muscle

You lift weights almost every day, yet you can’t build muscle. What gives? Most likely you’ve hit the dreaded fitness plateau, a state in which your body has gotten used to your normal workout routine and you no longer see as big of a progression as when you first started. So how can you...

So you're slaving away in the gym, hour after hour and day after day. You've been hard at work for several months (or years) but now you're hitting that brick wall. You're trying to stay motivated, but it's tough. You just can't see any new way to make gains, you're working with 225 on the...

The next time you're in the gym, take a look around you and watch how many people are half-assing their sets. Ask yourself how much their muscles really contracted during the movement. Anyone can bust out a quick set of curls or presses and appear to have done 10 or 12 reps. But the muscles did...

One of the more heated debates in sports nutrition circles is whether you need to supplement with branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) to maximize muscle building, or if you get enough of them through whole foods and protein shakes. The most often discussed aminos are the three branched-chain...

1) Don’t cut calories too far under maintenance Obviously there needs to be caloric deficit in order to lose body fat, but too many people are dropping down way too low. What does this mean? It means you become a smaller version of what you were before, but you don’t recomposition yourself like...

If you think that researchers—or research-savvy lifters—have figured out everything important there is to know about muscle growth over the years, you're giving us way too much credit. Muscle growth, like every other field of study, is constantly growing and expanding. Need proof? Look no...

There is a recovery technique dedicated to helping your muscles and joints recover and heal faster called muscle flossing. Yes, The name of this technique might sound a little odd, after all, since flossing is almost always associated with your mouth, but this method has been said to work...

Something that is never really discussed in bodybuilding are workouts that involve stimulating individual muscles during different parts of the workout. What I mean by that is this – there is this mentality with building muscle that says we have to torch a muscle and then move to the next...

Creating softball-sized biceps is part science and part art. The science factors in when considering the best exercises, their order, the number of sets, how much weight you should use, optimal rest periods, and even frequency. Fortunately, there's enough research to create some general...

When you first started doing an exercise, I'll bet you went through all the performance pointers like flash cards in your head to ensure you were doing the movement correctly. Hopefully, over time, the movement became second nature so you didn't have to think about it. That freed up your mind to...

It’s no secret that high-intensity interval training is a fantastic way to build overall conditioning. From fat loss to muscle gain, HIIT is one of the most popular ways to get in better shape without spending hours in the gym. In fact that’s why here at Muscle and Fitness we’ve created a...

One thing I've discovered is that if you want bigger biceps, doing spider curls a different way can get you to those big peaks faster. Spider curls are usually done off the steep side of a preacher bench, but something told me that the biceps might get more stimulation if the curls were done...

You could spend the rest of your lifting days doing just the basics over and over again, but don't expect your physique or your strength to make much progress. Training at the intermediate level requires making a conscious decision to increase your efforts in the gym. It also means changing the...

What do Tim Tebow and Steve Weatherford have in common? Both, of course, are former NFL players now chasing down different career paths: Tebow in baseball, and Weatherford in fitness, including numerous articles, workouts, and the 9-Week True Muscle Trainer with Bodybuilding.com. But the...

Fat-grip (aka fat-bar) training has become extremely popular in recent years. It is mentioned regularly by pro bodybuilders and strength coaches as a "secret" for building strength and muscle, and building up your upper body's weak links. The only problem, until recently, was that few gyms stock...

When building a bigger back, it makes no difference what your ultimate goal is—your back should have the strength and density to both show and go. This means you have to devote some special attention to training this massive body part. If your back looms as the weakest part of your game, you...

Legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden once remarked, "If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything." He was talking hoops, but it also describes the way many lifters approach the challenge of building bigger arms: try everything, try doing more of everything, and then see...

So you want to get huge, do you? Not just larger than you are now—we're talking objectively massive. You want to stand out from all those anonymous gym rats and get so big no one would ever need to murmur those dreaded words, "Do you even lift?" You want it to be obvious from a hundred yards...

Whether you’re just starting out on your fitness journey or you’re a seasoned gym veteran, you have goals. No two people necessarily have the same starting point, and your programming should reflect that. You may want to look better, feel better, and be stronger, but what that means to you and...

Read most articles about gaining muscle, and you could be forgiven for assuming it's purely a male problem. With titles like "Get huge!" "Pack on the pounds!" or "Jack up your mass!" it's no wonder many women shy away. In reality, having plenty of lean muscle mass benefits everyone. Men may...