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Everyone knows that
if you’re not dedicated and committed to your training, then you’re certainly not going to continue to add quality
muscle mass, get lean, and feel great. That’s just obvious. But why is it that so many people in the gym who are committed and focused on
what they’re doing find themselves stuck on a prolonged plateau, failing to make continual and dramatic progress? I see it all the time . . . people working
hard at the gym, week after week, and month after month only to find that they’re treading water. They’re obviously
trying to add muscle and drop fat, but they look exactly the same as they did 6 months ago.
Here are without a doubt the top reasons why people fail to make
improvements on a consistent basis:
 Lack of an intelligent training program based on the principles of variation.
If you always do the same thing in the gym, your body will quickly adjust
to the stresses you’re placing on it, and your progress will slow down significantly or stop altogether. Do you do the same workout for the same body parts on the same schedule for more
than 3 or 4 weeks in a row? If you do, then you’re not adequately using variation to continually shock your body into
new periods of muscle growth. Do you, for instance, train your
chest by starting with barbell bench presses every time? No wonder your pecs are not fully developed. Some days you need to
start with inclines or even flyes to break the pattern and build real muscle mass. Your training program should have variation built into it on a variety of levels including: exercises,
rep and set patterns, level of intensity, tempo, etc. If it doesn’t, you’re more than likely not maximizing your
gains. To make consistent and continual gains in the gym, you need to be constantly pushing yourself to break your training
patterns by using the principle of variation intelligently.
 Failure to fuel your body for muscle growth with proper nutrition. Some people will tell you that proper nutrition accounts for up to 80% of the results you get with
any bodybuilding or fitness program, and they may not be far off. In my experience, nutrition is the most neglected area for people interested in health and fitness. Why is it we’ll
spend countless hours and go out of our way to investigate, study, and test the latest new fangled training system, but we
won’t take 10 minutes a day to plan our nutritional intake? It just doesn’t make any sense. You must inform yourself about the body’s nutritional needs, and put some
effort into assuring that you’re meeting these needs on a daily basis. Of course, the intricacies of proper muscle building nutrition
are too extensive to explore fully here. But there are some givens that you need to be aware of and adhere to:
Protein intake
is absolutely essential to muscle growth. You should be consuming at least 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight daily.
The best way to do this is through the consumption of small, frequent meals. For instance, a 200 pound person involved in
intense weight training, should consume at least 35 grams of quality protein 6 times per day. To maintain proper nitrogen balance, try not to go more than 2-3 hours without
consuming an adequate amount of protein. Use protein powders,
meal replacement powders, and/or protein bars. But get your protein in!
 Take a multi-vitamin and antioxidants every day. People who tell you that you can
get adequate amounts of vitamins and minerals in the food you eat are simply living in a fantasy world and are not familiar
with the requirements of hard training athletes. The way many of us eat most of the time, it’s amazing we get any vitamins
at all. Fuel your muscle growth throughout the day by eating small, frequent meals.
Eat 4-6 meals per day. Four is the absolute minimum. Six is better.
Make sure you get adequate amounts of unsaturated fats. That’s right,
FATS. It’s not the four letter word the media has made it out to be. In fact, the proper fats are absolutely essential
to muscle growth and overall health in general. Good sources include fish high in Omega 3s, nuts, and olive oil.
Not understanding supplements and the key role they can
play in helping to build a quality physique. Don’t get me wrong, supplements alone without an intelligent training and nutrition program
are not enough. But the quality supplements that are currently available can certainly help take your physique to the next
level. Here, you also need to do your homework. You need to
have an intelligent approach to supplementing to reach your goals. Are you training for muscle mass? Are you trying to drop fat and get cut? How old are you? Are you male or female? How
you answer these questions will completely determine which supplements make sense for you and which ones do not. Your supplement program must be highly individualized based on your goals and
what works for you. Stick
with the proven supplements. If you’re looking to add muscle mass, you’ll want to be using
protein and creatine. For weight loss, try CLA and glutamine.
  
 Overtraining. Short of not training at all, nothing will cut into the gains you make in the gym quite like overtraining.
I am an avid believer in short, intense training sessions.
Get in the gym, go hard, and go home. My training generally
lasts 45 to 75 minutes, with 1 hour being typical. I mean I see some guys in the gym train their biceps for 45 minutes . .
. ridiculous. If you can’t blast your biceps to new growth in 10-15 minutes, your not training intensely enough and
you’re probably throwing in a bunch of worthless sets and reps. I also believe that most people do not give their muscles adequate time to recover between workouts. I’m talking,
of course, about "natural" bodybuilders who clearly need more recovery time than those who are using.
At a minimum, I recommend 3 days between training the same body part,
and many people can benefit from a full 5, 7, 8 days or even more. In fact, with muscle building, less IS often more.
Bottom Line: If you’ve reached the point where
you’re no longer making steady gains in the gym, the chances are that you are either not getting the most out of your
training, nutrition, and/or supplement program or you’ve fallen into the trap of overtraining. Take a minute to step back and reassess what you are doing. The payoff you’ll get in terms of
results will be well worth the added effort.
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