STOP Doing THIS If You Want to Build Muscle

This could be why you’re not gaining muscle, even if you’re putting in serious effort. Discover the #1 muscle growth mistake and learn how to build muscle correctly with proven muscle growth tips.

Let’s talk about the number one mistake people make when they’re trying to grow their muscles. In fact, I’m going to show you actually five more mistakes that are equally as bad as the first one. This video is especially for those people that are putting in all this effort, but you’re not really seeing a lot of results. But I do want to mention up front, personally I am not trying to build my muscles any bigger than they are. I’m 61 years old, I’m 195 lb.

I want to maintain my muscles, but because of my massive arthritic joints from earlier making mistakes, injuring myself, my main goal right now is cardiovascular fitness as well as flexibility and resiliency in my joints. The data that I’m going to share with you is the absolute best information that you need to know from the top people in the area of natural bodybuilding, and especially those who are not doing steroids. Mistake number one, you are not training hard enough. There is a lot of research on this, and great majority of people who think that they’re training hard enough are not even close to where they should be. So, to make a muscle grow, there’s a certain threshold of intensity that you must reach to be able to get that muscle to adapt and get bigger.

And so, the term for this is called proximity to failure. How close to failure can you get? So, let me just contrast this to what most people do. They do three sets of 10 reps, okay? That’s their workout.

And so, the problem is how do you know how much weight to put on the machine or a barbell to be able to do this? So, let’s say for example, you do 10 reps, okay? And it’s starting to get difficult. It’s uncomfortable. And then at the 11th rep, it starts slowing you down.

And then we do one more rep, number 12, and now it’s starting to really grind, right? But at 13, it’s physically impossible to complete that rep. This is where you need to be at the end of your reps, right here. Between 12 and 13. This is where all of the gains occur right here.

But, what do most people do? They quit here. And then, they compensate with more volume, never getting to the intensity to create the adaptation of the muscle. Here’s what I recommend you do, okay? Don’t have a preset number of reps in a particular set.

At first, you might guesstimate how many you can do, but you really want to go to almost failure, okay? And when I mean almost, is you’re grinding and you could barely actually complete that rep. So, once you’ve done that, this is what I recommend. You wait 10 to 15 seconds. Okay, that’s your rest.

Are you recharging fully? Absolutely not. You’re probably recharging 10 to 15%, okay? Then, you pick up that weight again. And maybe you’re able to do two, maybe four more.

And you’re going to complete failure. Then, you rest for an additional 10 to 15 seconds. Not 2 minutes, 10 to 15 seconds. Pick up the weight again. Maybe you could do one, maybe two more.

So, now we’re really giving that muscle the intensity it needs to adapt. And I would not count these as additional sets. I would count them as a part of this one set right here, because you’re really not resting too much in between. All you’re doing is you’re pausing to give your body a little reset to be able to squeeze out some more injury or more intensity to that muscle. And it really has to do with differentiating uncomfortableness until you say, “I can’t do anymore.

” Now, that being said, if you overdo this, you can really spike cortisol, okay? That’s the stress hormone. We don’t want to jack up the adrenal glands too much and create too much cortisol. So, what I’m going to recommend, especially if you’re starting out, do no more than two sets of this per muscle group. I’m talking about within a workout, okay?

Now, as you adapt and you get stronger over time, maybe go to three sets, but because you’re going so intense, you want to make sure you don’t overdo it. Especially when we come into the mistake number two, okay? Which involves parts of your body not recovering. Your muscles usually will recover between 48 and 72 hours. That’s two or three days, okay?

But did you know that the connective tissue, I’m talking about your tendons, the fascia that surrounds everything, take a lot longer to recover. In a day, if you’re lucky, it’ll recover between 0. 5 and 2%. Now, let’s take a look at your nervous system. The nervous system takes at least 5 to 10 days of recovery after this intense workout.

And then if we’re talking about hormones, we’re looking at between three and five days it would take to recover after an intense workout. Do you see the problem? The problem is most people are focused on growing their muscles and they’re not really looking at the recovery aspects of the other parts of your body. It doesn’t make any sense to build up your muscles to end up creating a tear in a tendon and now you can’t work out because you’re injured. So, how do we overcome this high intensity workout with trying to recover all of our tissues at the same time, okay?

Well, couple ways. Some of you might have heard of Arnold Schwarzenegger and he trained six days a week and I’m talking about two and a half hours in the gym every single day. How could he possibly do that? Well, steroids. Now, back when he was doing steroids, it probably doesn’t compare with the steroids that they’re doing now.

However, when you take steroids for bodybuilding, there also is a benefit from those steroids, which by the way, I’m not recommending these, but there is a benefit because your assimilation and using of these amino acids to build more muscles is accelerated, but also the repair and rejuvenation of your tendons, your cartilage is much shorter than if you weren’t on steroids. It has anti-inflammatory properties, not to mention growth hormone properties. And this is exactly why Arnold Schwarzenegger was able to work out 2 and 1/2 hours a day for 6 days in a row. If you take a natural bodybuilder that’s not on steroids, they’re not able to do it. They would overtrain because they don’t have the recovery.

I’m going to recommend you don’t work out 2 and 1/2 hours at the gym. That’s going to be overtraining, okay? What I would recommend is you only work out between 30 and 45 minutes. And when we’re talking about a muscle group, I would only work that one muscle group one to two times per week, okay? Not even three to four times a week because we’re trying to bring our cortisol down to allow more recovery for the connective tissue, the nervous system, and the hormones.

You have to realize the benefit from exercise occurs in the recovery phase when you are sleeping mostly. And so, on one hand, we want to create the messages for your muscle to grow bigger by using this, but on the other hand, we have to be very careful about not overtraining. Now, a couple other points that I want to bring out. It’s going to be really important to keep your cortisol as low as possible. So, on the off days or even on the days that you’re working out, going for a long walk in nature, super important.

Hyper-focusing on your sleep, super important. Making sure your diet is really rich in vitamins and minerals. And then every 4 to 6 weeks, I would take an entire week and do very, very light weights and not even do this right here. That way we deload some of the excess stress that could be accumulating. So, a lot of people ask me, what supplements do I recommend?

Now, of course, I’m not biased of my own high-quality line, but if you go to Amazon and type Dr. Berg supplements, you’ll find more information. Okay, next mistake is carb loading. A lot of bodybuilders carb load. They’re increasing carbohydrates for several reasons.

First of all, carb loading will retain water. It’ll make your muscl