If you’ve looked at any of the hundreds of bodybuilding and fitness magazines on store shelves, you could be forgiven for thinking that genuine natural bodybuilding advice is a little thin on the ground.
Advertisement after advertisement sells pills, gainers and worse stuff, but there is little advice for hardgainers who want to know how to build a great body without using those drugs.
Since you know it is possible to make serious muscle gains naturally, here are my top pieces of natural bodybuilding advice along with some helpful videos to help you along.
Eating Right for Natural Muscle Gain
One of the most important pieces of natural bodybuilding advice I can give is a change in diet.
By diet, I mean what you are putting in your body on a daily basis. If you’ve struggled to build muscle in the past, your diet was probably the culprit.
Most skinny guys and gym guys feel that they already eat a lot and hence wonder why they still struggle to gain muscle. However they are usually still not eating enough, and/or they are eating at the wrong times.
Aim to eat about 24 times the calories of your body weight in pounds (so if you weigh 150 pounds you should eat 150 x 24 = 3,600). Divide these calories into 6 meals per day to hydrate your muscles and flush out excess toxins. Your daily diet should be composed of approximately 25% protein, 50% carbohydrates and 25% fat for optimal muscle growth.
Use free weights where possible
A big mistake many lean hardgainers make is that they often use machine weights in the gym. There are a few reasons they do this… they don’t want to be seen free lifting with very little weight on them, and they lack the confidence or knowledge of proper technique.
The problem is that by using machine weights you usually only work one muscle group at a time and in a limited range of motion, and this isn’t ideal for building muscle naturally.
For this reason, using free weights is one of the most important pieces of natural bodybuilding advice you will come across. By using free weights on compound exercises like squats and deadlifts, you work smaller stabilizing muscles as well as multiple muscle groups, and shift more weight per exercise, which is key to getting bigger muscles naturally .
breaking plateaus
Every lean guy and hard worker who starts a natural bodybuilding program initially sees some initial muscle gains, but these lag behind and he reaches a plateau. At this point he may begin to consider whether or not he has reached his “genetic potential”, and whether he should be looking at artificial stimulants to see more benefits.
Usually though, it’s really just a plateau caused by his body getting used to the training and practice. The initial gains are due to the body doing what it is not used to doing… so to keep this going, you need to increase your workouts, exercises, weights and rep numbers to see consistent natural muscle gains Adoption is required.
Source by John Wheeler
