6 Pack Abdominals

Posts Tagged ‘cortisol’

  

Spending hours in the gym to build muscle up and not making progress? Excellent news! There is a good chance that you are not making incredible gains for just one simple reason. Just this simple knowledge can help increase your power to build muscle up. For a lot of people this little known truth can easily help them build muscle up fast.

So what exactly is this well kept secret? A new drug or something?

No not at all. It is a hormone know as cortisol, known about for a long time but ignored by many weight lifters.

What actually is cortisol?

Produced in response to stress placed on the body cortisol is a hormone released by the body throughout the day. Cortisol levels decrease gradually throughout the day from their highest point in the morning.

What is its role exactly?

Well it enhances your short term memory, aids in regulation of blood sugar levels and helps detox the liver. However it can raise blood pressure and decrease bone density if your cortisol levels get too high, however this would be unusual. However critically it does diminish muscle because it aids in the body using muscle for energy rather than fat. this is the reason that workouts should be under an hour long. After this time period they will actually be restricting their growth!

Here are a few guidelines to ensure that you are not wasting your time trying to build muscle up:

1) limit your cardio workouts, too much cardio causes the body to release cortisol which as explained is not what we need.

2) Try to not consume too much caffeine as this will increase your cortisol levels.

3) Ensure your sessions are kept below one hour. wear headphones if this helps you to stay focussed.

4) Stress causes the body to release more cortisol too so try to relax, although granted this is easier said than done.

5) Consume small frequent meals as infrequent meals make the body assume it is starving and will thus try and use muscle mass as a form of energy before it makes use of fat reserves by releasing more cortisol.

6) Sleep. This is when your muscle building hormones peak and your cortisol levels are highest so shot for 8 hours sleep.

With those building muscle tips in mind you should be able to give your workouts a great boost and help you to build up muscle more efficiently.

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