May 19, 2013 By Leave a Comment

How To Build Muscle: Women’s Edition Part 3 – Setting Up Your Diet

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This series is collaboration between JC Deen and Joy Victoria. Joy wrote 90% of the content.

Joy’s a wealth of fitness knowledge, and has already been published in the likes of T-Nation and contributes to WomanScope News Magazine. Make sure you check out her site, and sign up for updates. This is the final installment of our 3 part series.

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In part 1, we introduced you to the importance of training, and how it can help you build a better physique. In part 2, we broke down the training part, gave you free routines, and tons of tutorials on the main lifts.

Today, we’re going to discus what you need to know about diet and how to get started setting up your calories for a lean, toned physique.

All About Diet

Alright, when we say “diet,” we don’t mean going on a diet where you aim to lose weight by restricting carbs, or other food groups. We simply are referring to what you eat every day without any special changes or “challenges” or “cleanses.”

Your diet, simply, is what you eat. Changing your diet is different than going on a diet. The first means lasting progress, the second idea sets you up for frustration and disappointment. And if you’d you like to solve this puzzle once and for all, then we’re going to discuss macronutrients, micronutrients, calories, and how it all affects your body.

All whole foods are composed of macronutrients and micronutrients. Macronutrients (macros) are the big boys: protein, fat, carbohydrates, and alcohol. Micronutrients (micros) are the vitamins and minerals important for bodily functions and optimal health. Think of vitamin C in our OJ, iron in our steak, and zinc in various shellfish.

So as not to lose you, here is the gist of what we’re saying. There needs to be an equal focus on both macro and micro intake. It’s easy to eat foods that are macronutrient dense (fat and sugar-laden foods) with very little in the vitamin and mineral department. On the flipside, it’s easy to eat foods full of micronutrients that are very low in calories (salads with lots of veggies, and little else).

Consuming nothing but leafy greens all day long is NOT going to help you get stronger, or construct the curves you’re aiming for.

On the contrary, a diet full of calorie dense (but nutrient deficient) foods is not the answer either.

So as you might imagine, there needs to be a happy medium. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Female Fitness, Muscle Gain Tagged With: , ,
May 15, 2013 By 7 Comments

How To Build Muscle: Women’s Edition Part 2 – Getting Acquainted With Strength Training

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This series is collaboration between JC Deen and Joy Victoria. Joy wrote 90% of the content.

Joy’s a wealth of fitness knowledge, and has already been published in the likes of T-Nation and contributes to WomanScope News Magazine. Make sure you check out her site, and sign up for updates. This is part 2 of a 3 part series. Here’s the link to Part 1. Be sure and subscribe at the bottom of the article to get Part 3.

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In the last installment, we discussed how to get started, and why strength training is important when building the body you want. Today, it’s all about training – the why’s, how-to, and of course, getting started. Make sure you read to the very end as we are giving away some free training programs for you to download.

Out of the gate, learning the major compound movements is a great way to begin. When we say compound, we’re talking about the movements that require the use of multiple joints and muscles simultaneously, as opposed to isolation exercises, where you focus on a single muscle.

Here is why we believe compounds are the best exercises to start with.

If you’re new to training, it’s best to begin with exercises that yield the greatest impact, on both your muscles and your nervous system.

As you might infer, we’re foregoing the exercises normally recommended for “increasing tone, or length” such as leg extensions, bicep curls, and tricep kickbacks.

We also don’t need fancy moves such as the single-leg-squat-to-hop-with-overhead-press-into-a-burpee. The ultimate goal here is to focus on movements that provide the biggest bang for your buck, and get you the quickest results.

Compound movements have stood the test of time and are one of the best ways to get strong, and on your way to looking good naked.

Most of these exercises will be a push, pull or squat movement. Before you start shaking your head in confusion, we’ll break them down for you.

This categorization is an easy “way” to understand what an exercise does, and what muscles it primarily works.

Remember this: even though we are focusing on movements that make use of the entire body, they will most always favor one muscle group over another. It should always be simple when starting out. There are many variations and ways to alter these movements. But there’s no use in worrying about variations until you get the basics down. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Female Fitness, Muscle Gain
May 13, 2013 By 20 Comments

How To Build Muscle: Women’s Edition Part 1 – An Intro on Getting Started

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This series is collaboration between JC Deen and Joy Victoria. Joy wrote 90% of the content.

Joy’s a wealth of fitness knowledge, and has already been published in the likes of T-Nation and contributes to WomanScope News Magazine. Make sure you check out her site, and sign up for updates. This is part 1 of a 3 part series. Be sure and subscribe at the bottom of the article to get Parts 2 and 3.

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For so long, the words ‘women’ and ‘muscle’ were rarely seen in the same sentence. But it’s no surprise. With all the words like bulky, tone, lengthen, sculpt, ripped, shape, etc (the list is endless), it’s easy to get confused, or even turned off to what someone’s trying to sell you these days.

Because of the overwhelming load of information available (thank you, Internet!) we want to offer a very practical approach to helping you build a beautiful body. There won’t be any smoke and mirrors with this post, as per usual here. In fact, it’s pretty lengthy, so you might want to grab a cup of coffee (or tea, or whatever), sit back and take some notes.

Note: This is not a fad diet coupled with an impossible training program. We’re giving you something better; something that actually works. The principles that create success, and the ones you can use over and over again, even when the methods change (and yes, they’ll need to change eventually as you progress).

Today, we’re giving you the so-called secrets behind how and why these principles work.

And that’s what a lot of diet and training plans fail to explain. It’s more of just asking you to do something without explaining the method behind the madness.

How would you like to be given the freedom to manipulate the common “rules” of popular diet and training methods that have you spinning your wheels, and actually get results because you know why they work?

You know, the kind of results you see in all those before and after pictures.

And we’re not talking about just losing weight, but losing fat and getting toned, tight, and hot! [Read more...]

Filed Under: Female Fitness, Muscle Gain Tagged With: , ,
October 6, 2011 By

Listen Up, Ladies: Minimum Training for Maximum Results

There is a plague that is devastating the world of women’s strength training, and I’m not just talking about the foolish “light weight and high rep” recommendations touted about in fitness magazines and all over the internet. No, what I am referring to are the marathon workouts performed multiple days per week with the only goal being to achieve as much fatigue as possible.

Some men are guilty of this as well, but women especially tend to believe that if they don’t end a workout completely exhausted and drenched in sweat that they didn’t “do enough”. And if they can’t dedicate at least 60 solid minutes to training, they don’t see a point in training at all. So they perform session after session of circuits, conditioning work, and anything else that has them sweating, panting, and working themselves into a puddle of sweat.

Some women thrive on this type of training and can follow such routines long-term. However, the women I have witnessed who perform these marathon workouts quickly burnout, and stop coming to the gym all together within a few weeks or months. They realize it’s not practical to perform such gruesome, long workouts on a consistent basis. And because they are told that such workouts are the best way to get results, they stop training all together assuming it’s hopeless to even try something different, and less fatiguing.

Ladies, it is entirely possible to spend much less time in the gym (about 2.5 hours per week, to be exact) and still reap the benefits you desire from your training program. Furthermore, it’s even possible to enjoy your training and leave the gym feeling energized and not wiped out. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Female Fitness, Guest Articles Tagged With:
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