It’s unbelievable how many young guys think they need creatine and a whole list of other supplements; think they need to ‘split’ their workouts into ‘body parts’ and are trying to build muscle in an over trained and undernourished state…and then wonder, ‘Why can’t I gain weight?’ They have no idea that these programs don’t work without drugs. These are DRUG routines and drug routines don’t work for natural guys. Period.

The modern mainstream bodybuilding magazines at the newsstands (and even mainstream male and female fitness magazines are guilty) are really just ‘muscle comic books’ written at a 6th grade level. They glorify drug-using ‘bodybuilders’ and portray them as the picture of health. They cleverly combine two or three rehashed articles, a lot of pictures, gimmicks, sex and hype to sell this hype to millions.

And what do porn-like photo sections have to do with a muscle– building magazine? The publishers of some of these magazines beat the hell out of this marketing tactic, with partially nude women with their rears hanging out of thongs. It would be nice if men could pick up a bodybuilding magazine to learn some quality information and not end up getting an erection!

Supplement companies have always been a part of fitness publications (although it was not as blatant in the past) and now marketers are the writers and the product is no longer a magazine but rather bottles of pills and protein powders etc. I would say almost 70% of the articles in magazines have a marketing purpose and it’s even hard to tell these days what is an ad and what is a legitimate article.

Bottom line, there are too many rich supplement companies and too many frustrated weightlifters who are not gaining the size and strength they deserve.

Getting a muscle pump is not necessarily what causes the muscle to grow. Doing 100 reps with a light weight will create a huge pump – but does this make a muscle grow? Of course not! Distance runners get a pump in their legs when they sprint uphill and do they get big muscles? Heck, no!

Most bodybuilders swear by the ‘pump’ and preach that you are shuttling more nutrients into the muscle – but is that what is really happening? Sure it feels great, like Arnold says in the unforgettable scene in Pumping Iron, but all that is occurring is a ‘back-up’ of blood. The blood is ‘stuck’ inside the muscle, which creates that much worshiped tight and full look.

The blood that’s backed up into the muscle has hit a dead end and has nowhere to go. If you had fresh, new blood, that would be great, but unfortunately you just have old, stale blood getting ready for a snooze. That will NOT help you gain weight or build muscle mass! The pump that is built up by the blood in your muscles will usually occur after you repeat set after set, which results in the famous ‘burning’ sensation known as lactic acid. Lactic acid forms in the absence of oxygen. Lactic acid is a WASTE product and does NOTHING to build muscle weight.

Now if you are lifting extremely heavy weights and achieving a pump, then this is a very good indication that you are making the muscle fibers work fully. I would only use the pump as an indicator to reveal how well you are ‘targeting’ the working muscle, not as a guide to mark your success.

Do professional athletes and teams practice instinctively? Do competitive long-distance athletes train without their stopwatch? Of course not! So why would someone trying to build muscle employ an ineffective and unproven tool that can lead you astray?

Building muscle is based on improving the intensity of the workout progressively each session. So why complicate things by following this ‘inner compass’ that has never been scientifically verified to work?

Do you really think your body can decipher between the intensity of 9 reps with 225 lbs in 30 seconds and 13 reps with 185 lbs in 45 seconds? Of course not! Aside from hearing your muscles yelling at you to stop when the going gets tough, can you really interpret which was more intense? It is one thing to train instinctively during a set and squeeze out an extra few reps because you’re feeling really good today. But I do not advice “winging” your entire workout and throwing some random exercises together and training until you “feel” like it’s enough.

How do you monitor your progress? How do you know if you’re gaining or losing overall strength? How do you know what the purpose of the workout is? Every workout you perform should be based on “out doing” your previous workout and leading to an end result. My workout plans are based on ‘reason’ and simple formulas to measure your intensity — not poorly defined instincts.

If you are like most trainees, you got stuck at the same weights after the first few months of your first ever exposure to bodybuilding. If not – congratulations, I applaud you and you are doing something right. I’m also confident in saying that you made the majority of your muscular gains in the first few months that you began lifting properly. Is it safe to say that your muscular gains leveled off at about the same time your strength gains leveled off? Coincidence? Hardly!  Consistency

Your muscular size is ALMOST (there are many other factors we do not have time to discuss here) a direct correlation to your muscle strength. Have you ever seen someone who can bench press, squat or dead lift a few hundred pounds with a small physique. Very, very rarely!

Muscle size and strength are relative to each other. The stronger your muscles become the bigger they will be become and vice versa. Follow a program that prioritizes improving your strength consistently and trust that mass will follow!

However, if you are a drug-free trainee, what you DO need is every single secret that will provide the level of support necessary to optimize T-levels safely and naturally!

There are too many tips and tricks to discuss here, but I would like to share a few of the most common tricks to keep your T-levels elevated and not dropped to that of the guys in the ‘arts and crafts’ club!

Training too long, lacking true intensity, not targeting your legs, high stress levels, not enough monounsaturated fats and training at the wrong time of day, amongst many other pitfalls, can lead T-levels to drop so low that ‘Captain Willy’ will go on permanent vacation.

Assuming your training, nutrition, lifestyle and sleep habits are operating on the optimal end of the spectrum, introducing supplements will MAYBE, AT BEST, make a 5–10% difference. You will be more successful taking your fitness to the next level by working on your training, nutrition and sleep first. It will also be easier on your wallet! Powders are nothing more than crushed up food and loaded with artificial flavoring and lots of chemicals to preserve their shelf life. Shakes are certainly convenient and may assist you in reaching your goal calories, but do not ever kid yourself that they will have the same anabolic effect as food.

Dumping chemicals, artificial colors, flavoring, sugars, sweeteners and preservatives into your body basically turns it into a toxic waste dump! And did you know that this toxic waste loves to attach itself to your fat stores, making it even harder to get rid of body fat? And can you imagine how much harder it will be to build massive muscle in a toxic environment? What goes in must come out! Put garbage in and garbage will come out in the form of decreased energy, slow recovery, poor appetite, poor sleep and poor attitude – all elements critical for muscle building.

When was the last time an athlete won, or a medal was won, or a team won on pills, powders and shakes? Never!

In other words, if you simply want to have the ability to lift weights to ‘failure’ using 60–80% of your 1 Rep Max, then keep doing this because your muscles will accommodate this specific stress. Your muscles will not grow larger than they must to accommodate this one specific stress.

Don’t get me wrong. Your body will adapt muscularly, neurologically and structurally to this specific stress – but it will stop and end there. Even if you are increasing reps and sets, the muscles will grow minimally, but there will be NO sufficient reason for them to grow further because you are still within your natural threshold.

So if you want to gain 2–5 pounds of muscle a year, keep following conventional training programs because they are not made for extraordinary gains. I did not gain 41 pounds of muscle over the course of six months by accident!

Also, it is rumored that every hour of sleep you get before midnight has the equivalent affect of 2 hours sleep. So if you go to bed at 10 pm and wake up 6 am, you will feel as if you have just slept 10 hours (not the actual 8 hours). I have to admit that I have experienced higher quality sleep going to bed earlier.

Take advantage of power naps – they are not for wimps. Professional bodybuilders take them regularly in the course of a day so there is something to be said for them. 20-minute naps in the middle of the day are said to be the equivalent of a 2-hour sleep. Again, try it out and see for yourself. Naps are extremely beneficial if you did not sleep the night before. Remember, your muscles grow when you rest – this is the time between weight-training sessions. Sleep is the best opportunity to let your muscles rest. Sleep is a powerful tool that costs you nothing!

1. You have not applied energy balance (energy in versus energy out) properly. It is a lot trickier than simply multiplying your body weight by a factor of 18–22 as most authors suggest. This factor neglects your unique resting metabolic rate, your unique cost of daily activity, your unique cost of exercise activity and the thermic effect of food.
2. You combine the wrong food at the wrong times. Obviously eating 3000 calories of chips and Doritos is not as effective as eating 3000 calories of high quality carbs, fats and proteins.

There are also a few critical windows in the day when you must consume the majority of your nutrients to maximize muscle growth. If you wish to ensure that your muscles have enough fuel to support your workouts, train intensely, recover from workout to workout and, let’s not forget, grow NEW muscle, you have to keep track of what you are eating every day. There is no way around it. This is the number one reason why skinny guys never gain weight or why anybody, for that matter, will not make the quality gains that they so desperately strive for.

• Training too frequently or in excess.
• Training too long.
• Inadequate recovery.

Mainstream bodybuilding literature and science have traditionally focused on the symptoms rather than on the prevention of them. You often read articles on ‘overtraining syndrome’ and ‘planned overtraining’. This is unnecessary. If you are in control of the training and recovery process, if you train for predetermined periods and recover in predetermined ways, then you don’t need to know anything about ‘overtraining syndromes’! This online muscle building course does not talk about ‘overtraining syndromes’, but teaches advanced recovery methods to take charge of your training and accelerate your ability to recuperate and train again.