The Top 5 Muscle Building Mistakes You Can Avoid
By Lee Hayward

Number 5 - Not Monitoring Your Progress:

So many people just go through the motions with their workouts. They get into the habit of showing up at the gym day after day and mindlessly go through their routine. How many people do you see at the gym with no written plan and no way to keep score to tell if they are making progress?

For a lot of these people going to the gym just becomes a part of their social life. Now I agree that this habit is a lot healthier then hanging out at the local pub. But the time you spend in the gym could be a lot more productive and result in building a lot more muscle.

What gets measured gets improved. All it takes is little bit of time planning out where you want to go and then create a plan of action on how you are going to get there. Or get an experienced coach to help you create an action plan. The old saying "failing to plan, is planning to fail" is often overused, but it is 100% accurate, especially when it comes to bodybuilding.

Number 4 - Performing Too Much Exercise: Overtraining

Working out too much is just as detrimental to building muscle as doing nothing at all. Once you workout you have to give your body time to repair and grow through rest. A common mistake that people make is thinking that they will get better results if they workout for several hours everyday. This is not true because what happens is the body get stressed and damaged but doesn't get a chance to recover and build up. This is what is called "over training". When you over train your body can't build muscle.

Common signs of over-training include pain and joint injuries, insomnia, prolonged fatigue, lack of motivation to workout, and just feeling burnt out and exhausted. Taking time to rest and recover are vital for achieving long term consistent muscle and strength gains.

Number 3 - Performing Too Little Exercise: Undertraining

This one is the opposite of the previous one, people tend to take things to one extreme or the other, no one wants to take a moderate approach. Just like some people will think that if some exercise is good, then more must be better. And end up "overtraining". Others, who have learned about the negatives of overtraining, have taken it to the other extreme thinking that "if some rest is good, then more rest is better".

The fitness media will always play on people's laziness and therefore try to promote "easy workouts" as the answer to getting in shape. But the reality is that working out and getting in shape takes effort. There is just no way around it. Anyone who try's to tell you otherwise is just full of BS...

Number 2 - Thinking You Need Supplements To Build Muscle:

The magazines are the ones to blame for this. In a typical muscle magazine over 50% of the pages are ads (in some cases it's a lot more). And a lot of the articles are just fancy sales letters recommending muscle building and fat burning supplements.

The truth is supplements are NOT necessary to build a lean muscular physique. Exercise and nutrition are the only things you REALLY need. There are some supplements can help a little, but not nearly as much as you may have been lead to believe. About 95% of your results will come from proper training and nutrition.

A lot of people have their priorities backwards and spend their time worrying about what supplements to take, rather then focusing on improving their training and eating, which is responsible for 95% of their progress.

It is very common for the typical novice bodybuilder, who has just started working out, to immediately go looking for a 'short cut' by getting a bottle of "Super Duper Anabolic Muscle Dust 2000".

It's a shame that so many people are looking for instant gratification, instead of making the effort to learn how to eat and train better. Get your nutrition and training in order first. Then you can experiment with supplements, if you want to, and see if they make any difference to your overall progress.

Number 1 - Not Following A Sound Nutrition Plan:

Your diet is one of the most critical aspects of your muscle building routine. You can be spot on with your workouts, but if you don't fuel your body properly you will NOT get the results you want. Most bodybuilders that I work with day to day don't have any problems going to the gym and working out. But more often then not they get slack when it comes to nutrition.

The whole idea of eating 6 well-balanced meals per day for bodybuilding is by no means a new concept. You probably already have a good idea of how you should be eating. But the main excuse is usually not having time to eat properly. However, eating a "junk-food" diet takes just as much or more time then it does to eat a healthy diet. At lunch heading over to the fast food joint, waiting in line at the drive through, and then heading back to work takes a lot more time then if you had your food prepared in advance and ready to eat.

The key to following a healthy bodybuilding nutrition program is planning ahead. When you cook your food always prepare for several meals. It doesn't take any more time to cook larger quantities of food then it does to cook smaller amounts of food for just one meal. Purposely plan to have left overs that you can re-heat in the microwave, this saves time and makes it easier to have quick nutritious meals on hand.

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