November: Get maximal power

The autumnal raw weather is an ideal time to start going to the fitness centre, which is favourable to spark off a new wave of power growth. The period when you spent most of your leisure time rather outside on the stadium, on the bicycle or in the swimming pool enjoying warm days (although unfortunately very rainy this year) is going to an end. Winter has been gradually claiming supremacy, so the period when you will redirect your steps towards bodybuilding gyms or fitness centres is starting. The time when many of you will think more about your muscle mass, power and muscle volumes has come.

We will focus on muscle mass, power and support of its growth in the topic of this month. In it you will find suggestions how to achieve the above stated goal with the help of training and suitable diet including the indispensable supplements. Let’s start from the beginning – power training.

Training

Overwhelming majority of you has probably tried different modifications of classical power preparation in the fitness centre, as well as popular methods like Ivanov, HST, Korte and different other ones. Only few of current fitness centre visitors will have experienced true "professional" training in the power period. But if you have studied the training methods of power preparation with attention, you surely did not miss one thing: training weights and individual repetitions with them. Power training is based on high weights representing 90-100% of your maximum in exercise. You will make a series with those weights, but the series should not go until failure and you should perform 1-3 repetitions in it. Not more, so that your central nervous system does not get exhausted and at the same time that your muscles stay exhausted only at ATP level.

In power trainings, great stress should be put on basic exercises, i.e. not on pulleys, machines, elastics etc. but on pure free weights. So exercises like squats, dead pulls, benchpress, pressures in stand with big barbell and pull-ups will become your domain. Those exercises should constitute the base of your effort in the fitness centre.

It is also important to know how much strain to put on individual parts. It will fully suffice if you put strain on your whole body only once a week in three trainings, i.e. each muscle part once a week at the beginning. For example, if the muscle mass of the whole body is divided into three parts (A, B, C), you should exercise each part once a week (A Monday, B Wednesday, C Friday etc.). For more detailed description of power plans I will refer you to professional literature dealing with power training (books by PaedDr. Petr Tlapák, CSc., or professional articles in Muscle&Fitness).

Diet

Your diet is not less important than adequate training. It is often even the crucial factor between success and failure. In case of power training focused on growth of muscle mass volume and power it is classical volume diet in essence. We suggest consuming sufficient energy to cover the needs of the body for the purpose of muscle growth, reparation and restoration of tissues. You also need high intake of proteins to cover the required anabolic processes (anabolism = creation of muscle mass) in our body. Adequate dose consists of 2 g proteins per one kilogram of body weight (in case of an 80 kg sportsman it is 160 g proteins a day). In order to cover this need, it is suitable to use highly biologically valuable proteins, i.e. particularly or exclusively animal proteins. But in this case there is danger that you will take also big quantity of animal fat together with high-quality proteins. At the same time, a number of such foodstuffs constitutes a problem with relatively demanding digestion of the food and the related excessive strain of the digestive system. It is therefore suitable to provide the body with the recommended quantity of proteins through well digestible protein cocktails that, moreover, do not include any unhealthy fats. Suitable assistants to muscle mass growth are: Aminostar Whey Protein Actions 85 (high percentage of proteins containing highest-quality CFM protein, very good absorbability), Aminostar World No. 1 (highest-quality protein product, cleanest and highest-quality source of protein isolate produced by the method of ion exchange), CFM Whey Protein Isolate (high-quality, very well absorbable and thus immediately utilizable protein), or proteins from the ROX series – ROX CFM Nitro Professional (revolutionary patented formulation of highest-quality whey CFM isolate united with Nitric Oxide Synthase activator) and ROX 78 (hydrolyzed – partially predigested whey protein for very quick absorption of nutrients into muscles).

Besides proteins, also sufficient (but no excessive) consumption of complex saccharides (i.e. saccharides with predominantly medium or low glycemic index) and unsaturated fats is self-evident. Simple sugars are suitable only in the time immediately after training when they help us with quicker and higher-quality regeneration of muscle mass. In that case we definitely choose Whey Gainer Actions or GainStar.

Supplementation

Additionally to the above stated food supplements that have the mission to supplement common diet, as their name suggests, we have one important assistant that can push your effort considerably forward. Creatine is that supplement. Creatine keeps holding its first position among ergogenous substances that support sports performance and muscle growth. Its purest and most efficient form can be found in KreaGenic (doubly protected creatine molecule), KreAlkalyn (stable form of creatine that does not change into undesirable creatinine), Creatine Monohydrate or CreaShock with unique CreaShock matrix. So which are the main advantages of creatinine supplementation:

-         creatinine leads to power growth

-         at the same time active muscle mass grows thanks to creatine

-         creatine delays muscle exhaustion by 10-20%

-         it reduces the number of series needed to optimum muscle stimulation, i.e. it brings more benefit at less work

-         it reduces the quantity of lactic acid by up to 70%

-         it mitigates oxygen debt, so called after-strain oxygen

There are numerous schemes for creatine intake and dosage. It is generally recommended to start so called strain stage lasting 1 week when you literally “stuff” yourself with creatine. In this stage you take 30 g creatine a day. Then so called maintenance stage follows when you take 5-10 g creatine a day for 4-6 weeks. The assumed dose for more massive sportsmen is up to 20-25 g a day. It is important to divide the total dose into several daily subdoses. The transfer of creatine into muscles is supported by insulin, anabolic hormone regulating the blood sugar level; therefore you should combine creatine with simple sugar, pure dextrose, D-glucose or grape sugar if possible.

Power and its gain is not a simple thing, you must think about it. So think with support of Aminostar and enjoy a new wave of iron on the bars of your barbells in the winter.