7 Common Noobie Bodybuilding Mistakes To Avoid.

Basically this will be a quick review of all the other “Bodybuilding 101” posts I’ve done thus far.

As I had said before, bodybuilding at any level is a tough cookie. If it wasn’t, we’d have many more muscular people walking around. I think that it’s only tough when we don’t really have enough information to help us avoid the pitfalls that make 90% of noob weightlifters quit. If we know what we’re doing—and more importantly what we shouldn’t do—bodybuilding is easier than you can imagine.

So here you are, looking to get bigger, and here I am trying to show you the stuff I’ve learned during my own yet unfinished journey. In yours, you’re surely going to face at least seven evils, so let me try to prepare you for all of them (is this badass motivating enough? Feeling like a fantasy hero yet?).

In order of how they’re probably going to come, here they are.

1. Impatience.

Shit. You’ve been working out really hard during these last few weeks, and what does that asshole sitting on your bathroom floor tell you about your weight gain? Only four goddamn pounds! Fuck that thing. Fuck all of this. It’s not worth it.

Don't let this asshole control your life.

Well, isn’t it? You have to think it through. You had to know you weren’t going to immediately hulk out (though again if you do things right you’ll feel you have), but it's too much effort for such measly gains. The only thing left to do is evaluate your routine and be completely sure that you are doing things right and then be patient. Do it right, and your muscles will grow.

Guaranteed. 

2. Losing motivation.

There are a million things that can make you lose motivation. You're not seeing enough gains. Your stupid friend says you look like a douchebag. You don't feel like yourself anymore. Whatever it is, you need to make sure if all this hard work for a larger body is really worth it. Generally, it is. Trust me.

You're most likely to lose motivation because you're not as big as you wanted to be when you first imagined yourself hitting the gym. Like I said in another post, this is my absolute golden rule:

Don’t look forward to the moment you’ll be monstrous; look forward to the moment you’ll be bigger than you are now. It’s not far away at all.

It’s as easy as that. Every few pounds will be 100% noticeable and not only to you but to everyone else. All you need to do is to keep working until that moment when you notice you’re really changing (clothes not fitting, constant comments from others, etc.). If you do things right, you’ll be seeing those changes much sooner than you think.

Another thought. A lot of people frown upon semi-muscular guys wearing XXS t-shirts just to look bigger. Does it sound douchy? Yeah. Is it douchy? Maybe. But honestly, if making yourself look bigger through placebos will keep you motivated, go ahead and buy the smallest goddamn shirt you see. When you're bigger, your muscles will speak for themselves under an XXL.

3. Shitty diet.

You might have started eating more than you ate before, and that is great, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re eating enough to grow. Always remember the nutrition post and review what you’re doing with your diet to be completely sure you’re eating enough, because here’s the thing: if you are eating enough, there is absolutely no reason why you wouldn’t gain weight. So here’s the pro tip:

If you’re not gaining any weight, the first thing you should review is your diet. If you’re 100% certain you’re eating enough go right ahead and fucking eat more.

4. Overtraining.

This is very common for people who begin enjoying exercise and see their muscles grow. It’s easy to assume that more exercise would logically equal more muscle, but this isn’t the case, as I said in this post, your muscles grow when you’re asleep, not at the gym. Your muscles need rest to grow, so if you keep assaulting them, you won’t give them a chance to recover and your gains will stop.

So the advice to give here is to hold your fucking horses and let your body rest. If you try to accelerate growth by spending 10 hours at the gym, that guy who’s intelligently lifting less than you will soon be bigger.

5. Too many supplements.

I like to blame/credit the cartoons we saw as kids for the ideal of a supplement, and the jokes we hear as adults for their bad reputation. We used to see cartoon characters take some pills andinstantly become hulks. I know we consciously know this isn’t in any way possible, but there is a part of us who’d like to believe it is, if only in some capacity.

I know this is true because supplement companies like to hang onto that fantasy. If you read the labels of things like Muscle Asylum Project products, you’ll see blurbs like this gem:

“For individuals devoted to building 21-inch guns, growing a 50-inch chest, benching 4-plates, forcing yourself into an XXXL shirt, and living the life of a bodybuilding freakshow.* [Actual Quote]

Yeah, you fucking wish it was this easy.

*statements not reviewed by the FDA.

Doesn't that sound fucking great? Of course it does but with bodybuilding supplements, "Too good to be true" is a mantra you have to repeat to yourself. These guys are catering to our little fantasy of almost immediately transforming into a muscular freak from drinking some magic serum. It’s important that you don’t buy into that because taking too many supplements is not only very expensive but also dangerous.

While there are supplements that will definitely help you safely (we’ll discuss them soon), it’s important you don’t just take every pill you see the GNC rep recommending. This leads me right into problem number 6:

 6. Not enough supplements.

Here’s the truth: supplements are extremely useful, as supplementation. This means as an non-imperative addition to a solid diet and exercise regimen. There is nothing—not even the very dangerous steroids that do create Kai Greenes and Ronnie Colemans—that will instantly make your muscles grow.

But that doesn’t mean you should steer away from all supplements. I generally like to recommend that you start your bodybuilding experience (to say, the first 8 or so weeks of training) without supplements because 1, you don’t need them at your current size; 2, you’re better off learning how to diet properly for now.

However, once you’re past that initial phase of your training and you’ve put on a few pounds, it’s definitely recommended that you do begin exploring and experimenting with safe supplements like whey protein, creatine (which I personally have never used, but has many proven anabolic benefits), multivitamins, et al.

If your gains have stopped, and you’re currently staying away from supplements altogether, it’s a good idea to begin looking into them. They’ll definitely help. My favorite site for reviews is this. Bookmark it.

It’s extremely important that you research and read reviews for everything you decide to put in your body.

I had a very bad experience with a supplement once, and I’d hate to see it happen to you.

 7. Not enough rest.

You think it's a coincidence lions are big? No sir!

Not an extension of overtraining, because even if you are only training the 60-90 minute workout that’s recommended, it won’t help much if you don’t get enough rest. By rest I don’t mean every passing moment when you don’t have a dumbbell in your hands; I mean sleep.

8 hours of sleep, even if they have to be aggregated through naps, are necessary for your body to grow. Do your very best to get enough sleep.

And that is it. Remember all these tips because they’re pretty much the only real mistakes you could be making that will stop your gains at this point. Remember this:

There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with your body. If you’re not growing, you’re doing something wrong.

See you for the topic-specific posts starting now!

First Thing First: Supplementing, Resting, And General Tips.

Okay we’re here in the final “Bodybuilding 101” post. You’ve learned how to get and keep yourself motivated, how to eat, how to train, and finally we’ll learn how to properly rest to keep growing, and my views on early supplementation. After this, the posts I write will be a bit less focused on basics, but hopefully just as helpful for newbies as well as for more advanced bodybuilders who might be in need of a first, second or nineteenth opinion.

Supplements.

Here’s what I think about supplements: they are fucking awesome. No, seriously, they are. I’m going to be putting up quick blurb reviews in this blog because naturally not all of them are awesome, but they are—in my opinion—almost completely necessary to optimize growth.

Just not when you start out. This is kind of important and a piece of advice I will disagree with most other bodybuilders on:

Don’t start on any supplement for the first six to eight weeks of your training.

After that, feel free to take the right supplements, but for the first two months, just don’t. Why? Not because they will harm you or anything (though they might), but at this juncture they are unnecessary. I would much, much rather you learn how to eat properly first.

Think of this first period of your bodybuilding life—which I’ve referred to as “Phase One” in this blog—as Bodybuilding Boot Camp (dang that’s what I should’ve called this section). Supplements are definitely a great help for continuous gains and growth, but they’re also not free, some can cause damage if you’re not careful, and most don’t do shit. You need to know what to take and when to take it, yes, and I will explain in time but for now, don’t touch them. Rely just on food for now. Learn what meals you like, learn how to cook, learn how to maintain an appetite.

We’ll get to protein shakes, energy drinks, and tasteless powders later.

Resting. 

Good news: if you work out hard and eat well, you not only deserve to rest: you pretty much fucking have to.

Dem Z's are a must.

People don’t realize this, but muscles don’t actually grow in the gym (except for the sweet-ass blood engorgement [that’s what she said] that happens when you exercise, which we call ‘the pump’), but when you’re asleep. When you’re asleep is when your body recovers from everything that happened during the day—physically and mentally. Naturally, this includes the assault you unleashed on your muscle cells in the gym. That means that the more you sleep, the faster and more efficiently your body recovers, becomes bigger/stronger, and allows you to lift again.

You have to sleep at least 8 hours every day. Nap whenever possible.

Lions get it right. For some of you this sounds like a dream come true because who doesn’t love sleep? It’s pretty much awesome. However, it’s also not the easiest thing in the world to have a life that allows an hour at the gym, eight-plus hours of sleep, time in the kitchen, a job, and a social life.

Tough shit, though; sleeping is almost as important as working out and eating right. Sit down one day and try to create a schedule around these three important things or your effort might be in vain. As a subsection here, I’d like to add a little thought on overtraining—a weightlifter newbie’s bane.

Overtraining

Overtraining is exactly what it sounds like. Remember how I said before that I couldn’t think of any reason why someone should spend four hours in the gym? It’s not as easy of lifting more to get more results. Again, if it was that easy I’d be folding bears with my monstrously muscular eyelids. The truth is that rest is too important for this to be a possibility.

The general rule for bulking is that you should always have at least one but hopefully two rest days a week, if possible consecutive. Rest days mean rest from lifting and cardio, but not from eating right (though, of course, a couple of cheat meals a week are encouraged). On the weekends, please don’t touch a dumbbell, but if possible still stick to your diet for optimal gains.

Your body will grow consistently for a good while, but there will eventually be plateaus—both for your whole body and for specific body parts. Again, every body is different; I had to work legs more and arms less because when I started my arms blew up but my thighs didn’t. It’s natural. It’s genetics; even Arnold had a massive chest and comparatively small legs. You will be tempted to train some muscle groups double or even triple but there is one thing you need to remember:

If working a split routine, give each muscle group at the very least 72 hours to recover before working it again.

You probably won’t have to do this for years, but it’s extremely important to keep it in mind, or else your desperate attempts to have a huge gorilla chest will only keep it from actually growing.

General Tips for Wellbeing.

• Don’t let bodybuilding take over your life.

When people begin seeing results and feeling the changes they bring to their lives, it’s easy to become obsessed. It’s important that you don’t let this happen because it can have very shitty effects on your social life, your love life, and even bodybuilding itself. There are so many stories about guys that go to the extreme of asking how masturbating or having sex affects their bodybuilding. That is fucked. By the way: it doesn’t.

• When in doubt, don’t; instead, ask.

Bodybuilding is about controlled injury; don’t let it get out of control because of misguided experimentation. For this, there’s always the gym coach, your muscular friend, or another experienced acquaintance. There are also many great sources online where you can directly ask very knowledgeable people, even pros, about bodybuilding. Reddit’s Bodybuilding sub can be very helpful, same for the Bodybuilding.com forums, the Muscle&Strength forums (where I started), or this mindblowingly fantastic blog.

• Research the shit out of everything you put in your body.

I know I said no supplements yet, but when the time comes, don’t buy anything off the stores because a GNC employee recommended it, or because it’s on sale, or because of the blurbs in the label that prey on the insecurities of people like you. Use online resources like SupplementReviews to get first-hand accounts of users, familiarize yourself with the chemistry of supplements, learn what does what and what it is you need. Not every supplement “that works” will really have an effect on you. There are many ‘quintessential’ supps I’ve never taken, and some 'snake oil' supps I can't live without. We'll get to it.

• If you find something that works, stick with it.

Here comes the mantra again: every body is different. I guarantee if you follow the stuff I wrote in this blog you’ll begin to grow. However, the only way to really know what will make you keep growing is to identify what you’re doing right and to keep doing it. Yes, there will be diminishing returns, but that’s when you change what you’re doing—be it your diet, sleep schedule, workout routine, supplements, etc.

• Don’t compare your body to others’.

This is something I guarantee you’ll do because it’s just in our nature and it’s almost impossible to avoid. Either to your delight because you’re bigger than someone else or your dismay because you’re smaller, you need to try and control the instinct to compare your body and strength to others. Nothing good ever comes out of it.

• Don’t let the scale make you its bitch.

The scale will be either your best friend or your worst enemy. Standing on it will tell you how much you've grown or how much you haven't, right? Wrong. The truth is that while the scale obviously does give you your current weight, that number can often be a lie, mainly because there are a hundred different factors affecting it. You might be carrying a lot of water weight so it says you're 3 lbs heavier than you really are. You might have had a rough week when you couldn't stop shitting and it says you're 5 lbs lighter. You might have just eaten 2 lbs of Taco Bell. You might be standing on it while wearing 2 lb boots. Weight yourself every month at most, and consider that that number might not be completely accurate. If you ever want to know your exact body mass growth, have a check up. Just not too often.

Finally I’m adding one golden rule: Don’t be stupid. I know, this seems condescending but it’s not. It’s simple: don’t be stupid, and you’ll be fine. Don’t try to squat 250 pounds on your second week because that one guy in the gym could. Don’t stick a needle in your ass because your gym coach is selling. Don’t get cocky and try to get into a fight with some bully because you just gained 10 pounds and mistakenly feel very strong. Be and stay smart and you’ll be and stay strong.

That’s it for the basic part of bodybuilding which should be enough to give you your first several pounds. Stick around for more stuff, and feel free to contact me either through comments here or Twitter if you have any doubt.

In case you missed the rest of Bodybuilding 101:

IntroductionTo “Wolf In A Gorilla Suit In Gym Clothes”

FirstThings First: Preparing Yourself Mentally

FirstThings First: Nutrition Basics

FirstThings First: Working Out & The Gym

First Things First: Supplementing, Resting, And General Tips.