Ten Essential Bodybuilding Tips

If you are into working out, then use our checklist below to examine your mass gain training program and find out whether you are doing the best that you possibly can to reach your goals. Maybe there are some things that you are overlooking that can greatly improve your results.

The best results from bodybuilding training comes to the person who do a variety of things in the correct way rather than just doing one thing well. For example, it will not do you any good to exercise with great intensity and then only get two hours of sleep before heading off to work. Again muscle mass will not arrive if you eat well but spend most of your exercise routine on a treadmill or spinning machine. You could quite possibly workout in the best manner possible, eat correctly, get a good night’s sleep and yet achieve poor results because your workout form is poor.

The Secret To Bodybuilding

The secret to consistent bodybuilding mass gain is to do everything well – right from your breakfast to your workouts to the long sleep you get before you start all over again. This synergy of factors working together towards muscle and weight gain goals will produce spectacular results. Below I am listing 21 bodybuilding tips. Some of them are concerned with actual workouts but others deal with matters outside your gym.

Remember – Bodybuilding training does not take place only at the gym or in your workout room!

A great many weight lifters ignore this important caveat and find that their muscles are in turn ignoring them!! Many a times, a bodybuilder is stuck in a rut and wonders how to get back to improving his physique. It may be that changing your workout may result in breaking that rut but it is even more likely that there is another factor that is impeding your progress. Too many inexperienced body builders always look at the routine and lay less stress on the other factors.

Reading all the 21 bodybuilding tips below will push you towards greater gains.

1. Diet

You cant build a house without bricks, right? It’s a no-brainer. And yet there are scores of bodybuilding enthusiasts out there who are scratching their heads figuring out why they are not able to pack on muscle while eating what they have always had before – dal chawal and sabzi roti! Working out vigorously and lifting weights without giving the body the nutrients it needs to grow is as silly as building a house without bricks! Your diet is and will always remain the NUMBER 1 factor in your success.

2. Change

Wouldn’t it be just great if we could find a workout routine that works and repeat it over and over again without any thought until our goals were met. Unfortunately, things are slightly different in the real world. The body gets used to the difficulties that we subject it to and builds itself accordingly. If your body knows that you are going to subject it to three sets of ten at X weight, it will realise from past experience ( the previous three months of you repeating this routine every Tuesday and Thursday) that it has what it takes to conquer this. It won’t react. It has simply adapted! Remember your body is an intelligent organism with a mind of it’s own! You must constantly be changing things up to continue your gains. Always keep the body guessing. Keep a chart of suggested time-to-make-a-change schedule to help you with this.

3. Sleep

[highlight bg=”#f00000″ text=”#ffffff”]’The body builds itself at rest and not in the gym’.[/highlight]How many times have you heard this advice and yet tend to ignore it?! You may think of sleep time as time wasted but if you really want to improve your physique, you need to pay better attention to this well meaning advice. Think of sleep time as your most productive bodybuilding training time. Stop getting up with an alarm clock. Get up when you feel properly rested and refreshed and you will gradually start waking up with a bigger and more muscular body! Eight hours is the minimum that an average body requires give or take one or two hours. In reality, you are wasting your hours at the gym if you are not paying heed to this tip and giving your body the respect and the sleep that it deserves to really shine forth in all splendour!

4. Progressive Overload

If you train for the next 12 months by doing 80 kilo bench presses do you think you will get stronger and bigger by the end of 12 months? Nope. You will simply have a body that has been conditioned to handle that weight but not a bigger and stronger body. To get bigger you have to keep pushing the envelope. You have to keep increasing the weights you lift or the reps all the time.

5. Compound Exercises

To build muscle you must stimulate as much muscle fiber as possible. Compound exercises stimulate more than one muscle group at a time. These exercises affect your whole skeletal system and trigger growth throughout the entire body. Isolated exercises like leg extensions may make for a fun and happy little workout but they are nowhere as effective for muscle growth as squats or deadlifts.

6. Mental Intensity

When you are working out, if your mind is distracted by thoughts that are not related to weight lifting or bodybuilding then your workouts wont be that effective. If you don’t believe that you can achieve the body you want and if you don’t visualize your success then you are failing to take advantage of an amazing workout partner – your mind! Remember your mind or rather your brain is also a muscle – no different from your bicep! Successful people have strong mental muscles while unsuccessful are those who never train their mind to do their bidding.

7. Form

Take a Neanderthal man – the kinds that lived ten thousand years ago in the cold regions of Europe. Let us assume that one of them was frozen in the Alps and was brought back to life. If you set him loose inside a gym, chances are he would not achieve any more than your average weight trainer at your local gym. Well at least the Neanderthal man can be forgiven because he did not have access to these bodybuilding tips to review! On a serious note, you are now living in a world that is connected 24 / 7 to the internet where there are no shortage of videos and other information. Learn good weight lifting form from these videos. Even better use the internet to connect to good quality personal instructors who will teach you correct form and then consciously practice it. Good form will help you prevent injury and without a doubt, increase the effectiveness of your bodybuilding program.

8. One Hour Workouts

Well, in all probability you can do an intense workout for more than one hour and you will not drop dead from exhaustion. On the other hand you enjoy working out so much (welcome to the club!) that you just can’t get enough of it and one hour seems like warmup time! But consider this advice: Would you still be doing these hour plus workouts if you were armed with the knowledge that it was doing you no good beyond that one hour threshold? That you could be causing harm to your body and depleting your muscles of protein? If you answered ‘Yes’ then well, there is really no hope in advising you and I suggest that you stop reading our tips, and go back to getting ready for your next marathon workout! Intense workouts (those with rest pauses less than 45 seconds) should be kept under an hour unless you are an alien or are genetically superior to 99 % of the human race. Workouts that last beyond an hour get progressively less and less effective meaning that you are simply wasting your time beyond that 1 hour window. Think about this – Don’t you have anything else to do in your life besides admiring yourself in the gym – like making money or having a career? Then go do that!

9 Stretching

Stretching should always be done before, during and after workouts. Good stretching can accomplish many things. It can help you to warm-up your muscles and joints, stretch surrounding tissues and speed up recovery after an exhausting workout where you have practically destroyed your muscle fibers! Do not look at stretching as an also-ran tip since I have included it at the bottom of the page. It should become your point of emphasis while working out.

 10. The Plan

Every successful man and woman alive has had a plan to get where they are today. As a bodybuilder, you should be no different. Ask yourself today if you haven’t already – ” What are you doing and why are you doing it?” If you are working out and someone came up to you and asked you this question, how would you react? Actually I hope you would give them a nasty look and tell them that it is not right to disturb you in the middle of your workout. But then after your workout you should have an answer to this question.

You must have a goal and strategy in place to accomplish these goals. It is not enough just to throw weights around the place. Know what you are doing and why you are doing them. Have a plan and stick to it and more importantly follow all our above tips and you will see that the results come sooner than later!