Achieving Muscle Gains Without Supplements

I used to be big into taking supplements like weight gainer and protein shakes but have found that you do not need to take these to achieve muscle gains.

I am now stronger than I have ever been yet I have only taken two protein shakes this year!

Granted if you are someone who is always on the go then a protein shake or weight gain shake can be helpful to either ensuring you achieve your daily intake of protein or act as a meal replacement on the odd occasion.

If you are someone who doesn't have that much money spare to be spending on high quality protein supplements then I suggest that you don't as there are many foods out there you can use as an alternative.

Now this post isn't saying that protein supplements are bad or even that you shouldn't take them, far from it. For some people they really do support what they want to achieve in muscle building but for people like me they are not needed and natural food achieves what I want.

So how does it work?

Well if you don't want to take supplements for what ever reason I suggest having five to six meals a day and aim for a minimum thirty grams of protein in each meal. An easy way of achieving this in snacks is by using tuna as one tin of tuna carries around 31 grams of protein (differs depending on the make and type). tuna is also very versatile and works well in sandwiches, salads, jacket potatoes and much more.

For larger meals use turkey, chicken or red meat and you are sure to achieve forty grams of protein in these meals.

The hardest meal to achieve your protein requirements is breakfast as its normally the meal where there is not much protein, this is seen in cereals etc. For breakfast you can supplement you cereal with eggs, kippers or sardines on toast.

Training Has Never Been Better

My training has never been going so well, this past couple of months with my new training partner has seen both me and my training partner make some amazing gains in all areas.

We have achieved this with a gruelling training schedule and mixing in loads of new assistance exercises to build our supporting muscles for some added assistance in our lifts.

We are currently carrying out crucifix exercises, wrist and forearm exercises to build our muscles for supporting the bigger lifts. Further to this we have given ourselves some huge stretching targets to achieve in a small period of time that we are definately on course to achieve.

One of the big factors in our improvements is also the constant changes in exercises used to keep our body from hitting a plateau. Rather than just changing every 6 weeks we are actually setting targets to achieve and once we have hit them, then moving on to new exercises or variations of the exercise.

As well as the change in weights and lifting we are also carrying out CV work at the end of every weight lifting workout, this is running after all workouts except our back workout where we finish with rowing.

Currently I am weighing in at 94 kilograms,. I jumped on the scales this morning and was very pleased to see the needle waver around the 94 to 95 kilogram mark before settling on 94 kilograms, this shows that I am making the right progress towards my 100 kilo target.

Grip and Wrist Strength

As your body gets stronger there is one part of your body that gets neglected that you will start to notice, this is your hands and wrists.

As you gain strength and start to go heavy on exercises like the shoulder shrugs or the deadlift you may start to find your grip on the bar failing you. Its annoying when this happens because you know your body has the strength to carry out many reps but you just dont have the strength in your grip to hold the bar!

Another issue is your wrists, many people feel pains in their wrists from biceps and triceps training, they feel they have an injury but the truth is its your wrists being weak and not having the strength for the weight your lifting.

Now we come to the part where I mention the importance of training your grip and wrists. To improve your grip simply grab a barbell with heavy weights and hold it as you would at the top of a deadlift for as long as possible. Another method is to get up on a chin up bar and hang at arms length for as long as possible.

To improve your wrist strength try holding a weight plate or dumbbell in your hand with your forearm resting on your leg (hand inside your leg) and bringing your wrist up towards your forearm before returning to its normal position and repeating.

For some this may seem like a trivial post but for others it will help improve your overall weightlifting greatly as a result of something as simple as improving your write and wrist strength.