Tip 1: Focus on lifting more weight over time:
The first bodybuilding tip that will make the biggest difference in your rate of muscle gain is whether you are able to consecutively add more weight to the bar.
No matter how many fancy principles you use, if you don’t increase a huge amount of lifting over the course of a few months, you won’t build muscle as quickly as you should.
The number one priority of any bodybuilding training program for gaining muscle mass should be lifting increasingly heavier weights.
When you get “stuck” and can’t lift the weight any higher, that’s when you start tinkering with other strategies like drop sets, supersets, etc., as a means of increasing the body’s potential, so that in a few more week, you can move to the next weight level.
All of these fancy protocols will definitely have a benefit in the future once you reach a level of musculature you’re happy with, but until then you should use them intermittently when you’re unable to lift heavier weights.
Tip 2: One repetition away from failure:
The second bodybuilding tip to pay attention to is the failure rule. Some people believe that lifting to failure every single set is the best way to build muscle. They think that to make a muscle grow you have to completely exhaust it.
While it’s true that you have to push your muscles beyond their comfort level to see progress, you can run into a variety of problems when you lift to failure on each set.
The first big problem is central nervous system fatigue. Training programs designed to fail every time will be very taxing on the central nervous system.
After a few weeks of such a program, you will most likely find that your central nervous system is so depleted that you can’t even lift the weight you were using for the required number of repetitions, increasing it slightly upwards.
The second problem with failure is that if you do it on the first exercise of the workout, you won’t have much for the second, third, and fourth exercises after that.
Since you should be doing at least a couple of different exercises in every workout you do, it becomes very difficult to accomplish.
Instead, try to perform one or two repetitions before failure. This will still have you pushing your body hard and working at the level of intensity needed to build muscle, but it won’t completely destroy you, so you’ll have to end your workout prematurely and take a day or two off just to recover.
Tip 3: Only perform exercises that work at least two muscle groups at the same time:
The third piece of bodybuilding advice is to concentrate on compound exercises. You only have a limited amount of time you can spend in the gym each day due to time and recovery constraints, so if you waste this time on exercises that only work one or two smaller muscle groups, you’re not exactly maximizing your potential.
Instead, follow the rule that for 80% of your workout you will only perform exercises that work at least two muscle groups.
The shoulder press, for example, will work your shoulders and triceps. The squat will work your quadriceps and hamstrings. The bench press will work your shoulders, chest and triceps (even the biceps to a very small extent).
On the other hand, barbell curls will only work the biceps, triceps pushdowns will only work the triceps, and leg curls will only work the hamstrings.
All these exercises don’t really give you the best compromise between results and energy invested, so it’s best to keep them limited.
Plus, with compound lifts you’ll typically be able to lift more weight, and since you read the first tip in this article, you know that it’s critical to success.
Tip 4: Fuel your body right before and after your workout:
The fourth tip to follow with your bodybuilding training program is to make sure you fuel your body properly both before and after your workout.
Failing to absorb the amino acids that your body will use to synthesize new muscle mass or the carbohydrates that provide the energy to formulate new muscle tissue is a critical mistake that will lead to lack of results.
If there’s a time when you can’t be sure of your nutrition, it’s during these two times of the day.
During the rest of the day you can be a little more flexible in terms of meal times and composition, as long as you still meet your calorie and macronutrient needs, but before and after training things must be 100% “active”.
Tip 5: Never go more than two weeks without changes:
The fifth is the bodybuilding tip that breaks the plateau. If you’ve ever reached a point with your workouts where you feel like you’re no longer gaining muscle mass, that’s a sure sign that you’re at a standstill.
Plateaus tend to impact almost everyone at some point, unless you are very careful to avoid it.
What exactly is a plateau? A plateau can be defined as any time where you go more than two weeks without any kind of progress. For you, the dedicated athlete, that means wasted effort and time in the gym.
To prevent this plateau from occurring, your job is to make sure that something in your schedule is continually changing. This could be the order in which you perform the exercises, the amount of rest you take between sets, or even the type of exercises you are performing.
If you can’t increase the weight in a subsequent session, it’s time to change something else. If you do this, you will be sure to get the results you are looking for.
Tip 6: Remember that rest is necessary:
Finally, to conclude our bodybuilding tips, always remember to rest. Too many people make the mistake of training too hard, too often, without allowing themselves time for recovery.
If you don’t allow your body to rest before returning to the gym, instead of getting stronger, you’re only breaking it down further and becoming weaker.
Ideally you should take a day off between each weightlifting workout, but if you prefer to do an upper/lower split that has you training more frequently, make sure you have at least two full days off per week.
Also, for those interested in cardio, this doesn’t mean going out for forty-five minutes of intense cardio activity. This means rest, active rest if necessary (as in a light walk, run or swim).
If you try to push your body in other activities on designated days off, it will impact your progress.