Convicted steroid distributor speaks out

Here's an interesting article about steroid use in professional sports. It mentions a man who was convicted of distributing drugs to athletes but now wants to help correct the situation in the future.

I hope he is sincere and has some success. He does have the experience working on the other side of the problem, which I think we'll be of great use in finding a solution. I hope that athletes take this seriously and look for ways to gain muscle naturally

Here's the CNN Story

"The man whose lab distributed performance-enhancing drugs to athletes says the policies of American professional baseball and football leagues encourage their use.
Victor Conte served four months in prison for distributing performance-enhancing drugs.

Victor Conte, founder of BALCO, or the Bay Area Laboratories Co-Operative, said Thursday that Major League Baseball and the National Football League test for only half or fewer of the 60 stimulants the World Anti-Doping Agency lists as banned substances."

Is glutamine really that great?

Are you getting tired of hearing about the wonders of weightlifting supplements? Have you given up trying to keep up with the latest supplement fad? Maybe you're aware that bodybuilding magazines have close relationships with advertisers, and most of the claims about bodybuilding supplements are simply marketing tactics. Still, you may have heard a lot of your fellow trainees in the gym talk about one supplement in particular -glutamine. You may have been told this supplement is extremely helpful in growing your muscles, but do you really need to take glutamine supplements to maximize your muscle building efforts?



Glutamine is the most abundant amino acid in the body. (Amino acids are the building blocks of protein.) That much is true. But what about actual supplementation? The major reason that glutamine is believed to help muscle is that studies proved it beneficial in trauma patients. Studies have shown that muscle loss can be reduced in patients with severe trauma such as in the case of burn victims or AIDS patients. The problem is that this kind of stress cannot be automatically compared to the kind of stress your body undergoes during exercise. While there may be certain situations in which such a supplement would be helpful, glutamine supplementation is probably not necessary in the majority of cases. Don't forget that the supplement companies themselves provide much of the hype that surrounds these products. Always remember to stick with the essentials of progressive resistance training and increasing your calories, however popular a bodybuilding supplement may be.



Why do weightlifting supplements, including glutamine, do so well in the marketplace? They do well simply because so many bodybuilders are looking for the magic pill that will instantly deliver incredible results. Unfortunately, so many people in our society have become accustomed to looking for shortcuts and short term gratification. It's particularly sad when you consider that learning how to gain weight naturally is not as difficult as it may seem. The real magic pill is combining the right knowledge (weight gain diet plus proper workout routines) with determination. The beginner must understand that weight gain, like most worthwhile goals, requires diligence over the long term.



If you're feeling discouraged, consider the following. Remember that most great things in life are not achieved with one amazing act. On the contrary, both our successes and failures in life almost always come from the accumulation of small choices over time. A half hour workout a few times a week for several months will accomplish what one five hour workout cannot. Whatever you choose, keep the long term in mind and rest assured that living your dreams tomorrow, in both bodybuilding and beyond, are well worth the price you pay today.

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The Vegan bodybuilder

I read an article recently about a vegan bodybuilder (veganbodybuilding.com). His premise was that you can become an active athlete and even a bodybuilder while eating only plant based foods. It's an interesting idea, and one that should make meat eaters think twice about dismissing their vegetarian friends. On the other hand, I think the jury's still out on just how healthy a vegan diet really is. There is much controversy about soy food, and I think both sides have to admit that it'll be awhile before the debate is settled. Here is a comprehensive program on how to gain weight for both vegetarians and omnivores.

Gain muscle fast with the recovery recovery phase

I wouldn't be surprised if you haven't heard too much about the recovery phase in bodybuilding. After all, if you were to visit your local bookstore and browse through the bodybuilding magazines, you would most likely find little mention about recovery. Sure, there'd be plenty of ads to try and sell you the latest supplements and maybe even some useful advice on improving your training techniques. If you're having trouble making progress despite spending all of your time in the gym, however, you should take a moment to learn the importance of a recovery plan.

What exactly is the recovery phase? Well, let's review how muscle is built in the first place. In order for your body to build muscle, you first have to give your body a reason to build it. You see, on a basic biological level muscle is an expensive asset to have, and the body would rather not have to maintain it. The only way to stimulate new muscle growth is to give the body a reason to build it, and the way to do this is to take advantage of our basic biological need to survive.

Muscle fibers are damaged when we lift a heavier weight than we're used to. As long as there are enough nutrients, the muscle will be rebuilt bigger and stronger so the body can prevent a similar stress in the future. So how does this tie in to the importance of resting during the recovery phase? Muscles must be given time to repair before they're stressed again. This means that we must limit the frequency of our workouts in order to maximize their effect, and this is why many bodybuilding experts recommend only a few hours of training per week. You may have heard them referred to this concept with the motto Less is More.

In addition to carefully planning your workouts to avoid over training, you must make sure that you're getting plenty of sleep in order to experience the best possible muscle gains. Sleep is when your body repairs itself, and, as you learned above, the body has to repair and enlarge your muscle after a heavy workout. If you choose to ignore this advice, you may find yourself limiting your muscle growth potential. If you want to gain muscle naturally , don't forget recovery!

Don't believe everything you read

One of the places that a beginner bodybuilder might go to learn about the fundamentals might be the local bookstore, and one of the first stops in the bookstore would probably be the magazine rack. Looking to bodybuilding magazines can inspire a new bodybuilder by demonstrating what others have accomplished before. Though the pictures can be intimidating sometimes, many novice bodybuilders find the magazines exciting and take much of the information to heart. This can cause a major problem when it comes to choosing supplements to help build muscle. Did you know that many magazines actually own or are owned by supplement companies? Even when there is no direct affiliation between the magazine and the companies advertising their supplement products, there still seems to be a conflict of interest since the magazines rely on these advertisers. Advertisements, along with subscription fees, are how magazine companies make their money after all. This wouldn’t be such a problem if most readers realized this and had a healthy dose of skepticism when reading such ads. It also doesn’t help that many of the claims made by the supplement industry are questionable at best.

This brings us back to a critical concept of bodybuilding which tells us that supplements should not be the basis for a muscle building program. A few supplements can be useful for the advanced trainer who is trying to maximize his gains and has already developed a solid weightlifting and diet program. Most supplements, however, are either useless or are simply not necessary. The essential components of any bodybuilding workouts program will always be progressive resistance training and increasing one’s daily calories. Looking for shortcuts when you have not even mastered the basics will simply lead to disappointment and a lot of wasted money.

Bodybuilding tips for the beginner

In the beginning of a new bodybuilding program, the trainee is understandably enthusiastic and wants to see as much progress as possible as quickly as possible. This is a good thing of course, and it is important to take action while there is plenty of excitement and motivation to get going. However, this would be a good time to gain a little knowledge and do a little planning before getting started. Even though a person might be eager to get started, rushing ahead with misinformation can lead to major problems down the road. Not only can this impede your progress in a strength training program, but it can also lead to injury and illness if care is not taken in the beginning. Here are a few tips to help gain muscle safely and avoid pain in the future.

First, be sure to correct any weaknesses before tackling a more difficult program. If you have any lingering injuries, such as sports injuries or repetitive strain injuries, now is the time to correct these before they turn into something more serious. Check with your doctor to obtain a proper diagnosis, but you should also consider working with alternative healthcare professionals such as chiropractors and massage therapists. This so called alternative therapy is becoming more common and can offer recovery options that simply are not available in a doctor’s office. The important point to keep in mind is that these injuries should be dealt with before they become a more severe problem. Remember that an injury like tendonitis can hamper your ability to train and delay your progress significantly.

Another valuable tip to keep in mind, and one that is so often neglected by beginner bodybuilders, is the importance of a solid recovery program. Many beginners try to spend all of their time in the gym and think this extra effort will pay off in the long run. When they don’t experience any gains, or if they stop making progress shortly after some initial muscle-growth, the temptation is to increase the intensity or frequency of their strength training routines. Their logic is simple: more is better. While this may be a simple concept, it is inherently flawed because it ignores the basic principles of muscle-growth. The goal of a strength training workout in the gym is to challenge the muscle beyond its previous limits and create small tears in the muscle. The body will adapt to this new stress by rebuilding the muscle in a larger size (hypertrophy). However, the growth of the muscle itself will occur during the recovery phase, not during the actual workout in the gym. Allowing the body to heal before the next workout is critical to long-term success, and many experts only recommend as few as 3 hours of training per week! With this in mind, fewer workouts and a good night’s sleep are important tools in your body building arsenal. Remember that your muscles are not the only parts of your body that need to recover. Your central nervous system and immune system can be heavily taxed during a stressful work out and need plenty of time to recover. While the exact amount may vary from person to person, 8 hours of quality sleep is recommended for most folks. Note the word quality –growth hormone levels increase after an hour of deep sleep, so it is important to get the best sleep possible.

Finally, a word should be said about listening to bodybuilding advice at your local gym. If you hear some information that contradicts anything in this article, you may want to think twice before succumbing to peer pressure. If you want to be one of the guys that gains huge amounts of muscle in the shortest time possible, you would be wise to take these tips to heart and ignore the bodybuilding masses. Your goal should not be to copy everyone else; rather, you should aim to be extraordinary and achieve the most spectacular results possible. This doesn’t just mean gaining the most amount of muscle and becoming incredibly huge. What it really means in this case is that you should accomplish whatever muscle building goal you’ve set for yourself as safely and efficiently as possible.

Is training to failure the wisest move?

One of the most popular concepts that has been preached in the bodybuilding world in recent years is training to failure. What exactly is training to failure? Simply stated, training to failure means that you perform a strength training exercise until you physically cannot do anymore. You lift a weight that is heavy enough with enough repetitions until your muscles cannot perform another repetition – thus, you fail. Why is this a problem? Well, many bodybuilding experts will tell you that it is absolutely necessary to train to failure in order to achieve large muscle gains.

However, I’ve recently come across some articles written by a couple of accomplished bodybuilders who caution their colleagues, especially beginning bodybuilders, to consider training just shy of failure. Basically, the trainee would have to perform to failure in order to learn his limits, but after doing this for a while he would then try to consistently do one repetition short of training to failure. Trainers Kevin Dye and Jason Ferrugia tell us that consistently training to failure can exhaust the central nervous system and the immune system, both of which take longer to recover from a workout than your muscles do. During the next workout, you would then be less likely to have recovered completely, which means that your muscles fibers have not yet been rebuilt. To fully understand this, you must keep in mind the basic principles of muscle building. In order to grow muscle, a person has to challenge the muscle beyond its previous limits, and the muscle will grow stronger since the body does not want to be put under the same stress ever again. The actual growth of the muscle, however, does not occur in the gym but in the recovery phase. As long as a body receives enough nourishment in the form of calories and protein, the muscles will grow during sleep. According to Dye and Ferrugia, training to failure may impede recovery and eventually limit your progress.

While these recommendations may go against conventional wisdom, they are worth considering for anyone who is no longer progressing in his bodybuilding routine.