In my job, I see many people in the gym trying to build muscle. They often don’t know where to start, which exercises to perform to get the best results and following Social media which can be misleading.
So-called “bro-science”- myths populated by people who think they know the truth and spread through social media so that after a while, it is hard to know what to believe.
Have you heard any of the following:
Don’t eat fat post training
You MUST have a protein shake the second you stop training or lose your gains.
Don’t eat carbs in the morning.
Don’t eat carbs after 6pm
You have to eat ‘clean’ to get abs
Eat 6 meals a day or you won’t see results
My advice – don’t always believe what you read!
Contrary to popular belief, following famous body builders strategies is not the best way to get the body you want. Following a structured training programme tailored to you is.
Many famous body builders have great genetics, time to lift regularly and some even have chemical enhancement to get where they are.
The good news is, that by following a specifically tailored plan can help teach you the best way to get the physique you want, learn how to lift properly without injury and gain strength, muscle and confidence.
Did you know that a beginner to the gym, can build up to 5 kilo of muscle in their first year? However, each year after training, it gets less. So if you have been training for 5 years or more, you can expect to build around 1kg of muscle naturally.
Not that I want to put you off, but muscle is expensive! Not only in terms of cost of gym membership, nutrition and time, but it is a metabolically expensive tissue too, which means you have to work hard to keep it there.
Muscle will need between 50-100 calories per day per pound of muscle. That’s just to maintain it. So to grow, you will need to eat right, exercise and rest.
As humans, we are naturally going for homoeostasis – our natural state. So to build muscle is not considered normal, and we need to work at keeping muscle there through exercise stimulus. The saying if you don’t use it, you lose it, is so true here!
In a completely untrained person, muscle growth is virtually non existent in the initial stages of training and the upper extremities such as shoulders and backs are shown to hypertrophy first before the lower.
I often wonder if this is why many people concentrate on working their guns in the gym? It shows first?
One of my favourite things about my job, is that many women are now enjoying training. There is no longer a stigma that lifting weights will make you bulky – or at least there isn’t
at The Strength Studio.
Training is fun, empowering and can leave you feeling completely badass – if that isn’t a good reason to start training; I can show you many more at that!
The Strength Studio 