Building Muscle Mass and Power

 1. Bodybuilding requires commitment…

Embarking on a bodybuilding journey involves a complete lifestyle transformation, requiring you to shed old habits and embrace new routines. You must be fully dedicated; this is not a pursuit for the faint-hearted.

Bodybuilding challenges your strength, self-discipline, and willpower. Only begin when you are confident in your ability to invest the necessary time, effort, and energy.

If you are not committed you want Succeed!

2. Write out your goals, your plans…

How much body fat do you want to lose? How much muscle weight do you intend to gain? Are you after gaining strength? Are you after developing speed, endurance? What about power or strength?

What exactly do you want to achieve, how are you going to achieve them, how long to achieve each step – 6months, a year, two years. Plan your exercise routines, your diet, and your supplements.

Make sure you write down each training routine and the length of time you applied it, you will want to read notes on routines that worked for you over the years…don’t rely or miss out, because you can’t remember.

However, do remember this, there is a lot of truth in planning your way forward, there are two ways a) one is plan to succeed 2) the other is fail to plan and you will be planning to fail.

3. Setting up an in-home gym versus getting a gym membership…

Many people find it easier to stick to their workout routines in a gym environment. While training at home offers convenience, it can also lead to distractions.

Like the phone ringing, kids running around, the dog barking, and the temptation to skip on some sessions when people pop around.

Being in the presence of fellow bodybuilders in a gym, can serve as a powerful source of motivation.

4. The importance of warm-ups…

There are three levels of warming up. Begin each workout session with a general warm-up lasting five to ten minutes. Engaging in light activities, such as using the treadmill or exercise bike, for example. It helps prepare your heart and body for the workout ahead.

A body-specific warm-up enhances muscle flexibility, by lightly activating the muscles before more intense activity.

Finally, an exercise-specific warm-up familiarise your muscles with the exact techniques involved, helping to reduce resistance during the workout.

5. The importance of stretching….

It’s very important to stretch both before and after training. The benefits of stretching are significant; it enhances flexibility and improves agility, allowing for smoother transitions between positions.

Additionally, stretching promotes muscle growth by increasing the body’s ability to move through a greater range of movement, maintain various exercise positions and move lactic acid.

Aim to allocate at least 15 seconds for stretching before starting your sets.

6. You will need to balance out your workouts…

Dumbbells, straight bars, machines, etc., are tools you use to stimulate muscle growth…you don’t grow in the gym.

You see, rest is more important than lifting weights. ‘Why’, because muscle only grows when it is totally repaired after your training session… as I have already mentioned, muscles don’t grow in the gym.

Rest is King, and it is the only time this can happen.

You also require sleep, because, when you are in a deep sleep, the body releases (HGH) ‘Human Growth Hormone’. The correct balance of proteins, fats, and carb’s are essential, as are small meals you should be eating throughout the day.

7. Don’t over-train… it’s the killer of muscle growth…

If you are spending more than an hour in the gym training, then you have already overtrained.

And make absolutely sure that you DON’T train any muscle group more than once a week…

In other words, if you train say Back and Biceps on Monday, you don’t train them again until next Monday. And this applies to all the other days of the week, too.

Everyone recovers at different rates, and you can’t know that until you have been training for some time. You want see any muscle growth or strength, until they are totally repaired.

To be on the safe side, you need to wait 7 days, then train that muscle group again. This is crucial, as it is responsible for over 98% of people in the gym today making little, if any, progress.

8. Use progression in all your training routines…

It’s no good picking up the same weight you were using 6 months ago and wondering ‘Why’ you’re not making any gains. You must strive to increase weight, if only by a small amount or your body will adapt unable to progress.

How can we achieve this goal?

Here are four proven methods that will definitely help, a) use more weight, Yes, obvious, b) decrease the time it takes to do the exercise, but you must keep good form, c) If that doesn’t help try decreasing the time in-between sets d) ideally you should be doing around 3 different exercises for each muscle groups, but ideally, you should know at least 5.

This way, each week you can remove one of the exercises from your last training day and replace it with one of the other exercises you have on your list.

Rotating these exercises every week ensures your muscles do not adapt to your weight routine, ensuring a better chance of success in gaining new muscle mass.

9. Stop this obsession with heavy weights…

Unless you are a powerlifter or weightlifter, or train using weights for fitness, there is no need for you to use heavy weights when training. Because heavyweights inhibits you from doing the right number of reps, with the right weight, to stimulate muscle growth.

Weight is a tool we only use to get a result. Remember, remember, remember, you need to take the muscle to the point of failure, when it becomes impossible for you to do another positive rep on your last rep… and what is that magic number? 6.

‘Yes’, constantly using heavy weights can make you a lot stronger, but if you are looking to increase your muscle size then you will find yourself out of luck.

Only a few people in the world have both super strength and size, not without steroids anyway!

Make your mind up and stick to your decision. To increase your strength… Power-Lift. If you want to increase muscle mass… Body-build, don’t do both.

10. The Mind, Muscle Connection…

This one is so important. Ignoring this one will stop you dead in your tracks, and you’ll never reach your full physical potential. I have witnessed 1000’s of people abandon their bodybuilding dreams, because they failed to train their mind to connect to the muscle(s) as they train.

During training, you need to picture, feel, and concentrate solely on the muscle you are training.

To do this, isolate the muscle using your mind’s eye. Hold a mental picture of the muscle you are about to train, forget about all the other surrounding muscles, tendons and joints, they are not important to the exercise.

As you work the muscle, see it contacting as you begin to move the weight, then holding the movement before lowing it down. The more you can hold and develop this connection, the more you will find you’ll able to stress and stimulate more growth.

For example, let’s say you are doing dips as part of your chest muscle routine:

And let’s say that during the dip, you become aware of the stress being placed on your triceps as you begin to bend your arms to lower your body, instead of the chest muscles.

You will have lost all the tension you started out with on the Pecs (Pectoralis Major Chest Muscles)… in effect wasting that set.

Instead keep ALL of your attention on your Pecs, placing tension, tension, and more tension through these muscles using your mind to visualise the perfect moment.

This alone, if done correctly, will take your muscle workout to a whole new level.

11. Correct Movement…

Apart from using ‘Mind Muscle Connection’, it’s also important to use the proper movement when doing your exercise. Unfortunately, about 98% of those who weight train today, do not follow this very important rule.

I see people just wasting their time going through the motions in the gym, because they believe that all one as to do is pick a weight up, and you will grow… but nothing could be further from the truth.

If there is one singular, most crucial lesson you can take to the bank today, it’s this tip, learning the correct way to do the Correct Movement for the exercise you are doing.

12. Don’t put on the wrong type of body weight…

I hear people talking about bulking up and how they should put on bodyweight by eating all that they can cram down their throats. This is wrong, wrong…WRONG!

Unless you have the perfect genes that allow you to eat as much food, as you like, only putting on muscle without body fat, then stay away from this advice, as will jeopardise and wipe out any muscle mass you may have gained.

Why?. People don’t understand that when you diet reduce calories, your body will cannibalise muscle to get energy it needs. Fat cells won’t give up their stored energy until it as no choice, this is a biological fact.

So the end result of putting on and storing all that extra body is… muscle loss, the very thing you worked so hard to gain. If this describes you, learn what foods you need to eat, stop dieting and gain muscle mass… not fat mass!

Note – Read tip #9. above again:

13. Increase Your Protein intake…

You’ll want to eat just over a gram of protein per day per pound of lean body mass. It’s a no-brainier, because muscle requires protein to repair muscle breakdown and that’s the primary job for all bodybuilders… to continually break down muscle fibres.

Then it stands to reason that a bodybuilder will require more protein than the average man in the street. Make sure that you give your muscles all the proteins it requires to repair the muscle damage done during training. And not only for a day or two, but throughout the rest of your training days.

14. Drink enough water during training to NOT dehydrate…

Water is crucial for cell function, but you shouldn’t overdrink it either, because too much water can have the opposite effect.

It’s recommended you drink between 2 to 2.5 litres of water per day, about 8 glasses.

Drinking larger volumes of water can lead to some significant physiological problems, such as water intoxication (hyponatremia), that’s where the blood sodium levels become dangerously diluted, it can also overwhelm the Kidneys.

It can also cause other symptoms such as headaches, confusion, coma, nausea, and in some cases to coma or death.

So is this theory or myth?

There is, however, a simpler and safer way to define if you need to increase your fluid intake, and that’s to simply take notice of when your body is telling you when you need water.

When you feel thirsty, then you are… ‘Dehydrated’!

I would recommend that you sip at some water, stay away from any ‘Sugar (Sugar Free)’, drinks including any Energy Drinks, they are deadly, full of additives, killing your system. Endeavour not to allow yourself to become thirsty.

Tip: If you are trying to lose weight, drink water at room temperature.

Drinking water from the fridge can shock your system to the extent of slowing down your metabolism. Your metabolism dictates ‘How’ much fat you burn.

Of course, the opposite is true; if you aim to increase muscle size and you have a low body fat content, then drink the water as cold as you like.

15. Myth Busting:

Understanding Fat and Muscle Development…

How do I turn fat into muscle?

One common misconception in the fitness world, is the idea that you can convert body fat directly into muscle. Despite what some may believe or claim, this is simply not possible.

As someone who has been asked this question countless times, I feel it’s important to clarify this once and for all.

First and foremost, it’s crucial to understand that fat and muscle are two distinct types of tissue in the body. Fat is not merely a source of energy; it serves as insulation and cushioning for our muscles and organs.

It doesn’t have the ability to transform into muscular tissue through exercise or by any other means. Rather, muscle tissue is built through your Genetics interacting with your cells, and the environment.

Further muscle size can only be gained through resistance training and proper nutrition.

The concept of “spot reduction,”or losing fat in a targeted area through specific exercises is also a myth. When you work out, you cannot choose where you lose fat; your body decides where it burns calories based on its own metabolic processes and genetic predispositions.

Usually, you lose fat from the areas you first put fat on. Engaging in localised exercises may strengthen the muscle underneath, but it won’t directly eliminate fat in that area.

To effectively build muscle, you need to prioritise fat loss first. This means adopting a well- rounded fitness regimen, focusing on a combination of cardiovascular exercise, strength training, and a healthy diet tailored to your goals.

By creating a calorie deficit, your body will begin to shed excess fat, revealing the muscle underneath.

As you pursue fat loss and muscle gain, remember that patience and consistency are key. Building a strong, sculpted physique takes time, dedication, and the right approach.

Embrace your journey, and remember to celebrate each and every small success along the way.

By understanding the relationship between fat loss and muscle building, you can set realistic goals and work toward them effectively.

Please take the above tips to hart, they are really critical for the long term success of both building and keeping that newfound muscle mass, and reaching the top form of fitness and wellbeing.

Train hard, eat lots of pizza (ha, ha), grow strong and big… john!