on when you have mastered the basic exercises first. It is a great way to isolate one particular muscle and focus all your energy on that muscle. Bodybuilders use this so they can make their body proportional. It is a great technique to use and can be used on the cable, machine or free weights. You can completely fatigue the muscle with this type of workout.

Compound Workout

This workout is nothing like the isolation exercises that focuses on one muscle group. Instead of using one exercise to workout a particular muscle, you will be doing a variety of exercises to workout different muscle groups. It is a great exercise to loss weight.

Calisthenics Workouts

These exercises use your own body weight as the resistance. This is great for beginners. You do not need any equipment or the need to go to the gym. It is free and anyone at any age can do these workouts. Even if you are an expert in body building, you can do calisthenics exercises to relieve the soreness the next day after a hard workout.

Core Workouts

These muscles are a workout by themselves. The abs are so important to the control of the body, not only in bodybuilding but in all sports. The core is so resilient that you can work them out everyday.

Plyometric Workouts

The purpose of the plyometric exercises are to gain the greatest amount of force in as little amount of time as possible. It is great for professional athletes and helps gain reflex power.

Ball Workouts

This is a new way of working out and is great for your stabilizer muscles. Many physical therapy companies have used the ball and has show positive results. Everything you do on the ball has an effect on your abs. Your abs will get stronger the more you use the ball. You could use ball workouts at the end of other workouts.

Elastic Band Workouts

This is new to the workout world and safe to execute. It is also convenient because they are so small that you can take the bands everywhere you go.

Pilates Workouts

This is great for gaining strength without building mass. It also stresses flexibility in the workouts. The nice thing about pilates is that you don’t need to buy expensive equipment to do this workout and can be done at any age.

Cardiovascular Workouts

This is great for building up your legs and your lungs. It helps in
burning off the fat. There are a lot of different kinds of cardiovascular exercises you can perform. Here are a few…

• Running
• Biking
• Swimming
• Rowing
• Stepper

Now that you have learned many different forms of exercises, you will need to have a diet that will best fit into your goals. Bodybuilding and fitness exercises are useless if you do not eat the right foods. With all these new exercises you will be doing, you will have to eat more foods with protein and drink plenty of water. Nutrition and exercising go hand in hand.

Sooner or later, you will experience the Bodybuilding Plateau. This is the point where you will be unable to increase your strength or add to the number of reps and sets.

If you have lifted weights for awhile, then I’m sure you’ve reach a point in your workouts where you were unable to do any more reps then you did in the previous weeks. Here’s a tip that bodybuilders use to overcome that roadblock and reach their full potential.

What you need to do is change your workout and perform some other type of movement. Lets say for example you’re bench pressing 10 reps at 200lbs for the past 3 weeks. In order to break this cycle, you need to switch your exercise and do another chest workout like the dips or incline bench press. This will give your muscles a new and different movement. Later, if you hit another plateau on the new workout, you can change back to the bench press, but this time you will be at a higher level then you were before.

Staying with the chest example, here are some different exercises you can switch to…

• Bench Press
• Dips
• Push Ups
• Incline Bench Press
• Decline Bench Press
• Flys

This technique can be used for any exercise you have reached a barrier. Switch exercises whenever you’ve hit your Bodybuilding Plateau and you will never be held back from reaching your full potential.

Bodybuilding is easy once you know what to do to get results. One of the nice benefits of gaining muscle mass is you will burn a portion of your fat during the time you are building muscle. The reason is two fold. First, it takes energy (calories) to repair and build muscles.  Second, the more muscle mass you have, the more calories your body will use throughout the day.

Basic Bodybuilding Exercises

For those of you who are just starting out lifting weights, you need to focus on the big muscle groups to gain the most out of each workout. You will see more results building these bigger muscles rather then exercising smaller, individual muscles. Some exercises that focus on the larger muscles are…

• Bench Press - develops the whole Chest and Triceps
• Bent Rows - develops Back and Biceps
• Squats - develops Thighs and Calves
• Barbell Curls - develops Biceps and Forearms
• Calf Raises - develops the Calves

Rest & Recovery

The time period of rest is very important to the growth of muscle mass. Between bodybuilding workouts, you will have to rest your muscles at least 48 hours after each workout. The harder you exercise, the longer you need to rest the muscles. When starting out, you need to take it slow and get your body used to the new stress it will under go. If you workout too hard in the beginning, you may injure yourself or become very sore and may not be able to lift until your muscle(s) recover. This is a lost of weight training time you can avoid. Also, if you do not give each muscle the right amount of time to rest, you will stunt the growth of your muscles.

Listen To Your Body

The human body is amazing. It communicate to you every minute of your life. All you have to do is pay attention to what it is telling you at any moment. For example, during each exercise, tune into the muscles that are being worked…

Is there pain in the joints…

Possibly you are using bad form or too much weight or it maybe a small injury from the last workout which you did not notice.

Learn the Burn…

This will take several weeks, but once you get this right, your growth should improve. Too much burn will cause soreness during the rest period and not enough burn will result in little muscle growth.

This is just a small sample of what you can learn from paying attention to your body.

Outdoor exercises is free and anyone at any physical level can do. If you are a beginner or been doing weight lifting for a while, you should always incorporate outside exercises in your everyday activity.

Many people don’t have time to go to the gym or even have the money to go. And maybe you don’t like to workout with many people and wait for people to get off the equipment. The other choice is to workout at home but you may not have the money to buy the weight machines or free weights to do so. You may have the money but don’t want to spend it because you will think it will be a waste of time. But there is no excuse why you can not do your workouts outside. Outdoor exercise is;

• Free
• Not Crowded
• No Waiting
• No Weights Required
• No Need to Drive Anywhere
• Is Open Anytime

Since all outdoor exercises requires no weights, you are using your own body weight as the resistance. It is something everyone can do. Here are some great outdoor exercises…

Lunges: Lunges need to be done with good form for you to feel the results. It is a great exercise to work your legs. Not only do they build the muscles in the leg, but they stretch the muscle as well.

Push Ups: Push ups work out your chest and your triceps. There are a variety of different types of push ups you can do. You can do a wide stance push up with your hands or a narrow stance. If you can find a slope or stairs, you can do an incline push up or a decline push up. All these different types of push ups builds different areas of the chest.

Squats: This is another great leg exercise that really makes you feel the burn.

Pull Ups: This exercise builds the back and the biceps. This is hard to do for some people so if you can do a pull up, instead, jump up and slowly lower your body to the ground. Using gravity will help get you the strength to do those pull ups.

Uphill Sprints: A great exercise for your lungs. This exercise will help you loss those calories and burn the fat. Using this exercise with intensity training will give you a great workout. It also builds your thighs and calves.

You can do all these exercises at a park or even in your backyard. Exercising in fresh air is a healthy benefit. Make sure you drink plenty of water before and after each workout.