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| Kevin Levrone |
Bodybuilding can be very complicated. There are lots of things you need to
utilise in order to MAXIMISE muscle building and reach your true potential.
However, most people aren't growing at all, because they are missing the two
key principles... The key principles of building muscle are very simple…
there are two essential requirements which are often missed ... TWO things you
MUST DO in order to build muscle! 1 Progress the load (lift increasingly
heavy weights over time) 2 Maintain a calorie surplus (increase calories as you
get heavier)
In other words, you need to tell the body it needs more muscle (1) and you need
to give it the fuel to build it (2). The problem is that these two things
require hard work. Simple but hard work. Everything else is just about details
and options, rather than essentials. Let’s break it down and discuss why these
two factors are so important and why so many people fail to implement these
principles or fail to be consistent and therefore do not achieve muscle growth.
ESSENTIAL PRINCIPAL 1 - PROGRESS THE
LOAD
You will often see people lifting the same weight, month in, month out, year
in, year out and their muscles never grow. Why? Because they are not increasing
the demand placed on their muscles, which is what you need to do in order to
tell muscle to grow.
Some people don't like the fact that going heavy is downright HARD and it
HURTS! Learn to love the pain that going heavy brings! Chase it!
FORM WARRIORS These people either don't like going heavy or stay safe because
they have been distracted by perfecting form. This can result in them never
increasing weight because it causes them to break form slightly.
You are always going to fail somewhere, at the end of a set
when your body cannot do any more, you are going to lose form and fail on your
last rep. It takes practise to fail cleanly without breaking form. Work towards
technical failure but fail as heavy as you can. Don't fear going for a weight
you haven't lifted before, then cleaning up the technique the following week
until you are working with that weight using perfect form. Then, go up in
weight again. Providing you don't do anything which is going to injure you,
it’s cool to find the balance between form and weight.
PEOPLE WHO WANT TO
PUMP UP FOR THE GRAM
These people focus on pumping their muscles up. This means
doing high reps using light weights, which pumps blood into the muscle and
makes it look and feel good. But ultimately, this temporary pump won’t make the
muscle grow, so don't confuse a pump with stimulating hypertrophy. Pump sets
are useful for cell volumisation exercises at the end of a workout but aren't
the key primers for muscle growth. Start with heavy weights to grow.
PEOPLE WHO GET BORED
EASILY SO WANT TO CHANGE WORKOUTS
You will often see people constantly change up their
programme or training type without truly maximising strength using any one
system. They are changing the stimulus, so are going to get DOMS, but they are
not maximising the strength of their muscles and progressing to lifting the
heaviest weights possible as they would be if they stuck to a consistent
exercise programme.
YOU NEED TO SELECT A
GROUP OF EXERCISES... THEN PROGRESS
THE LOAD OVER TIME
Once you plateau, then you can change exercises, or just
take a de-load week and go again. Focus on the fun of getting stronger every
week, not switching to diferent exercises each session. There is nothing more
exciting than getting REALLY, REALLY strong... If you want to grow, you should
walk into the gym every session feeling both excited and fearful about the
weights you are scheduled to lift. After the session, you should feel a sense
of achievement that you have annihilated your targeted lifts.
HOW TO FIX IT - LOG BOOKING
If you just walk in the gym and lift the most you can each
day, you’ll find on days you feel strong you pick up heavier weights and on
days you don't feel so good you will pick up lighter weights. Or, you won't force through those last few
reps. And as you get stronger, you'll
doubt yourself and be unsure as to whether you can or should increase the
weight, as the next weight up may seem intimidating. You'll settle into a
comfort zone. The best way to ensure that you are progressing your load is to
use a log book religiously. This way, you have a written a target every week
based on last week’s lifts and you will
have to improve on that lift. This can
either be achieved by adding a rep, or
by adding some weight once you get to the top of your rep range. You will find
that you have already set yourself a
goal for the forthcoming session and once you really go for it, you can achieve it.
ESSENTIAL PRINCIPAL 2
- MAINTAIN A CALORIE SURPLUS
It is very much possible, AND COMMON, to increase strength
over time without getting bigger. Just look at competitive weight lifters. They
manage to increase strength, but by controlling calories they maintain their
size rather than grow.
Unfortunately, too many people spend months or even years in
the gym progressing the weights they are lifting but fail to realise that
without getting into a calorie surplus to build muscle, growth won't occur.
CALORIE SURPLUS
To begin with, you only need to be in a small calorie surplus to build muscle. Once
your body has all the fuel it needs to stay alive and move around all day, it then needs a little extra to build the
muscle you have asked it to by training hard.
CALORIE PROGRESSION
Once you are lifting increasingly heavy weights and you
create a calorie surplus (either by chance or calculation), you WILL GROW.
However… once your bodyweight increases, your maintenance calorie requirement
increases accordingly. So, what WAS a calorie surplus could now be a
maintenance number of calories. At this point, your body will stop growing and
simply maintain its weight. For this reason, in order to gain muscle your
calories need to be progressed as your bodyweight increases. This sounds
obvious when you say it out loud, but a surprising number of people don't
follow this principal. They think, “well I was growing, and now I've stopped so
something isn't working anymore”. They then turn to the wrong things to fix it,
like hormones, food choices and exercise frequency, when all they really needed
to do is implement another increase in calories.
MORE REASONS PEOPLE
FAIL TO EAT ENOUGH?
• They’re scared of
gaining body fat
• They don’t know how
much food to eat
• They’re unable to
eat enough food
THE FEAR OF GETTING
FAT
You can't stay absolutely shredded all-year-round AND gain
muscle. You are going to have to go into a calorie surplus if you want to put
on muscle size, and this will mean gaining some body fat. However, by making
intelligent choices, you can keep a favourable
gain ratio of mostly muscle and minimal body fat.
THE INABILITY TO CALCULATE THE AMOUNT OF FOOD NEEDED
The reason this can be hard is because you only want to be
in a surplus of a few hundred calories- not a thousand calorie surplus or more.
You either need a coach to work this out for you, or you need to be good at
calculating your daily activity levels and simultaneously tracking your daily
calories. You can use an online calorie calculator and a food tracking app;
these can be inaccurate, but they are a
good start. Most people lack an
understanding of finding the exact
calorie surplus required to grow enough muscle tissue without gaining excessive
body fat. Many people think that when they eat clean, they are eating a lot,
but in reality they are not eating enough and don't gain muscle. Many people
who don't eat clean and consume
calorie-dense food eat too much and gain
fat. Most people who train hard can eat more "clean" food than they
realise without getting fat... and less junk food.
IT'S TOO HARD
Some people just aren't up for eating 4000 plus calories a
day. It's HARD! If you eat clean foods which will be beneficial for digestion,
performance etc, then it's a lot of food. People can struggle after a week or
two. Some of the best strength athletes and bodybuilders you meet have got
where they are because they are able to put away huge quantities of food.
Nobody gets huge without becoming sick of chewing at one time or another. There are ways to make it easier, by focusing
on digestion and making the food tasty, which will keep your appetite healthy.
Conversely, choosing the wrong foods will make it twice as hard.
TOO MANY CHEAT MEALS
Many people assume that because they are "bulking"
they can get away with more cheat meals, when it’s quite the opposite. In order to maintain a slight calorie
surplus, you need to be stricter on your diet than people realise. If you are
cutting with 500 calories a day under your maintenance, you are hitting about a
3500 calorie DEFICIT over the course of the week. So, if you eat a cheat meal
of 1500 calories once a week, you probably won't get fat over the course of the
week. However, if you are in a 300 calorie SURPLUS and you eat a cheat meal
once or twice a week... you will get fat fairly quickly. “Bulking" is not
an excuse to eat like a pig… quite the opposite. You must be extra careful.
What often happens is that people have a couple of cheat meals a week during
their bulk, gain fat too quickly, and then drop the quantity of food they are
eating daily too low, meaning they cannot gain muscle efectively. The key here
is to keep your bulking calories high but keep cheat meals portion controlled.
LACK OF CONSISTENCY
Some people can eat correctly for a few days, or even a week
but then fall of the wagon by either reducing their calorie intake or
increasing it with junk food. They then spin into a cycle of losing muscle one
week and gaining fat the next. Stay consistent every week and it will be much
easier.
EXCEPTIONS TO THE
RULE - DON'T LET THEM DISTRACT YOU
For long-term success, the above rules are essential.
However, you will see exceptions to these two rules in the gym from time to
time. Don’t let yourself think that this disproves the above rules and distract
you from what you need to do in order to build muscle. Here are some examples:
NEWBIE GAINS - NEW TO
LIFTING WEIGHTS
When someone first enters the gym, they can do everything
wrong and will still make progress because it is all new to their muscles. Very
soon this will level of without progressing weights lifted and creating and
maintaining a calorie surplus.
NEWBIE GAINS - NEW TO EATING A BODYBUILDING DIET
I would also call it “newbie gains” when someone has been
training for some time but eating badly. They can tidy up their diet and
increase their protein intake and for a short period they will build muscle
without creating a surplus... but not long-term, they too will soon plateau.
STEROIDS
Steroids obviously change things dramatically. Someone can
add steroids and make progress without being in a surplus. But not for long.
And be aware not everyone tells the truth about steroid use. So, when you see people make radical
short-term progress, don’t allow yourself to believe that you can make progress
long-term, without a calorie surplus and without progressing your loads.
GENETIC FREAKS
There are a few genetic freaks out there, they can do things
wrong for longer without reaching a plateau. These people will STILL progress
faster by applying the two principals mentioned above. And the chances are...
I'm sorry to say that you are not a genetic freak.
The following list of items are variables that afect the
speed and ease of muscle building, but do not tell the body that it needs to
build more muscle and therefore will not assist without also implementing the
rules above.
• Supplements
• Food choices
• Macro splits
• Balancing hormones
• Meal timing
• Exercise selection
• Exercise execution
• Training frequency
• Recovery
• Consistency
