Testosterone is one of the most crucial hormones needed to build muscles. It can also be a limiting factor as it can determine how much your actual muscles can grow.
If you are able to increase the amount of testosterone your body produces, there are a variety of benefits to your body, including:
Increasing your muscle size and strength
Decreasing your body’s fat levels
Improve your mood
Decreasing your overall and your bad cholesterol
To work on naturally increasing your testosterone, try these 9 steps;
1) Use compound exercises in your workouts.
Compound exercises refer to a great deal of basic workouts such as squats, deadlifts, bench presses and chin ups. Each of these basic workouts place a great deal of stress on your muscle groups, forcing them to release testosterone.
2) Give Your Workouts 100% Effort
In order to gain the best effects from your efforts, give every workout as much as you can as it is the stress that you place on your muscles that will help them to grow.
3) Don’t Forget Your Legs
A bunch of people only train their chest, or they spend a small amount of time developing their legs. Don’t forget your legs- workout your entire body. The legs are a very large muscle group, and training them will actually help your upper body grow.
4) Essential Fatty Acids (EFAs)
Be sure to add a high volume of essential fatty acids to your daily diet as they are a great way to boost your own body’s natural testosterone levels. Even if you are trying to restrict calories, consuming healthy fats should not be a problem. NB: Fats from foods like: avocado pear, vegetables. Omega 6 & 9 rich foods.
5) Monitor Soy Intake
While there are many health benefits of soy, it can have a negative effect on testosterone production, so when possible work to avoid it in your diet.
6) Limit your consumption of alcohol
Alcohol has been shown to have quite a dramatic effect on testosterone levels, so try to limit your "binge drinking" nights and keep your alcohol consumption in moderation.
7) Eat Your Vegetables
The following vegetables are beneficial at naturally increasing testosterone, including: broccoli, cauliflower, radishes, turnips, cabbage and brussel sprouts.
8) Manage Your Personal Stress Levels
Increased stress levels can work to reduce your testosterone levels.
9) Go to Sleep
Too many people do not get enough sleep and a lack of sleep substantially reduce testosterone levels. Aim for 8 hours every night- even on weekends!
Remember that the higher your levels of testosterone, the easier it will be to pack on muscle, so be sure to follow these steps I've recommended!
Stress, you should know, increases the growth hormone which is necessary for muscle building, especially the tendons and ligaments. But for optimal build, there should be a hormonal balance.
Reducing the stress of the day prepares you both physically and mentally for your exercise. One way of doing that is called the' thymus tap'. A short video clip is attached to guide you through the process.
YouTube - Hepatitis C & AIDS Alternative Thymus Gland
This can help reduce stress also. Reduced stress can stimulate testosterone production.
Enjoy your muscle building exercises!
The gold hormone in muscle building, testosterone, is a hormone present more in the males than females. It's responsible for the male characteristics, especially, muscle formation. Again, research prove, in a consistant manner, that the level of serum testosterone is higher after a bout of demanding resistance training. That increase being affected by the amount of muscle mass stimulated, the training load and the level of intensity (again intensity refering to a %age of your 1RM).
Effect of the amount of muscle mass stimulated on serum testosterone
Findings all flood in the same direction as to say that the larger the amount of muscle mass is stimulated simultaneously, the more the testosterone level increase. You might have heard a trillion time that multi-joints exercises were better than isolation exercises to develop muscle mass and strength but without really knowing why.
Well this is one of the reasons: multi-joints exercise stimulate more testosterone production compared to single-joints movements. That's why doing heavy sets of squat will build you all around, because it shut your natural levels of testosterone through the roof!
For that reason the bulk of your program should be constituted of the basic, multi-joints movements, if you want more testosterone that is!
Yet despite that we see countless individuals doing endless hours of biceps curl, leg extension and the likes. Literaly wasting their time when they could be training productively!
Effect of the Rest between Sets on Serum Testosterone
Since a higher volume lead to more testosterone but longer training time lead to less there must be a time factor somewhere that will enable us to conciliate the two. Of course it's the time of rest between your sets.
To cut a long story short, many studies researched that variable, the most significant being by Kraemer et al.
This research consisted of two groups, one performing an hypertrophy workout made of sets of 10 RM with a minute of rest between each sets.
The other one was a strength training consisting of multiple sets of 5 RM with 3 minutes between each sets.
Both group shown significant increase in serum testosterone, the earlier showing a slightly higher increase.
That indicate that hypertrophy workout do increase testosterone level more than strength training. Also shorter rest periods seem to have the same effect.
If 1 minute seem to lead to bigger increase in testosterone level than 3 minutes I wouldn't recommand going below 1 minute in hope to increase the testosterone level even more, because by doing so you would greatly impair your short-term recovery and would have to decrease your load.
Points to remember
1-You should stick with as many multi-joints exercises as you can.
2-You should use a training load high enough to fully stimulate testosterone production.
3-Keep your reps in the 5-10RM range.
4-Keep your rest between sets in the 3-1 minute(s) range according to your intensity level.
5-For maximum testosterone release keep your time under tension between 40 and 70 seconds.
6-Train early in the morning if you can. Not to worry if you can't since th
Some facts
Testosterone is known as the male hormone, It is secreted by the testes and according to the most recent research it is so in a circadian (regular cycling) manner. Still according to these studies even if each individuals have slightly differant cycles it is the general rule that testosterone levels are at their highest in the morning. So training in the morning do have a slight advantage over working out later in the day.
As you probably already know testosterone is the muscle-building hormone. By synthesising proteins it rebuild the muscle fibers damaged by resistance training.
The amount of testosterone in your body is a limitating factor because you can't build more muscle if your testosterone levels are not high enough, that's why athletes who take synthetic testosterone (steroids) experience faster muscle growth, their limitating factor just disapeared.
But without plunging in the hell of performance enhancing drugs, there is a way to increase your level of testosterone naturally.
Effect of Weight Training on Serum Testosterone
Again, research prove, in a consistant manner, that the level of serum testosterone is higher after a bout of demanding resistance training. That increase being affected by the amount of muscle mass stimulated, the training load and the level of intensity (again intensity reffering to a %age of your 1RM).
Effect of the amount of muscle mass stimulated on serum testosterone
Findings all flood in the same direction as to say that the larger the amount of muscle mass is stimulated simultaneously, the more the testosterone level increase. You might have heard a trillion time that multi-joints exercises were better than isolation exercises to develop muscle mass and strength but without really knowing why.
Well this is one of the reasons: multi-joints exercise stimulate more testosterone production compared to single-joints movements. That's why doing heavy sets of squat will build you all around, because it shut your natural levels of testosterone through the roof!
For that reason the bulk of your program should be constituted of the basic, multi-joints movements, if you want more testosterone that is!
Yet despite that we see countless individuals doing endless hours of biceps curl, leg extension and the likes. Literaly wasting their time when they could be training productively!
Effect of the Rest between Sets on Serum Testosterone
Since a higher volume lead to more testosterone but longer training time lead to less there must be a time factor somewhere that will enable us to conciliate the two. Of course it's the time of rest between your sets.
To cut a long story short, many studies researched that variable, the most significant being by Kraemer et al.
This research consisted of two groups, one performing an hypertrophy workout made of sets of 10 RM with a minute of rest between each sets.
The other one was a strength training consisting of multiple sets of 5 RM with 3 minutes between each sets.
Both group shown significant increase in serum testosterone, the earlier showing a slightly higher increase.
That indicate that hypertrophy workout do increase testosterone level more than strength training. Also shorter rest periods seem to have the same effect.
If 1 minute seem to lead to bigger increase in testosterone level than 3 minutes I wouldn't recommand going below 1 minute in hope to increase the testosterone level even more, because by doing so you would greatly impair your short-term recovery and would have to decrease your load.
Points to remember
1-You should stick with as many multi-joints exercises as you can.
2-You should use a training load high enough to fully stimulate testosterone production.
3-Keep your reps in the 5-10RM range.
4-Keep your rest between sets in the 3-1 minute(s) range according to your intensity level.
5-For maximum testosterone release keep your time under tension between 40 and 70 seconds.
6-Train early in the morning if you can. Not to worry if you can't since this don't have a huge.
Foods that can increase testosterone levels in the body
Oysters are the best source of zinc. For long, they have been regarded as aphrodisiacs. Research shows that oysters are rich and abundant in zinc. Hence, they happen to be the perfect testosterone food that you can add to your diet. Another great source of foods that can enhance testosterone and are also rich in zinc is animal protein or red meat.
Eggs(boiled)
Vegetables eg cabbage
Figs and nuts in general
Beans can also be added to the diet
Heart Disease
Metabolic syndrome is a group of risk factors, including high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high cholesterol levels, and fat in the midsection that increase one's risk of heart disease and diabetes. Diet, exercise, and medications have been shown to improve metabolic syndrome and lower the risk of these complications.Currently a study called Prevención con Dieta Mediterránea (PREDIMEDD) has enrolled 9000 high-risk participants aged 55 to 80 years who are assigned to one of three interventions: Mediterranean diet with the provision of 1 L/week of virgin olive oil, Mediterranean diet with 30 g/day of mixed nuts, or a low-fat diet. This is a long-term, multi-center, randomized controlled clinical trial is designed to assess the effects of the Mediterranean diet on the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease. (Primary prevention means the prevention of a disease that the person has never had before. Compare this to secondary prevention which means preventing a person who is known to have high cholesterol and blockages in the arteries from having a heart attack).Already data from 1224 participants in the study have shown that adhering to a Mediterranean diet supplemented with mixed nuts appears to provide benefit to individuals with the metabolic syndrome. Investigators observed a reduced prevalence of metabolic syndrome at one year among individuals adhering to the Mediterranean diet plus mixed nuts compared with those adhering to the traditional Mediterranean diet alone."The novelty of our findings is that a positive effect on metabolic syndrome was achieved by diet alone, in the absence of weight loss or increased energy expenditure," wrote lead investigator Dr Jordi Salas-Salvadó (University of Rovira i Virgili, Reus, Spain) and colleagues in the December 8/22, 2008 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. At the beginning of this study, nearly 62% of the participants met the criteria for metabolic syndrome. After one year the rate of metabolic syndrome dropped by nearly 13.7% in the patients assigned to the Mediterranean diet plus mixed nuts, 6.7% in those consuming a Mediterranean diet alone, and only 2% among those on the traditional low-fat diet. (Is there anyone left out there who still thinks the ill-advised, poorly researched, low-fat diet benefited anyone but the companies making carbohydrate-rich junk foods?)The beneficial effects of the diet happened without an increase in exercise habits, calories burned, or weight loss and add to the evidence that diets enriched with nuts do not induce weight gain, noted the authors. This author does note however that the amount of nuts was limited to 30 grams a day, which is one ounce or about 2 tablespoons). The researchers aren't sure yet what caused the improvement, but think that the diet plus mixed-nuts intervention may have positive effects on insulin resistance. Another possibility is the diet's effects on other factors such as oxidative stress and its related inflammation in the blood vessels. Previous analysis of the data have shown that the Mediterranean diet coupled with nuts protects against oxidative damage and reduces cardiovascular risk factors better than a low-fat diet.Source: Salas-Salvadó J, Fernández-Ballart J, Ros E, et al. Effect of a Mediterranean diet supplemented with nuts on metabolic syndrome status. Arch Intern Med 2008; 168: 2449-2458.Take care
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