The importance of hydration in bodybuilding and fitness

70% of the human body is water.Being dehydrated will hinder your results in a MAJOR way.

*Being hydrated can increase your strenght in the gym by 19%.When you are even 3% dehydrated you lose up to 19% of your strenght.

*Water helps with digestion of food.It helps shuttle the important nutrients to your muscles more efficiently.

*Water makes a big part of the ingredients of the fluid responsable of lubricating your joints which plays a big factor in avoiding injuries in the gym.

*Being dehydrated reduces your energy levels as well as your strenght.If you want results, if you want to build muscle fast and get ripped DON'T be dehydrated.

The average man should drink approx. 3 liters of water per day and the average woman needs 2.2 liters of water every day.For every scoop of protein powder you consume you need to drink another cup of water.

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How to achieve muscle hypertrophy to build muscle fast.

First i'd like to talk about the term hypertrophy.It is the excessive development of an organ/part.more precisely the increase in size by thickening of muscle fibers.
To achieve hypertrophy you must be staying within 8-12 rep.range for upper body and 15-25 rep range for the lower body.

Lower rep ranges are for building strength.If  you are staying within 3-5reps you will be gaining a lot of strength fast, but not as much mass.
This is the 4 time champion of the World's Strongest Man as you can see he doesn't have massive muscles and an amazing looking physique.









And this is a bodybuilder having much more massive muscles and being bigger at a much lower body fat %.










Lower reps fail to stimulate your muscles in the way that brings out hypertrophy.You must be using a weight that allows you to do a minimum of 8 reps and a maximum of 12.The only muscle in the upper body that needs a 15-25 rep range are the abdominal muscles.Lower body muscles require 15-25 rep range as well because your legs and abs are endurance muscles.

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Bodybuilding Stunts Growth?

The reaction of almost everybody that is uninvolved in fitness and gets told that i do fitness is:Oh you won't grow anymore, you will stay short for the rest of your life etc.

Well I'm proof that bodybuilding does not stunt vertical growth at all.I grew more than an inch in the last couple of months and i am still growing(I'm 15 177cm+) While i am training really hard in the gym and constantly improving my performance.

Bodybuilding/doing fitness by itself will not stunt your growth, in fact it may even boost it.It has been proven that weight training increases your naturally occurring testosterone levels and if you are not destroying body in the gym like some idiots i see doing weights that exceed their capabilities and visit snap city every time they visit the gym you WON'T STUNT your growth.

There are things how ever that can stun your growth.Those are steroids, malnutrition  and some supplements.

I'll start with the steroids.

So your bones are connected by cartilage which holds them together and over time some of the cartilage turns into bone, but that doesn't continue forever.At one point in puberty when your body is pumping out hormones like crazy your cartilage sees the huge amount of hormones and it decides that it is time to stop growing cause in order to have so many hormones you are an adult.Well when you take steroids they turn into hormones, huge amounts of hormones and your body can't tell from where exactly they are coming from so it thinks you have become an adult and boom it stops your growth.And if you get off the steroids there is NO guarantee that you will continue growing.My opinion is that there is very little to no chance for the growth to come back.

Now lets talk about the nutrition.

It's been proven that bad nutrition will stunt your growth.You can't know by how much but it will, it may be an inch or even a millimeter but why take the chance?Try to lay off the french fries, chips etc. It won't only make you fat but it may also stunt your growth.A very important substance for bone growth is calcium everybody that is 9-18y old should try to get 1300mg of calcium every day

And about the supplements

If you are young, you should not be using any other supplements than a multivitamin and a good quality protein.Many of the supplements on the market contain substances that can stunt your growth so why take the chance?Good nutrition is all you need to build muscle, supplements may help you build muscle, but most of the time they are just bullshit spreaded by fitness magazines and companies to make you waste money on useless supplements.

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Quick high protein tasty yogurt desert recepy for bodybuilding and fitness.

First I'd like to apologize about not posting much recently i will start posting regularly again soon i'm having some issues these days.

For this high protein fitness desert you will need : 

* 200g. low fat greek yogurt
* 1 scoop of protein powder[pref. chocolate]

* a hand full of blueberries+strawberries[If you are using frozen berries like i am just microwave them for 15 seconds and they're ready to eat]
* Optional: tbsp. of oatmeal/muesli.
NOTE:Measurements don't have to be exact.
Stir all this up and it's ready to eat.

Nutritional facts:

 226 calories.
 11.5g fat.
 10g carbohydrates.
 34g protein.
 NOTE:For those nutritional facts I've used plain greek yogurt if you use low fat one you will have even less calories/fats.
Enjoy!

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Cheap protein choice!For bodybuilding and fitness.

Hello guys,
so yesterday i went out to buy a new tub of protein and i found this product in the sports nutrition store.It's 5lbs(2.27kg) SYNGEX Whey Isolate

85 servings 105 calories per 26g serving with 20g protein, 0g carbohydrates, 1.5g of fat just for 32 euros.

You can order it online for 28 bucks.For all of you in the US/Canada this may be normal stuff, but for all of us europeans this protein is hella cheap.It is 37 cents per serving i mean come on it doesn't get better than this.Here are the pros and cons in my opinion

PROS

Really cheap and it lasts long Mixes great Tastes just awesome Good value and recovery 37 cents per serving

CONS

n/a
So that's basically it i wanted to share this with you guys because i know how much a pain in the ass finding cheap whey protein in Europe can be.In Bulgaria protein prices are doubled and it is just really expensive for our low salaries.

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Intermittent fasting to build muscle and lose fat.

Intermittent fasting or IF

Hello guys, let's talk about IF.If you follow any fitness channel/blog/magazine you probably already know what Intermittent fasting is.Basically it is fasting for 16-24 hours and then eating your macros in a smaller than usual period of time.

An example of IF can be:
1st and ussualy biggest meal of the day-1PM
2nd meal of the day-4PM
3rd meal of the day-8PM
4th and last meal of the day-9PM

Fast from 9PM to 1PM the next day which is 16 hours of fasting.

Which results in weight loss.

Does it really work?

Well let's think about this for a second.Will you lose fat if i don't eat for extended periods of time?

What do you think?Of course you will lose fat.

Will you lose all your muscle?Will your body cannibalise all your muscle?NO!Come on guys really?All of that is a bunch of bullshit that the supplement companies want you to believe.When you have your last meal of the day at lets say 9PM it will take it until the next morning to digest all the food you ate.And also your body doesn't go off eating your muscle as it's first source of energy when you fast.That is what fat is for.Plus the majority of weight loss that comes from IF is that people tend to consume less food while on it.I don't know about you but i used to have those little snacks every time i go to the kitchen.You know a little bit of that a little bit of this.I used to think that it's okay because having those little snacks will boost my metabolism etc...
Plus i'm sure not many of you can go eat 6 meals per day.You either have to carry food with you everywhere you go or you will just have to buy something which is rarely going to fit in your macros.

What about hunger?

Well you might feel hunger the first few days but it's nothing intense.Just get a calorie free buble gum or  drink a lot of water and you won't feel hunger at all.Pretty much after the first week hunger disappears.

Are there any health benefits?

It has been said that fasting has many health benefins as it lets your body clean it self.But personally i believe that there hasn't been enough research on fasting to prove that on 100%.I can speak from personal experience that IF actually helped me with my acne.I never had huge amounts of acne but the amount of piples that i have have drastically decreased.Keep in mind i am eating even more sugar than before when i was on my regular diet.

Intermittent fasting comes in wide variety of forms.

Some people fast for 20 hours and then have an 4 hour window to eat.Other people fast for 24 hours and so on.IF can be used for fat loss, lean gaining of muscle mass and maintaining current weight.

You can learn more about Intermittent fasting on the leangains website.

And remember keep things simple don't over complicate things :)Building muscle and losing weight isn't rocket science.

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Fitness goals and epic mix.

1. Sup ,this is covering my current state and my future goals.

I'm pretty satistified with my bodyfat at the moment.

Going to go to a lean bulk while doing intermittent fasting at the end of the summer.Pretty much my goals are to gain 2 kilos of lean muscle over the course of 8 months while staying under 15% bodyfat.And maintain after that in my opinion a lot of muscle on a young frame doesn't look very good.Gonna take some pictures and blog them next time i go to the gym.

(credits of the picture go to theshoupguy from bodybuilding.com)
The only supps i'm using are whey protein and a multivitamin.Green tea and fennel tea(to counter bloating).

Thinking of making video blogs aswell in the near future just need to get the hang of this thing first :)).

And As Promised.

>The mix<

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Hello everyone, first time blogging lets see how this turns out.. :]

Hi,
My name is Nikolai, I'm from Bulgaria I'm going to be blogging about my fitness progress,music, and anything else i consider interesting. :)I speak bulgarian(my native language),english and french(not perfectly).I hope this goes well.

On my first post i'd like to promote Ro >http://kingofweb.com/users/rosannapansino< Vote for her please! It's for charity every vote helps it's really close guys.Help her out!

(source of picture-poptower.com)

This is Ro(Rosanna Pansino) If you don't care about charity just do it cause she's awesome :D
Stay tuned for my next blog if your interested in my fitness goals and an epic mix of a few awesome tracks[free download] I'll post an awesome track and on a few occasions i'll post epic mixes on every blog i make from here on. :)

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