There are two common mistakes that natural weightlifters make, stopping them from reaching their full potential and growing more muscle mass.
Mistake #1 – Forgetting to build their strength base
The first mistake is that they attempt to build muscle way too early, and not only that, but they try to specialize in it almost immediately. They forget to build their base of strength which is crucial in supporting more advanced training, like that of bodybuilders.
Mistake #2 – Changing exercises too often
Their second mistake is changing exercises way too often, which often leads to program hopping. This is when you scrap one program for another before even seeing any results – in fact, before giving it a chance to work. This is the wrong mentality to train with.
To solve these problems, you will need to increase your movement frequency, which means you have to step up your lifting game to at least 4-5 days a week. This is a key strategy in packing on more meat on your bones as well as becoming stronger, which will act as a basis for the next step in any plan.
First of all, you will need to boost your motor learning. This means that you should do an exercise until that exercise becomes memorized in your muscles and therefore more natural. The more you do an exercise the more your muscles recognize that movement and have an easier time in reproducing it.
Also, improving your motor learning will allow you to reach better long-term results because you will be able to lift a larger volume of weight, improve the recruitment of muscle fibers and create even more mechanical tension in your muscle tissue.
Second, you want to look at boosting your protein synthesis. Training a muscle more often means you’ll trigger more protein synthesis in it. Your muscles grow through this process because it’s the single most important biological process where cells build specific proteins that they need, and you need to take care of it as much as possible.
When you get a higher movement frequency, you will be able to improve your protein synthesis process in the following days. There are scientific studies that show that protein synthesis responds really well to heavy resistance training, and it continues for up to two days after the training session.
This is a main reason why you should train a certain muscle group much more frequently than just having a ‘chest day’ or a ‘leg day’. If you want to become bigger and stronger, you’ll want to keep your protein synthesis process at its very best, simply because the more you train, the more consistently your body will synthesize protein.
This process also keeps you in the anabolic state, which makes you build more muscle all over your body, as well as keeping your testosterone levels high. With all this taken in consideration, you can safely expect to be really consistent in your strength and size gains as long as you keep your protein synthesis levels high. It doesn’t matter if you’re a natural lifter or a non-natural lifter – you can get results!
keeping your testosterone? What about for woman??
Women produce small amounts of testosterone as well. But don’t worry, these levels are not enough to build large muscle mass like males have if that’s your concern.
Hello
what about the dieting equirements for this type of frequent strength training? do you need to be in caloric surplus or deficit? and why?
I believe there’s an added value in deficiency to reduce body fat, however u can’t from hypertrophy when in caloric deficiency.
You should be consuming calories depending on what your end goal is. If you are looking to gain muscle, be in a caloric surplus by about 500kcal. If you need to cut fat lower your carbs for about 500kcal worth (about 125g of carbs less). Of course you need to work to find your maintenance calories first.