Getting to know your muscles and how to get rid of pain

It is a fact that there are about 650 muscles in the human body which comprise about half of our total body weight. So, whenever you feel some pain in your muscles, whether due to a hard gym workout, a basketball game, hard labor, or due to an unexpected muscle injury, make sure you pay attention. Do not ignore this for it could be a warning sign that something is already seriously wrong with your body. Immediate action, usually via consultation with a doctor, will be a great help in preventing additional injuries or lessening the complications of an existing injury.
The Musculatory System
Muscles give form to our skeletal system and allows our body to perform voluntary and involuntary movements. It also helps in regulating body temperature and controls blood flow. Muscles are made up of thousands of fibers that enable them to contract, either to shorten or lengthen, and produce movements. In order for a muscle fiber to attach itself to a bone, it blends itself w ith connective tissues known as tendons.
There are three main types of muscles. The muscles that are attached to the skeleton which allows us to perform movements are called Skeletal Muscles, or Striated Muscles. Skeletal muscles are considered voluntary muscles which means you have to first think of contracting them and the nervous system tells them to do so. They can also perform two types of contractions. The Twitch, which is characterized by short and single contractions, and the Tetanus, which involves long and sustained contractions.
The second type of muscles are called the Smooth Muscles. These are found in the walls of blood vessels and internal organs such as the digestive system, bladder, airways and the uterus. It provides a series of wavelike contractions known as peristalsis and has the ability to stretch and maintain tension for a long period of time. Smooth muscles move involuntarily, which means that it can contract without conscious effort. These muscles cannot be controlled by your thoughts.
The third type of muscle is called the Cardiac Muscle, which as the term implies, is found in the heart. Being an involuntary muscle, it contracts by itself without the aid of the brain. Like smooth muscles, cardiac muscles can stretch in a limited way with short and single contractions, but still have the force of a skeletal muscle.
Sore Muscles and Muscle Injuries
Muscles become sore when they haven't been used for a time being and a heavy task to contract them would cause some strain to the fibers, ligaments, and tendons. Or when the muscle is given a task that is quite new such as a first-timer in the gym who had just finished his dumbbell workouts. The used muscle would feel pain, sore and strained due to some microscopic tears in the muscle fibers and tissues. This trauma is a natural reaction of muscles that is why rest is advised to those who workout their muscles in for them to grow bigger, stro nger and firmer.
However, if you are experiencing excruciating pain, stop whatever it is you're doing and have it checked right away. Muscle strain injuries occur more often with eccentric muscle contractions due to the great force produced by such contraction. Tears occur near the muscle-tendon junction and/or the muscle fibers themselves are torn. Violent force and prolonged use can cause tears in the muscles leading to injuries.
Treatment and Medication
Skeletal muscles have the impressive ability to regenerate itself on a daily basis as well as in response to injury. However, some damaged muscles may not become as strong as the way it was before the injury. Healing depends on the severity of the injury.
First aid treatment such as ice therapy can serve as a natural pain relief. Other forms of natural pain relief may entail the use of medicinal herbs, liniments, or therapeutic massage. Continued application of ice to swelling muscle area for three days after the injury helps a lot to decrease inflammation. Make sure ice is not directly applied to the skin. Gradual rehabilitation is needed with the help of stretching exercises until the strength is revived. While there are still no conclusive evidence that specific natural pain relief products are effective, many of these remedies had already been in use for thousands of years.
While undergoing therapy, muscle relaxant medications and anti-inflammatory drugs may help to ease the pain of the injury but it is a given that we must seek medical advice before taking any of these drugs. More often that not, anti-inflammatory drugs are doctor-prescribed and cannot be obtained over-the-counter without the authority of a physician.

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Gain Weight Fast & Muscle With High Frequency, Pt.1

It seems that when it comes to designing bodybuilding programs to gain weight and build muscle mass, all of the attention is placed on the amount of sets, reps, and exercises to perform.
Yes, these are big factors to consider when following a workout routine.
However, there's still one factor left out of the equation most of the time....and it's a big one, if not the biggest!
I'm talking about training frequency......the amount of times you train the same muscle group within a specific amount of time (usually per week).
99% of all weight training routines now-a-days recommend that you train a muscle once a week.
That means that if you trained your chest on Monday you don't train it again until next Monday.
The basis for this is that if you train a specific muscle intensely you must give it 5-6 days of complete rest in order for enough time to have gone by to allow that muscle group to repair, recover, and grow from the workout.
Funny, because I used believe this as well.
When you look at bodybuilding history, this whole "train a muscle only once a week" philosophy hasn't been around since day one.
No.
Decades ago, back in the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, and 80's the majority of bodybuilders trained each muscle way more than just once a week.
They would train each muscle several times per week, with a higher amount of volume and frequency (but we're just going to focus on frequency in this article).
And what's interesting about this is that many feel today that the physiques of those decades are of much higher quality than those of today.
Sure, individuals like Mike Mentzer popularized cutting back drastically on training frequency, but it really wasn't until the mid-80's and 90's that training a muscle only once per week became the norm in bodybuilding circles.
However, since the masses began to cut down training a muscle to just once per week, have we seen major progress in people's muscular development and muscle weight gain???
Absolutely not!
Because we've heard and read it thousands of times over the past 2 decades we all tend to think that training a muscle more than once a week will surely lead to overtraining, especially if you don't use anabolic steroids.
But is this really the case?
Before we get into specifics as to the optimum training frequency to build the most amount of muscle mass at the quickest rate without overtraining or burning out, we need to see if in fact it's true that any more than once every week or once every 5-6 days would lead to the over-taxing of muscle group.
Take a real close look at the medical references cited in articles that recommend to only train a muscle once a week ("infrequently", as the proponents say).
Every time a study is mentioned that supposedly had several groups of individuals training, one training less than the other, whenever they give the results of those groups, it is always tracking who gained more strength.........NOT who gained more weight and muscle size.
There's a huge difference between the two.....gaining strength or building size.
And no, the two don't go hand in hand (more on this in a future article).
Sure, these studies may prove that training "infrequently" may be more efficient for building muscular strength (...and that in itself isn't really true either, as I'll also write about later on), but it doesn't prove that it is more efficient for building size....growth.
The problem with evaluating what most articles / weight training routines recommend is that they are all going off of the pursuit of strength instead of size.
It seems to them that as long as you are gaining strength, then you must be gaining size. Right???
Hah! What a joke. Anyone that has ever worked out for a significant amount of time knows that you can get stronger and stronger every week, yet still look the same in the mirror.
So, first off in our "optimal frequency evalulation" is that we cannot go off of any of these scientific studies, nor can we conclude that just because training a muscle once a week may help you get stronger it will also make you bigger.
Real life experience has proven time and time again that this isn't how it works in the "real world".
Be looking out for part 2 of this article, as we'll go deeper into this very imporant topic for all of us looking to gain muscle weight and build mass.

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Essential Bodybuilding Supplements

Essential bodybuilding supplements are an area which is often overlooked. However much time you spend in the gym, you still need to be nourishing your body with the right nutrients, otherwise you can fall into the trap of damaging your joints and even programming your body to digest its own muscles. Here in this article we show you how to use essential bodybuilding supplements.
Tip 1
There is no doubt that the essential bodybuilding supplement is protein. Your muscles are built from protein, and a regular intake is necessary to ensure that the muscles are properly repaired following your gym work. Protein is a nutrient which the body cannot create for itself, and there are no alternatives that can be used instead. Your muscles will not grow to the size you would like if you are not taking in enough protein.
Tip 2
Another essential bodybuilding supplement is one which you will need only if your life is extremely busy, or if you are traveling. These are Meal Replacements. Meal Replacements are powders which are dissolved into milk or water, and they provide some of the nutrients that you will be missing if you can't eat your regular diet. Essential nutrients like protein, carbohydrates, fatty acids, vitamins and minerals are provided, and quickly absorbed into your body. Nobody would ever go to a posh restaurant to "eat" one of these, but they are extremely useful in maintaining a steady food intake when you are busy.
Tip 3
One essential bodybuilding supplement, at least for many starting out on their bodybuilding journeys, is weight gain powder. As with the Meal Replacements, this is dissolved in liquid. It gives the body a huge boost of carbs and calories which will help the novice bodybuilder put on weight. Often those just beginning bodybuilding find the first few pounds difficult to gain.
Tip 4
Pro biotics. There are those who question that these really are an essential bodybuilding supplement, but the most successful and effective weight lifters use them without hesitation. Pro biotics contain bacteria which help your stomach digest food. More of the nutrients you take in are absorbed by the body, and fewer are wasted.
Essential bodybuilding supplements is an area which can confuse the beginner to bodybuilding, so this guide is designed to start you off properly.

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