How would you take it if you learned that just about everything you were doing to gain weight and build muscle was wrong?
What if all the time and effort spent on a gym membership, all the money spent on stacks of bodybuilding magazines, all the faithful muscle building reading and following, turned out to be wrong?
What if you had precious little in the way of muscle gains to show for it? Would you be happy or sad?
If you find yourself in a situation like that don’t be too hard on yourself. Bodybuilding is all about trial and error. Not everything works for everybody every time. At times you have to be willing to fail before you can succeed.
There are multitudes of muscle building mistakes that beginners fall victim to. Follow a mistake long enough and you could either hurt yourself or waste your time. By avoiding the mistakes you increase the odds that you will gain muscle the way your body was meant to.
Here are three of the worst mistakes that athletes try to build muscle the wrong way. Remove these mistakes from your brain and workouts and you’ll be a lot closer to earning yourself a thickly muscled beach body.
1. Skipping Cardio
Bodybuilders who skip cardio workouts are about as common as ballerinas who skip bodybuilding workouts. They don’t seem to go together.
I hear you saying, “I’m a bodybuilder not a friggin’ marathoner!” Why would I want to run, jump or dance my way to heart fitness when weightlifting will get me there?
Weight lifting, at times, produces heart pounding, heavy breathing exhaustion. There just has to be cardio benefits in there somewhere.
Yes, there are some cardio benefits, but not anywhere near what you get when you do a true cardio workout.
Aerobics plays a pivotal roll in muscle development. Aerobics speeds up recovery from weight lifting. It transports oxygen and blood flow to your muscles faster and better.
Add a cardio workout to your weight lifting workouts and you’ll start feeling and seeing improved muscle gain results.
2. Overtraining Your Biceps and Triceps
The most overworked muscle is the bicep. Go into any gym on any given day and you can bet that nobody skips the EZ Curl bar, the preachers bench or dumbbell curls.
Not only do these building-muscle-the-wrong-way Feldmans overwork their biceps on a day to day basis they also overwork them on an hour by hour basis.
They do too many reps combined with too many sets. They never allow proper recovery time. Since they are always breaking their bicep muscles down they wonder why they never get built up.
Note: Your legs are four times thicker than your arms. Refocus more time and energy on your legs and less on your arms. Of course I’m not suggesting that you overtrain your legs. Be reasonable.
It’s been proven that heavy lifting that improves the strength in your legs and back will also will also increase the size of your arms.
3. Not Focusing On Strength Improvement
Most new fitness trainees shy away from pure strength training because they care more about what they will look like, ripped and muscular, more than anything else.
They can’t seem to get it into their heads that the stronger they get and the heavier weights they can lift means larger muscles.
I’m not talking about only a small strength improvement here, I’m talking about serious strength improvement. The stronger the better.
The more weight you can move means the larger your muscles will have to get to keep up. Being stronger also leads to better lifting technique. Better lifting technique means less injuries. Both of those improvements adds up to more intense workouts.
Building Muscle The Wrong Way – Conclusion
Avoid building muscle the wrong way at all costs.
- Add a cardio element to your weightlifting workouts.
- Focus more on your legs and back. Your biceps will grow bigger because of it.
- Improve your overall strength so that your lifting technique gets better and you suffer less injuries.
Click here, to check out Vince DelMonte’s skinny to muscular story. If you are skinny, looking for muscle building help, then Vince’s advice may be just what you’re looking for.
