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| Want to get big muscles? Avoid these common bodybuilding mistakes! by Nathan Donahue September 30 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) Not Eating Enough To get maximum results from the time you spend exercising, you’ve got to feed your body frequently - six times a day is best. The benefits of eating six times a day are numerous and include enhanced protein synthesis and faster recovery. 2) Doing Too Much Aerobic Exercise Your body has a limited ability to recuperate. It’s very difficult for the body to build new muscle size and strength if it’s overworked. With aerobic exercise, as with so many things, there’s a point of diminishing returns. Too much aerobics burns muscle. Stick to 20 minutes of intense interval training three times a week max if your goal is size. 3) Training Too Long The amount of muscle size and strength you build is not determined by the amount of time spend in the gym. If it were, there would be a lot more people with perfectly built bodies because there are thousands of lifters who spend two hours a day, six days a week in the gym. For best results, you should not train for more than an hour at a time. Your body has a limited ability to recover from strenuous workouts, and if its busy trying to restore energy that was lost during a long, brutal workout, this takes away from the resources which could be used to build muscle tissue. Your workouts should be brief but intense. 4) Working Out Too Often A hard workout tears down muscle tissue. Between workouts, your muscles recover and (hopefully) grow. If you put your muscles through an additional workout before they’ve recovered from your last workout, you can actually lose muscle size and strength. If you’re like most people, it’s very unlikely you’re going to be able to recover from an intense workout in any less than three to five days. Try training with weights only three times per week but super intensely every time. This way, your muscles have enough time to recover and grow. 5) Not Keeping A Journal One of the most important things you can do to ensure your success is keep a record of how you’re training and eating. If something’s not working, you can go back and look for vital information which will help you troubleshoot your program. And, when you are growing, you’ll want to keep track of exactly what you’re doing so you can keep track of what works best. Also, if you don’t keep a journal and record your performance in each workout, there’s no way you’ll know what you’re trying to accomplish in your next workout. (Your goal should be to lift more every week!) It takes only a few minutes a day to write down what exercises you did, how many reps and what weight you used, and what you ate. It’s a very simple and effective strategy. |