Some of us have a harder time than others cutting out the sugary foods. Here are a few tips to combat your sugar cravings.

First, go on a sugar fast for a few days. The fast energy from sugary sources creates a craving for more sugar. It will be tough but your body will adjust and thank you later.

Eat your vegetables! Veggies contain fiber which keep you feeling full and aid in digestion and increase your metabolism.

Protein shakes are great for snacks and quick aminos but make sure to eat plenty of protein rich foods that you have to chew. These slower digesting proteins help to stabilize blood sugars. *Chromium picolinate and alpha lipoic acid are also great for blood sugar stabilization!

Finally, as if you haven’t heard this enough, stay hydrated. Drinking water not only keeps you feeling full but dehydration can cause sugar cravings.

If you are in a rut with your training WAKE UP! The feeling of success toward a goal far outweighs any soreness experienced along the way.

2. Stick to the basics. You can use all kinds of machines with cables and angles from all directions but nothing beats a heavy barbell curl for pure mass! Again, this allows you to handle more weight and recruit more muscle fibers than small isolative movements.  Incorporate a few sets of straight bar standing curls into most of your bicep workouts.

3. Hammer it out. Don’t forget to include some hammer curls in your routine. The palms inward position utilizes the biceps brachii to a larger degree. This muscle lies beneath the biceps femoris. Growing your brachii muscle pushes outward on your biceps femoris giving you a thicker overall bicep. It also hits your forearm brachioradialis muscle, getting your pipes bigger form the elbow down.

4. Get your pump on. Finish each workout with some muscle busting short rest sets. This is the time to utilize some smaller isolative movements like preacher curls or concentrations with the focus not on the weight moved but on forcing as much blood as possible into the working muscles. Take short rests between these sets, enough to get some oxygen but don’t let the “pump” dissipate before starting the next set.

5. Keep your ego and form in check. You see it all the time, guys crushing huge weights but doing half curls. Nothing wrong with cheating out the last few reps of a tough set but make sure the majority of reps completed are quality. Stretch your biceps straight at the bottom of each repetition and squeeze, at the top of the movement again squeeze the biceps for a count and lower slowly.

1. You don’t grow thick biceps just by killing the curls. Biceps are secondary movers that control and aid large back movements like pull-ups, barbell rows, and cable rows. While they are not isolated they have to control much more weight then you could curl. These back movements recruit more muscle fibers and can elicit more growth in your biceps, not just your back. Don’t skip the tough stuff, your biceps will thank you.

2. Stick to the basics. You can use all kinds of machines with cables and angles from all directions but nothing beats a heavy barbell curl for pure mass! Again, this allows you to handle more weight and recruit more muscle fibers than small isolative movements.  Incorporate a few sets of straight bar standing curls into most of your bicep workouts.

3. Hammer it out. Don’t forget to include some hammer curls in your routine. The palms inward position utilizes the biceps brachii to a larger degree. This muscle lies beneath the biceps femoris. Growing your brachii muscle pushes outward on your biceps femoris giving you a thicker overall bicep. It also hits your forearm brachioradialis muscle, getting your pipes bigger form the elbow down.

4. Get your pump on. Finish each workout with some muscle busting short rest sets. This is the time to utilize some smaller isolative movements like preacher curls or concentrations with the focus not on the weight moved but on forcing as much blood as possible into the working muscles. Take short rests between these sets, enough to get some oxygen but don’t let the “pump” dissipate before starting the next set.

5. Keep your ego and form in check. You see it all the time, guys crushing huge weights but doing half curls. Nothing wrong with cheating out the last few reps of a tough set but make sure the majority of reps completed are quality. Stretch your biceps straight at the bottom of each repetition and squeeze, at the top of the movement again squeeze the biceps for a count and lower slowly.

If the New Year wasn’t incentive to get you going, take a look outside. Spring is the time for change; the beach and pool are calling! When you workout you look healthy, you have more energy, digest your foods better, and have a generally positive outlook on life. Now who doesn’t want that?

If you haven’t made time or have fallen into a workout funk, now is the time to reprioritize and get productive again. Make time to workout and start enjoying the benefits. Remember you will always regret missing a workout, but you never leave the gym thinking “na, I wish I hadn’t just worked out.”

The old way of taking a pre-workout was downing some coffee, a couple of aspirin, and some desiccated liver tabs for aminos. We have obviously come a long way since then but the new trend is stronger and stronger stimulants. Hey, we love a good workout pick-me-up but the adage of -some is good, more is better so too much otta be just right, defiantly not true with pre-workout stimulants.

Too much stimulant can actually constrict vaso activity, taking away your pump. In very high amounts it can blunt the absorption of nutrients, like those liver tabs you just took! You want to elevate your heart rate in the gym but if it’s beating out of your chest from your pre-workout powder your recovery between sets may take extra time.

Everyone will have a different stimulant threshold but here are some guidelines to make sure you don’t over do it.

*We love caffeine too but 300mg (about 2 cups of coffee) or less at any one time should be sufficient.

*If you experience a big crash after workouts try scaling back your serving size.

*Eat something before training. A combination of slow and fast digesting carbs will give you real sustained energy and buffer the effects of stimulants.

*Don’t mistake jitters for energy, you should feel focused and energized but not shaky and sweaty before even touching a weight.

We get it, we are in the supplement industry and like you we expect results from the supplements we “take.” But that is just part of the puzzle when growing more muscle, a chiseled physique or both. It takes much more than remembering a pre-workout powder a post workout protein, throwing in some pills here and there etc… To truly build an impressive body it takes years of sacrifice and dedication to your goals, constant planning of meals and supplements, along with a wealth of knowledge and technique perfecting your routine.

A very large and respected bodybuilder once said this, “When I travel to shows and expos I have a lot of people who come up and ask me, what do you take? I usually tell them a bit about my diet and some supplements that have become mainstays in my routine. What they miss is the dedication, time and effort that have gone into my looking the way I do. The true answer to there question is this:

TAKE the next 3 years and eat every meal with the purpose of gaining muscle. TAKE the next three years and never miss a workout, workout on holidays, on vacation and plan trips around your routine. TAKE time everyday to broaden you knowledge about nutrition and fitness. Do this and in three years people will be asking you, what do you take?”

One of the great things about Titan Nutrition is we get to travel around and talk nutrition and supplements to customers and store owners, both topics we are very passionate about. When discussing protein we will often hear the statement “you don’t need to consume a large amount of protein after a workout because the body can only consume 13 grams an hour.”  If you have heard this “traditional wisdom” before, here is our counter. No BS here, as you know we do not have nor plan to have a protein line.

Next time you hear “Consuming large doses of protein isn’t necessary because the body can only absorb 13 grams in an hour (give or take on amount and time). Ask “whose body?” Is this figure for a 125 pound female or a 280 pound linebacker? What activity have they just done? What how much of their weight is lean mass (body fat %)?

Wouldn’t it seem to reason that a 280 pound athlete completing a 2 hour intense weight lifting routine “absorbs” drastically more protein than a 125 pound sedentary female?

You see the point that these two individuals are drastically different and would require drastically different amounts of protein to fuel their lean muscle tissue.

Think of our ancestors, cavemen who may have gone days eating very little, exhausted themselves on a long hunt to bring down large animals, then gorged themselves knowing it could be a long time before their next big meal. If they could only absorb 13 grams, I’d say our poor ancestors must have been very malnourished and weak! Of course they weren’t. Our bodies have adapted over thousands of years and have become very efficient machines! There is no one definite number you can place on everyone’s ability to digest and utilize protein. Some food for thought next time you mix up your 60 gram post workout shake or order that extra chicken breast…     

If you’ve heard this argument before please “share” and enlighten!

Q- It’s probably accurate to say that most everyone who trains hard would like to have a great set of abdominals to show off this summer. Can you give us some insight into your ab routine? What has been your secret to bringing out great abs to show off?

A-Well, first I’d like to point out (and I am probably “preaching to the

choir here”) that abs are made in the kitchen, not in the gym. You can have

an outstanding set of abs, but if they are hidden underneath a few layers

of fat then they are pretty much worthless. No ab exercises will help you

lean out your stomach.. Anyway, I personally like to train my abs with a

little bit of weight to help them pop a little bit.

A few staples in my routine are:

-Hanging leg raises

-Planks

-Weighted sit ups

-Lying leg raises

I tend to do more types of leg raises than anything else, because I feel

like they are where I need the most strength improvement. I can’t really

get too many straight leg-hanging leg raises, but I can get a ton of situps

with a 45lbs dumbbell on my chest.

I do believe that abs should be trained at least 2x a week – not as much

for hypertrophy, but more to keep your core stable. The times I have had

problems with my lower back during squats and deadlifts, are the times

where I have neglected my abdominal training.

            When eating to lose fat while maintaining muscle mass you must time your nutrients around what we call the book end meals. The book end meals are the most important times to feed you body and if you are eating 6 small meals per day they will take up 4 of those meals. They are: breakfast, pre-workout, post workout, and before bed. Closely monitor these 4 meals and half the diet battle will be won! We have already discussed what nutrients to eat and when (for a refresher read below) but your calorie consumption will ultimately determine whether or not you actually lose weight/fat.

            Our numbers are going to be based on a 200 pound recreational bodybuilder but here is the formula we used if you want to plug in your own numbers. (1.5 gram protein per pound, 1.5 grams carbohydrates & 0.2 grams of fat per pound) so for our 200 lbs subject they would need to eat 2760 calories per day on this diet. Plenty of food to stay full and continue to train hard granted they eat to fuel their workouts.  If this sounds like a lot of food try counting your calories for a few days, you might be surprised. Most guys can clean this up with a couple meals over the weekend! **Actual number of calories will vary depending on the individual and the percent of lean body mass.

            Staying with our number of 2760 calories and 6 meals per day 4 being our “book end” meals (you with me?) we now want to look at how to disperse these calories into our meals. Remember we are eating to lose fat and gain/keep all our muscle mass. Here is an easy way to divide those calories throughout the day keeping to the nutrients we discussed last week. Aim to consume 1/3 of you daily calories within 1 hour post workout then divide the remaining calories out evenly between the other 5 meals. That’s about 910 calories allotted to replenish your muscles after a workout. In this brief window you have a huge anabolic potential and can slam down a relatively high amount of clean calories without worry of gaining unwanted weight.

            Your other meals will be small (about 400 calories) but you will be eating often. Not to say you won’t get hungry but hey, a little sacrifice is worth a shredded summer any day! Once you reach your goal weight or body mass you can include a cheat meal a week or add a few calories and still maintain what you’ve accomplished!    

            Fats get a bad name in the diet community mostly because people associate fat with junk food and getting fat. It is true that fats can pack on the pounds if you’re not careful, this is because they are very energy dense. Each gram of fat contains 9 calories while a gram of protein or carbohydrates contain only 4 (alcohol is 7 for those who need to take account!).

            More important than the timing of your fats is the type of fats you choose to consume. Choose polyunsaturated or monounsaturated fats from sources like olive oil, nuts, fish, and seeds. When you cut out carbohydrates in the evening your calories from protein and fat will increase, that’s fine but remember the serving size of fats needs to be closely monitored bearing in mind they pack more calories than your carbs. Fats should make up about 25-35% of your daily caloric intake.

            Fats slow the digestion of nutrients so avoid eating too much fat at times when protein digestion needs to be immediate like upon waking and right after working out. A small amount of fats like 1oz of almonds (about a handful) can help maintain level blood sugars when taken before working out.

            Whenever possible avoid trans and hydrogenated fats. These fats stay a solid at high temperatures (like in you bloodstream) and are a major culprit in clogging up your system. Staying away from store bought bake goods and fast food goes a long way. No amounts of these fats are healthy.

            Fats from egg yolks and read meat are a beating post in the main stream health community because of their cholesterol content. Yet they are a staple to the bodybuilding community. Assuming you do not have a history of high cholesterol a moderate amount of  fat from read meat and egg yolk can help maintain testosterone levels and androgen production. Red meat shouldn’t be eaten everyday on an aesthetically geared diet but lean sources like sirloin and flank steak are great choices 2-3 times a week. For eggs, try using a ratio of 1 whole egg to 3 egg whites. 

            So avoid the burgers this summer, peal the skin off your chicken and smoke up some salmon!