How To Grow Muscles

So I know most of you look at us as the best workout music in the world... however... where would we be without teaching people above and beyond our music. We truly believe in helping people and so we wanted to take a second and reflect on how to build muscle... the Physical science behind building muscle.

First let's start with the 20% everyone is familiar with which is the workout. Essentially when you're working out, your are breaking down the muscles so that you can rebuild them later. The rebuild phase happens during moments of rest and the fuel that you're putting into your body. So regardless of the workout... whether we are doing endurance events, long distance running, crossfit, cardio, triathlons, Ironman, spartan race, tough mudder, weight lifting or whatever else we may want to comprise of... it all is pushing your muscles into doing something they haven't done before which breaks them down... and then they rebuild stronger. Focus on building from week to week.

So what is the science behind what we need to be consuming to help the rebuild process take place. It breaks down like this,

You need:

1. Protein - This is what actually builds the muscle.

2. BCAA's (Branch Chain Amino Acids) - This is a necessary acid that helps build the muscle that your body can't reproduce on it's own so it has to be ingested. We try to find this in pill form as to avoid having companies put artificial sweeteners in it like sucralose or other harmful chemicals.

3. Muscle Enzymes - The standard muscle enzymes obtained for diagnosis are creatine kinase (CK), the transaminases aspartate aminotransaminase (AST) and alanine aminotransaminase (ALT), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), and aldolase. We typically like to find creatine in powder form... but the only ingredient on the label is creatine as to avoid other harmful chemicals

4. Potassium - 4700mg a day. This one is tough. This equates to 3 large bottles of Zico Water per day OR 7-10 cups of veggies, OR roughly 10 bananas per day... That's if you were trying to get enough potassium with only one food... we would highly recommend doing a combination of these... like 1 large bottle of zico coconut water, 3 cups of veggies and 2-3 bananas per day...

5. Trace Minerals / Vitamins - Vitamins A, D, and K. Vitamin A. Specifically Vitamin A is critical to help support heart rebuild and development which will help you push harder on your next workout... helping rebuild your heart is like helping to rebuild a bigger engine. Vitamin A also stimulates the production and activity of white blood cells, takes part in remodeling bone, helps maintain healthy endothelial cells (those lining the body’s interior surfaces), and regulates cell growth and division such as needed for reproduction. The two main forms of vitamin A in the human diet are preformed vitamin A (retinol, retinyl esters), and provitamin A carotenoids such as alpha-carotene and beta-carotene that are converted to retinol. Preformed vitamin A comes from animal products, fortified foods, and vitamin supplements. Carotenoids are found naturally in plant foods. There are other types of carotenoids found in food that are not converted to vitamin A but have health-promoting properties; these include lycopene, lutein, and zeaxanthin.

How to consume vitamin A efficiently is through the following foods:

1. Leafy Greens (kale, broccoli, spinach)

2. Orange Veggies (carrots, sweet potatoes, pumpkin etc)

3. Tomatoes

4. Red Bell Pepper

5. Cantalope

6. Grass Fed Beef and or beef liver

7. Fish Oils

8. Milk

9. Eggs

So that's a pretty good run down of what you should be eating to begin gaining more muscle mass. Your diet is literally 80% of the equation. Now if we switch over for a second to the 20% of the equation which is working out we will give you some quick tips that will help you plan for your fitness adventure.

1. Weight Training - Try German Volume Training - This concept basically tells you to find what exercise you would like to become better at or have bigger muscles in and find a weight that you can do 10 reps of... then do 10 sets at that weight. In our experience this WORKS... You may need to take a day or two off after doing this consistently for a little while and eventually you'll need to up the weight and if you want to really get into some good fitness you can start increasing the number of sets from 10 to 20 if you want to start looking like a body builder.

2. Running - You can start off small with a quarter or half mile... we've been injured many times and had to recover from injury and build back up from nothing several times by doing this... try to do it three times a week and switch the intensity levels. one should be a long slow day, the other should be a moderate day and then the other should be a fast but shorter day. Try to not increase the distance more than 10-15% per week to avoid injury.

3. Biking - This is very similar to running... you should have a long slow day to increase your aerobic base, then you should have an interval day where you go fast but short but do that 8-12 times for 30-60 seconds, and then you should have a moderate day where you try to find how much you can take for a 60 minute span which is what they call a tempo day.

4. Swimming - Same as running and biking... three days a week... until you feel ready to do more. Switch up the intensity levels with paddles, kick-boards and swim hip bouys. Check out the proper form on some you tube videos. Water is 89 times thicker than water so aerodynamics in the water is super important. You want to try to stay as long as possible to maximize speed.

So that last point is that you should feel moved to do the workout. How we typically achieve that is by listening to Murph Workout Radio which is the best workout music ever heard by human ears. Seriously, it's as if God himself made workout music for humans to listen to. In our blind studies, listening to our workout music actually increased performance in professional and semi-professional athletes by 15-30%. So the interesting thing is that is a calorie free performance increase that doesn't involve any harmful chemicals in your pre-workout or BCAA's.... it literally is just a performance boost just by listening to our workout music.