Muscle Building Ideas is a site devoted to those aspects of health and fitness which are associated with building muscle. Muscle building is relevant to bodybuilders, to athletes, to slimming, and to rehabilitation from injury.  Anyone concerned with exercising after abdominal surgery may find useful references in Some More Sites.  Links in the text on this page will take you directly to an appropriate page on this site, but if you don't want your reading interrupted you can return to the text link or navigate using the menu at the top of the page.

Athletes involved in a wide variety of sports build muscle in order to improve their strength, speed or acceleration, and the particular muscle building technique which they employ must be chosen to develop principally the types of muscle fibres most appropriate to their sport. Athletes involved in endurance events are concerned not so much with building muscle as with training muscles to maximise energy efficiency.

Bodybuilders compete by building muscle and showing off their resulting muscular development, but to be successful they must also reduce their body fat to a minimum, in order better to display their physical development.  Their needs are discussed particularly in muscle building routine and muscle building workout, but the guidance in muscle building diet is also relevant.  Constructive advice can also be found in muscle building steroids.

The principle of muscle building to increase the basal metabolism of the body leads to the concept of fat burning muscle building, in which body fat can be reduced efficiently by combining an increased basal metabolism with a restricted calorie intake. If a reduction of calorie intake is the only change made, the body compensates for it by reducing the basal metabolism, and little fat reduction is achieved. By adding muscle building to this regime, in combination with a reduced calorie intake, the basal metabolism is maintained and effective fat reduction is achieved.

Another group with a need for muscle building are paraplegics: individuals suffering from a spinal injury that has caused total or severe loss of control of the lower limbs. These people require to work to develop their upper body strength so that they can enjoy the maximum degree of mobility without the use of their legs. Additionally, if they retain some residual degree of mobility in the lower part of the body, they will work at muscle building to maximise such muscle strength as remains. Quadriplegics, who have substantially lost the use of all four limbs, will also work to develop any remaining muscular movement.

Correct nutrition is an important requirement for effective muscle building: essentially an adequate protein content to provide the amino-acids from which the body can synthesise muscle; protein drinks may help in this respect.  In the case of athletes and bodybuilders, sufficient carbohydrate also to meet the demands of the exercise which they must undertake in order to achieve the muscle building which they desire. The requirement for slimming and weight loss is that a calorie deficit must be maintained which is adequate to achieve an appropriate rate of weight reduction, without compromising health. Such a calorie deficit is enhanced by a muscle building programme. All groups require to moderate their fat intake, but must remain aware of the need for sufficient dietary fat to transport the fat soluble vitamins from the food to the body.

Consideration should also be given to the desirability of using vitamin and mineral supplements, if for any reason an individual’s diet is found to be inadequate for that person’s needs in muscle building.