The first part offered 22 ideas; this instalment continues with 12 tips. These simple, tried-and-tested principles will keep your training sustainable and the results coming—whether you’re a beginner or have already worked through a few programs over a couple of years.
Adjusting training volume and frequency
1. Try full-body training. Your body often makes progress with the simplest approach. Full-body training has two major advantages: each workout stimulates the production of growth-promoting hormones throughout your body, and you can train more frequently—even three times a week.
2. Cut back on volume. How many sets are you doing? If your chest workout consists of bench presses, dumbbell presses, flyes, dips and pec deck flyes, that’s too much in a single session. If you’re doing that much, you definitely need to cut back and simplify your workout. Focus on increasing the weight and intensity on your main presses, then add 1-2 lighter accessory exercises. That should be enough.
3. Train more often. If you train a body part once a week, you give yourself 52 opportunities a year to stimulate muscle growth. Twice a week gives you 104 opportunities. That really says it all.
4. Add plyometrics. Explosive exercises aren’t the main method for building muscle, but they activate large muscle fibers and stimulate growth in their own way. Don’t believe it? Look at sprinters’ legs.
Nutrition as the foundation of training
5. Eat healthy fats. Include beneficial fatty acids in your diet. Why? They help regulate testosterone and growth hormone production and help you cope better when dieting. Eat eggs, avocados and nuts, use olive oil and nut butter, and don’t forget fish fats.
6. Keep processed foods to a minimum. This isn’t just about junk food, cakes, pizza or ice cream. Ready-made dinners and sweetened breakfast cereals belong in the same category. Prioritize eggs, vegetables, fruit, meat and other nutritious, unprocessed foods.
7. Get most of your protein from regular food. Supplements are a good, convenient way to supply your muscles with amino acids, but they can’t be your main way of meeting your protein needs throughout the day. Get the lion’s share of your protein from fish, chicken breast, beef, eggs, cottage cheese and quark. No supplement can beat regular food.
8. Be smart about cheat days. If your goal is to build muscle without a significant increase in body fat percentage, a cheat day doesn’t mean eating pizza and ice cream all day long. A burger or two is no sin, perhaps with a dessert you wouldn’t normally eat. But taking a cheat day to extremes doesn’t pay off.
Consistency, recovery and your training mindset
9. Stay consistent and push yourself. Is your lifestyle constantly changing? Do your training times vary? Are you missing workouts? Struggling to stay committed? There’s only one solution—you have to get through it all and persevere. Go further: push yourself even in the toughest circumstances. Stick it out for a while, and you’ll learn to love discipline and live with it.
10. Get enough sleep. Put simply, training breaks down muscle fibers and stimulates growth, but much of the actual growth happens while you sleep. Aim for 8-9 hours of sleep a day whenever possible. Less sleep means poorer recovery and slower progress.
11. Say no to stress. Stress is one of the biggest obstacles to progress if you train seriously and want to improve. Stress kills. The positive stress of training triggers growth, but you must keep the stress of everyday worries under control at all costs. Otherwise, it will prevent you from reaching your full potential in pursuing your training goals.
12. Sometimes, go without a plan. Are you someone who plans every workout from start to finish? Or do you follow the same routine year after year? Give your brain a break occasionally and head to the gym with no plan at all. Do whatever comes to mind. Even if that means 10 sets of chest presses, so be it. Let your instincts guide you sometimes.
Frequently asked questions about training
How many times a week should you train each muscle group? Training twice a week gives you twice as many opportunities to stimulate growth over the year as training once a week—104 versus 52. Full-body training three times a week also works well for beginners.
How much sleep do you need for muscle growth? Aim for 8-9 hours a day. Much of your muscle growth happens during sleep, so less sleep means poorer recovery and slower results.
Can supplements replace regular food? No. Supplements are a convenient addition, but the lion’s share of your protein should come from fish, meat, eggs and dairy products. A supplement is an addition, not the foundation.
Translated by: Janar Rückenberg
Source: Turg.Fitness.ee
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