On social media, we see people who have beautiful athletic bodies, obtained without the use of harmful chemicals.
But blindly copying what we are shown — training, nutrition, so-called natural bodybuilding from influencers — is the best way to never make progress. Instead of blindly copying someone else's style and letting the next fitness guru put noodles on your ears, it is important to understand the basic principles. Read this article to the end — follow simple tips, and it will save you years of time!
The first reason is that no one warns about the danger.
One of the most common reasons is a banal injury, the risk of which is extremely high in the first months of training, if you approach the matter thoughtlessly. Many trainers suggest doing deadlifts and other basic exercises, because they are very effective. But it almost never happens that anyone tells the truth – such exercises require a long preparatory period.
What should you add to your training? Before you grab the barbell, make sure your joints are ready for the load and your body understands the movement pattern. Start each workout with a warm-up: 5-7 minutes of light cardio to warm up and joint gymnastics to mobilize. Before performing heavy exercises, such as squats, first learn to do them perfectly with your own weight, then with a light bar. Your task at this stage is not to lift more, but to teach your nervous system to correctly activate the necessary muscles.
No matter how much you want to build muscle faster, devote the first three to five months of training to safe exercises. Let these be exercises on simulators performed lying down or semi-lying down, various pull-ups. Eliminate all exercises with heavy weights in a standing position. Try to work more or less at full strength while you are lying down, and work at half strength when standing.
Reason two: easy workouts without progress become a routine
The trainer suggests “not chasing weight” and “working on technique”. As we have already understood, in the first 3-5 months it should be like this. But this is where the preparatory stage ends. This time is enough to work out the technique and move on to the main work – increasing the working weights. Unfortunately, today in the gym you will be offered any training methods, except for what is really needed. Natural bodybuilding is based on one key principle of muscle growth – strength progression of loads.
If you bench press 50 kg for 8 reps month after month, neither slight changes in tempo nor constant repetitions of the same number of reps will produce significant growth in your chest muscles. Muscle burning and pumping can be useful additions, but without the main incentive – an increase in working weight – they will not become a magic pill for a natural. Your goal is to get stronger. Strive to gradually reach significant working weights in basic exercises, for example, pressing a barbell equal to your own weight, and eventually exceed this figure. Without an increase in strength, muscle growth will be minimal.
Reason three: You're doing dozens of useful exercises, blocking your progress.
Some people do 5-7 exercises for each muscle group! This is completely unnecessary and can be counterproductive! Three exercises is the absolute maximum for a large muscle group, provided that you make steady progress in each of these exercises. And usually, one or two exercises are enough to grow a small muscle, and for a large muscle group like the latissimus dorsi, you can do two or three.
Why doesn't “more” mean “better”? Imagine that your recovery capacity is a glass of water. Every exercise, every set, takes a sip from it. When you've done 2-3 heavy basic chest exercises, you've already given your muscles a powerful stimulus for growth. Everything you do after that — another 4-5 isolation exercises until you're exhausted — is “junk volume.” It doesn't provide an additional stimulus, but it depletes your recovery resources. As a result, you don't grow, but you drive yourself into overtraining.
Reason four: your diet doesn't provide you with all the nutrients you need
Just sit down and count the amount of proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Let's say your body weight is 80 kg. So you need 160 g of animal protein, 320 grams of complex carbohydrates, and at least 40-60 grams of healthy fats of both vegetable and animal origin, including omega-3. As a result, we get about 2300-2500 kcal, which is a starting point for a man weighing 80 kg. Most likely, you will need even more nutrients for growth, you will probably need to increase the amount of complex carbohydrates.
And what besides BVH? Calories and macronutrients are the foundation, but not the whole building. You can eat your norm, eating garbage, and not get results. Water is a transport system for all nutrients and the basis for all processes in the body. Do you drink less than 2-3 liters per day? Your muscles literally “dry up”. Micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) from vegetables, fruits and greens are catalysts, without which protein synthesis and recovery are impossible. Don't be afraid of carbohydrates – they are your fuel during training. Don't be afraid of fats – they are needed for the production of testosterone, the main anabolic hormone.
Reason five: You're doing all of the above, but you're doing the wrong sets and repetitions.
This is one of the most common and annoying reasons. You need to rest between sets just enough to get the most out of each set. Muscles grow from increasing strength within a given range!
At this point, your trainer or training buddy will urge you: “Enough resting, let's work!” At this point, muscle growth ends, because instead of working on strength, you shift the emphasis to endurance training and muscle acidification. This metabolic stress can contribute to hypertrophy, but it should not replace the main principle – load progression. Why is this important? For heavy basic exercises (bench press, squats), a 2-3 minute rest allows you to restore ATP reserves – the main fuel for short and powerful efforts. By reducing rest to a minute, you will not be able to lift the same weight for the same number of repetitions, which means you will not create the necessary stimulus.
The same goes for reps. If in pursuit of muscle growth you lift a barbell or dumbbells not 6-8 times, but do as many as 15! At first glance, this is much “cooler”, but different rep ranges develop different qualities of muscles. While working in the range of 15 or more reps to failure can also stimulate muscle growth (mainly due to metabolic stress), for a natural looking to gain mass, the most effective is to focus on the range of 6-12 reps with increasing weight. High reps shift the emphasis more on muscular endurance.
Reason six: you forget that muscles grow not in the gym, but in your sleep
This is the most important point, which for some reason is talked about the least. You can train and eat perfectly, but if you sleep 5-6 hours a day, there will be no progress. Training is stress that destroys muscle fibers. And growth (hypertrophy) is a process of recovery and overcompensation, which occurs mainly during the deep phase of sleep.
It is at night that your body produces the maximum amount of growth hormone and testosterone, while simultaneously reducing levels of cortisol, the stress hormone that destroys muscle. Lack of sleep kills this process. Your goal is 7-9 hours of quality sleep every night. This is not an option, but as much a mandatory part of the training process as the bench press or chicken breast.
Reason seven: you are looking for a magic pill, not building a system
It's a psychological trap. You see a blogger doing some new “secret” exercise and you drop your program to try it. Then you read about a “super-effective” diet and you change everything again. This constant pursuit of quick results is a guarantee that they won't happen.
Natural bodybuilding is a marathon, not a sprint. The body doesn’t like chaos. It needs consistency and stability to adapt and grow. Choose a simple, working program, adjust your nutrition, and stick to that plan for at least 2-3 months. Record your working weights, track your progress, and make small adjustments rather than changing everything drastically every week. Patience and consistency will beat any trendy technique.
In fact, there are many more reasons why our progress may stop than seven, but today we have considered the most important ones. Start by correcting these mistakes, and the result will not be long in coming.
Джерело: ukr.media
