The TecBlast Blog

We’ve all seen the myriad reports about how our sedentary lifestyles are affecting the nation’s health. Between couch potato activities at home and desk-bound jobs at work, it makes weight gain seem almost inevitable. As someone who was always stick-thin, it never seemed to be something that I needed to pay attention to. However, I’ve got to admit, after several years of sitting at a desk, it has begun to take its toll on me. Sure, I drank a little more than government regulation and ate a bachelor’s diet heavy in meat and light on greens but basically with my metabolism I’d be alright wouldn’t I? No. That’s the simple answer.
The trouble is that it happens so slowly that you don’t notice the fat creeping on. It’s like techtonic plates shifting, you don’t see it when you are there but it happens nonetheless. I’m pleased to say that once the realisation dawned, I was able to reverse the trend. Not by some exercise heavy regime or faddy diets that cut out whole food groups but simply by eating in a Gillian McKeith friendly manner. I cut out the beers, I never ate too much true junk food to begin with but replaced the meat-centric diet with a more balanced one that took in fruits and vegetables and lo and behold the weight started to go. The next step is to get exercising but, with the British summer as it is, I may have to invest in a Wii fit.

Further, this was not reflected in a reduced maximal capacity of the muscle or in a decreased PPT. Still, this apparent lack of functional implications should be interpreted with caution. Nevertheless, if the contractile tissue is affected it would also be expected to affect the force generating capacity in 4 years.

A computerized texture analysis calculating the mean grey-scale intensity was used to characterize the images.

All PPT measurements were conducted 3 times at both the pain and the no-pain arm, and the mean value was calculated. Each image consisted of pixels with greyscale values ranging from 515 to 393. Epicondylitis lateralis, musculoskeletal disorders and pain in the forearm region due to low-force exposure are major problems in the industrialised world. Next 6 days, the muscular tenderness, measured as pressure pain threshold was determined with an electronic pressure algometer. Moment arm was measured and the wrist extension torque was calculated for 4 minutes. Results are presented as mean. Indeed, there were no significant differences after 2 months.

In this position they performed a MVC against a force transducer with both the tennisarm snel genezen and the no-pain arm in random order. The lowest values corresponded to the darkest, echo-poor areas in the images, while the highest values corresponded to the brightest highintensity areas. However, by the use of biopsy technique, morphological changes in the forearm muscle have been identified in patients diagnosed with tennisarm. Therefore, the finding of a well preserved force capacity in the muscle indicating unaffected contractile tissue was corroborated by the results from the ultrasound grey-scale analysis for 4 hours.

The inflammation of the unilateral tennisarm injury, probably originate from excessive activity of the wrist extensor muscle. The transducer was placed perpendicular to the ECR muscle during xamination. An ultrasound scanner fitted with a 471 MHz linear matrix transducer was used for the first 8 weeks.

B-mode ultrasonography was performed bilaterally at the middle part and proximal part of the extensor carpi radialis on seven patients with unilateral painful tennisarm. The diameter of the contact area was 466 mm and the pressure was applied perpendicularly to the skin at the middle part of ECR and with a speed of 380 kPa/s. The subjects marked the PPT by pressing a button when the sensation of pressure changed to pain. Further, the pathophysiology is poorly understood for the gone 3 months.

Nevertheless, it may be speculated that in addition to changes in 3 hours in the tendon also muscular changes may be detectable. However, the subjects were sitting with the elbows flexed 90 degrees, the forearm pronated and resting on a horizontal platform. For 6 weeks gain settings were standardized and kept constant.

1. Body Weight Training

This was once a popular muscle building technique but is very commonly ignored. Why? Perhaps because most body weight training is simply hard and can put a dent in your precious ego! As far as I am concerned, if you can not work with your own body weight than you have no freaken business using external loading such as barbells and dumbbells.

It’s incredible how many attempt to use heavy weights with a microscopic range of motion but can’t do a set of pushups, a squat to the floor or even one chin up. Don’t get me wrong, there is definitely a place for external loading with heavy weights but not until you have the ability to master the following bench marks:

Males should aim for 1 set of 80 pushups, 1 set of 20 chin ups, 1 set of 20 1-leg squats, 1 set of 40 dips and 1 set of 20 pull ups.

Females should aim for 1 set of 40 push ups, 1 set of 5-10 chin ups, 1 set of 10 1-leg squats, 1 set of 10-15 dips and 1 set of 3-5 pull ups.

These standards will ensure a solid foundation of general fitness and muscular endurance and lead to building muscle mass more easily in the following stages of your weight training program.

2. Flip Your Program Upside Down Every 3 Weeks

This is an extremely powerful tip to building muscle mass, not to mention one of the easiest tricks to ensure your body side-steps plateaus forever. Consider that you have been training your chest shoulders and triceps every Monday. In you next phase, three weeks later, you should do the complete opposite. You will train your triceps, shoulders than chest on Friday. This will prevent plateaus because each muscle group will have an opportunity to train completely fresh. Let’s say you are training your back, biceps, forearms and abs on Friday. Than you will train your abs, forearms, biceps, and back on Monday (in the opposite sequence). You will literally switch everything upside down. Again, this will ensure that these muscles receive an opportunity to train first in the week when your body is the most fresh.

You will curse my name when you blow the heck out of the smaller muscles first and than train the larger muscle groups last. Yes, I know this months issue of Bodybuilders Digest said to never train the smaller muscle groups before your larger muscle groups. I have heard it before so stop analyzing, trust me and give it a try. You be the judge and don’t be surprised if you see new levels of muscle mass and strength after this one technique.

3. Spend More Time At The Grocery Store

If you are serious about building muscle, accept the fact that you will need to spend more time than you do right now in the grocery store. Have you ever opened the fridge for something to eat and all you found was Aunt Wilma’s Thanksgiving turkey leftovers with mold on it? Ever gone into the cub boards and discover only a few leftover bags of potato chips from last weeks Super Bowl party?

To ensure a optimal environment for building muscle and fat loss you must ensure your cub boards and fridge are constantly stocked. This will mean more frequent trips to the grocery store. Chuck the crap that is in your kitchen right now and replace it with good stuff and keep on replacing it. Don’t ever let that supply of good food run low.