Often, athletes can overdo and go too far in the pursuit of putting on new layers of muscles on their bones. This does serious damage to their body and hinders their athletic performance as a result.
You will see a minority of these excess muscle builders succeed and become a reason for other athletes to do the same, who do not have the luck to succeed the same way.
Do yourself a favor, don’t listen to any unqualified advice.
You will automatically avoid these 7 common mistakes that are limiting your muscle growth:
1. Supplements
The purpose of supplements is to fulfill the nutrition needs of your body that are being unfilled by your normal diet.
They are in no way meant to replace your actual diet.
They certainly not meant to do the work for you.
You can’t just take supplements and expect to build muscles without putting in the hard work required.
You need the steady diet of grilled steak and whole foods, and a steady work ethic to build muscle.
2. Excess Workouts
There is a lot of debate online about whether there is such a thing as excess workouts or working out too often.
Let’s put that debate to bed.
Yes, that is a thing.
More isn’t always better when it comes to workouts.
When you lift weights at the gym or perform high intensity workouts, small tears occur in your muscles. Especially if you don’t have the proper protection gear. Rest and a proper diet heal these tears and develop new muscles fibers.
If these tears haven’t healed properly and you work out again, then you will feel pain that is unnecessary. Not to mention the damage that you will be doing to your body which, in many cases, could be irreversible.
3. Overblown Expectations
It is good to visualize your goal before you start anything.
You may have an idea of what your body may look like after a certain period of regular exercise. More often than not, these expectations are more than what you can achieve.
Years of hard work goes into the physical fitness that pro athletes have. You can’t expect to look like them in a matter of weeks or even months. Having realistic goals and discipline can help you achieve what you realize but take baby steps.
4. Not cleaning up your Diet
Bulking up doesn’t mean that you are allowed to each all your favorite junk food.
Building muscle is all about taking lean proteins and good carbs.
Junk food has none of that.
All you are doing by ‘bulking up’ is putting in bad carbohydrates in your body. You need to feed your muscles with a clean diet and keeping yourself well hydrated.
And if someone tells you that they are bulking up when they are eating pizzas, fries, etc. Remember these words:
THEY ARE NOT!
5. Doing Expert level Exercise Regimens
When you take on a workout that you see a pro level athlete performing in a video you are doing yourself a serious disservice.
The small clip you see doesn’t show the whole picture.
You don’t see the army of nutritionists, coaches and trainers that is helping that athlete and taking care of his every need. They know how much exercise their muscles can take.
A normal person, even an amateur athlete, doesn’t have a good idea about the routine that will help them build the kind of muscles they require.
6. Inconsistent Workouts
Some people will advise you to change up your routine to make faster progress at the gym.
That can be a good thing as long as you don’t change the exercises that you are doing.
You can change the reps, rest periods, weights etc. but don’t turn your whole workout upside down because you want a change.
There are exercises that are essential for muscle building, like squats, deadlifts, and when you move away from them you will take a step backward.
7. Increasing Weight unnecessarily
People are so happy when they do a single rep of a really high weight.
There are endless rounds of bragging afterwards.
But ask yourself, what was the benefit for your muscles?
You could have done 8 or 10 reps with a lighter weight and that would be much better for their overall goals.
So unless you are a weightlifter or powerlifter, you should stick with weights that you can do more than one rep with.
Or stick with reliable workout exercises.
To summarize all of the mistakes above;
Don’t listen to bad advice,
Think about your routines,
Stick with them and don’t overdo them.
Do that and you will be building muscle like you want to, soon you will be the one people will come to for advice and you can oblige by giving the right one.
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