How To Lose Weight And Build Muscle At The Same Time

By Howe Russ

When it comes to fitness, most people find it difficult to set a realistic goal. In fact, if you ask any health and fitness enthusiasts at your local gym to describe their goal you're probably going to hear them telling you that they wish to learn how to build muscle and lose fat at the same time. Sadly for most, they never reach their target.

In today's article we will show you the main obstacle which prevents a lot of individuals from accomplishing their long-term goal.

While those who are in their first few weeks of training are able to enjoy both fat loss and hypertrophy because of the shock caused to their body by their new healthy and active lifestyle, this period is short lived. Before too long they need to make a choice. What is more important to you right now?

Despite all of the scientific advances we have made in sports, the basic rule of weight loss is to eat less than you used to. That's right, the first step really is that simple. Work out your existing daily calorie total on average and then try to eat slightly less.

However, if you want to build your body into a more powerful and appealing shape you will immediately encounter completely different advice. In order to get bigger you need to operate on a calorie surplus, i.e. eating more food each day than you currently do.

When results from your new healthy lifestyle start to slow down you will reach the crossroads which call for you to make a decision. What direction to you want to go in? The two proven calorie rules cannot co-exist, after all. Most people never set this goal and struggle to see any change, instead just treading water in the gym years after year.

The easiest way to build a more muscular body while dropping weight is to separate your goals and work on them individually. If you want to drop fat first and then focus on building, you should do that. If you want to build first then you should structure your diet and training with that in mind.

When you deem yourself to have reached your first goal you can focus on the second.

By separating each goal you will notice results far easier to come by.

If you make growth your primary target you will notice that the principles of hypertrophy remain largely the same as they were twenty years ago. Focus on improving your big, compound lifts while getting plenty of good rest and getting on top of your diet.

While you may wish to learn how to lose weight while figuring out how to build muscle at the same time, the fact is you will get fat better results by simply focusing on one thing at a time.

About the Author:

About today's writer: Russ Howe PTI is the UK's most followed fitness instructor. If you need to learn how to build muscle or how to lose weight our free proven guides will help you get the most from your training.

Can You Build Muscle Quickly With HIIT Resistance Training?

By Howe Russ

Naturally, if you walked up to anybody at your local gym and asked them if they would like to learn how to get a six pack in 3 minutes they would probably jump at the chance. Of course, everybody believes such things to be nonsense. However, if you're looking into how to build muscle you are about to discover why HIIT can produce very good results in less than half the time of regular resistance training.

If you have been spending hour after hour toiling away in the gym to no improvement, you're about to discover a whole new way of training which will undoubtedly kick-start your interest in the gym. []

The trick to building more lean mass is variety. Couple it with intensity and you have a winning formula. Variety can mean something as little as changing how many repetitions of an exercise you perform or changing the order in which you usually workout. Small, subtle changes will shock the body into pushing beyond the plateau it gets itself into over a period of time.

At one point on another, almost every gym user has encountered a period of little progress. In most cases, this occurs because their body has simply adapted to the routine the person has been doing. If you have been training the same way and lifting the same level of resistance for the last three months, it's no wonder your muscles have adapted. They know they don't need to grow any more in order to handle the workload being put on them, because they did it all last week and the week before that.

You don't need to completely overhaul a program which may have worked well for you in the past. Simply throw in a few curve balls, try to keep every workout slightly different. Keep the body guessing and you'll keep it improving.

Intensity levels are often misunderstood. No, increasing your intensity in the gym does not simply mean blasting through exercises at maximum speed. You should never sacrifice good lifting technique for anything, no matter whether it's more weight or more speed. Intensity means keeping your rest periods to a minimum, that's all.

With minimal rest times and new, challenging exercise routines each time you hit the gym you will feel a new lease of life.

To put this into context with a routine designed to focus on your abdominal area, try this simple but brutal workout today: []

* Leg Raise

* Mountain Climber

* Exercise Ball Leg Raise

It might look easy on paper, but it is not to be underestimated. Try moving from exercise-to-exercise with 30 seconds on each movement and no rest at all. Take a 60 second breather at the end of the circuit and then start over. Two rounds would only take 3 minutes, but it will really test your fitness levels.

The workout above will effectively show you how to get a six pack in 3 minutes at home every day. If you were to keep doing it, however, you would simply adapt as we have already discussed. The trick lies in varying things when it become stale. You can also apply this style of training to any other muscle group, so if your goal is to learn how to build muscle in as little time as possible, then you have just discovered one of the most effective methods.

About the Author:

Further Info: The new guide from Russ Howe PTI shows how to get a six pack in 3 minutes per day without going to the gym. If you want to learn how to build muscle quickly , be sure to check out his free guide next.

Should You Exercise Or Diet To Lose Weight?

By Howe Russ

Is diet more important than exercise or vice versa? This is a question which people around the world have contemplated for years, often to no conclusion. Today we will help you to reach that conclusion for yourself.

It would seem the typical answer you get to this question would vary depending upon who you asked. If you ask somebody who has religiously followed weight loss plans and celebrity culture for a while there is a large chance that they will concur dieting plays the bigger role.

Likewise, however, those with a long background of exercise under their belts will be much more likely to advise you that you need to concentrate more on the fitness aspect of your lifestyle. Many people even go as far as to advise that if you do this effectively, you can pretty much eat whatever you want. So who is correct?

Actually, it's neither.

Rather than see the potential benefits of both areas, people tend to place a priority on one over the other. This ends up leading them down a path towards failure, of course. For instance, if you ever hear somebody telling another person that your diet makes up 80 percent of your results and exercise only accounts for the other twenty percent, try to avoid falling into the same mentality.

Following just one principle tends to make people fall into one of two potential categories. While everybody is different in build and stature, there are certain stereotypical features to watch out for here. The next time you are having a discussion about how to lose weight and this matter pops up, take a look at the individual in question and they will probably fit into one of two fields:

* Those who always keep up to date with the latest eating plans. They're always looking for the next miracle food and tend to follow celebrity magazines which promote this type of mentality. However, you will notice that while these individuals know how to cut calories and drop unwanted pounds they don't actually look any healthier than when they started because they haven't been stimulating their muscles at all.

* The person who seems to live in the local gym. They are there every time you walk through the door and they are still there when you leave, yet they certainly don't work there! These people are more than happy to do endless hours of cardio or throw the weights around, but the most they look into their eating habits seems to be a protein supplement when they're finished exercising. These folks are usually equipped with fairly well defined muscles in their shoulders, arms and chest but pair it with a pot belly or undefined, flabby abdominal muscles.

If you only pay attention to one factor, or you choose to place way more importance on one over the other, then your destiny is shown in the two stereotypes revealed above. Why would you do this? As somebody trying to build a better body, it simply would not make sense.

If is comparable to a keen gamer trying to decide whether a game is more important than a console. You need both in order to get the most from either one. Rather than seeing them as competing aspects, see them as a great team because that is exactly what they are. With a few simple changes to your eating habits and a regular exercise routine you will experience far superior results.

The final word on this subject goes to bodybuilder Jay Cutler. During a recent tv spot, an interviewer asked the question is diet more important than exercise and the response was excellent. It's one hundred percent exercise, and it is also one hundred percent diet. This concept works whether you are trying to get into bodybuilding or simply trying to learn how to lose weight more effectively.

About the Author:

Writer: Learn how to lose weight with Youtube's most followed Personal Trainer Russ Howe PTI today. Now, is diet more important than exercise? Check out his fitness blog for more tips every week.