Weightlifting when you have little ones

Weightlifting while you have little ones can be a little weird,but you just have to fit in all there needs and find time to excersise ie when they are asleep or between feedings etc. even if it doesn’t feel like it but bring all the stuff you kids need can help your muscles as well ie when you bring the car seat(when your kids weight in at 7-10lbs plus clothes it can add up) and the baby’s bag and mabey the playpen,all these things can be heavy at times so therefore you can workout your muscles at the sametime just be careful not to over load your self and put you back out. or even when you have to hold you baby a certain way for a long period of time it can be great for your biceps all the way up the arm to your delts. It just goes to show you that even if you have kids you allways have to be thinking.

Foods that grow muscle

There are 8 types of main foods that grow muscle,they are eggs,almonds,olive oil,salmon,steak,yogart,water,and coffee. below is a link that has information on such foods.

http://www.tomvenuto.com/articles/best_weight_training_books.shtml

A Farewell to Small Arms

Cable stations give us lots of good things–Shannon Whirry, for example. They also give us more muscle. But using a cable station usually means exercising one arm at a time. Next time, try this cable-crossover technique to achieve more muscle growth in less time, says Kurt Brungardt, author of Essential Arms. It works both arms individually, but simultaneously. So you get the constant-tension benefits of using a cable station while exercising both arms at once–as you would with dumbbells. Do two to three sets of eight to 12 repetitions, and rest 60 seconds between sets.

Double Cross Pulldown

Attach single-arm handles to the high pulleys on each side of a cable station. Grab the left handle with your right hand and the right handle with your left hand. Stand with your feet about shoulder-width apart and your knees slightly bent. Hold the handles near your chin, with your arms crossed [A]. Without bending forward, slowly pull the handles away from your body until your arms are straight [B]. Pause, then slowly return to the starting position and repeat.

Great Popping Pecs

Surprise your muscles.

“The key to adding mass to any large muscle group, such as the chest, is varying the type of stress you put on it,” says Michael Y. Seril, N.S.C.A.-C.P.T., owner of Michael Seril Fitness, a personal-training company in Orange County, California. “Try combining these two movements into one exercise,” he says. It’s sort of a “press-fly.” The bonus: You’ll save time, because you’ll be doing more work with less rest between exercises.

Lie faceup on a bench, holding dumbbells with an underhand grip at the sides of your chest.

Press the weights straight up and rotate them until your palms are facing each other.

Keeping your elbows slightly bent, lower the dumbbells outward in an arc until they’re at chest height.

Use your chest to pull them back up, following the same route in reverse. Lower the weights back to the starting position. That’s one repetition. Perform three or four sets of eight to 12 repetitions.

Dumbbell Incline Bench Press

The incline bench press works primarily the upper region of your chest. It also involves your front deltoids, triceps, and serratus anterior–a small but important muscle that helps move your shoulder blades. Add the incline press to your chest workout after your flat-bench or pushup routine. Three sets of eight to 12 repetitions will help you build a larger chest.

A common mistake: sitting too vertically, which incorporates your shoulders too much in the move, preventing you from lifting more weight. Position the bench at an angle between 45 and 60 degrees. Also, a lot of men like to lower the dumbbells so they’re next to their upper chest. Don’t–this puts too much stress on the shoulder joints. Lower the weights farther forward, in a plane that intersects your body just below chest level, until your elbows form 45-degree angles and the weights are at shoulder height over your upper arms.

• Grab a pair of dumbbells and lie faceup on a bench. Place your feet flat on the floor, draw your abs in, and push your lower back into the pad.
• Press the dumbbells above you in a slightly arcing line toward the midline of your chest. It’s not necessary to clank the weights together–that can cause shoulder impingement, plus it annoys the rest of us trying to work out. Keep them 1 to 2 inches apart.
• Squeeze your chest muscles at the top of the move. Then reverse the same slightly arcing motion to lower the dumbbells under control.

Bench-Press Boost

When you’re stuck bench-pressing the same weight, you’ve probably worked your pectoralis major so much that your small, stabilizing muscles — your rotator cuffs and the muscles around your neck and shoulder blades — aren’t working well enough.

The fix:  After your bench-press routine, do up to three sets of eight to 12 reps of the moves above, resting 60 seconds between sets. Keep your quads and glutes tight; pull your navel toward your spine. You should see up to a 15 percent gain in chest strength in 4 weeks. If you’re new to weight lifting, do only the first exercise after you bench-press; do the first two if you have some experience; and do all three if you’re more advanced.

Swiss-Ball Decline Pushup

This time, position yourself so your shins are resting on a Swiss ball and your hands are on the floor. Tuck your chin and, leading with your chest, lower your body until your arms form 90-degree angles.

Double Swiss-Ball Pushup

Set two Swiss balls against a wall a few feet in front of a bench. Place a hand on the center of each ball, making sure the balls are touching, and rest your feet on the bench. Lower your body as far as you can with control. Pause, then push yourself back up to the starting position.

Build a Powerful Chest

Guys tend to measure themselves by three criteria: income, sexual prowess, bench press. Why we care about the first two is obvious, but the popularity of the third is a different matter. Sure, the barbell bench press is a great way to build strength and size in your chest muscles, but it’s not the only way. And if you’re in the weight room to improve your performance in a sport, wearing a groove in the bench won’t help much.

“Any chest exercise done on a bench will have little effect on playing-field performance,” says Paul Chek, strength consultant to the Chicago Bulls and other professional sports teams. In other words, there is no sporting equivalent to lying on a bench and pushing a weight off your pectorals.

That’s why Chek recommends chest exercises done on a therapeutic ball, also known as a Swiss ball. When you balance on a ball, every muscle has to help. If your legs and torso muscles don’t do their work, you fall off. That’s how your body works on the court or playing field: You have to establish balance before you can generate power.

Even if your sole goal is to build bigger muscles, the ball can help. Muscles in your upper back and your rotator cuffs have to contract to hold your shoulders in place on the ball, which helps them grow bigger and stronger. And if you want a greater range of movement, you can lower the weights a little farther on Swiss-ball chest exercises, giving the pectoral muscles a new stimulus.

These exercises range from fairly easy to really hard. Learn them in the order shown, but take it slowly. And the next time someone tries to challenge your manhood by comparing bench-press stats? Tell him you don’t bench, you ball.

Two-Angle Press

Sit on a Swiss ball with a dumbbell in each hand and the weights resting on your thighs. Slowly lie back as you walk your feet forward. Stop when your head, neck, and upper back are in contact with the ball. Your feet should be flat on the floor, your knees bent at a 90-degree angle. Lift the weights to your shoulders. Tighten your abs and lower back to stabilize your position, then exhale as you press the dumbbells up and toward each other.

Slowly roll your hips down the ball as if you were doing a squat. When your upper torso is at a 45-degree angle to the floor, slowly lower the dumbbells back to your shoulders. Now roll back to position A for the next repetition. The idea is to lift the weight when your body is in its strongest position, then lower it when your body is in a weaker position. This makes your chest muscles work harder during the lowering portion of the exercise. It also gives some extra work to the upper portion of your pectoral muscles. Do three sets of five to 10 repetitions.

Swiss-Ball Pushup

Lean your entire torso against the ball and place your hands on the floor in front of it. Slowly walk yourself forward on your hands until your legs are up on the ball. How far forward you go is up to you. For an easier pushup, rest your thighs on the ball. For more of a challenge, rest your shins or just your feet on the ball. Tighten all your torso muscles (abdominals, lower back, chest, and upper back) to help stabilize your body. Slowly lower yourself until your upper arms are parallel to the floor. Pause for 2 seconds, then push yourself back up until your arms are straight. You’ve seen guys do this using a bench; by incorporating a ball, you use your torso muscles to stabilize your body, so you get more out of the exercise. Do three sets of 12 to 15 repetitions.

Combo Press

Place a set of heavy dumbbells on the floor in front of the therapeutic ball. (A good rule of thumb is to use double the weight you’d normally use for a chest press.) Grasp a pair of lighter dumbbells, using weights that you know you can handle for incline chest presses. Hook your feet under the handles of the heavier dumbbells (they should be positioned about shoulder-width apart), and lie back on the ball, with your upper torso at roughly a 45-degree angle to the floor.

Press the weights straight up from your shoulders, lower them, and do repetitions at this angle until you feel you can manage only one or two more. Roll your body up until your torso is parallel to the floor–you’re now in the equivalent of a flat-bench position. Again, do repetitions until you feel you can do only one or two more. Roll back farther until your head is lower than your hips. Now perform repetitions until you absolutely can’t do another.

By going from your weakest position to your strongest, you work all the sections of your chest without changing weights. Chek says that the entire set shouldn’t last longer than 15 repetitions. Try one set at first, and work up to three.

As you master this exercise, try shifting positions without taking a break in your repetitions. The continuous movement will make this exercise even more challenging for your chest muscles.

Unilateral Dumbbell Press

Grab a pair of dumbbells, lift them to your shoulders, and lie back on the Swiss ball so that your torso is parallel to the floor. Press the weight in your right hand straight up from your shoulder. Pause for a second at the top, then slowly lower the weight to your shoulder. Do the same with the weight in the left hand. That’s one repetition. Perform two or three sets of six to eight repetitions.

Note: This exercise is much harder than it looks, so you need to start with light weights. The first time you try it, focus on your abdominal muscles. Feel how hard they have to work to stabilize your body. As your midsection becomes accustomed to the exercise, you’ll be able to use more weight.

Stabilizing Pressup

Place your hands on the ball about 12 inches apart, and position yourself so your legs and torso form a straight line, your arms are straight, and your weight is on the balls of your feet and your hands. Bend at the elbows, and very slowly lower your chest toward the ball. Go as low as you can, then push yourself back up to the starting position just as slowly. Try one set of four to six repetitions at first, and do more as your performance

If you

If you really want to get into hardcore weightlifting then try to pull a car or heavier vehicle by having a rope tied to your waist and then walking forward(great for your legs) or for your arms and legs combined you can do the same thing but instead of walking forward you can pull yourself forward by attaching a rope to a tree or something similar and pull yourself towards the object,it might take a while to get the car rolling but once you have the weels turning it should be easier to move the car as per once the vehicle is in motion ot stays in motion untill an object stops it. it is also wise to do this with someone in the car so they can back it up for you if you want to take a go at it several times or you can push te car back to your starting point your self(also great for arms and legs but watch your back when doing this).

I find

I find that you can ad more weight to your dumbells if you have a combined plastic and metal ones on the dumbell,you can use a c-clamp to pinch some more weight to the plastic weights ie 5lbs or 10lbs which ever will fit(to do this you attach the weight to the inside of the plastic weight so it is clamped on so to speak)that way you can add mabey 5-10lbs to your dumbells,i’m not sure if this works with a dumbell having all metal weights on it though but i will try that someday and see how it goes(i do this because my dumbell bar is to short to add more and more weight to them). i’m also not sure if this works well at all it was just a curiousity thing. to add more weight to dumbells all you have to do i guess is buy longer bars.

exersises in water

There are many types of excersise you can do in water to build muscle,like for example try to lift milk jugs filled with sand for bicep curls(it creates awesome resistance) or for chest excersises swim laps around the pool,or for your legs you can push yourself away from the swiming pool wall while using your leg strength.

just goes to show you that sometimes you have to visualise what you can do with different types of objects for different places in able to get a work out.