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Training secrets for muscle growth and fat loss

The training secrets here are pretty simple: getting stronger, eating enough and putting in consistent work beat miracle solutions.

Training secrets for optimal muscle growth…

1. If you are a natural lifter, you need to get stronger to get bigger. If you do not track your progress and the weights you lift do not increase over time, you will not grow either.

2. Training a body part, lift or muscle less than 2 x a week is not optimal. For most natural lifters, the optimal approach is an upper/lower split, training each half 2 x a week on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. At times, full-body workouts 2 times a week (translator’s note: or three) also work well. Training a muscle, lift or body part every 5 days is too infrequent for a natural lifter. It is better to do less per workout but train more often. Training a muscle, lift or body part 1 x a week suits professional bodybuilders who use steroids, not natural lifters.

3. Keep your training volume moderate. You do not need to do 30 sets in a workout to stimulate hypertrophy. If you cannot thoroughly work a muscle in 4 – 8 working sets (occasionally more), you have been holding back and have not been pushing hard enough. I once had a friend who sold supplements. He kept asking me to develop a supplement that actually worked. I told him it would have to be something that made people put in real effort at the gym, do the work and push themselves. He thought I was joking.

4. Generally, heavy compound exercises are the best choice, of course, but isolation exercises certainly have their place too. Just as with free weights versus machines, both isolation and compound exercises have their place. Anyone who insists that you absolutely must do “this or that” exercise is speaking from emotion, without always taking physiology into account.

5. If you think you can build muscle without eating enough calories to support that growth, you might as well give up bodybuilding and take up golf, for example. You cannot build or create muscle out of “nothing”. You need calories and you need protein to grow, to build muscle. If you cannot consistently eat enough, with the right balance of nutrients, you will not get results either. And spare me the excuses that you simply are not hungry, have no appetite or cannot fit it into your schedule. It is a matter of priorities: either you eat more and get that balance right, or you do not grow and stay scrawny and skinny.

6. Most “hardgainers” train very foolishly and eat nowhere near enough.

7. When it comes to nutrition, your first priority should be to get your everyday diet in order. Only then should you start thinking about supplements.

8. There is no single best, indispensable protein; each type has its pros and cons. Broadly speaking, I think casein may be the preferable option and is better suited to dieting, whey proteins are suitable before and after a workout, and all other complete proteins should be available at other times. Combining different proteins is a good idea: this way, we get the benefits of both proteins and eliminate their drawbacks.

Diet secrets for fat loss…

1. There is no magic to burning fat. If physical activity and calorie restriction do not leave you burning more calories than you consume, your weight will not start dropping. And if you are relying on “miracle substances”, many of them may simply work by making you eat less. Ultimately, it is the calorie deficit that makes you burn fat.

2. Stop talking about and dwelling on how much you hate dieting and/or training. You have two choices: either you change your eating habits and increase your activity or you stay fat.

3. If you want to lose weight and keep those unwanted extra kilos of fat off for good, you need to make the training and nutrition habits that delivered results part of your lifestyle.

4. First, every diet book tells you the same thing I said in point 3. Second, whether you cut your calories and keep your activity the same to create a deficit, or keep your calories the same and increase your activity to create that deficit instead, whatever the diet, ultimately the only thing that counts across all approaches is that you need to be in an energy deficit.