It’s easy to think that when it comes to adding muscle, you might as well eat anything you want because you’re going to gain body fat no matter what. Hey, that’s why they call it “bulking,” right? The more fat you’re adding, the more muscle must be coming along with it. Jim Stoppani, Ph.D., …
3 Misconceptions That Derail You from Building the Body of Your Dreams
Small waist, round booty, and toned legs—do I have your attention? Over the past decade, more and more women have been embracing the weight room, which I, for one, think is awesome. Even so, there are still many misconceptions surrounding weight training for women. I am about to shine some light on the top …
Eating to Grow: The Top 10 Foods for Building Muscle
If you’re trying to gain size, you can spend two hours in the weight room, hammering out set after set, but it won’t mean much if you aren’t eating a muscle-focused diet.Size gains come from two foundational actions: tearing the muscle down with training, and building it back up with nutrition. And nutrition means …
3 Keys to Building Mass Without Adding Body Fat
You want to gain mass, but you don’t want to add excess body fat along with it. Seems reasonable, right? But the bro-science on the internet calls for extreme swings in the direction of “bulking,” meaning eating as many calories as humanly possible, followed by a period of extreme “cutting.” Many consider this to …
5 Keys to Building an Olympia-Caliber Physique
As an IFBB pro 212 bodybuilder since 2015 and runner-up at the 212 Bodybuilding Olympia in 2019, I can tell you firsthand that competing isn’t only about meticulous diet and slamming weights—although you can’t leave those out of the picture either. As bodybuilders, we don’t just want to look good—we want top finishes to …
2 Chest Workouts for Building Muscle-Packed Pecs
The New Rules of Building a Super Body
Conventional wisdom about how women should eat, exercise, and look is often negative, self-defeating, and downright degrading. Magazines and over-hyped media encourage women to eat less, warn us not to lift too heavy, and offer numerous “secrets” about how lose weight. Because, you know, a woman’s happiness is inexorably tied to the number on …
5 Tips for Building Your Best Back Ever
Back is an out-of-sight, out-of-mind muscle group for many people. Unlike the chest, shoulders, arms, and abs, it doesn’t easily catch your eye the way a biceps stretching out of a T-shirt sleeve or a ripped sixer does. Even more importantly, it can’t be scrutinized for weaknesses when you’re looking straight into a mirror. …
3 Workouts That Are Insanely Effective At Building Hams And Glutes
4 Workouts That Are Insanely Effective At Building Shoulders
A pair of strong, sculpted shoulders is shorthand for, “Don’t mess with me…unless I ask you to.” Having big show muscles is one thing, but a strong upper frame tells the world you’re serious about your physique. So, we recently invited four top trainers to come to Gym2k.com headquarters in Boise, Idaho, to take us […]
Intensity: The Most Misunderstood Concept in Building Muscle
One of the biggest misconceptions when it comes to hypertrophy (the scientific term for muscle growth) is that the only factor in building bigger muscles is lifting heavier weights—and that one automatically leads to the other. This myth has been perpetuated for decades by the bodybuilding and fitness industries, as well as by bodybuilders themselves. […]
How Much Do You Really Know About Building Abs?
Nothing goes viral faster than a picture of some lean body with a perfectly sculpted six-pack, but do you really know what goes into creating that irresistible click-bait group of muscles? Does it come down to having the right diet? Is it all about the training? Is there some perfect combination of diet and workout […]