Many people don’t realize that you can build muscle without using any fancy gym equipment — in fact, standard bodyweight exercises like pushups can be used to build muscle up the old-fashioned way.

It’s understandable that you might not realize how effective the grand-daddy of exercise moves is at building your chest and arms. At a glance, pushups are simple and repetitive. And that’s true to an extent. But what you might not realize is that there are nearly endless opportunities for pushup variations that you never learned in high school gym class.

There is a wide variety of pushups that you can perform to isolate different muscle groups, but we’re going to focus on five types in this article. These will not be the best five for all people, but they should open your eyes to the variety possible in simple bodyweight exercises.

Wide pushups: traditionally, pushups are performed with your hands being placed at shoulder width. Wide push ups, sometimes called “wide-stance pushups”, require you to extend your hands beyond the width of your shoulders. Wide-stance pushups work your chest muscles more heavily than military-style pushups, so if chest definition is what you are looking for — wide pushups are one exercise that will help you meet your goals.

Fist pushups: Sometimes referred to as “knuckle” pushups, require the use of your fists, instead of the palms of your hands, to bear your body weight during the pushup. Fist pushups are beneficial because they target different areas of your body than traditional pushups, and may actually increase the effectiveness of your workout.

Yogi pushups: also referred to as “divebombers,” you start the pushup in the yoga downward dog position, which is similar to a pike. On the down rep, you transition into the upward dog position in a motion that is similar to sliding under a fence, reversing this movement on the up rep. These pushups are brutal and really work your shoulders.

Incline pushups: Incline pushups are the exact opposite of decline pushups — instead of placing your feet higher than your head, your head should be higher than your feet for this exercise. Any sturdy surface that will allow you to perform the pushups unencumbered can be used. Incline pushups work your lower pectoral muscles.

Deep pushups: If you are working out at home, you can perform raised pushups with the help of three sturdy chairs. By placing each of your hands on an opposite chair, and your feet on the third chair, you can increase the depth of your pushup and thereby increase the effectiveness of your workout routine. A similar, but less intense, movement can be performed with pushup stands. The “Perfect Pushup” bars work wonders.

Here is a more comprehensive list of pushup styles to achieve muscle weight gain: wide, fly, diamond, military, yogi, fist, decline, incline, stacked, deep, prison cell, and inchworm pushups.

Tips to increase the effectiveness of your pushup workouts: remember to add some weight once the pushups begin to get easy. You don’t want to push out 50 easy repetitions. Rather, struggle with 20 or 30. Also be sure to add variety by varying your hand position for each of the above types of pushups.

Push ups are a great way to strengthen your upper body and exercise, build muscle at the same time. If you keep it interesting by mixing up your hand positions and trying a few different styles of pushups you can increase the effectiveness of your at-home exercising and relieve the boredom!

There are countless oridinary men and women that regularly go to a gym in order to increase lean body mass. They strive for a much improved body shape but all too seldom they do not accomplish their goals.

As the weeks pass by they become increasingly annoyed with their shortage of mass gains.

This can be a regular problem for anyone expessing a desire to improve their body shape, which is why many people quit, thinking that they are by some means unable to add body mass.

So why does this occur to so many people and what can you do to resolve it?

From my knowledge, those of us who do not make good muscle gains in the gym make the same mistakes time after time.

Read on below to see if you are making these everyday mistakes, with solutions for every problem.

Some people choose the completely wrong workout program to achieve their aims, often following professional workouts from bodybuilding books.

This is no use for the typical guy or girl, and in particular for hardgainers.

In order to increase muscle mass you should train for around 45 mins with heavy weights, doing 2-3 sets per exercise. Keep your sets at between 8-15 sets per weight training session.

It does nothing to benefit you by doing 20 or more sets and sacrificing many hours at the gym.

Doing the same bodybuilding program month after month, even though they haven’t made any evident body mass gains.

In order to encourage muscle growth you must change your workout every 8-12 weeks. Our body’s have a kind of muscle memory so it quickly gets used to the same weight workout you repeat each week.

You must shock your muscles by altering your body building workouts routinely.

Not having days off from weight training.

I take 1 week off in the middle of each bodybuilding training program.

This gives my muscles time off to recuperate and revitalize. In the past, before I took regular time off I often experienced muscle strains and tendon injuries.

Another benefit is that I often experience increased strength after I’ve taken time off.

Bodybuilding training on successive days.

Doing bodybuilding programs that involve lifting heavy weights puts a lot of load on your muscles. It can even take up to 24 hours to restore your glycogen reserves. Therefore, ensure you train no more than 2 consecutive days. This will make sure your body can re-nourish itself, resulting in optimum energy reserves when you train at the gym.

You depend on muscle building supplements to compensate for a poor diet.

Most body building supplements are not anything more than costly marketing scams. They empty your pockets of hard earned money and do nothing to build mass. If you spent $50 a week on bodybuilding supplements, it will make no more than 10% difference to your muscle mass gains.

All workout routines should be structured around a stable dietary plan.

You have got to ensure that you nourish your body with the nutrients it requires in order to produce lean body mass.

What to do next

In order to build muscle more quickly than you have ever achieved previously, you must ignore the traditional bodybuilding methods that you have picked up in the past from professional bodybuilders in muscle books and magazines.

Hard gainers in particular can adjust their bodybuilding workouts and stop repeating the frequent mistakes I’ve outlined above. Do this and could see some remarkable results!

Many people get caught up in the fad diets jumping from one diet program to the next hoping for weight loss results. Most are often disappointed which leads them to move on to the next miracle diet. Thus, one of the biggest hurdle that people encounter when trying to lose weight is getting started in the right manner. Let me share some tips with you to help you get going to successfully lose weight no matter whether you want to lose ten or hundred pounds.

The first step to successful weight loss is to set some goals. Goals should be used in the same way as milestones are used on highways. Without any milestone, you will have no idea of where you are going. As such, you do not have any idea what you will need to do to lose those unwanted pounds if you do not have weight loss goals.

Ask yourself some questions when setting your goals:

1. How much weight you want to lose?

2. By when you expect to lose all the weight?

Write the answers to these questions down on paper. This is important. Actually writing your goals is one of the surefire ways of making sure that you never forget them! So, write your weight loss goals on a piece of paper, make copies of that paper, and stick each paper on every place you can see them.

Make sure you don’t forget to stick this paper on your refrigerator and kitchen, since it is in these places that the demon called temptation tries to ruin your weight loss efforts!

Lastly, it is very critical that your goals be achievable. By this, I mean that they must be REALISTIC goals. Setting a goal to lose sixty pounds in a couple of weeks will not be accomplished and will only nullify the very powerful effect of goal setting in the first place.

Unrealistic goals will result in failure and you will just end up disappointed and frustrated with yourself and your weight loss efforts.

Ideally, no matter what you do, you would be able to lose no more than 3-4 pounds per week. So create your goals accordingly. If you want to lose sixty pounds, it will take you at least five months to achieve!

Set small and achievable goals for yourself so that when you achieve them, you will feel more confident to move forward. This is the biggest secret of successful weight loss!

Crash weight loss plans and fad diets are an unreasonable alternative to permanent healthy eating habits, according to the American Heart Association.

Many of these fad diets, such as the notorious and outright silly Cabbage Soup Diet, will undermine your health, cause physical discomfort (abdominal discomfort and flatulence (gas) ) and lead to the yo-yo effect of gaining weight soon after losing it. In other words the risks aren’t worth the rewards.

Quick-weight-loss diets generally put far too much emphasis on one particular food or type of food. They violate the first principle of good nutrition which is to eat a balanced diet including a variety of foods.

If you are able to stay on such a diet for more than a few weeks, you may develop nutritional deficiencies, because no one type of food has all the nutrients a human being needs for good health. One such diet is the Cabbage Soup Diet. The myth of this diet is that cabbage soup is some sort of weight loss potion.

People supposedly lost 10-17 pounds in only a week, eating mostly cabbage soup. On top of not working to lose weight, this diet lacks essential nutrients and can cause serious health issues. Pixies, elves and fairies, or even cabbages, can’t provide magical weight loss. That’s why you should eat moderate amounts from each of the food groups rather than cutting out everything but a cabbage and water.

The second principle of good nutrition is that eating should be enjoyable. You think eating only cabbages every day is enjoyable?. These diets are so monotonous and bland that it’s almost impossible to stay on them for long periods. Imagine eating cabbage soup, nothing but cabbage soup, for even a few days much less for a whole week.

By mid week crawling bugs would look good. They’d cart you off in a straight jacket by week’s end.

There are many other ways fad diets aren’t good for you. Many don’t encourage exercise, for example, walking 30 minutes most or all days of the week. Physical activity helps maintain weight loss, while physical inactivity is a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke. When a diet includes no need for a workout, run the other way.

Quick weight loss is possible. Just don’t fall for tricks or gimmicks that might end up ruining your health.

Swimming is a great way to exercise. The whole body gets a workout in a gentle manner, and you have fun while exercising. You get both types of exercise - resistance and cardiovascular workout at the same time. There is little chance of your hurting yourself in this form of exercise.

The simple objection to swimming as an exercise is the inconvenience. You just come home from work, all bushed out. Then your spouse reminds you that you have to go to the swimming pool for your prescribed exercise. Groan! Even if the pool were in the neighborhood, you know how it feels to go out at all? And woe betide if it’s storming or snowing! If only you had a swimming pool at home!

Well, now you can have a swimming pool at home. That too at just a fraction of the cost of a regular pool! It’s called a stationary lap pool, and it simulates a stream flowing past you. You get in and swim against the flow. So although you’re swimming, the action of the current keeps you there in one place as though you were stationary. Hence the name.

A lap pool comes ready built in a variety of style and models. About 4 feet wide and 6 feet long, it can be located almost anywhere, even indoors! What can be more convenient? They can be installed above ground to avoid any digging, or in the ground - the choice is yours. The savings in cost and space is tremendous, and the convenience is priceless!

The basic concept of a stationary lap pool is to move the water, not the swimmer! So the swimmer swims in place against the flow of water that is circulated around the stationary lap pool. As mentioned at the outset of this article, swimming gives the swimmer both resistance exercise as well as cardiovascular exercise.

Stationary lap pools range from the basic model to super luxury models. In the very basic model you can adjust the speed and force of the water flowing against the swimmer. In higher end models you can control the temperature of the water as well, or have a Jacuzzi effect with pulsating jets of water massaging you down with alternate streams of hot and cold water.

A stationary lap pool is the ideal system to get your resistance exercise and cardiovascular exercise at the same time, in a very enjoyable way. Compact enough to fit inside your house, cheap enough to be generally affordable, the stationary lap pool gives you so many conveniences and advantages that you’ll have no hesitation in buying one for yourself, or in recommending it to others.

In conclusion, a stationary lap pool is your best bet to a form of exercise which is deeply relaxing and pleasurable. All this is yours, at an extremely attractive price. If you like swimming, then just head out and get yourself a stationary lap pool!

You have taken the first and hardest step in your weight loss journey and that is acknowledging that you want to lose weight. When you are not happy with your weight, it can take an emotional and a physical toll on you.

However, sometimes people have a tough time with the concept that to lose weight they need to eat more often. Typically, when people start to diet the first thing that they want to do is to slash what they are eating. But that can actually end up doing more harm than good.

Eating too little during the course of the day actually sets up your body for weight loss failure. By not eating enough you set your body up to have low energy throughout the day. Try to store as much fat as possible, which will thwart your weight loss attempts,your body will also go into starvation mode. You should also know that once you begin to keep yourself from eating you will have a greater food craving than if you were to just eat sensibly.

Your aim should be to remain fit and healthy through out your life. Our bodies possess a variety of survival mechanisms which serve to maintain the function of our bodily systems. These systems will automatically start up when your body gets the signal that it is needed. Among the most developed of our body’s defense mechanisms is its reaction to the perception of starvation.

That you could sit down and eat whatever you want is not really realize by your internal mechanisms. You body will automatically go into starvation mode if it thinks that you are choosing not to eat enough calories to get through it’s daily functions.

By keeping yourself from eating for too long between meals or by not eating enough throughout the day, your body’s famine response will kick in automatically. When it does this, your metabolism instantly slows down, this means that you are not able to burn fat as effectively or quickly. When your goal is weight loss, having an efficient metabolism is an essential key to your success.

Instead of the fat as a result of your eating habitsyou may start to lose the toned muscle. If your body does not get enough protein to support your regular activities, then you will lose muscle mass. You will be slowing down your metabolic rate even further,additionally, by loosing this lean muscle. Again reducing the amount of fat that your body is able to burn.

When you are looking to lose weight, ensuring that your metabolism is fully functioning is an essential step to ensuring your success. The key to keeping your metabolism up is to make sure that you are eating small meals about three hours apart. If you do that in coordination with a fitness program you are sure to quickly become the new you that you have always dreamed of being.

Let’s consider a look at protein. Did you know the huge absolute majority of your body is protein? That’s right. If all the water were taken from your body, 80% of what continued would be constituted of protein. Your hair and nails take in protein in them, as do your brain, bones, heart, kidneys, even your skin. You must descend the satisfying sum of protein from your diet or you will bear from down vigour, weakened superior response, high cholesterol, hormonal imbalances, liver toxicity, premature aging The listing goes on and on.

When there is not enough protein in your diet, your body really uses protein from its personal tissue papers, break down your hard-earned muscles, organs, ligaments, tendons, etc. This is harmful to anyone working hard to get more fit because muscle is wanted to suntan calories, make us big, shapely and energetic. When you lose muscle, you loose the ability to burn calories, and dramatically slow down your metabolism, ruining even the best diet drives!

Various to belief, fats are not the enemy of dieters. In fact, although fat has twice as many calories as other some other solid food types, fat does not excite important production of insulin, which is the body’s fat-making hormone, which is a superior welfare when used in conjunction with a proper dieting like that discovered in the book Maximise Your Metabolism.

Your body wants some fat. Eating light foods is not the result. Most fat-free food is stuffed with sugar or bad chemicals.

Furthermore, unsaturated fats are outstanding for human survival. Fat helps the nervous system work. Fat holds the reed organs of the body in correct places. Fat isolates the body. Fat is performs a wide array of vital body works.

There are many various origins of fat in the diet, making it nearly unbearable to keep off fat, as at least a small amount is in nearly all foods. Foods such as oil, nuts, full fat cheeses, avocados, olives, certain cuts of meats, are taken high in fat. Foods such as fruits, vegetables, most grains, potatoes, and
others are very little in fat.

There are unique types of fats, too. There are good fats and bad fats. Good fats, or unsaturated fats, are beneficial to the body in a number of ways, and should be applied into your daily diet. These easy fats are found in such foods as olives, avocados, extra-virgin olive oil, safflower oil, flax oil, nuts, etc. Bad fats, or saturated fats, are the kinds of fats that clog the arteries, make cholesterol levels rise, and raise blood pressure. Bad fats are found in meats, cheeses, butter, lard, and cream. Stay away from ALL saturated fats!

Now, for carbohydrates. Carbohydrate poise is serious to reaching weight down loss. Carbohydrates should never be called carbohydrates. They are, in fact, SUGAR! No matter how complicated, carbohydrates are broken down to their lowest common denominator, which is glucose. Glucose is sugar.

Carbohydrates, in the class of blood sugar, are pumping through your mineral veins every minute of the day. And while they are important to your survival, they can be your lowest enemy.

Carbohydrates in the diet can be found in many places, including fruit, flour, bread, yams, potatoes, rice, pasta, oatmeal, beans, etc.Standardised of carbohydrates, and eating the right carbohydrates, is required to getting healthy, and to losing any unclaimed body fat.

Cleaning protein, fats and carbohydrates for weight-loss. In short, to see the quickest, most grand fat-loss resolutions, you will need to add more protein to your diet, eat a few tablespoons of the proper fats, and eliminate all of the wrong fats, as well as all white-flour carbohydrates and sugars from your diet.

While this sounds like a challenge, you will speedily find it is not. And, by holding these easy, highly-beneficial alterations, you will see glorious results quickly, looking and experiencing better within the first week. To help you plan your diet, concern to the lists below:

Protein

Egg whitens

Beef

Soya Protein

Fish

Shellfish

Veal

Lamb

Pork

Venison

Buffalo

Nonfat cottage cheese

Egg substitute

Protein powders, bars

Fat

Olive oil

Olives

Nuts

Seeds

Carbohydrates

All vegetables

Drinks

Water, water, water genuinely should be the only
drink you consume other than some decaf herbal tea’s)

Diet flavored waters

Herbal teas

Iced tea (sugar free, decaf)

Cut out all fruit juices as they are high in sugar

Crystal Light

Diet sodas (avoid phosphoric acid)

If you’re up late at night watching TV, chances are, you will be seeing infomercials. A good portion of those are probably promoting ab related products. You’ll find machines, medicines, diets of fashion, and workouts that will promise to give you that beautiful six pack you’ve always dreamed about. There are a lot of theories, but are any of them practical?

The vast majority of these fads do not last very long, they are exposed for what they are and people move on to the next breakthrough invention. If most of these fail, is there any way to get flat abs?

This is the best time tested approach to getting yourself a six pack abs. The best way to achieve this goal is through a healthy diet and exercise, but you might not want to hear this. There really aren’t any legitimate shortcuts to getting the body of your dreams. If you have discovered how to lose weight quickly, you will soon find out how quickly you will put it back on.

Now that we know you’re going to have to exercise, what types of exercises should you do? Should you just get on the ground and start doing thousands of crunches? Will this give you the six pack of your dreams? Actually it won’t do much at first. Your ab muscles are probably covered up by a layer of fat. This means that if you want to see those abs, you have to get rid of the fat first. So how do you get rid of the fat?

Many people have the misconception that they need to routinely undergo hours worth of jogging on their treadmill. However, this is a common misconception as well. Interval and weight training are the best way to burn fat quickly. Weight training burns calories when you are working out and when you are resting.

Once you develop your muscles, they will act like incinerators that continuously burn calories in order to keep themselves going. This will help to burn much more fat in a very short time. Weight training, jogging and running are great methods to improve your fitness.

Besides the right exercises, you should also try to eat healthier as well. If you’re always on the couch, cramming your face full of nachos and beer, you probably won’t be getting a six pack anytime soon. Getting different results in your life requires you to take different actions. If you want a six pack, you’ll need to change what you’re eating. Eat healthy foods and drink a lot of water. Put good things into your body and it will give you good results.

In general, it’s not that hard to develop a six pack. Don’t think it will be a breeze, you will not wake up to a tone, fit looking body the next day. If you stick to the long process, you could achieve the necessary weight loss of any proportion.

How would you like to build muscles without any weights? Many may say that this is impossible, but this is something that can definitely be accomplished using the right methods and techniques. Here’s a list of the things you need to do to build the muscle you want without any weights.

1-Basics

It is even possible to build muscle without weights with the traditional simple forms of exercise - exercises which need no special equipment, and which can be done anywhere. These include such exercises as sit ups, press ups etc. These are not going to turn you from a weakling into a champion bodybuilder, but if you are not used to exercising your body, they can be a great way to start. As with any form of exercise, you need regular workouts to see results.

2) Arms without Weights

A specific focus on particular muscle groups is what it’ll take to build muscle. General calisthenics may be good at building the abs, chest, and triceps, but may not be the best exercise for building up your arms. Most budding bodybuilders will want to use weights to build their arms. One secret you can use to build your arms without weights is to use cans and a plastic bag to create weight. You can easily make a 5-15lb weight using canned foods and a plastic bag, which in turn, and be used to build your arm muscles.

3) Chest without Weights

A well built body usually has a muscled chest framing it. So how can you build your chest without using any weights. Let’s go back the basic push-up. The push-up in and of itself will build the chest along with other muscles. But if you really want isolate the chest here’s a variation on the regular push-up that will build your chest muscle. Simply place your feet on a chair while doing the push-up. This will isolate the chest muscles (pectoral muscles) to help you build them quickly.

4) Shoulders without Weights

The shoulders will definitely benefit from basic exercises such as press ups, and even more so from inclined press ups. One way to go beyond this is to add pull ups. So many people find these exercises hard to perform, so they definitely have the potential to build muscle without weights. To get the very best results from your pull ups, you will need to widen your grips, so that the weight is concentrated in the shoulder area. This will make sure that the effort you are putting in gets the best possible result, by being directed to the right area. It is hard work, though.

Forget the pricey gym memberships or expensive home equipment. You get can the muscles you want without the use of weights.

It is astonishing to see the number of individuals who think that the surest way to lose excess pounds is by starving and though it might yield some result immediately, but no dietician in his right mind would advocate such a desperate measure. They insist that only healthy weight loss diets are recommended, given the fact that excesses tend to leave the body weaker and almost defenseless when facing illness. Most of the better healthy weight loss diets advocate providing the individual the required amount of calorific intake which is considered to be just right, and the diet should contain all the essential nutrients required by the body.

Most individuals do not take the importance of good rest too seriously in the overall maintenance of good health, as it is equally essential as burning all the excess calories which accumulate in the fat in the body. Sometimes the women’s’ periodicals are the real culprit in encouraging these fad diet plans, which are not backed by any scientific data or trials and they somehow convince the readers that these are allegedly healthy weight loss plans.

Take the example of taking boiled vegetables with chicken, salad and fruits: while this is not bad to begin with, it is to be remembered that a healthy weight loss diet would include several other nutrients which simply boiled vegetables may not contain. Weight watchers who observe this type of diet plans with these food groups may actually slim down and feel good about it, but ultimately they would not be able to reach their weight loss goals, as the whole exercise turns extremely boring after sometime.

If you seriously want to stick to your healthy weight loss diet, remember not to have high calorific foods and stick your daily exercise schedule, even if it is thirty minutes of walking every day and get a good nights’ rest. Rest is an astonishingly essential part of our lives - something which medical science is only just starting to understand but it is common amongst people with weight problems to feast during the night, often not remembering they have done it.

If you are somebody who does rise in the night to eat, you are doing nothing but damage to your body and will be ruining all the effort you have lead, following a healthy weight loss diet program with exercise, to burn off calories. The result of following a healthy weight loss plan does not take too long to show up as you feel lighter, happier, energetic and you rest better and all these mean that your chances of falling sick also decrease.

The other serious aspect for following a healthy weight loss diet is that you start to feel good about the way you look and feel: entertaining negative feelings about self can do more harm than anything else. It is essential to note that the body cannot perform magic and losing weight cannot happen like in a dream - most obese individuals tend to go through overtly rigorous physical exercises to achieve this impossible ambition.

Any healthy weight loss program involves regular physical exercise, but some overweight people go overboard with this part, forgetting that your intensity should be mild to moderate in the beginning with swimming or jogging and when you feel up to it, and then join a gymnasium later. The moot point here is that you should take it slowly and never try to overdo anything until such times that you feel totally comfortable with your physical exertions.