Mass Gaining for Beginners
So you want to gain muscle. Great! You need to get started. The more time you spend thinking about getting started is the more time you’ve wasted. Perhaps you’re searching for the perfect routine and diet. If that’s the case, then listen. There is no perfect routine or diet. Quit trying to come up with one – you’re wasting your time. The perfect routine and diet is one that is constantly changing, just like your body is. You cannot adequately provide for your body’s changing needs by trying to come up with one routine and diet that will best serve you forever. It takes trial and error to really discover what works best for your body, but starting with the basics will get you well on your way. If you want to gain muscle, you need to eat more. You need to be eating 6-7 small-to-medium sized meals per day. Keep track of what you are eating, and keep slowly increasing it until you see a change in bodyweight (by no more than 500 calories per day). Eat protein with every meal (you need to be getting at least 1g of protein per pound of bodyweight every day – so a 160lbs person should eat roughly 160g of protein per day), and limit the amount of fat you are taking in, especially saturated fat. You don’t need to worry too much about macro-nutrient ratios when you are trying to gain mass – just make sure you are getting plenty of complex carbohydrates and protein at every meal, with sprinklings of healthy fats (nuts, extra virgin olive oil). Carbs are important – you aren’t going to get bigger without lots of them.
I’m going to walk you through a sample diet and several different sample training routines. Let’s get started…
New Music WIP
I haven’t posted any new music in a while, so here is a preview of something I’ve been working on. At least this piece is in-time better than usual:
Slug It – 3.8 MB MP3 320 kbps
I have no idea why I named it that. The name should change.
Please excuse the premature cutoff of some samples near the end of the piece – particularly the strings and drums! Also, if I ever finish this piece, I plan for it to be much longer.
Nerdiness vs. Athleticism
Nerd or athlete. Smart or strong. Mind or body. So many people talk as if you have to choose one or the other. Sure, chances are you’re always going to better at one or the other, but you only live once. Develop both!
It seems to me that some “nerds” choose to completely ignore their physical development, just as some “jocks” choose to completely ignore their intellectual development. Some nerds view their bodies as things to transport their heads around. They live in their heads, limiting themselves from an entire range of physical perception and experience that they sometimes seem to grudgingly envy, as if it has somehow been denied them. On the other hand, some jocks view their heads as merely things to control their bodies. They live in their bodies, without higher thought. Like animals, physical perception and experience is all that matters to them – intellectual pursuits rarely entire their mind. Like nerds, it seems they too sometimes grudgingly envy the abilities of their counterparts, the “nerds.”
Your mind and body are inseparably connected – one will not function without the other. If the ability of one is damaged, the other is damaged, and if the ability of one is improved, the other is improved. Exercise is not only healthy for your body, but also for your mind. It makes you think more quickly and clearly. Likewise, taking the time to hone your mental abilities certainly would not be a detriment when perusing physical activities. Rock climbing, for example, is as much a mind game as it a physical one. Thus, training your weak side to a certain degree – instead of not training it at all – may actually help with your strong side as well. Read more…
Destroy Depression with Exercise
Does he look depressed to you? I thought not. (Check out TricksTutorials.com, it's awesome.)
We all get depressed from time to time. It’s just human nature. Stress is normal as well; in fact, stress can be good, because it is necessary in order to keep you motivated, alert, and prepared for danger. It’s no secret that stress and depression are linked. Likewise, the mind and body are linked – if one is affected by something, the other will often be as well. Stay stressed too long and you can develop a condition known as distress, which disturbs the internal equilibrium of your body. Your mental problems will start to manifest themselves physically. In other words, all that crap that’s bothering you is damaging your body. You could develop any of the following conditions:
- Depression, Anxiety, and Panic Attacks
- Headaches
- Upset Stomach
- Chest Pain
- High Blood Pressure
- Sexual Dysfunction
- Sleeping Problems
- Emotional Problems
- Worsened or increased chances of heart disease, lung problems, cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, accidents, suicide, and more (Chakraburtty)
Luckily, this mind-body link works both ways. According to a publication at Harvard University’s website, “A review of studies stretching back to 1981 concluded that regular exercise can improve mood in people with mild to moderate depression. It also may play a supporting role in treating severe depression.” Read more…
De-Load for Greater Success
Training is hard. There’s no way around that. But it’s even harder when you are trying to train through a plateau, or are training with accumulated stress and small injuries. Your eagerness to get through your plateau may be resulting in over-training, and thus only making the plateau worse. How about that tightness and instability you develop in your hamstrings after weeks of doing heavy deadlifts and squats? Keep it up and you could get a ruptured hamstring. Or maybe you’re feeling other small aches and pains elsewhere in your body. Anyone who trains regularly is going to accumulate fatigue in their body – it’s just natural. You might think that if you’re not reaching your goals, you need to push yourself harder. The reality is that you need to learn how to listen to your body.
If you’re having trouble with a plateau or are suffering from accumulated stress injuries, it may be time to initiate a “de-load” or “back off” period. This simply means reducing your training volume or intensity for a specific amount of time, such as a week or for one cycle of your training split routine, however long that is.
What De-Loading Does
- Gives you a mental break from intense lifting and lets your central nervous system recover
- Allows your connective tissues – joints, tendons, ligaments, etc. – to recover
- Reduces the risk of or helps recover from over-training (also known as under-recovery)
- Helps you get over plateaus and prepares you for further gains Read more…
Using Samples in Your Music is Not Cheating
This is a pretty common topic among modern-day computer musicians. In this day and age, so many people create music using samples and loops for the basis of their songs. Is this “cheating”?
I don’t think so. Where do you draw the line, anyway? If you use a microphone to record a set of drums being played live, then should it be “cheating” because you did not build the drums yourself? Come on. Besides, if you have pro recording equipment, then the recording of the drum beat played live versus the drum beat played using samples isn’t going to sound very different, as long as you use the same kind of drums and play them the same way. Using samples of recorded instruments isn’t a lot different from just recording instruments to begin with – especially with these crazy, multi-sampled libraries of today, where each note / drum has multiple recordings and nuances to make the beat sound more “real.” Add to that the degree to which you can alter the sound using effects, and you can really make the sound “your own.” The biggest problem with recording things yourself is simply that in order to get professional results it’s going to take a lot more time, effort, money, and equipment. Don’t get me wrong – nothing beats the real thing, but if all you’re doing is trying to lay down a good beat, why not use samples? In this day and age, it’s almost expected. Read more…
Beginner’s Guide to Making Music Using Computers
This article was originally written in July of 2008.
Please note that I’ve removed all links from this article (they just led to pages of zZounds.com).
HARDWARE
The Computer:
First of all, you’re going to need a decent computer — as good of one as you can afford. It doesn’t have to be a supercomputer, but you can’t have too good of a computer; especially when you get into the more advanced applications. Nearly all aspects of the computer will factor in, including the CPU power, the amount of RAM, the speed of the hard drive(s) and how much space they can hold, the quality of the sound card, etc… For audio creation, your sound card will be one of the most important components of your computer. You should get a sound card built to be used for audio creation, preferably from a company such as Creative Labs (or even more preferably, from their “Pro”-level subsidiary company, E-MU). M-Audio also makes good sound cards for this purpose. Read more…
Metal Gear Solid 4: Mad Gekko Disease
This article was originally written in November of 2006.
Please note that I no longer feel as strongly about this as I did back in 2006. I just don’t care as much… although I still hate AC!D and those “digital comics.” You will find a mini-review of MGS4 at the bottom of this page, which was written in 2008. MGS4 is a pretty good game… not as good as MGS1, but none of them ever will be. Anyway, hopefully you’ll get a laugh or two out of this article, if nothing else:
Let’s sum up the main installments to the series: Metal Gear, 1987 – the original stealth action game. Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, 1990 – some say it’s the best of the series. Metal Gear Solid, 1998 – a classic in the history of gaming. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, 2001 – a highly anticipated game; a tad disappointing to some. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, 2004 – a high-rated hit… that could have been better.
Enter Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots! Stunning new graphics, and a continuation of the intriguing story. But what’s this? Snake looks ancient now, he’s got a stupid-looking mustache, and he’s dying?! That’s right, folks, he looks like DICK VAN DYKE. I’ll prove it to you:
Record Any Audio Your Computer is Outputting
Have you ever wanted to record the audio that your soundcard is outputting, whatever it is? Maybe you’ve Googled the name of a song, and noticed that there are tons of sites (like iLike, Rhapsody, etc.) that show up in the top of the Google searches and let you play the entire song in high-quality, for free, right there in a pop-up window. Of course, the next time you listen to the song, it will only be a 30-second demo (although this can be worked around by simply clearing your web browser’s cache – boom, you can listen to the whole song again). Well, if you simply record what your sound card is outputting, you can record that song that is playing into an MP3 file and save it on your PC. Cool, huh? And then you can go to iTunes or eBay and actually purchase the album because you like the song so much (hint, hint). I’m not trying to support illegal music downloading or anything – but this is a cool trick that has tons of uses. Read more…
Make Money Online by Talking About Making Money Online
Make money online! Those three words are like gold to the eyes of those who are looking for a quick, easy, and steady way to make money so they can quit the dead-end jobs that they hate. There are so many ways to make money online… If you are innovative and persistent, and hopefully have some programming skills, then you may eventually have a flash of insight and come up with the next Google, Facebook, or Twitter. Or you could – with a lot of patience – start a blog and get it popular enough that you make lots of money through ads alone. Or you could become a YouTube celebrity by making videos where you talk to yourself in front of a camera and act insane (who knows – one might even go viral). You could make money through any combination of these things. Read more…