Bodybuilder.comRoger Clemens. Barry Bonds. Mark McGwire. Sammy Sosa. Shawne Merriman. Floyd Landis. And so on and  so on.

You recognize these names. They are disgraced professional athletes who cheated, who disrespected their sport and their competition by using performance enhancing drugs – specifically, human growth hormone (HGH) or some sort of anabolic steroids. Regardless of whether their objective was gaining muscle mass or improving their body’s capability to process oxygen and so improve cardiovascular endurance, the process is the same: They use drugs to boost their work out regimen and push their bodies beyond what would otherwise have been their limit.

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And these types of drugs have made their way into our fitness centers and also our schools. Kids, always obvlivious to long-term consequences and always attempting to look good, frequently become victim to performance enhancing drugs with terrible long term consequences. When the goal is increasing muscle mass, then going the route of human growth hormone or anabolic steroids is all too easy. It’s too tempting, too obvious of a short cut, for many, many young people to overlook.

So if the goal is gaining muscle mass, how does one go about it without the input of human growth hormone or anabolic steroids? After all, these drugs not only make it so that your body builds muscle more quickly and retains it better and longer, but steroids also dull the aches and pains associated with strenuous exercise. That means you can work on longer, harder and more frequently than you would be able to otherwise. With regards to gaining muscles, you can see just how that would certainly be an edge.

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This is exactly why you need to be practical about your goals and your timeframe. You need to set set up a baseline exercise routine, build your core muscles, and work from there. Thus any kind of exercise regimen which aims for gaining muscles will start with routine exercises like sit-ups, push-ups and medicine ball work. You should focus on this regularly and with extreme prejudice not less than a month, getting your core solid and impossibly ripped and fit, prior to aiming to gain muscle mass anywhere.

As soon as you have completed that, you’re ready to change to hard core weight work. What this means is high weight low reps, pushing the greatest amoung you possibly can, as opposed to low weight high reps, which ends up producing a leaner cut of muscle.

And most importantly, you must change your diet. Include plenty of high protein meals while eliminating as much fat as is possible.