Did you know that in bodybuilding there is a very fine line between failure and great success? It’s true – just a few little mistakes or miscalculations can throw you off your game and make you come out almost empty handed, or with very little to show for all of you efforts. It’s your job to ensure you have everything down pat, to make sure you get the very best results you can.
In this article I hope to give you a few simple, yet not often-known tips or guidelines you can implement into your training which will help you to do just that. Right, let’s crack on…
1: Avoid getting too fat when bulking
Let me tell you now, this tip is very, very important. When bulking, people have a tendency to be slack (or outright discard) any notion of watching what they eat. Anything goes, and on comes pound after pound of bodyweight… the only problem being, far too much of it is fat!
Now, it’s true, you can’t cut it too fine this ‘watch your fat’ business because you’ll stifle your muscle gains. You can’t avoid gaining a little fat, but, you can certainly avoid putting on stones of it. Believe me – it’s very easy to pile that amount of weight on during a long bulk!
The reason for this is simple: it’s got to come off sooner or later. And, if you are 2-3 stone overweight from fat, it may take you half a year or more to lose it all. That’s time you’ve effectively lost forever that you can’t gain an ounce of muscle during, and in all likelihood, because of the length of the cut it’ll take to get rid of it, you’ll probably lose a substantial amount of muscle, too.
2: Eat every 3 hours
A huge mistake many young bodybuilders make is leaving it too long before meals. This makes the anabolic state fluctuate as it turns to catabolic and begins eating at muscle tissue. You need to retain the anabolic balance, and particularly helpful in doing this is good amounts of good protein: eggs, beef, fish, chicken, milk etc.
3: Change things around every 4 weeks
The body gets bored of what you are doing, just as your mind will… and it’ll stop responding. When it stops responding, you stop getting gains. And if you keep forcing your body into stagnant workout routines, you’ll begin to lose muscle mass.
You need to change things around. That doesn’t necessarily mean you need to change your entire arsenal of exercises, but subtle changes can often be enough: have less rest between sets… alter your grip width… go at a slightly different angle… go faster… go slower… do more sets… less sets… more reps… less reps – you get the idea.
Overall, the biggest tip I can give you is consistency – stay on the ball, don’t give up, and results will come.