Whether you're hitting the gym for the first time or you've been training for a while and have hit a plateau, it can feel like progress is impossible. But the truth is, if you approach your training in the correct way, you can reach any goal you set your mind to.
And we're here to help you do just that, by letting you in on a few bodybuilding secrets that will unlock your training potential and maximize your results. If you're ready to take your bodybuilding journey to the next level, keep reading.
1. Start with Your Calories
When your fitness goals involve making changes to your body, whether that be gaining or losing weight, you need to keep energy balance in mind at all times. Your energy balance is the number of calories you're consuming in relation to the number you're burning.
When you consume more than your burn, you're in a positive energy balance. On the flipside, burning more than you consume will put you in a negative energy balance.
In order to build muscle, you need to gain weight. This means you need to maintain a positive energy balance by increasing your caloric intake. To do this in a healthy way, the number of calories you consume in a day needs to be increased gradually.
Start by taking your calorie count up by 500 per day. Maintain this new number for a few weeks, and if you don't see an increase in your weight, add another 500 calories to your daily diet.
2. Nutrition Is Key
Let's continue with the topic of increasing your calories in a healthy way. You might be thinking, to increase your calorie consumption by hundreds of calories a day, you could just eat cookies and ice cream all day.
Well, while ice cream is a great post-workout treat, you need to ensure that the bulk of your calories come from whole foods if you want to gain weight healthily. If your diet is made up of sweets and other unhealthy options, you will gain weight, but you're likely to put on more fat than you were hoping for.
When you're creating your meal plan for muscle gain, stick to a nutrient-dense diet. Fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and healthy fats and carbohydrates will give your body the fuel it needs to build muscle efficiently.
3. Develop a Training Schedule
In most situations, the harder and more frequently that you work, the quicker you'll reach your goals. But when it comes to bodybuilding, this couldn't be further from the truth.
Yes, you have to work hard and you have to work out on a routine basis, but you should never strength train more than 4 days a week, and never on consecutive days. This is because your body doesn't build muscle while you're lifting weights but while you're asleep.
When you're sleeping, your body has much more energy available for tasks like rebuilding damaged muscle. Because of this, it's essential that you get your 7-9 hours of high-quality sleep per night and give yourself time between training sessions to rest.
Develop a training schedule for yourself in which you start with 2-3 workouts per week if you're new to weightlifting. Once you get comfortable with that, you can bump it up to 4 sessions per week but no more.
4. Focus on the Right Exercises
Stepping into the gym, you're bombarded with a wide variety of machines, each designed to train a more specific muscle than the next. But one of the best-kept body builder secrets is that you can skip every single one of them.
You don't need any of the fancy weight machines to maximize your muscle growth. You need the free weights (dumbbells and barbells) and the big 5 of weightlifting. These are deadlifts, squats, barbell row, overhead press, and bench press.
These five lifts are all compound exercises that hit all of your bodybuilding muscle groups. This will enable you to get the best results in the least amount of time. Weight machines might be fun, but they're ultimately a waste of your time and energy.
5. Add Supplements to Your Routine
In addition to increasing your caloric intake, you need to pay special attention to the amount of protein you get in a day. When your goal is to get bodybuilding muscles, you need to be taking in 0.5 to 1 gram of protein per pound of your body weight per day.
So if you weigh 180 pounds, for instance, you would need 90-180 grams of protein in your diet per day. This is a great deal of protein, and getting that many grams through food can be a challenge. Because of this, protein shakes are a bodybuilder's best friend.
Drinking a protein shake before a training session will boost your results and ensure that your body is getting the nutrients it needs.
Now, if you're interested in taking it a step further, you can learn about kratom for fitness, and about other supplements. But keep in mind that you should consult your physician before introducing any new supplement into your body, as they can react badly with certain prescription medications and underlying conditions.
These Bodybuilding Secrets Will Take Your Training to the Next Level
Breaking into weightlifting can be an overwhelming experience, but don't allow anxiety to keep you from pursuing your goals. It's not as difficult as it may seem, and by putting these bodybuilding secrets to use, you'll be building muscle like a pro before you know it.
One of the most important things to remember is to take your time. Going about your training the right way will speed up your result but won't bring them overnight. Stay patient and you'll reach your goals faster than you think.
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