Nutrition and Workout Strategies

I've came across some info that could be vital to you in achieving maximum gains, get totally shredded and have an awesome workout in the gym, every time! What you're about to read is some special tips and workout strategies that will make you into a ripped, shredded powerhouse. I'm also going to let you know how to build muscle by manipulating hormones.

Heavy lifting and high-intensity workouts raise testosterone, growth hormone and IGF-1 but cortisol goes along with them during intense exercise. This applies to sprints and other high-intensity programs as well as weights. Planning your nutrition is likely to be helpful but for training programs I can’t do better than to quote the review by Kramer and Ratamess in Sports Med. 2005 when it comes to suggesting a strategy in the gym.

Protein.
Now I don’t agree with the guys or gals who want to eat 40 percent protein in their diets. It’s way beyond what is scientifically proven to be required, expensive, not necessary and may even be unsafe in the long term.

However, heavy weight trainers can probably justify extra protein up to about 1 gram/pound bodyweight. Don’t make it all beef dripping with fat though. Get plenty of white meat, dairy protein and soy as well for healthy eating. Get some advice if you even think you have dysfunctional kidneys. Just for the record, 4 ounces or 100 grams of lean grilled chicken breast or beef has about 30 grams of protein.

Creatine and zinc are potentially important components of an anabolic diet. Creatine builds bulk and re-supplies the phosphocreatine energy system which is important for those fast heavy lifts and zinc is necessary for testosterone production. Meat protein is a good source of both of these elements. Vegetarian bodybuilders may need to ensure sufficient intake.

Testosterone, Growth Hormone, Insulin
Several hormones play a critical role in exercise in general and strength training in particular. Testosterone, growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) provide strength and muscle growth stimulus; cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine and glucagon control access to fat and glucose fuels by manipulating the release of stored fuel when needed in addition to other important functions; and insulin provides the storage impetus for the fuels derived from the food we eat. Getting these hormones to work so that you can maximize muscle and strength is one of the secrets of natural weight training. In this article I’ll concentrate on how you can get the most from the muscle building hormones we all share.

Testosterone
Testosterone is for the most part a male hormone produced by the testicles, although a smaller amount is produced by the adrenal glands.

This hormone is responsible for the development of male physical characteristics, muscle mass, strength, fat distribution and sexual drive. Smaller amounts of testosterone are also produced by women in the ovaries and the adrenal glands. Testosterone production is stimulated by hormones such as leuteinizing hormone further up the chain starting at the hypothalamus in the brain.

To be more definitive, testosterone is an androgenic, anabolic, steroid hormone. ‘Androgenic’ means pertaining to male characteristics and ‘anabolic’ means building up or synthesizing body tissue. ‘Catabolic’ means breaking down tissue. Another important hormone, cortisol, is a catabolic hormone. A ‘steroid’ in broadest terms is a class of similarly structured chemicals produced by the body.

Testosterone is the number one hormone for bodybuilding and weight training, especially for the development of strength and muscle although this is not always the primary goal of weight training.

Growth Hormone and IGF-1
Human growth hormone is produced by the pituitary gland and stimulates the liver to produce IGF-1 which is ultimately responsible for the growth promoting and anabolic effects of growth hormone. Like testosterone, this production declines as we age and is probably responsible for at least some of the decline in muscle mass seen in older people. These hormones seem to have an inverse relation to body fat : the less you produce the more body fat you accumulate. . . so there’s the first call to action.

Enhancing growth hormone and IGF-1 delivery may be possible with nutritional and exercise manipulations. GH and IGF-1, testosterone and cortisol are all increased with intensity of weight training and high-intensity sprint cycling or running.

Insulin
Insulin is the storage hormone. The pancreas produces insulin in response to food. When you consume food, enzymes break it down into constituent glucose, fatty acids and amino acids, vitamins and minerals. Insulin responds to carbohydrate and protein by storing glucose in muscle and liver, fat in fat cells and by the utilizing amino acids from food protein in body building and repair. It’s incorrect to think of insulin as only responding to carbohydrate foods because some protein foods such as fish and beef elicit a very strong insulin response in their own right. In diabetes, insulin is either insufficiently produced or is available yet fails to store glucose efficiently. This is called insulin resistance.

Combining pre- and post-exercise foods or sports drinks containing protein and carbohydrate elicits a very strong insulin response in the refueling period after an exercise session. The value of this is that along with the glucose storage and amino acids synthesis in new protein, you get a powerful anabolic, muscle building response. Insulin is an important anabolic hormone. Manipulating insulin is one of the main tools described here for bodybuilding. See further down for nutritional approaches.

Natural Anabolic Enhancement
I trust the bigger picture of hormone action and metabolism is starting to make sense. You can see from the discussion so far that we have a task ahead of us here. We want to keep those anabolic hormones high and the catabolic hormones as low as possible while still providing basic functionality. It's not useful to regard cortisol or any other hormones as 'bad guys' because we couldn't live without them.

In the ‘natural’ bodybuilding movement and for sports where compliance with drug-testing protocols is essential for competition legality, finding a way of training or eating that will maximize or enhance testosterone and androgen-related muscle and strength is keenly sought. Alas, this is not a process that is easily manipulated and there is much still to learn. However, that has not stopped supplement manufacturers claiming to have products that can do just that with herbal extracts or combinations of vitamins or ‘legal’ steroids. Examples of such products are the herb Tribulus terrestris, zinc-magnesium tablets, ginseng, bovine colostrum, beta-alanine, HMB, and DHEA, a prohormone banned in most sports but not in baseball.

credit: about.com

If you are looking to make the most all the hard work you put into weight training...and why wouldn't you, the techniques described above are definitely worth following up. In some ways we are slaves to our hormones, but you can make a serious difference.


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