Avoid These 3 Muscle Building Mistakes and Bust Through Plateaus

Muscle building plateaus are normal. If you haven’t seen any muscle growth in a long time, you may want to try some of these muscle building tips and AVOID these 3 muscle building mistakes to help you break through that plateau.

Muscle building can be pretty easy as a beginner. The gains keep coming pretty fast but what happens when things just suddenly stop?

Maybe you already put on quite amount of muscle and your body is trying to adjust to it’s new mass before it puts on anymore muscle.

If you have reached a plateau here are some muscle building tips and 3 to AVOID.

By:  Tim Ernst – Founder of Body Blitz Max, 180 Muscle and Barbell/Dumbbell Ripped Muscle Complexes

#1 Calories

How much are you eating. Your body doesn’t necessarily want to put muscle on because it’s an extra expense calorie wise.

In order to put on more muscle you need to be consuming a lot of extra calories above what it takes to upkeep your body.

A lot of people will build some muscle at a certain calorie range, and then when they plateau they continue trying to build muscle at that same calorie range.

If 2,000 calories per day is not building muscle, you may want to try 2250 calories per day. If that doesn’t work in 4 weeks try 2500 calories per day.

Just keep in mind that as you grow muscle and plateau, your body will be using a lot more of calories to support that new muscle mass.

So that means you need to add even more calories to build even more muscle. Also stop going crazy with supplements.

Supplements at your local gnc or vitamin shoppe will not help you grow and build muscle as well as real food.

#2 Workout Intensity

How intense are your workouts?

When I first started working out I would come into my gym and in the middle of my workout I would look around at what kind of weights the people with more muscle than me were using.

I would look at some guy with huge biceps and be like,  “I wonder what he’s curling”.

Okay he’s curling 135 I’m curling 65lbs, if I want to get biceps as big as his I got to get to curling 135lbs.

Now even though this is a very beginner mindset, and isn’t always true, the intensity of your workouts are largely related to the size of your muscles.

As a natural lifter you’re most likely going to need to use some really heavy weights to stimulate muscle growth.

If you’re using 25lbs for dumbbell presses every single week then chances are you chest is not going to get that much mass.

Some people give way too much attention and focus on form and way too little to intensity.

Yes your form is important, but you’re going to have to get off of the tri cycle eventually and trade it in for a bike.

That doesn’t mean that you jump from doing 25lb chest presses to 75lb chest press because you’ll probably die.

But it means that when you’re comfortable with pressing the 25’s you do everything you can to move up to 30’s.

So many people complain all the time about coming into the gym, working out, and not seeing any results.

When I ask what they have done to take their workouts to the next level they draw a blank.

Building muscle is not done by treating a work out like a clock in clock out scenario.

Someone can come into the gym 2 days a week and get more results than the person coming in 7 days a week just because they are pushing the intensity level of each of their workouts.

If you can’t move up in dumbbell presses, move up in flies. Try to move up in something every time you are at the gym.

This doesn’t only apply to building muscle. It can apply to burning fat, increasing your speed, your agility, and your conditioning.

Instead of running for a mile every week, try two, then three, then 4. The point is don’t keep doing the same things and expecting different results.

#3 Training to Failure

Let me ask you a question… If you are trying to grow your chest muscles and your benching 225lbs for 3 sets of 10 and every one of those sets you hit 10 reps, why do you think your muscles will grow?

Your muscle is going to think, “I completed the set and did what I have to do. I have everything that it takes to complete that set. I’ll be able to do that next time if I just stay where I’m at.”

On the other hand if you took 275, only did it for 5 reps, failed completely and needed someone to help the weight off of you, your chest is going to say:  “shoot I need to get stronger and add more muscle fibers to handle the stressors in my environment.”

You need to fail to grow your muscles.  If you want to build muscle grab weight in every set that causes you to hit failure before you get 10-12 reps in.

You can lighten the load as you get further along your workout because you should be hitting failure faster and faster as you tire out your muscles.

Other then these 3 tips, you just have to make sure you are not over training.

Remember, to build muscle you need to be in a calorie surplus state. So you can’t be working out so much that you’re burning up all the calories.

What’s Next?

Most popular bodybuilding programs consist of training primary and secondary muscle groups such as chest/tri’s, back /bi’s, etc…

While this training style has it’s benefits it does NOTHING to increase testosterone, strength, size and burn fat.

Super-setting opposing muscle groups or antagonist/agonist is something entirely different.

When The “Oak” Arnold Schwarzenegger trained his chest by bench pressing he would do a complete 180 turn and do pull-ups to train his back in the same set creating a HUGE surge of anabolic hormones known as the “TESTOSTERONE PUMP!”

By using 180 style training you get better intra-workout recovery and spend less time in the gym which means more time to spend RECOVERING and GROWING, not to mention showing off all the new mass you have gained.

> Learn Arnold’s 180 training style here to maximize growth and testosterone