Best Bodybuilding Workout Tips for Everyone
1 / Know Your Limits
Seriously, know your personal limits. I can't tell you how many
times I've seen somebody give up too early or get hurt during training
or racing because they simply had no idea what their real thresholds
were. The whole idea behind training and/or competing is to push your
thresholds to the limits to fulfill your potential. If you don't know
what your limits are, how can you possibly know what your potential is?
How do you figure out your limits? It's not easy, and it's the #1
reason why people hire coaches. Experiment with training variable until
you establish your comfort zone, and then systematically push out of
that zone to force adaptation. If you're competing in your comfort zone,
then you're not trying hard enough.
2 / No Pain, No Gain
You would think that this myth has been beaten to death or at least
shooed from popularity, but I hear it surprisingly often from people who
honestly believe that they need to kill themselves every day during
training to maximize their workouts.
Don't do that.
Is your resting heart rate jacked up today? Are you too sore from
your last workout to walk? Did you only sleep a few hours the last
night? Skipped breakfast and lunch? Congrats, you just earned yourself a
rest day. In other words - go home. You aren't going to get anything
but an increased risk of injury by training in any one of these
conditions.
Forget about fighting through the pain.
Discomfort is your body telling you that you've stepped well out of your comfort zone. Pain is your body telling you to knock off whatever you're doing. If you're an endurance athlete, listen to it.
3 / The Farce Of The Low-Carb Diet For Athletes
True, monitoring carb intake is one of the best ways to play around
with your weight, I don't dispute that. I do it myself, and it can be a
powerful tool for people who need to lose a significant amount of
weight. But the everyman athlete has no need to go bonkers cutting out
all kinds of carbs just for the sake of it, because that sort of eating
behavior is not sustainable for an endurance athlete.
Atkins crazed low-carb lifestyle promoters need to buy a clue. Carbohydrates are absolutely essential to your diet, especially if you're an athlete.
There are no such things as good carbs or bad carbs - just too much
carbs! If you're an athlete on a low carb diet, you're basically
sabotaging yourself. Good luck topping off your muscle glycogen stores
by eating a protein and fat centric diet.
Put the proverbial fork in this one - this fad diet has finally bit
the dust amongst athletes who know better. Next time your spin
instructor starts touting the amazing low-carb lifestyle he or she
leads, throw your used sweat towel at them and switch gyms.
4 / Create Variety In Your Training
Any good training regimen needs to include variables that can be
toggled to alter training for specific purposes. A weight lifter, for
example, would take into consideration their specific exercise
techniques, pounds lifted, sets per lift, reps per set, tempo per rep,
rest between reps, rest between sets, emphasis between concentric,
eccentric, and/or static contractions, number of sets, set order,
supersetting, and so on, ad nauseum.
That's a lot to take into consideration, and by adjusting just a few
of those variables you can focus your training down to hone in on your
strengths or weaknesses.
Perhaps most important though, is that creating variety in your program keeps you from getting bored with what you're doing.
Obviously though, no matter how many variables you might switch
around during, say, your bench press, if you are just plum bored with
bench pressing, you're still stuck.
So don't be afraid to completely switch around your workouts to keep
yourself entertained and sharp. If you're an endurance runner, toss
some speed work into the mix, or vice versa. If you're a power lifter,
mix in some yoga.
Adding variety is the best way to keep yourself on track without
getting bored, as well as a great way to keep your body sharp by forcing
it to adapt to something new.
5 / Always Second Guess Yourself
That's right; always second guess your motives, your training, your
goals, and your accomplishments. Keep a running tally of where you are,
where you want to be, and what you need to do to get there. Don't kid
yourself into thinking you can do this on autopilot - this needs to be a
conscious effort.
Always ask why. Why am I running stairs? Why am I doing this
particular exercise? Why is my 400 meter split time still not improving?
Why did my trainer/coach have me do this? (If your coach can't answer
this, get a new coach.)
Why did I just eat that whole pizza?
You get the picture.
6 / You Cannot Spot Check Fat
If I had a nickel for every time I heard this myth, I would be a very, very rich man.
The fact of the matter is that fat goes on to, and comes off of,
your body the way it wants to, not the way you want it to. The only way
around this is targeted liposuction.
A brief, fairly unscientific explanation will do for this one. You
cannot work the fat off any specific area of your body because, well,
you cannot work fat. People mistake that good old muscle burn for
something that magically removes adipose proximally from wherever it
burns. Those were your oblique abdominals being worked, not the love
handles next to them.
There are only two ways to shed those lbs, and they work best in tandem; diet and exercise.
Create a reasonable caloric deficit as often as you can while eating
in a manner that's in line with your nutritional needs (a third curtain
call please for the low-carbers) and get yourself into an exercise
regimen that will help you maintain your lean body mass and prevent
catabolism.
7 / You Need To Supplement Your Diet
Because of the specific training many enduroletes employ, many
supplements are basically useless, or at best, cost prohibitive for
endurance athletes. It's a much different game than, say, bodybuilding,
where intensive supplementation is absolutely critical. The key is to
understand the basics and use supplements that have real application for
an endurance athlete.
It is quite difficult to achieve competitive success without proper
supplementation. For example, you could easily replenish your carbs on
an Ironman course with white bread and Fig Newtons, but you'd have to
carry a backpack full of the stuff to ensure your calorie intake was
adequate. It's much easier to supplement with a carb/sodium replacement
gel.
If you're going to consider supplementing your diet, keep it simple. Think natural whey, soy, and caseinate proteins, creatine monohydrate, electrolytes, BCAAs, recovery formulas, a multivitamin etc.
But just because you take a vitamin, don't think you can skip out on
those leafy greens. Remember, the multivitamin is supposed to
supplement your diet, not replace any part of it.
As a general rule of thumb, if you can't pronounce the ingredients,
don't ingest it until you've done your homework to understand what it
is! Take responsibility for what you put into your body.
8 / Play The Mental Game, Too
The best athletes in the world train not only their bodies, but
their minds, for success in their sport. Why not take a page from their
playbooks and do the same?
Visualize your goals, and visualize yourself achieving those goals.
Imagine the emotions you might experience during a competition, and
think how you can prepare for them. Visualize possible setbacks and
visualize how you'll overcome them.
Visualize your success. Now give yourself an imaginary high-five.
9 / Plan For Adequate Recovery Time
You can't train 24/7, unfortunately. If we could, we'd all be
stellar athletes. Between those beatings you place on your body, it
needs time to recover.
Fill up your glycogen tank after a workout with carbs (do I have to
even say it, carbophobes?) to prepare yourself for recovery and your
next workout, get enough sleep every night, and drink more water than
you think you need. In fact, if you think you've had enough water, drink
more, because odds are you haven't.
Periodize your training - you can't go up, and up, and up, forever.
You have to build in rest days or rest weeks to allow your body to get
its bearings and adapt. Every season has to also have an offseason.
Train. Overreach. Recover. Adapt. Repeat.
10 / Set SMART Goals
This is simple enough, just like the nifty little acronym that helps
us to remember proper goal setting, SMART. Make those goals Specific,
Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time bound.
Your goals must be all of those things for you to succeed. Write them down if you have to, and keep track of your progress.
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