Best Bodybuilding Tips – How To Grow That Muscle 5 out of 5 based on 1 ratings.
I want to preface these best bodybuilding tips with the following:
Everything you read below will apply equally well to both men and women.
All of these tips assume that you are not taking any steroids or prohormones. However, even in that case you will probably find all the information outlined here very useful – I just cannot guarantee it.
Now, let’s get down to business, shall we?
Best Bodybuilding Tips
I’ll break this down for you so it’s easier to go through.
Tip #1: Calorie Surplus
You must stay on a calorie surplus if you want to build weights. If I was only allowed to give one piece of advise to bodybuilders, it would always be this one. Making sure that you’re on a calorie surplus is even more important than the weight lifting routine you choose – yes, it’s that important!
Let me ask you this: have you ever seen, or known, someone who has been going to the gym for years, maybe even has extraordinary strength, but doesn’t look like he’s been exercising whatsoever? In fact, he might be even exceptionally skinny. Rings a bell?
That’s the kind of person who has a good workout program, but has not paid attention to having a calorie surplus diet.
Your body simply needs an abundance of calories if it is going to build muscle. Otherwise, you will only gain strength by neural adaptation to the exercises you are doing, but you will not grow any muscles. To find out exactly how many calories you should be consuming per day in order to gain muscle mass, read this article. It will walk you through all the steps needed for calculating that number for your own specific body type and weight.
Tip #2: Rest.
As far as the best bodybuilding tips go, this one definitely deserves a place near the top.
Perhaps you know it or perhaps you don’t, but it is while you are resting that actual muscle mass is growing. No tissue gain happens during the training session itself – in fact, that is when you are destroying your muscles by overloading them with force.
If you want to have a bodybuilder’s physique, you will need to give your body adequate time to rest. That’s why I strongly discourage you from lifting weights every day, unless you are a relatively experienced bodybuilder and are on a “split” type program – but that’s not something a beginner should be doing anyway.
By the way: a “beginner” bodybuilder is someone who cannot squat close to twice his body weight for one repetition, and bench press close to one and a half times his body weight per repetition. If you’re results are far away from this, you are still considered a beginner even if you’ve been lifting weights for 10 years.
Make sure to get at least 7,5 hours of sleep per day – nothing should get in the way between you and a good night’s sleep.
And make sure not to lift weights every single day as a beginner – don’t do it more often than 3 times per week.
Tip #3: Protein intake.
If you want optimal muscle growth, you’ll need to make sure that you are consuming a minimum of 1 gram of protein per pound of your lean body mass (LBM)
LBM simply refers to the weight of your body excluding any fat you have under your skin. So if you’re total weight is 200 pounds, and you’ve calculated your body fat to be at 25%, then we know that you have a total of 50 pounds of fat on you (25% out of your 200 pounds of total weight equals 50 pounds), and by that we conclude that your Lean Body Mass equals 200 – 50 = 150 pounds. Therefore, in this example, you’d need to consume a minimum of 150 grams of protein per day.
I have written more on the subject of daily protein requirements, so make sure to read what I have to say if you want extra help on this. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a compilation of best bodybuilding tips that does not speak of protein intake – if you do run into one though, ignore it, as the author clearly has no idea what they are talking about.
Tip #4: Choose an appropriate bodybuilding routine.
You’ll notice that I didn’t speak about choosing a bodybuilding routine until the 4th tip. That’s because I strongly believe it is actually less important of a factor for growing muscle than the three best bodybuilding tips I’ve already outlined above (calories, rest, and daily protein).
Most bodybuilding routines will work fine for you, as long as they are suited for your level of experience in weight lifting. It’s the first 3 tips though that you need to pay the most attention to.
Anyway, I’m going to assume that if you are looking for the best bodybuilding tips, then you are most likely a beginner weight lifter, so here is what I would recommend for you in this regard.
Don’t listen to people / friends who tell you that you should do a so-called body split. This type of routine is good for advanced lifters, however just because it works well for them absolutely does not mean that it will also work for a beginner. That’s like like if a beginner runner, who has never ran before, decided to start his running journey by employing the same training tactics used by advanced runners, and attempts to run for 4 hours a day. Crazy idea for a beginner, don’t you think?
Focus on routines that employ a lot of compound exercises. This means squats, dead lifts, bent-over rows, over head presses (military press), stiff-legged dead lifts, and so on. As a beginner, your entire body is weak and therefore you need to focus on exercises that work as many muscles as possible, and NOT try to target only specific muscles such as your biceps / triceps etc. Do exercises that require a ton of physical work and concentration – this will also boost your testosterone levels and make you grow muscles even quicker. Actually, this one point is so important that I should have actually made it into a separate best bodybuilding tip, but here we are.
Don’t avoid doing squats. No, really – don’t. Unless you have a medical condition that prevents you from doing them, learn to do it. Afraid of it? Well guess what – most people are, and that’s why they don’t grow as much as they would like to.
Do not attempt to build your own bodybuilding routine, as you will screw it up 100%. Find something tested, designed by a professional weight lifting coach. And I don’t mean those “coaches” that you will find at most gyms.