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4 Keys to Building Muscle Fast

[email protected] (Shehzad)
December 25, 2013

Build-Chest-MuscleDec 25: There’s a reason why you’re spending countless hours in the gym but still looking scrawny and not brawny: muscle mass isn’t built solely in the weight room. In fact, what you’re doing at the kitchen table–and even in the bedroom—may be more important for gaining muscle mass than what you’re lifting. (Of course what you’re lifting, and how often you’re lifting it, matters a lot too.) For any athlete looking to add size fast, the following four factors are critical.

Essential Exercises

Isolation training, where you focus on a single muscle, is nearly pointless for athletes. If your goal is to develop size, you need to perform complex lifts that recruit several muscle groups at the same time. So ditch moves like arm curls in favor of full-body movements like Chin-Ups. You’ll cause more muscle stimulation throughout your body, leading to more muscle growth. The following eight exercises are essential to anyone looking to pack on muscle mass fast.

• Squat

• Deadlift

• Lunges

• Split Squat

• Bench Press

• Military Press

• Chin-Ups/Pull-Ups

• DB Rows

Correct Sets and Reps

Knowing the right exercises is only half of the muscle-building battle in the gym. The other half is knowing how many of those moves you should perform, and how frequently you should perform them. Thankfully, the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) has studied that exact subject, diligently working to determine the ideal combo of sets, reps and rest to optimize hypertrophy (the fancy word for “muscle growth”). Based on their studies, they recommend:

• Sets: 3-6

• Reps: 6-12

• Rest between sets: 30 to 90 seconds

• Workout frequency: 2 or 3 days per week

The NSCA also found that muscles need 48 hours of rest to fully recover from a workout. So if you whaled on your legs on Monday, don’t work them again until Wednesday.

A Powerful Diet

Of course you want to eat a well-rounded diet that provides plenty of nutrients through fruits, vegetables and whole grains, but the two most important dietary elements for muscle growth and development are protein and water. The NSCA recommends athletes consume about 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight per day. Remember to eat for the body you want, not the body you have. So if you weigh 170 pounds but want to get to 200, take in 200 grams of protein each day.

Since muscles are about 75% water, anyone looking to add size should be drinking plenty of H2O. A good target for men is to drink about 3.7 liters (about 125 oz.) per day, while women should aim for 2.7 liters (a little more than 90 oz.) per day. Since you lose water through sweat during workouts, you need to drink even more on gym days.

Proper Rest

You may think you’re getting “swole” in the gym, but in reality most muscle growth occurs during the REM cycle of sleep. So no matter how much you lift, you won’t get the growth you want if you’re not getting enough sleep. (Check out Secrets for Muscle-Building Sleep.)

Athletes should aim for at least eight hours of sleep per night—as many as 10 if they can spare the time. Rid your room of computers, TVs, phones, and other distractions that can disturb your sleep. And drop the room temperature to between 60 and 65 degrees Fahrenheit if possible. Cool temps induce sleepiness, helping you reach the deeper REM phase sooner.

Learn more about getting bigger by checking out STACK's Guide to Building Muscle.

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Agencies
June 17,2020

Leading physicians are celebrating a small dose of good news that arrived Tuesday about dexamethasone, a cheap and widely used steroid shown to be able to save lives among COVID-19 patients, but also cautioning against releasing study results by press release during a global health emergency, like in the case of the latest dexamethasone study by University of Oxford.

"It will be great news if dexamethasone, a cheap steroid, really does cut deaths by one-third in ventilated patients with COVID19, but after all the retractions and walk backs, it is unacceptable to tout study results by press release without releasing the paper", Atul Gawande, surgeon and CEO of Haven Healthcare, tweeted.

"Bottom line is, good news," Dr. Fauci, America's foremost infectious diseases expert told a US newswire on Tuesday, soon after the dexamethasone results were announced in the UK.

Fauci, who has long championed the therapeutics-first view said that dexamethasone is a "significant improvement" in the available therapeutic options currently available.

On Medical Twitter and Facebook, doctors broadly agree that dexamethasone use aligns well with the way COVID19 attacks the body's immune system. Fauci said the results in the Oxford study make "perfect sense" in that context.

"We should see the number of people who actually survive go up, if the study holds up," virologist and epidemiologist Dr. Joseph Fair told a television network.

Global coronavirus cases crossed 8 million on Tuesday. In the US, Texas and Florida are facing a new wave of cases after lifting lockdown orders earlier than medical experts recommended. Amidst the relentless graph upwards, the dexamethasone study results injected hope for better survival rates among those most seriously ill.

World Health Organization chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan welcomed the results from the randomised control trial.

Dr Eugene Gu, Founder and CEO of CoolQuit tweeted that he is "genuinely impressed" with the UK dexamethasone trial. This may be a "game changer", he wrote.

"There's no conflict of interest as dexamethasone is a generic steroid. The mechanism of action makes sense because steroids can reduce cytokine storms and overactive immune systems that makes COVID-19 so deadly. The number needed to treat is 8 ventilated patients which is great."

The Oxford study found that dexamethasone reduced deaths by 35 percent in patients who needed treatment with breathing machines and by 20 percent in those only needing supplemental oxygen. Dexamethasone was one of 5 drugs studied in a large clinical trial in the United Kingdom named RECOVERY, short for Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy.

Peter Horby, chief investigator of the University of Oxford clinical trial, said dexamethasone is the first drug to be shown to improve survival in COVID-19. Details of the study have not been released. The trial organisers said they made their announcement via a news release because of "the public health importance of these results." According to Horby's public comments, there was a lot of initial resistance to studying steroids.

During the study, 2,104 patients were randomly selected to be given 6 milligrams of dexamethasone once a day (either by mouth or by intravenous injection) for 10 days. That group was compared with 4,321 patients who received the usual care alone.

Researchers estimated that dexamethasone would prevent one death for every eight patients treated while on ventilators and one for every 25 patients on extra oxygen alone.

UK experts have called the study results a breakthrough in the fight against the virus. The researchers have promised they would publish the results soon.

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Agencies
July 7,2020

The World Health Organization (WHO) is reviewing a report that suggested its advice on the novel coronavirus needs updating after some scientists told the New York Times there was evidence the virus could be spread by tiny particles in the air.

The WHO says the Covid-19 disease spreads primarily through small droplets, which are expelled from the nose and mouth when an infected person breaths them out in coughs, sneezes, speech or laughter and quickly sink to the ground.

In an open letter to the Geneva-based agency, 239 scientists in 32 countries outlined the evidence they say shows that smaller exhaled particles can infect people who inhale them, the newspaper said on Saturday.

Because those smaller particles can linger in the air longer, the scientists - who plan to publish their findings in a scientific journal this week - are urging WHO to update its guidance, the Times said.

"We are aware of the article and are reviewing its contents with our technical experts," WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said in an email reply on Monday to a Reuters request for comment.

The extent to which the coronavirus can be spread by the so-called airborne or aerosol route - as opposed to by larger droplets in coughs and sneezes - remains disputed.

Any change in the WHO's assessment of the risk of transmission could affect its current advice on keeping one-metre physical distancing. Governments, which also rely on the agency for guidance policy, may also have to adjust public health measures aimed at curbing the spread of the virus.

"Especially in the last couple of months, we have been stating several times that we consider airborne transmission as possible but certainly not supported by solid or even clear evidence," Benedetta Allegranzi, the WHO's technical lead for infection prevention and control, was quoted as saying in the New York Times.

WHO guidance to health workers, dated June 29, says that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, is primarily transmitted between people through respiratory droplets and on surfaces.

But airborne transmission via smaller particles is possible in some circumstances, such as when performing intubation and aerosol-generating procedures, it says.

Medical workers performing such procedures should wear heavy-duty N95 respiratory masks and other protective equipment in an adequately ventilated room, the WHO says.

Officials at South Korea's Centers for Disease Control said on Monday they were continuing to discuss various issues about Covid-19, including the possible airborne transmission. They said more investigations and evidence were needed.

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Agencies
July 8,2020

Probiotics that broaden the mix of helpful bacteria in the gut may help to ease depression, say researchers.

Foods that broaden the profile of helpful bacteria in the gut are collectively known as probiotics. These "good bacteria" can be taken as supplements, or found naturally in yoghurts or fermented foods.

For the findings, the research team from the University of Brighton in the UK searched for relevant studies published in English between 2003 and 2019, which looked at the potential therapeutic contribution of pre-and probiotics in adults with depression and/or anxiety disorders.

Out of an initial haul of 71 studies, just seven met all the criteria for inclusion. All 7 investigated at least one probiotic strain; four looked at the effect of combinations of multiple strains.In all, 12 probiotic strains featured in the selected studies, primarily Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus casei, and Bifidobacterium bifidium.

One study looked at combined pre-probiotic treatment, while one looked at prebiotic therapy by itself. The studies varied considerably in their design, methods used, and clinical considerations, but all of them concluded that probiotic supplements either alone or in combination with prebiotics may be linked to measurable reductions in depression.

And every study showed a significant fall or improvement in anxiety symptoms and clinically relevant changes in biochemical measures of anxiety or depression with probiotic or combined pre-probiotic use.

Of the 12 different probiotics investigated, 11 were potentially useful, the findings showed.'Probiotics may help reduce the production of inflammatory chemicals, such as cytokines, as is the case in inflammatory bowel disease, the researchers suggested.

"They may help direct the action of tryptophan, a chemical thought to be important in the gut-brain axis in psychiatric disorders," they added.

In this way, with a better understanding of the mechanisms, probiotics may prove to be a useful tool across a wide range of conditions," the authors wrote.

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