Even for those people that insist that raw eggs provide better quality protein, this is hardly worth the risk, considering the chance of salmonella poisoning. You may go many years without being adversely affected by raw eggs, but if you get salmonella your bodybuilding progress will be set back by many months.

If you want to get the most protein out of your eggs, you should consider eating only the egg whites, and throwing away the yolks. According to the USDA website, 100g of egg whites contain 10.9 grams of protein and 52 calories, making a ratio of 0.21. On the other hand, 100g of egg yolks contain 15.86g of protein and 322 calories, making a ratio of 0.05. This means you are getting about four times less protein per calorific content with yolks, rather than egg whites.

It is true that there are some benefits to the yolks, such as vitamins and minerals, but they are also high in cholesterol and calories. Furthermore, vegetables are a much more efficient source of vitamins and minerals. So consider limiting yourself to two or three egg yolks per week, and stick with egg whites the rest of the time.

Holding your breath increases the pressure in your torso and raises your blood pressure. If you hold it too long, especially during strenuous activity, you could faint and injure yourself. In more serious cases your ocular nerve could become detached and you could bleed from your eyes and go blind. In the worst case scenario you could develop internal bleeding in your brain, burst a blood vessel, get a stroke, go into a coma or die.

The other common technique that is taught in gyms is to exhale during the push. The main advantage of this technique is that it prevents you from holding your breath. However, if you breath in and out once with every movement, your intake of oxygen is dependent on how quickly you are performing the reps. This means that as you slow down near the end of the sets, you will not get enough air, as your reps have slowed to a crawl as failure sets in due to the secretion of lactic acid in the muscles. This results in an oxygen debt at the end of every set, and a resultant need to breathe heavily and for extended periods.

Perhaps not so surprisingly, the most effective breathing technique is just to breathe naturally. Choose your initial pace for the reps and don’t think about your breathing. If you feel yourself needing to take shorter or deeper breaths, listen to your body and don’t try to artificially control it.

The only alcoholic drink that provides any healthy substance is red wine, as it contains anti-oxidants. However, there are much more calorie-efficient ways of bringing anti-oxidants into your diet. The main benefit of anti-oxidants is to people with high blood pressure and other heart-related conditions, which are not likely to affect bodybuilders in their prime. The fact that red wine provides anti-oxidants is usually used as an excuse to drink it.

Alcohol is also severely dehydrating, which is highly detrimental to any exercise regiment. Additionally, it also prevents the body from absorbing certain vitamins, which impedes your ability to add muscle mass.

Excessive drinking is especially damaging to any workout routine. If you drink so much that you have a headache the following morning, or so that you can’t remember the previous night, you will set yourself back by up to 7 days, due to the lack of sleep and dehydration. This means that if you drink heavily once a week, you will never work out at peak performance. If you can’t achieve peak performance, you are not straining your muscles hard enough to add muscle at any significant rate.

If you drink regularly, you are placing a considerable strain on your liver, as it needs to filter the toxins from the alcohol in order to prevent it from entering the blood stream. Due to this it is extremely important that you do not mix nutritional supplements (especially Creatine) with alcohol, as they both burden the filtration mechanisms of the liver. In extreme cases, over-use of alcohol and/or Creatine can result in liver failure and death, as the liver is not able to filter fast enough to prevent the poison from entering your blood.

This is incorrect. You can work out seven days a week as strenuously as you can and stick to the healthiest food and you still will not see results in just a few months. Rarely will somebody be an actual hardgainer. It is more likely that they are completely normal but just have unrealistic expectations. Muscle growth is a very slow process and you will need at least a year to achieve noticeable gain. Bodybuilding is a marathon, not a sprint, so make sure to pace yourself as you will not reap the benefits for quite some time.

The other misconception that these supposed hardgainers carry with them is that they can modify their diet to bulk up. Increasing your calorie and protein intake beyond what your body is able to process will not build muscle – it will only make you fat.

When you embark on a journey to gain muscle and lose fat, make sure you know how to keep track of your progress. If you use only the bathroom scales as an indication then you will not be able to tell if the change in weight is due to a difference in muscle, fat or water weight. In addition to the scales, you need to use an instrument that is able to measure body fat percentage, such as a caliper. Ideally, your weight should slowly increase on the bathroom scales, and the amount of fat under your skin should decrease over the months. This means you are losing fat and gaining muscle.

Don’t buy any products that promise faster gains – they don’t work. Once again, there are no shortcuts in bodybuilding. Have patience and enjoy the journey, that’s the only way you’re going to stick with it long enough to see results.

Use a Towel

When working out on any machine, or lying on any bench, make sure to use a towel to separate your sweat from the surface. Using a piece of equipment that is covered in sweat is not conducive to a pleasant gym session.

Don’t Hog

When you rest, get up and allow others to jump in before your next set. Don’t sit resting on a machine, as this is time in which someone else could be doing something useful. If someone is standing close to your workout area, be aware of them and offer to change places between each set.

Keep Your Mouth Shut

Don’t shout or laugh with your friends in the gym. You’re there to work, not have a good time. You’re disturbing other people’s concentration.

Also don’t offer unsolicited advice to people – nobody likes this. You may very well know a more effective way of performing the exercise, but nobody asked you, so keep your guidance to those who ask for it.

Don’t approach women on the gym floor looking for a date – it’s not a singles bar, and she’s there to work out.

Finally, although it is advisable to exhale strongly at each rep, it’s not necessary to moan and scream like a woman in labour.

Put it Back

This is an obvious one: when you’re done with a set of weights, put them back where you found them. Don’t just leave them lying next to where you were using them, or it will take the next guy much longer to find them.

It is true that a week of rest is sometimes necessary to facilitate muscle growth – but only if you have been overtraining. If you work out with a normal intensity and maintain a healthy diet, you will not get any benefit from a week of rest, as your body is getting what it needs. However, if you target the same muscle groups too frequently, you do not give it a chance to recover between workouts. This means that the micro tears in the muscle fibres are chronically present. If you reach this state it means you are overtraining, and you require a week to heal before your next weight lifting session. Symptoms of overtraining include fatigue and decreased performance in the gym.

Therefore, whilst it is true that a week of rest can give results, this is only the case if you were working out incorrectly by overtraining to begin with. You will never require the fabled rest week if you are allowing your muscles enough time to recover between consecutive workouts.

The most effective way of dealing with shoulder injuries is prevention. This involves building strength in your shoulders and maintaining good form during upper body workouts. For instance, the bench press exerts a lot of stress on the shoulders, and it is therefore important to complement the bench press with military press and shoulder raises. If you work on the strength in your shoulders you will find that you will be able to bench a lot more weight. This is due to the fact that the body places an injury-preventing limit on how much you can bench if your shoulders do not have enough strength. Once your shoulders gain strength, you will be able to translate more of the weight to your chest muscles during the bench press, without being limited by weak shoulders.

As with all other exercises, it is very important to warm up the shoulders prior to any chest or back workout. Start your first set with a low weight in order to prepare the muscle group for the oncoming load.

Lat pulldowns and bench press workouts are particularly prone to shoulder injuries:

Lat Pulldown

One of the most common mistakes people make with the lat pulldown is to bring the bar down behind their neck. This places an immense strain on the rotator cuffs (as well as the neck) and will sooner or later cause injury. The bar should always be brought down in front of the head and make contact with the chest halfway between the collarbone and the nipples. In addition, you should lean backwards while the bar is being pulled down and keep your eyes fixed upward at 45 degrees.

Dumbbell Bench Press/Fly

These exercises can cause shoulder injuries if the dumbbells are brought down further than the horizontal with the bench. This is because this extra angle puts a downward strain on the shoulders and can even result in dislocation. The extra range will also not do any good because the chest muscles are no longer engaged at that inclination. Furthermore, at the end of the dumbbell press or fly you should not stretch your arms to bring the weights to the floor as this can cause shoulder tears. Instead you should sit up with the weights and bring them to the floor with a straight back and bent knees.

If you are already injured then it is of utmost importance not to place any strain on the shoulders. Work only on your core and legs until you are fully recovered. You should also consider a shoulder-strengthening program before heading back into your regular routine, in order to equalize the strength in your upper body and get a more effective workout.

Every time one of your feet hits the ground the impact sends a shock wave up your leg and into your spine. This is why marathon runners commonly develop knee and lower back problems. In order to minimize damage you need to obtain proper running shoes and perhaps ask your physician about orthopedic knee support straps. You should try to take deliberately long strides while running so that you land on your heels. The stride should then ‘roll’ from your heel to the ball of your foot where it is lifted off the ground again. This rolling motion will translate some of the vertical momentum into horizontal momentum – reducing the stress on the rest of the body. Also make sure you run with a straight back, your head up and your eyes fixed ahead of you. This way you will run as efficiently as possible and reduce the negative effects.

However, no matter how good your shoes and your technique are, you will never eliminate the impact felt at each stride to zero during running. This is why you might want to consider switching to the cross trainer. This is an effective simulation of a running motion, but with none of the impact stress. In addition, you are working your arms, which means you are targeting more muscle groups and burning more calories. You can also vary the motion on a cross trainer from a cross-country skiing stride to a stair-climbing stride. In summary, cross training will yield all the benefits of running, without any of the negative aspects.

Planning an effective diet for weight loss is not as hard as most people think. Your daily intake of food should include plenty of high fiber selections such as fresh fruits and fresh vegetables. In addition to these, you should also eat two or more moderate portions of high quality carbohydrates such as whole grains. The meat that you eat should reflect leaner selections. Chicken breast, turkey breast and fish are preferable to fatty red meat, however you can still continue to consume these from time to time in moderate portions.

A little more difficult than eating the right foods, is giving the wrong foods up. These include fast foods and foods that are prepackaged or that come ready-made to eat in any other way. These selections should be eliminated entirely from the diet as they, more often than not, lack sufficient nutrients to justify their high calorific content and tend to pack on the pounds. Your goal should instead be to eat foods that remain as close as possible to their natural state. For instance, a boiled potato is a much better selection than a potato that has been peeled, sliced and fried in oil to a crisp.

Drinking plenty of water can have a phenomenal impact on your efforts to trim down and reshape your physique. Water helps to flush out fat and toxins and can even help to lessen the appearance of cellulite when consumed in significant quantities. Best of all, it is a beverage that contains no additional calories which means that no matter how much you drink, you can still lose weight.

You will need to perform cardio exercises for a minimum of thirty minutes per session, no less than three days per week. These can include running, jogging or any other activity that promotes sweating and significantly increases your heart rate. Even walking can prove challenging enough as long as you maintain a brisk pace. In addition to these exercises you will need to engage in strength training as well to tone up your muscles. Lunges, squats or other toning workouts that use hand and leg weights can be beneficial to this end. You should perform your strength training activities for no less than fifteen minutes per day, three times per week.

Those who have long been battling the bulge will find that they are able to enjoy visible results after several weeks of healthy eating and increased physical activity. Should there be less than stellar results in the abdominal area, however, there are numerous cosmetic solutions that may prove helpful. Tummy tuck is one very effective remedy for stubborn deposits of fat in the stomach region. As many individuals workout more and eat better they often continue to struggle with the appearance of their midsection. While a better diet and more exercise is the most effective way to lose weight, it does not always ensure that the weight will come off of this common trouble zone. While continuing your commitment to diet and exercise you can also begin to speak with local tummy tuck surgeons who offer weight loss services in order to learn more about this trusted method for trimming the waist.

The reason this myth is so prevalent is because the external symptoms seen when a bodybuilder stops working out seem to agree with the idea that muscle turns into fat. If you work out for long enough you will build muscle mass through weight lifting and lose fat through cardio and a healthy diet. If you then stop this routine, a number of things will happen. The muscles you built will no longer be of any use to your body and it will begin to break it down and absorb it. The body does not keep excess muscle as it is just extra weight and requires extra energy. You will also likely start to gain fat as you are not doing regular cardio. If you start eating badly in addition you will gain fat at a faster pace. This may even happen rather naturally, as bodybuilders tend to become depressed when they stop a regular workout routine. This depression may result in an increased appetite. This in turn will cause an increased food intake and thereby a faster fat gain. This positive feedback loop is difficult to get out of and the best way to avoid it is to not stop working out.

We can see that the above processes in combination may look like the muscle is ‘turning into’ fat when you stop a workout routine. However, this is not the case, as there are two simultaneous and independent processes going on – the loss of muscle and the increase in body fat percentage.