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What You Need to Succeed
What You Need to Succeed
What You Need to Succeed
by Iron AddictThis introduction to the “what you need to succeed” section of the forum will state as simply as possible the most important factors needed to succeed in your goal to build a bigger, stronger, leaner physique. Then the Iron Addict’s Admin and Mod staff are going to fill in all the details with articles and tips about how to go about it.
Simply put, getting bigger/stronger/leaner is all about balance. It is about balancing the proper volume/frequency/intensity in the gym, and then supporting it with the proper nutrition/supplementation, and not short circuiting it with faulty sleep habits, or excessive stress levels.
When everything is in balance for YOU, progress will be consistent and given time and patience, most of you can reach your goals as long as they are not too lofty. Take any part of the equation out and progress slows to a crawl or is non-existent. From my standpoint as a trainer that has worked with large numbers of clients over a long period of time it is simple to design training and diet programs that work—it could be for you also, but more often than not the trainee fails because parts are missed or not in balance.
The workload must be correct for YOU, not pro X, your buddy Jimmy, or the routine you read about in the last months muscle and fiction magazine. Most people simply do too much workload, or often have the workload correct at one point in their training careers, make some good progress, and then will only use that same loading simply because it worked once upon a time. The volume MUST be balanced to the intensity, and those two balanced with the frequency. And UNTIL YOU HAVE AT LEAST A REASONABLE STRENGTH BASE, STRENGTH SHOULD BE YOUR PRIMARY CONCERN, NOT SECONDARY TO SIZE. Strength work IS size work for most lifters, pure hypertrophy work is often extremely poor strength work. What you want is again balance.
Part of training needs to be conditioning work. I can’t even begin to tell you how many lifters expect great things out of a body that can’t walk a flight of stairs without wheezing like a race horse. Doing a set of 6-8 reps and sitting down on a bench and resting a couple of minutes isn’t going to cut it. Suffice to say that a conditioned body is a body much more receptive to growth and keeping fat levels at bay.
The perfect training is useless without the proper nutrition to back it up. From experience of working with a lot of trainees I can tell you without hesitation that nutrition is the stumbling block more often than not. You need enough protein for growth, and enough carbs and fats for energy without getting you fat. Overall macro-nutrient profiles MUST be correct, and above and beyond that, food choices must be correct also. All protein/carbs/fats are not created equal and what you eat or don’t eat is almost as important as overall quantity.
Traditional “bulk” diets are a waste of time in my opinion. Once you have enough protein and enough calories to put you a bit over maintenance levels you are set. Gaining some bodyfat while bulking is fine, getting fat and WAY out of shape just does a lot of negative things metabolically (MUCH more to follow) and doesn’t provide additional anabolic drive. ‘
Aggressive cut diets are just as misguided. There is simply no reason to lose muscle mass while dieting. Doing so shows you are just being too aggressive with caloric restriction, to aggressive with cardio, or both. Improper macro-nutrient profiles are also a culprit.
If you don’t log your diet at least periodically you are doomed to many nutritional blunders. If you are serious you will log anytime changes are made, and at least now and again to check yourself. If all you are doing is guessing what you are eating, you are also guessing you will get optimal results.
It is extremely common to find lifters at both extremes of the supplement spectrum. Those that think a “one a day” every now and again is enough, and those that spend small fortunes every month on in many cases USELESS supplements. There are a lot of extremely effective supplements these days that can be very helpful to accruing mass, or dropping bodyfat, but no matter what, a bare bones supplement regimen is essential for success. Trying to get everything you need from food alone just isn’t going to cut it. A bare bones supplement schedule is easily affordable for anyone that has any kind of income.
I see people all the time that have diet and training dialed and guess what? Their sleep habits are so poor that their progress is slow at best. If you don’t already understand how poor sleep habits affect your metabolism and thus ability to gain muscle/lose fat please do some research. There is a lot of good info on my forum about this.
Last but not least we come to stress. Trying to build mass while in a stressed out state (something that holds true for a LARGE segment of the population) is a losing battle. Stress makes the body secrete excess cortisol and cortisol catabolizes muscle and tells the body to lay down bodyfat. Is this really what you want? And please be honest with yourself. When I ask training clients about stress the typical answer is that its low, or well, “I have quite a bit of stress, but I handle it really well”. Then they proceed to give me details that are quite contrary to their initial statement. Stress management is key to optimal results.
So there you have it. Simple huh? Stay tuned as we go over the topics one by one and post details about how to best handle covering the big picture for optimal results.
