Amino Acids: The Building Blocks

Amino acids are often referred to as being a fancy word for proteins, but this isn’t quite right.  Amino acids are involved with proteins, actually.  Amino acids are the building blocks of protein.  Without essential amino acids, proteins can’t effectively work in the body.  There are many specific supplements that are even aimed towards helping those building blocks.

Amino acids naturally come from protein rich foods like meat, fish, dairy, and certain vegetables such as legumes.  Taking a supplement that helps the amino acids in your body is going to help your muscles, your bones, and help your boy absorb and use protein more effectively and efficiently.  Amino acids are absolutely essential to the human body, as they are needed (like protein) for muscle repair, growth, and development.

In addition to the obvious and well recorded benefits that amino acids have on the body, it’s not just professional bodybuilders who can enjoy the benefits of an amino acids supplement, but amino acids also play an active role in keeping emotional moods normal, concentrating, attention, aggressiveness (keeping in check, or becoming more so in appropriate situations), and even sleep.  Consumed protein is broken down into amino acids, at which point they go to work.

Amino acids are in everyone’s body, and are a necessary part of having a healthy physical body.  If you’re wondering what people might need amino acids supplements, aside from bodybuilders, there are actually several groups of people who might want amino acid supplements.  Some individuals who find amino acid supplements helpful include vegetarians, people afflicted with certain allergies, people affected by stress caused fatigue, or hypoglycemia.  In this case some extra boost to the amino acids can make a huge difference in helping individuals out.

The good news is also that supplements usually only have to be taken for short periods of time.  The odd thing is that to get the full amino acids out of food that the body needs, the body needs to already have amino acids in order to process the new ones.  Once levels go back to normal, often times there’s no need to take more supplements, although even healthy individuals can still benefit immensely.

Amino acids are called the building blocks of the body for good reason, as without them no one could be healthy.  These work in processing every single enzyme in the human body, as well as building and recovering muscles among many other things.  If you are a bodybuilder looking for a little bit more, then amino acid supplements might be the right way to get that last little bit of boost, and for individuals who maybe just need a little bit extra to get healthy, this could also be the answer that you’ve been looking for.

Amino acids are an essential part of every human body, and the more you know about them, the more aware you can be of the benefits.

Shoulder Exercises: Bulking Up the Frame

If you want a full and balanced weight lifting workout (and even if you are specifically aiming especially hard for one part of the body or one muscle group, you should still go for balance) then you can’t just stick with the same old bench press and curls. While the arms might stick out the most and get you that attention you’re craving, only a weight lifter who concentrates on a balanced work out is going to enjoy the full benefits of a serious program.

One of the parts of the body that often doesn’t get enough attention is the shoulders. The shoulders are one of the hardest parts of the body to train. For one thing, the shoulder, which basically means the deltoid muscle, is comprised of three separate “heads”: the anterior (front), the medial (middle), and the posterior (back). This is what allows for our shoulders to have such a wide range of motion, and is part of the reason that there is not one single weight lifting exercise that can efficiently work out the entire shoulder.

What does this mean? Basically that to work out the shoulders (which every weight lifter absolutely should do) you will need to know more than one technique of weight lifting. Individuals who are working out the shoulders know to use a wide variety of exercises to work out the shoulders, and they also know that since the shoulder can be more sensitive, and less forgiving if you screw up (hello torn rotator cuff), that proper technique is far more important for working out the shoulders than weight is.

Using good form when working out the shoulders is absolutely critical in order to avoid shoulder injuries. There are several shoulder exercises that tend to be more popular than others, including: military press, lateral dumbbell raises, overhead dumbbell presses, and seated rows. These four are the most common weight lifting exercises for the shoulder that are commonly taught, and the combination of these exercises can help guarantee that your shoulders get a full impressive workout.

There are some differing opinions on this, as there are certainly resistance machines that are more than adequate for working out the shoulders, but many bodybuilders still prefer the good old fashioned dumbbells, and lighter dumbbells work very well. Especially early on, you don’t need a lot of weight to get your shoulders in shape, and you definitely want to start out slowly. A shoulder injury can be absolutely devastating, so slow and steady is definitely the way to go with shoulder exercises.

Most shoulder exercise combinations will have you do one set of each specific exercise anywhere from 8 to 15 times per set, 2 or 3 times a week. Start out with the lowest weight and least amount of reps, and once you get to the point where you can easily do 15 reps of an exercise, move up to the next weight and drop down to eight reps until you can move up again.

Another reason to be careful with the shoulders: going heavier won’t bulk you up. But going with the lesser weights will actually shape and tone you more quickly than heavier weights. Be careful with the shoulders, and you’ll be rewarded with a great looking body.

Biceps Workouts: Pumping Up Your Biceps

There are many different exercises and many different weight lifting machines that focus on exercises that help build up good looking biceps. Even with all the advancements in weight lifting and knowledge about how the body works to build new muscle, one basic bodybuilding exercise is still tops when it comes to building up the bulging biceps: the biceps curl.

Many bodybuilders like to use dumbbells for this exercise because they provide the maximum amount of effectiveness in building up bulky muscle mass. Dumbbells also make it easier to assure that each arm is getting a strong and equal workout. That being said, barbell curls are also very effective. These exercises don’t need fancy machines to be improved upon, but the one common mistake that many weight lifters make is to use poor technique. Nothing will get more frustrating than the complete lack of progress you experience when using an incorrect technique for this biceps exercise.

To properly perform a set of barbell curls, you will want to have a shoulder width grip on the barbell. Keeping your elbows close to your sides, and not out in the air, you then curl the weight up, contracting the biceps at the top.

One common mistake you will want to avoid is curling your wrists towards your main body at the top of a barbell. A lot of people do this, but not only is it not god for your wrists, but this also takes resistance off of the biceps, preventing you from getting the full benefit of this exercise, which can also be extremely frustrating as you keep lifting but don’t see any obvious positive effects. Curling the wrists as you lift is the biggest mistake many people make and that takes away pressure from the actual muscles that you’re working out, and so cheating you out of the full effect of the exercise.

There are biceps exercises that can target a specific section of the arm to look better, as well. For example, if you want to bulk up your upper arms, then you need to do exercises that specifically target the “brachialis” muscle, a muscle that is between the biceps and triceps. Just doing hammer curls, as opposed to biceps curls, targets these muscles and will result in big upper arms that you can show off to anyone with pride.

Another biceps exercises that work really well (and often work out a second group of arm muscles, as well), include the reverse grip barbell (or dumbbell) curls, which are like regular curls but with the palms facing in instead of out. Then do a normal curl. To avoid pressure on the wrists, this needs to be done with much lighter weights than you normally use for your other biceps exercises.

Biceps workouts are among the easiest and most useful for quickly bulking up, but on the other hand these exercises are also the easiest to “cheat” at, making it harder to see the quality results you should be getting. Concentrate on technique with your biceps exercises and you’ll be happy with the results.