It’s very easy to believe that something different from you will take care of your muscles for you. The reality is that nothing but you can make your body grow muscle. Of course knowledge and information are necessary for you to not waste your time and effort on useless stuff, but without the dedication and determination to actually use the stuff you’ve learned, you won’t get anywhere.

Ads in magazines are very seducing: they use muscular men and say the supplement will help you succeed in muscle building. The ads don’t tell you that you’ll look like the fitness model most of the times, but that is what drove you into buying the supplement. They tell you that the model uses it or, sometimes, they just let you make the wrong assumptions by yourself (which is most likely to be your case).

The reality is that most fitness models, mainly the huge ones, are on anabolic steroids and the magazines owners don’t want you to know that because if you do, they lose money. If you knew that (which you already do), you’d stop buying their supplements because you would know that it’s not the supplement that made them huge (it was their effort plus the help of steroids).

Listen, you don’t need steroids if you work hard and right. You need to work out correctly and intensely. You need high quality and quantity eating. You need proper resting and scheduling.

You can look like the fitness models, but it’s not by doing what the magazines tell you to do.

I’m pretty sure you have the determination if you get to here, so what you need is the right information to start learning what you actually need to do. Start by getting the free materials I’ve listed in the important pages section of this website. From those materials you’ll pretty much will know what to do and everything you’ll need is determination and dedication to keep applying them.

For some, changing workout routine kinda sucks because they’d have to get used to the new exercises. If you are one of those or you just want to get over the plateau without changing the workout plan, then here are some hints and tips for you.

Your diet

You probably know that your diet gives your body resources for it to build muscle after you’ve stimulated muscle growth by working out (if you didn’t know that, then you do now).

The fact is that you start with a certain amount of strength. With that amount you cannot lift heavy weights and not many stimuli are created. For that reason, you don’t need a “heavy” diet (i.e. with many calories).

You’ll be able to go along with this lighter diet plan for a while, but you’ll reach a point that your diet plan will not be able to give your body enough nutrients for it to maintain all the muscles it already has and build more.

By upgrading your diet you may overcome your workout plateau because, then, you will be giving your body resources to evolve again.

How to know if your problem is in your diet plan?

I’m going to be honest with you. I cannot tell you whether your problem is or not in your diet plan. Not because I don’t want to, but because I don’t have your individual information.

You need to find out information about your body; get a calorie calculator; and see if, for your situation, you are eating enough calories. If not, it’s time to upgrade your diet.

There are formulas out there telling you to multiply your body weight by some factor or 15 or 18, but that is really not accurate and it doesn’t consider many individual characteristics you have that must be considered so that you end up with an accurate value for daily calorie intake.

Your resting

Everyone knows, and it is true, that muscle is built while you rest; not during the workout. The more muscle you have, the stronger you are (supposing you’re natural and is doing everything right).

If you are not resting properly, then you’ll surely hit a workout plateau.

See, if you are not giving time for your body to build muscle, then you won’t get stronger and be able to evolve.

How you should rest

The general rule is: don’t have more than two workout sessions in a row and don’t have more than one workout session per day.

If you already do that, there still are chances of resting being the problem why you have hit a plateau.

There are some individualities (e.g. hormonal issues, how muscular you already is) you should take into considerations when scheduling the days you’ll take for resting.

Did you really hit a workout plateau?

Don’t get me wrong, but you may not have reached a plateau. Try sticking with the workout plan for three to four more weeks and see what happens.

I say this because in the beginning lifters evolve faster and, as months go by, the amount of muscle they build decrease. If you are able to pack 50 pounds of muscles in one year, does that mean you’ll pack 500 pounds of muscles in 10 years? Does it mean you’ll be able to pack 1000 pounds of muscles in 20 years? Of course not.

So you may just be in a phase where this decrease of development is more noticeable. If that is your case, then it is good signal. It means you evolved from beginner to intermediate or from intermediate to advanced.

If nothing else works …

Then there are some tweaks you can do to your workout plan I’ve seen people doing to successfully to overcome their plateaus.

Tweak #1 – Change the order in which you do your exercises

You may get results by changing the order in which you do the exercises. Alternate lower body and upper body exercises.

Some people, in a single workout session, do all the upper body exercises first and only after that they do the lower body exercises. If you do that, they play with the order of your exercises a little. Mix it up!

Tweak #2 – Take a week off

Some people have had success by taking a week off and, after that, going back to the gym but not lifting more or the same amount of weights. They actually started over by lifting less weight.

They went back to the gym lifting only 80% of what they were lifting before taking the week off (propositally) and increasing weights every week until they get back to normal. After that, the didn’t reach a plateau again and were able to evolve normally.

That worked for them to overcome their plateaus. It may work for you too. It’s a little time consuming because it takes from 3 to 4 weeks for you to get back to normal.

Tweak #3 – Decrease reps

Some people, many in fact, have decreased reps and increased weights. What happened is that after increasing the weight, they got stronger and they were able to increase the reps again.

So, if you can decrease the number of reps and increase the amount of weight you lift, that is a possible solution for you to evolve and get over the plateau.

After increasing the weight, you should try to increase the reps back to what they were.

Here is the reason why plateaus happen

It’s possible to not reach plateaus. Plateaus happen to people that are not working out, resting or whatever they are doing correctly.

So if you have information on the topic of bodybuilding you can stop losing time and effort on such things (e.g. plateaus) and spend your time in building muscle.

I’ve gathered some free sources of information and they are in the important pages section of this website. Using them will help you very much in building muscle. You can go there by clicking here.

If you quit now, you’ll learn how to quit and once you learn it, it becomes a habit.

Ask yourself now. Do you want quitting to become a habit for your life?

P.S.: I don’t remember where I’ve seen this, but it’s very wise. You may find the source of this quote on the Web by searching on Google if you want.

First, you should not workout too long.

After about forty minutes of workout, our body starts to release a “muscle eating” hormone called cortisol. Cortisol is going to make your body stop using fat as source of energy and start using muscles. So, bottom line is that if you workout for too long, your body will burn some of your muscles, decreasing the effectiveness of your workouts.

Have you ever seen those guys that workout for hours and everyday? Have you already notice that they don’t grow that much (some of them don’t grow at all)? That is one of the main reason why that happens. If you are one of those guys, stop working out too long now! You should spend at most forty five minutes at the gym. More than that, you burn muscles.

Now, the question you may be with inside your head is:

How do I build muscles if I have little time to workout?

You need a system that is going to tell you how to workout, how to eat and how to rest appropriately and you will use this all this information to maximize the results of all the workouts.

So, here is what you should do:

1. Stop working out more than 45 min. per session.
2. Take a look at the important pages here so that you can get free information on how to build muscles.

P.S.: Most people fail in their dieting, which makes them not building most of the muscles they could be building, chances are that you’re one of those. If you are working out too long, you’ll losing muscles during the workout plus not building as much as you could be doing because of your poor dieting. See? One things sums with the other and the result is you building no muscles at all.

Being a bodybuilder beginner can lead to a very stressful lifestyle. For that reason, it is very easy to give up and go back to the skinny (or chubby) life. But here is the interesting: If you ask those that given up if they really wanted to give up, they’ll answer “No”.

If so, why do they give up?

Since a bodybuilder beginner doesn’t need supplements to succeed in this, it’s not because of lack of money to buy supplements. Since he/she doesn’t need drugs, it’s not because of lack of money to buy drugs. The reason is very simple: What the bodybuilder beginner lacks, in most of the cases, is a real goal.

Why is a real goal important?

A bodybuilder beginner cannot know what he/she should be doing without a real goal.

Imagine if you wanted to learn something, let’s say computer programming. This is a huge area of knowledge and if you were going to learn it for game programming, the learning process would be very different from learning how to develop medical software.

With bodybuilding the same thing happens, if a bodybuilder beginner doesn’t know his goals, he cannot train well because of the simple fact that he doesn’t know quite well what he wants out of his bodybuilding life.

Here is the lesson

Have goals. Not just weak goals, have strong and filled with muscles goals. Adjust your bodybuilder beginner lifestyle to fit your goals.

Why having a goal is so important?

Having a goal will put directions into your mind. And what does a beginner need (it doesn’t matter if it’s a bodybuilder beginner or programmer beginner)? Directions. Without directions, you get lost. Getting lost leads to desistance, which you don’t want to happen.

What else?

Of course you need more than goals, but if you start out without them, you’ll surely fail. For that reason, you should take a piece of paper and write down all your goals and keep that with you so that you never forget them.

You also need information teaching a bodybuilder beginner like you how to succeed in building muscles and getting ripped. If you check out the important pages page of this website, you’ll find resources where you can have free programs and guides that will give you very useful information that you can go and use to build hard muscles.

Weight training properly is known by few. If it was easy then you would see a lot more muscular and lean physiques on the streets. Before you learn how to weight train properly, it is critical that you learn these five weight training tips before you even step foot in the gym.

1. Write down a realistic short term and long term goal.

2. Make a commitment to stick to one program for at least12 weeks.

3. Educate yourself prior to starting.

4. Hire a trainer to teach you proper technique.

5. Focus on gradual progression.

Weight Training Tip #1: Goal Setting

Inch-by-inch life is a sinch. Yard-by-yard life is hard. Treat your goal setting the same way. Do not expect to be on the cover of Men’s Health by next summer. Decide how much muscle weight you wish to achieve in three months. Six months and one year. Decide where you wish to finish and work backwards. If you wish to gain 50 pounds by the end of the year, than create a game plan that allows to gain at least one pound per week.

Weight Training Tip #2: Commitment

The only reason you will fail is if you are not truly committed to your goals. Do your homework and find a weight training program ideal for your specific goals and situation. Study the program fully prior to commencing. Comprehend every detail of the program and if you don’t, contact the author of the program to ensure you have no excuse to misunderstand or perform the workout incorrectly. After you chosen a program, take responsibility for your decision and follow it to it’s full completion. Do not try it out for three weeks and than say, “It’s not working…” and try another program. This will create a failures attitude and begin the deadly bad habit of program hopping

Weight Training Tip #3: Education

How much do you really know about building muscle? Let’s put it this way, if you had to teach someone else how to transform their body in the next twelve weeks, could you help them? Never mind, could you transform your body in the next twelve weeks? If not, you probably do not know enough about how your body works from a training, nutrition and recovery stand point. Order a book, visit a reputable website and find out everything you must know, about proper weight training, before you start the guessing game.

Weight Training Tip #4: Proper Technique

You wouldn’t try and drill your teeth? You wouldn’t try and do your own taxes? You wouldn’t try and fix your own car? Assuming you have no expertise in dentistry, accounting or automotive repairs. So why would you try and teach yourself proper weight training technique? It boggles my mind why so many people across North America sign up for a gym membership and jeopardize the health of their tendons, ligaments and joints with the attitude of “I think I’ll try it on my own,” or “My friend is going to teach me,” or “I am self taught from watching others…” Do not be cheap and leave your ego at the door and hire a reputable fitness trainer who can teach you proper weight training technique.

Weight Training Tip #5: Progression

I’ll say this again. Inch-by-inch life is a sinch. Yard-by-yard life is hard. Approach each workout with this attitude. Your bench press does not need to go up twenty pounds in the first week. But just imagine your bench press went up consistently 2.5-5 pounds every week for the next year? That would some serious muscular and strength gains! Your goal is to simply out do yourself from workout-to-workout, week-to-week. Whether you do one extra rep, one extra set, a extra 2.5 pounds or a shorter rest period, these are are measurable signs of weight training progress.

Conclusion

Make your weight training life easy by starting with the the above weight training tips and look forward to a rewarding and fruitful adventure in the gym.

There is a good chance that you are not maximizing one of these four steps. Your problem and solution lies in correcting these essential steps before you have any chance of building a muscular and lean physique.

Get read to learn how to build muscle in four simple steps, in less time, without any drugs and without bogus supplements.

Step #1

Committ to lifting weights at least three to four times per week. Your goal is to stimulate your muscles with resistance (stress) which results in your muscles growing bigger to avoid the stress from occuring again. Once you go home, let the muscle heal through nutrition and rest, it will grow bigger and you will repeat this process again. Ideally you should hit your muscles once every 72 hours so you could perform 2 upper body workouts per week and 2 lower body workouts per week.

Vince Delmonte

Step #2

Focus on eating at least 5-7x a day with balanced meals from carbohydrates, proteins and fats. If your goal is to build muscle than you should be eating at least 15-18 x your current body weight. Your carbohydrates should equate about 45% of your intake, your proteins should equate about 35% of your intake and your fat should be the remaining 20% of your intake. You should focus on over half of those meals being solid whole food meals and the remainder can be liquid meal replacment shakes.

Step #3

You should focus on stretching at least half the amount that you lift weights. One of the biggest mistkakes I see is people training, training and training with out any stretching. Stretching helps restore normal length to the tissue and if you are constantly training, your muscle tissues will shorten and big to perform weaker and slower and have a higher incidence of injuries. So if you are lifting weights 4 hours in the week, at least an additional 2 hours should be dedicated to stretching. You must counteract the shortening of the muscle tissues that occurs with weights or else you are a injury screaming to happen.

Step #4

Avoid supplements that have not been around for longer than 3 years. I learned this phisophy from an Australian strength coach who recommended not trying any supplement until it has been around at least 3 years to pass the test of time. This will make your life much easier and help you avoid all the marketing hoopla in the latest fitness and bodybuilding magazine. If you follow this rule, you will discover only a small handful of supplements still standing. Here are the ones you should not go with out: a high quality multi-vitamin, fish oil capsules, powdered creatine and a protein powder. These products will cover your nutritional basis for health, healthy body composition, strength and muscle mass.

I’ve just remembered the old days of the web. The days when search engines were not much popular. People would search for good websites on kinds of  websites that put together links in an organized way. Those link aggregators websites were (and still are) called website directories.

The most famous directories are Yahoo!’s and DMOZ.

Nowadays, a directory’s usefulness is a little different than serving users directly. As far as I know, their biggest utility is to help search engines in the ranking process by giving them some sort of pre-approval for the all websites that they have within their database.

Search engines also put together websites, but it’s different from directories in the aspect that in a search engines you search for a keyword and get a list of websites, in a directory you browse through categories. Also, in the search engine results, you see pages; in a directory category you see web sites.

If you go to the bodybuilding section of those directories, you’ll surely find some interesting websites that have a minimum of quality from the directories maintainers’ point of view.

My tip is simply to go to some directories and look at their bodybuilding category because all the website there will have a minimum of quality from the directories’ maintainers’ point of view.

Here are some you can check out.

• DMOZ main page (here you can browse all the categories present in the DMOZ directory)
• Bodybuilding category at DMOZ
• Fitness category at DMOZ
• Nutrition category at DMOZ
• The Yahoo! directory main page (here you can browse all the categories present in the Yahoo! directory)
• Health category at the Yahoo! directory
• Weightlifting category at the Yahoo! directory
• Fitness category at the Yahoo! directory
• Nutrition category at the Yahoo! directory
• Bodybuilding category at the Yahoo! directory

You may wonder why I just talk about those two directories (yes, there are a lot more). The reason is that those are the only ones that I think are worth to look at. Google uses DMOZ to get information “directory-kind” information. Besides Google, more than 5 other major search engines trust in DMOZ. That is pretty much the reason why it is the only I personally care about.

The Yahoo! directory seems to be good, but I’ve never used it. I’m referring to it because people talk so much about it that it must be worth something.

For you to get more informed, go read my diet for building muscle article.

The most important part of bodybuilding is nutrition. Muscle building nutrition should be threaten seriously if you want to get somewhere in bodybuilding.

Here I gathered some facts that present in every descent bodybuilding diet plan.

1. It must be natural in first place. A diet plan should be consisted of mainly whole foods because foods have way more nutrients than supplements (even science doesn’t know what are all the nutrients inside most, maybe all, whole and natural foods).
2. It must be as exact as possible. Accurate nutritional information is necessary. You need closer to perfect measures of how many grams/calories of proteins, carbohydrates and fats you need to consume per day. The rest (vitamins, minerals, …) is only required to be in place for a healthy living and muscle growth.
3. Your life style should be designed around your diet plan. That seems somewhat exaggerated, but even for supplements users this is a must. For natural bodybuilders this life style issue is more than a must. Your daily schedule should be planned around your diet plan (hours for study, happy hours, workout hours, etc). For natural bodybuilders, the diet plan is the center of attention.
4. It must fulfill your daily calorie needs. A diet plan should be designed so that it will meet your daily calorie needs. If that doesn’t happen, you’ll start losing weight (muscles and fats) instead of gaining weight. For that reason foods must be not only healthy (which they should obviously be), but also in the correct amount.
5. It must also exceed your daily calorie needs. If not, you won’t gain weight. How you use the exceeding calories (working out for example) will determine if you will grow muscles or not. No matter what you do, you will only gain weight (be it muscles or fat) if you consume more calories than the amount you need.

Now a bonus tip: you need to drink a lot of water. A good diet plan must be designed so that you eat many meals during the day. This will speed up your metabolism (i.e. increasing its intensity). Since all metabolic reactions spend water and you will increase the amount of metabolic reactions, you will need much more water than normal.

I bet you have felt the need for accurate information of how to build a diet plan for you. You can get that by checking this major article I’ve written. But keep in mind something: no one can give you a diet plan without knowing your exact needs and situation. For that reason you need to build one for yourself.

Peace.