5 Most Common Mistakes That Will Sabotage Your Weight Loss Goals

If you are trying to lose weight but have been unsuccessful so far, check to see if you are making any of these common mistakes.

1. Eating Too Often – it is a commonly held belief that eating multiple small meals each day is a good way to lose weight. But this only works if the meals are SMALL! If each of these so called ‘small meals’ start to creep up in calories and start to get larger you are never going to lose any weight. I suggest eating less meals per day. This way you have more chance of having a satisfying meal and less opportunities to over do it.

2. Not Doing Resistance Exercise – many people still think ‘cardio’ type workouts will burn more fat. This is incorrect as research has shown that higher intensity intervals will burn more fat. Also, higher intensity workouts and resistance training workouts build and maintain muscles, which keeps your metabolism rolling along. Traditional ‘Cardio’ type workouts can’t build muscle and will not burn as many calories as higher intensity intervals. A circuit workout of whole body exercises will get your heart rate up, and works all the muscles of your body is the most efficient way to burn fat and build and tone muscles.

3. Snacking – Typical ‘snack’ foods can have way more calories than you think. Before you know it you can be consuming more calories in a ‘snack’ than in one of your meals.

4. Not Eating Enough Fruits and Vegetables – Fruits and Veggies take up lots of space in your stomach and make you feel full without putting in too many calories. Eating lots of fruits and veggies can ensure that you will feel full without putting in too many calories.

5. Trying To Do It Alone – Research is indicating that the people you socialize with will have an enormous impact on you reaching your fitness and nutrition goals. Social support is probably the single most important factor to staying on a good workout and nutrition plan. Try to recruit a good workout partner or two to stay on track with your workouts. Also be aware of the friends and family who seem to always sabotage your nutrition habits. Ask them to politely support you and not pressure you to break your plan.

These are the most common problems that get in the way of weight loss success. When a potential client asks me how to lose weight, the first thing I do is check to see how many of these mistakes they are making. I’d say nine times out of ten they are making all of them, and they don’t even realize it! Taking action on each one will put you on the right path to lasting weight loss.

How to Build Big Triceps

By Jason Ferruggia

When people ask me how to build big triceps I respond with two simple words; “do dips.” Do dips and do a lot of them. Why, you ask? Have you seen the triceps development on male gymnasts lately? The dip is basically the only true triceps move they do and they are absolutely jacked with huge, thick, horseshoe triceps. Whenever you use your bodyweight for resistance or bodyweight plus additional resistance via a chin/dip belt or weight vest, you activate a much greater number of muscle fibers than you would if you simply used a machine. Machines do not recruit the smaller stabilizer muscles and do not force the muscles to contract naturally as they would in real life. Whenever possible you want to try to move your body instead of simply moving the arm or attachment on a machine. And although free weight exercises are very effective and a much better option than training on a machine, moving your own bod will always reign supreme when it comes to building muscle.

Dips can be performed on parallel bars or, if you are really strong, gymnastics rings. Be sure to squeeze the bars tightly, brace your abs as if you were about to be punched and lower yourself no lower than the point where your triceps are parallel with the ground. Going lower than that puts too much stress on the shoulders and getting the extra stretch is not worth the risk of an injury.

Dips can be performed three times per week as a beginner. After a few months of that I don’t think you will be confused about how to build big triceps anymore. When you get more advanced it is recommended to cut your dips down to twice per week. Although I used to love weighted dips and routinely had many of my clients perform them with numerous 45 pound plates strapped to their waists I have found, over the years, that there is simply too great a risk of injury with heavy weighted dips and now do not allow anyone in my gym to do dips with more than just one 45 pound plate. Anything beyond that seems to get too risky.

For intermediate lifters you could do one day heavy, where you add resistance to your weight belt, and one day light where you simply rep out with bodyweight. The two days should be about 72 hours apart. Once you get strong enough to do a 45 pound plate you will probably only want to use weighted dips as a rep exercise and not a heavy strength movement anymore.

To make dips more difficult without adding more weight, try doing them on gymnastics rings or on straps. You can also try holding your legs straight out directly in front of you as well. Either option will be very challenging and are great muscle builders.

Aside from dips, the next best muscle building exercise for the triceps is a reduced range of motion close grip bench press or some variation of it. The top half of the bench press really focuses the stress on the triceps which is why you want to limit the range when training simply to increase the size of your arms. To do this you can set pins in a power rack or have a partner hold a few two by fours on your chest. These are called board presses. Three, four and five boar presses are awesome for building huge triceps and should be incorporated into your routine on a regular basis. When you get too strong to go heavy on dips without risking a shoulder injury, make board presses your heavy triceps movement and dips your light triceps movement. Keep pushing up the weight and reps and pretty soon people will be asking you about how to build big triceps like yours.

Train hard,

Jason Ferruggia

Jason Ferruggia is a world famous fitness expert who is renowned for his ability to help people build muscle as fast as humanly possible. He is the head training adviser for Men’s Fitness Magazine where he also has his own monthly column dedicated to muscle building. For more How to Build Muscle Fast tips, check out http://www.musclegainingsecrets.com/

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How to Build Big Traps

By Jason Ferruggia

When it comes to the question of how to build big traps the discussion starts and finishes with deadlifts. This incredible mass builder will pack huge slabs of beef on your traps faster than just about any other exercise there is. Just look at powerlifters and you will see that there is simply no way to avoid building huge traps when you do a lot of deadlifts.

While the deadlift is the king of trap building exercises, an argument could be made that Olympic lifts are equally as effective. I would tend to agree if not for the fact that Olympic lifts are harder to teach and learn than deadlifts are, which moves them down to second on the list. Everyone can do at least a partial range deadlift properly. Not everyone can clean or snatch properly.

Finally, you have shrugs. While it seems like a very simple and straight forward movement there is actually a great deal of confusion over how to build big traps with shrugs. Nobody seems to be able to agree on how they should be done. On one hand you have the camp that says you need to go as heavy as possible and do partial reps, just heaving the weight up. Then there’s the camp that says you need to go light and get a full range of motion, trying to get your shoulders as close to touching your ears as possible and hold it there for a second.

Who is right and who is wrong?

They both are.

To understand where the answer truly lies lets again take a look at the athletes with the biggest traps: power lifters and Olympic lifters

Powerlifters have huge traps because of all the deadlifts they do. Deadlifts are heavy, period. There is no shrugging movement at all, in fact. Olympic lifters lift relatively lighter weights explosively and with a range of motion that does indeed have them bringing their traps to their ears.

Looking at these two groups, what does this tell us about shrugs and the proper way to do them?

Quite simply, what it tells us is that the best way to get huge traps is to deadlift and Olympic lift. Bottom line.

BUT… what if you can not do either of those exercises due to back or shoulder problems or just want more variety in your trap training routine? Then you have no choice but to shrug. Traps are the most important, intimidating and impressive bodypart there is and you can’t walk around with none.

So then, exactly how do you do shrugs and which camp is right? They both are. Sometimes you should go heavy for low reps, cheat the weight up and don’t worry about getting an extreme contraction at the top. Then on another day of the week go lighter for higher reps with a complete range of motion and exaggerated contraction and hold at the top.

Another option is to do both variations in one workout. You could start with a lighter weight, doing 10-12 reps, bringing your shoulders as high as they can go. With each set add more weight and work your way down to the point where you can only get five partial reps with a little cheat at the end. You could start with the heavier sets first and lighten them as you go.

Deadlifts and Olympic lifts should always be your first answer to the question of how to build big traps. But sometimes and in certain situations, shrugs can be very effective as well. Just make sure to go straight up and down and don’t roll your shoulders forwards and backwards; that’s for nitwits who don’t have a full understanding of how gravity works.

Be relentless,

Jason Ferruggia

Jason Ferruggia is a world famous fitness expert who is renowned for his ability to help people build muscle as fast as humanly possible. He is the head training adviser for Men’s Fitness Magazine where he also has his own monthly column dedicated to muscle building. For more How to Build Muscle Fast tips, check out http://www.musclegainingsecrets.com/

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Get the Adonis Effect

How to Build Big Calves

By Jason Ferruggia

How to build big calves… it’s a question that I pondered for many years as a kid, being born with calves like string beans. After much experimentation, what I finally realized was that high volume works great for calves. They are probably the hardest muscle to build. Just doing a few sets for them never did anything for me. Since I had no desire to train them and preferred to focus on strength, athleticism and bigger compound lifts they stayed that way for years.

The only time they finally responded was when I hit them with very high volume. I usually do this for about a month and then I am bored to tears and stop training calves again for another year. Also, you can’t really tolerate the high volume loading for too long before you will start to develop some ankle/achilles problems. If you are an athlete and run or jump a lot, don’t even consider doing high volume calf work.

But if how to build big calves is a question that you obsess over, and you just want to get them jacked then you need to really increase your volume and frequency. I once put two inches on my calves in just over a month! Now, don’t get me wrong, my calves are still nowhere near huge, but the point is you can add significant size to your calves if you really want to.

They were Arnold’s worst bodypart and he dedicated all his time and effort to bringing them up. He even cut all of his pants off at the knee so he had to suffer the embarrassment of having his calves exposed wherever he went.

One option is to do a set of calves between every set of every exercise you do at each workout. Be sure to go heavy, get a good, deep stretch and hold it for a second (and up to ten seconds) at the bottom and get all the way up on your big toe at the top while flexing your calves hard. When you do standing calves your knees should be slightly bent on the way down and then locked out on the way up.

Another option is to start each workout (or each lower body day) with calves. One day per week would be heavy standing calf raises for 5-10 sets of 5-8 reps and the other day would be seated calf raises done for 4-5 sets of 15-30 reps.

You should also consider training the tibialis anterior muscles. These are the muscles that run down the front of your shin. Some people develop imbalances from too much ankle extension and not enough ankle flexion. When this happens and becomes a problem, the calves will not grow. So train these muscles by hanging your feet off the end of a bench and holding a dumbbell or DARD device between them and flexing your feet up toward you for a few sets of 10-20 reps, twice a week.

After you finish up with standing, seated and donkey calf raises and the tib raises, try doing farmers walks for up to five or even ten minutes while remanining on your toes the entire time. This will absolutely smoke your calves.

Finally, finish up your workouts with 10-20 minutes of jumping rope.

The above strategies should definitely get anyone’s calves to grow rapidly in a couple of months. Just be sure to ease into the extra volume slowly and gradually and take a step back if your ankles start to bother you.

If you are currently doing only 3-4 sets of calves twice per week you should slowly add a set or two at every workout until you get to about 10 or so. Ten hard, heavy sets plus the farmers walks and jumping rope should be more than enough for most people to add an inch or so in a month.

Now you know how to build big calves. For more information on adding size to the rest of your body check out http://www.MuscleGainingSecrets.com now.

Train hard,

Jason Ferruggia

Jason Ferruggia is a world famous fitness expert who is renowned for his ability to help people build muscle as fast as humanly possible. He is the head training adviser for Men’s Fitness Magazine where he also has his own monthly column dedicated to muscle building. For more How to Build Muscle Fast tips, check out http://www.musclegainingsecrets.com/

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3 Measurements You Must Know to Build a Perfect Body

Have you ever wondered how we all can spot a person that just looks better? We can even recognize other shapes – a building or a sculpture that just looks ‘right’? All people have an inherent ability to recognize beauty when they see it, but few have ever stopped and tried to describe and measure it.

There is a specific set of measurements and ratios that can tell you what the perfectly proportioned body looks like. Classic Greek and Roman sculptors like Leonardo da Vinci figured out these proportions a long time ago but over time, the concept has disappeared.

The 3 measurements you need to know to determine your ideal proportions are as follows:

1) Height

2) Waist

3) Shoulders

Research done on human anatomy, classic art sculpture, and the psychology of attraction tells us that there is a specific body shape and size that people will find most attractive and pleasing to look at. People that are close to this ideal size are generally treated more favorably, because we live in a society that is driven by beauty and perfection. Given the physical and social benefits of a perfectly proportioned body, aren’t you curious to know what your specific ideal size and shape is, and how to get it?

Starting with your height measurement, each person will have an ideal waist measurement and ideal shoulder measurement that equal your perfect body proportions. These are not up for debate. Scientific research indicates women will find a man most attractive when his proportions approach these ideal measurements. Most people have no idea what these measurements are or how to achieve them.

To start, you need to know where you are now compared to what your ideal is. Once you know your starting point you can determine how to go about getting to where you want to be. The fitness industry has always been striving for the perfectly proportioned look. However, until now nobody has managed to pin down what this “look” is, how to measure it, and how to get it.

I’ve created a workout that is based on bringing you to your specific ideal body shape starting with your current measurements. This specific and defined goal is the best way I have found to formulate an effective workout strategy that gets you to where you want to be.

Forget just doing weights to get big, or doing cardio to burn fat, I’m talking about a specific workout routine to build your body into its perfect form. To get bigger only in the right places and lose inches where you need to. This routine is called the Adonis Index Workout

John Barban is the Author of the Adonis Index Workout, a specific method for building a guy’s body into its most attractive shape: the shape women find attractive and that creates social dominance with men.

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