Have you been busting your butt in the gym without gaining little to no muscle at all? If your answer to this question is yes, you’re in the right place.
He there, it’s Mike here again with another treat for you guys.
This post is based on a video presentation by ATHLEAN-X. One of my favorite sources on the internet in the fitness and muscle building industry.
Why Listen to Jeff Cavaliere?
Jeff is now one of the biggest influencers in the muscle building industry! But he had the same muscle-building challenges back in the days that many of you face today.
This is Jeff in high school, painfully thin, unable to put on muscle. But things have changed though for him because he learned from a lot of his mistakes which I’m here to share with you
Mistake #1: Overtraining
This sets up a roadblock for many, many guys that consider themselves to be hard dangers or just unable to add muscle.
You see, we always think that more is better.
We’ve been conditioned in the society to think more is better and when it comes to training more is not better.
More is not better!
Only the right amount of the right type of training is better.
Jeff cavaliere
You do even more and then you do even more.
And before you know what you’re doing 55 sets for chest alone and your chest looks like shit.
If you’re going to be a drug-free unassisted lifter than you better find ways to enhance your recovery.
And most of us are not able to recover fast enough without the assistance of drugs, to allow ourselves to go back to that gym to do another 55 sets and another 55 sets.
Mistake #2: Undertraining
Which leads us to the next point. Undertraining.
Now you may be shocked when mistake #1 was don’t overtrain.
Let clear this right now.
Undertraining is when you show up at the gym thinking that just by walking into the gym and gracing everybody with your presence, swiping your gym card, grabbing your protein shake and then heading over to the leg extension machine that you’re going to build muscle.
If you head to a gym and your goal is to count reps count to 12 over and over again, you could’ve better stay home and watch your favorite series. If that’s all you’re going to do, the numbers that you’re doing in the gym, the reps that you’re counting don’t mean shit.
If you want to build muscle, the only thing that ever matters is the intensity that you’re bringing to those numbers.
So, if you bring that high level of intensity to what you do now, a high level of focus to what you do then you’ll find that you’ll get an extremely intense workout, extremely effective workout in about 45 minutes or so. Maybe an hour’s top.
Mistake #3: Avoiding Hard Exercises
People tend to avoid the heart exercises. Jeff states that he was guilty of this as well.
We all know the hard ones, the ones where it’s like the impending doom of the bar. It creates a threat to you and your comfort level in the gym bench pressing.
There’s a threat that the bar had come down in your chest. There’s impending doom.
Other exercises like squats and dead-lifts are also examples belong to this category.
Well, if you want to build muscle, you better build your foundation of strength and build it with those key foundational exercises.
Don’t jump in and only what everybody else is doing.
And start at your own level.
Just because you someone else benching 300 to 400 pounds and squatting 300 to 400 pounds, doesn’t mean that you have to start there.
We all start somewhere.
We all start at the bottom, no matter who you are.
Just start somewhere and you build from there.
Mistake #4: Misapplying the Exercises
But just by doing those exercises doesn’t mean that you’re accomplishing everything you need to accomplish.
A big mistake is thinking that, okay, I did the exercises.
Now, how did you do them? What was the purpose? What was the purpose of your training?
If you’re trying to go for hypertrophy, maybe a power clean is not the best way to go.
Power clean is great if you’re trying to be explosive and build a build top-level explosive strength as an athlete, but it’s not a great hypertrophy exercise.
Remember a different purpose, needs a different time, different exercise, different application.
So, don’t miss apply the exercises that you’re using, but don’t shy away from those that are the most intimidating or the scariest to you because they often hold the key to your most growth.
Mistake #5: Empty Eating
So, nutritionally we all make mistakes. Jeff states that he made plenty of mistakes, plenty of mistakes. Apparently, he was the biggest junk food eater. The biggest junk food eater on the planet. Every day he got home from school and wasn’t building muscle.
The scientific explanation for this, he explains is because even though he was over-nourishing in terms of the number of calories that he was taking in, he was undernourishing his muscles.
Not providing the nutrients that your muscles need for growth.
You see, it’s a very important difference if you don’t provide yourself with the right type of calories.
Calories alone will not help you to build muscle.
Think about every skinny guy you know who eats a ton of food and just can’t do anything.
The fastest way to fix it is to tell him to stop worrying about all the shit that he’s eating and start focusing on eating the right stuff.
And if he starts to eat the right stuff, there is no doubt that his muscle growth soars over the next year because he’s finally providing his muscles with the fuel that actually needs to grow.
It’s the concept of shit in shit out.
Mistake #6: Under-Nourishing
On the flip side of the coin, when you do clean up your diet, one thing you’re going to be wanting to be aware of is to make sure that when you do make your substitution, think about what you took out and what you’re putting back in.
You have to make sure once you clean up your food your calorie intake doesn’t drop too much.
So, you’re going to find that you struggle to put on size because you’re under-eating.
The first thing you’re going to want to do is don’t throw up your hands and say, I’m sorry this clean way of eating doesn’t work.
Now you want to start making sure you’re eating more at every single meal, every opportunity that you can, you’re trying to drive more of that nutrient-dense foods into your body.
This so you can increase the calories to be able to get to that level that your muscles need to be able to help you to grow. Get enough protein.
Make sure that you’re following a strategy to get you there.
Supplementation
And one of the strategies that’s great use all the time is supplementation because the liquid intake is easier extra high-quality calories, and the extra protein.
Supplementation makes it so much easier for you to take in around your solid meals throughout the day.
And number two, it allows you to be very, very, very consistent because consistency with nutrition is key.
You can’t make a change today.
This is a long-term approach that you want to start eating right and eating right for a lifetime and you could do it if you identify foods that you like and then have a strategy for being consistent with it.
And supplementation often comes in here and a very, very valuable way to allow you to get that stuff in without really feeling like you’re eating so much throughout the day.
Here I’ve included the video if you wish to get the whole presentation
Kudos to Athlean-X. You can check their excellent programs here.
Conclusion
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