There are really just three ways that wellhealth build muscles can be stimulated to change. So, let’s review those three ways and talk about what happens inside the muscle.
These are the best ways to wellhealth build muscle with Dr. Andrew Huberman. It’s very clear that moving weights or using bands or using body weight, for instance, in the 30 to 80% of one rep maximum, that is going to be the most beneficial range in terms of muscle hypertrophy and strength. So, wellhealth build muscle growth and strength. And there will be a bias.
How to Build Muscle Tag Growth and Strength
If you’re moving weights that are in the 75%, 80% range, or maybe even going above that 85 and 90%, you’re going to bias your improvements towards strength gains. This is true. And if you use weights that are in the 30% of your one repetition maximum or 40% or 50% and doing many more repetitions, of course, then you are biasing towards hypertrophy and what some people like to call muscle endurance. Using the wellhealth how to build muscle tag principle, it’s a little bit of a complicated term because endurance we almost always think of as relating to running or swimming or some long bouts of activity.
So, 30 to 80% of one repetition maximums to build muscle, it doesn’t really seem to matter for the sake of hypertrophy, except at the far ends when you’re really trying to bias for strength.
Now it is clear, however, that one needs to perform those sets to failure where you can’t perform another repetition in good form again, or near to failure to build muscle. And there’s all sorts of interesting nomenclature that’s popping up all over the internet, some of which is scientific, some of which is not scientific about how you are supposed to perceive how close you were to failure, et cetera. But there are some very interesting principles to build muscle that relate to how the nerves connect to the muscles that strongly predict whether or not this exercise that you’re performing, based on the wellhealth how to build muscle tag recommendations, will be beneficial for you or not.
So, here’s how it goes
For individuals that are untrained, meaning they have been doing resistance exercise to build muscle for anywhere from zero, probably out to about two years. Although for some people it might be zero to one year, but those are the so-called beginners. They’re sort of untrained. For those people, the key parameter seems to be to perform enough sets of a given build muscle exercise per muscle per week. Okay, the same is also true for people that have been training for one or two years or more. What differs is how many sets to perform depending on whether or not you’re trained or untrained.
Muscle Ranges
So, let’s say you’re somebody who’s been doing some resistance build muscle exercise kind of on and off over the years, and you decide you want to get serious about that for sake of sport or offsetting age-related declines in strength. The range of sets to do in order to improve strength building muscle, to activate these cascades in the build muscle ranges anywhere from two, believe it or not, to 20 per week.
Again, these are sets per week, and they don’t necessarily all have to be performed in the same weight training session. When looking into wellhealth how to build muscle tag guidelines, they emphasize the significance of consistency. I will talk about numbers of sessions. So it appears that five sets per week in this 30% to 80% of the one repetition maximum range to wellhealth build muscle, getting close to failure or occasionally actually going to full muscular failure, which isn’t really full muscular failure, but the inability to generate a contraction of the muscle or move the weight in good form. I’ll go deeper into that in a moment.
But about five sets per week is what’s required just to maintain your building muscle. So think about that. If you’re somebody who’s kind of averse to resistance training, you are going to lose muscle size and strength. Your metabolism will drop. Your posture will get worse. Everything in the context of nerve to muscle connectivity will get worse over time unless you are generating five sets or more of this 30% to 80% of your one repetition maximum per week, as per the wellhealth how to build muscle tag recommendations.
Okay, so what this means is for the typical person who hasn’t done a lot of weight training, you need to do at least five sets per muscle group.
3 Major Ways
There are three major stimuli for changing the way that building muscle works and making muscles stronger, larger, or better in some way.
And those are:
- Stress
- Tension
- Damage
Those three things don’t necessarily all have to be present, but stress of some kind has to exist. Something has to be different in the way that the nerve communicates with the muscle and the way that the muscle contracts or performs that makes the muscle need to change. So this is very reminiscent of neuroplasticity in the brain.
Something needs to happen. Certain chemicals need to be present. Certain processes need to happen or else a tissue simply won’t change itself.
But if those processes and events do happen, then the tissue has essentially no option except but to change. So muscles move, as I mentioned, because nerves dump chemical onto the muscles, but they move because they have these things called myosin and actin filaments. And if you want to read up on this, you can look on the internet. You can put the sliding filament theory of muscle contraction, if you really want to go deep down that rabbit hole.
It’s interesting.
You can learn about this in a building muscle physiology class, but basically along the length of the muscle, you have what’s called myosin. And just think of myosin as it’s kind of like a wire. It’s like a bunch of beads and wires that extend across the muscle. I think that’s the simplest way to describe it. And the myosin is surrounded by these little beads called actin.
Wellhealth How to Build Muscle Tag Fast
The way to build muscles and achieve growth to get bigger is fundamentally tied to the thickness of myosin. It’s a protein, right? And it gets thicker. To truly grasp the “wellhealth how to build muscle tag” concept, put this in your mind. If you’re listening to this or even if you’re watching it on YouTube, the way to think about this whole actin myosin thing and muscles getting bigger is to imagine that you’re holding a bouquet of balloons, a bunch of balloons by their strings. Except, you’re not holding the strings all at their bottom. So the bouquet isn’t nicely arranged. It’s not like some balloons that are all up at the top and you’re holding the strings down at the bottom.
Imagine that one of the balloons is very close to your hand, another one is a little bit higher up. And so this bouquet is very disorganized. In other words, the string extending out of your hand, the strings rather extending out of your hand are all different lengths. And so the balloons are all over the place. That’s essentially what myosin looks like in the muscle. And those strings are what we call the filaments.
And then the myosin head is the balloon. When you stress a muscle properly or you give it sufficient tension or you damage the muscle just enough, there’s an adaptive response that takes place where protein is synthesized and it’s a very specific protein. It’s myosin. The myosin gets thicker. In other words, the balloons get bigger. If you want to build massive muscle following the “wellhealth how to build muscle tag” advice, you need to eat the right foods.
5 Expert-Based Tips: How I Built Muscle Tag FAST
Is it possible to build muscle fast? It took me years to gain some size, and eventually, my gains thawed altogether. I recently implemented a handful of new research-backed techniques and managed to gain a lean 20 pounds in 16 months, and there are 5 things I did.
Training
Number 1 has to do with my training. There’s a really exciting new area of research called stretch-mediated hypertrophy. This is something I’ve covered in depth in a past video, but some muscles growth faster from exercises that challenge them the most when they’re in a stretch position.
This has now been shown with the biceps, triceps, quads, and hamstrings, and it seems like it will be true for most or even all of our muscles. To take advantage of this, there are two things I did.
First, exercise selection. Let’s take the biceps, for example.
Aitor Zabaleta-Korta 2023 study Effect of Exercises at Long and Short Muscle compared two exercises, preacher curls, and incline curls.
Preacher and Incline curls
Preacher curls are most difficult right around here, when the biceps are almost fully stretched, whereas incline curls, based on the incline angle used in the study, are a little bit higher up when the biceps are almost fully contracted. After 9 weeks of testing the two, the preacher curl led to around 150% more growth.
Other recent studies on the biceps have found similar results, but there seems to be a similar effect with the triceps. One study had subjects do overhead extensions with one arm and normal triceps pushdown with the other. Likely because of the greater stretch on the triceps, the overhead exercise led to significantly more growth. To apply this in my weekly routine, I made sure I was doing at least one exercise that challenged each musclebuilding in a stretch position.
Curls for biceps
Aside from the ones I just shared with you, I also did behind-the-body curls for biceps, behind-the-body cable lateral raises for shoulders, seated leg curls for hamstrings, and Bulgarian split squats for glutes. But I did one more thing to focus on the stretch position even more. And honestly, this is what made the difference. So I’ve always been obsessed with progressive overload, lifting more weight and doing more reps every workout. While important, it’s easy to get carried away.
You start lifting heavier, but it comes at the expense of form. You go less deep or start using just a bit more momentum. These little compensations decrease the challenge you put on your muscles in that stretch position. So, although I was lifting heavier over time, I needed to see better results.
So, I first lighten the weight on almost all my movements by about 10-20%. I then tried to go as deep as I could with good form, and for some exercises like presses and squats, I even added a half-second pause at the bottom. Although I wasn’t lifting as heavy, my muscles were challenged so much more, especially during that deep stretch, and they responded extremely well to this.
Your goal isn’t to lift as much weight as possible; it’s to use that weight to challenge your muscles as much as possible. Knowing that will completely change how you train and save you from a lot of injury.
Maximize Growth
Now, even if you do all the best exercises and use the right form if you’re not applying this next step, you won’t grow. It wasn’t until I fixed this that I realized how much it was holding me back. So, In order to maximize growth, you need to get close enough to failure during each of your sets. J. A. Sampson, H. Groeller repetition failure critical for the development of muscle hypertrophy and strength. Research suggests that at least 3 reps of failure is the threshold. The more experience you get, the more important this becomes.
Even though I was aware of this, I’ll be honest: after I built up a decent amount of muscle, I just got comfortable. I wasn’t training as hard as possible; I was going through the motions. It was when I started pushing myself close enough to true failure that I started seeing my growth take off. And let me tell you, it’s very easy to think you’re pushing hard enough when, in reality, you still have more to give. A recent meta-analysis released just last year found that in weightlifting studies, subjects would, on average, stop their sets almost 10 reps before they reached failure.
3 Step Process
And even well-trained lifters have been shown to underestimate their max effort by around 1-2 reps on average. Believe me, the difference between stopping a set 3 plus reps short of failure and pushing through to just 1-2 reps short of failure is a whole other level of pain.
This won’t be comfortable, and it never gets easier, but I did a few things that helped. First, I changed my mindset towards the pain. I view it as a sensation, and I now link that feeling of pain with growth. So now, my brain is looking forward to and seeking that pain because I
know it will result in future growth.
And second, I always take at least a few seconds to close my eyes and mentally prepare myself for the next set. It’s so easy to let your mind get distracted when you’re working out and start scrolling through social media. But you need to get locked in to push to the levels required to force your muscles to grow truly. And that happens before you’ve even started your set.
And lastly, there’s no way you’ll be able to do a crazy amount of volume every workout once you start training with this level of effort.
Recovery
So, your workouts are what provide the stimulus for your muscles to grow. But the actual growth happens when they’re resting and recovering. Most people think that recovery only has to do with your rest days. But the most important part of managing your recovery is your workout program. For years, I would train at least 6 and sometimes even 7 days a week.
When I was younger, I could do this with no problem. But over time, especially after applying the last tip, it just became too much. I stopped looking forward to my workouts, I had low energy, and my muscles didn’t recover well.
So, I cut down my workouts to just 5 per week. I recently cut it down to just 4 slightly longer workouts per week with the occasional accessory day. Almost instantly after making the switch, I felt much better day to day and a lot more energized going into my workouts, and I noticed my muscles recovered and grew a lot better as a result. Don’t get me wrong, you still need to train hard, and you still need to do enough weekly volume to grow. Schoenfeld BJ, Ogborn D, Krieger JW. 2017 research suggests at least 8-10 sets per muscle per week.
But more isn’t always better; what someone else can recover from might be too much for you. Keep in mind that your workouts aren’t the only stress your body has to recover from. Your work, life, and relationships can all be added stressors, and your body and mind may not have the recovery capacity to commit to 5 plus days a week in the gym. So, don’t force it, and listen to the signs your body is giving you.
Diet
Alright, so far, we’ve talked a lot about training. But all that training wouldn’t have done much if I didn’t modified my diet. To maximize growth, Murphy C, Koehler K., 2022 research suggests you probably need to be eating in a calorie surplus, also commonly referred to as a bulk. But like with workout volume, more calories isn’t always better.
Researched by Ina Garthe effect of nutritional intervention on body composition effects of a fast bulk vs a slow bulk. Both groups were in a calorie surplus, but the fast group ate, on average, about 600 calories more than the slow group.
After 10 weeks, the fast group gained more than twice as much weight, about 5 times as much fat, and only a tiny bit more muscle than the slow group, which actually didn’t reach statistical significance. So what I did was a lean bulk. This is when you purposefully overfeed your body with just a bit more calories than it needs, typically around 10-15% above your maintenance calories. This started at about 2,900 calories and ended up at a bit over 3,000 calories by the end of the bulk.
And if you need some help figuring out the right amount of lean bulk calories for you, you can check out the calculator at builtwithscience.com. However, even with a lean bulk, you likely gain some fat. The 20 pounds I gained was not all muscle, which can be tough to accept.
It’s hard seeing your abs and muscle definitions slowly fade away, especially during summertime, and in my case, it was really hard mentally, especially with all the pressure to constantly be shredded for YouTube and social media. In the past, I’d always go back to dieting whenever I saw just a bit of fat gain, so I never progressed. This time, I decided to stick through it, and it paid off tremendously. So, shift your mindset and think of it as a long-term investment. You have plenty of summers to get shredded in the future, and your body will only look even better with more muscle on your frame.
Fat Loss
Tip number 5 was probably the hardest thing to implement. You see, fat loss is a relatively fast process. You can easily lose 1-2 pounds of pure fat per week, but in comparison, once you’re past the beginner stage of training, it can take several months to gain even just 1 pound of muscle. I gained 20 pounds, but not all of that was muscle, and it took me almost a year and a half to do. But don’t let this discourage you. The small gains you make week to week will, over time, amount to big, noticeable changes.
11 Morning Habits: How to Build Muscle Tag Faster
The way you start your day can impact muscle growth, fat loss, motivation, productivity, and many other factors related to being an overall more successful person. You might have heard that simply making your bed in the morning can help fuel you to get more complex tasks done throughout the rest of the day.
Well, there are also certain morning habits that could either help or hurt your ability to build muscle and develop a more attractive physique.
#1 A Big Breakfast
One of the best morning habits, if you’re serious about building muscle, is to have a big breakfast. Even though you don’t necessarily need to eat breakfast to build muscle, it’s a good idea to start your morning with a meal if you want to maximize building muscle growth tips.
This is because the main dietary requirement for building muscle is to be in a calorie surplus. And if you want to bulk up without adding too much body fat in the process, you’re going to mostly be eating natural foods that are very filling per calorie contained. So, the more you space out your meals, the more time you’ll have to digest the large amount of calories you’re required to take in on a daily basis to grow.
Of course, many people make the mistake of using mass gainers and supplements to increase their calorie count to meet their daily surplus requirements. Not only does this lead to fat gain due to the sugar content of these mass gainer supplements, but there’s also evidence that unprocessed foods lead to better results than processed ones.
This is why you may have heard that you should try to eat whole meals over supplements whenever possible. With protein, for example, Tabatha A Elliot, Melanie G Cree, research that Milk ingestion stimulates net muscle protein synthesis following resistance exercise shows that whole milk stimulates more protein synthesis than skim milk. Even when the whole milk contains less protein than the skim milk.
This is most likely due to food processing because Stefan H M Gorissen, Nicholas A Burd, studies that found that Co-ingesting milk fat with micellar casein does not affect postprandial protein handling in healthy older men e, which is a milk-based protein source, it didn’t end up increasing muscle protein synthesis.
Aside from processing, we also don’t know what we don’t know. So, chances are high we haven’t discovered every vital vitamin, mineral, and chemical found in real food and how those substances impact build muscle growth. So the point is, start your day with a big breakfast made up of whole, real foods to help you add a bunch of calories to your daily total early on while still giving you time to digest everything before your next meal.
#2 Get Your Workout Done Soon After You Wake Up
Another habit that can be very beneficial for certain people is to get your workout done soon after you wake up. Even though research shows that you’ll most likely be able to lift more weight and feel stronger with late afternoon and evening workouts, you’re not going to make any progress at all if you’re skipping your afternoon or evening workouts.
So, if you struggle to get to the gym after work or you have a busy schedule that typically leaves you exhausted, then make sure that you get your workout done first thing in the morning.
Completing your workout first thing in the morning is the solution if you find yourself making excuses later in the day because it guarantees that you actually get it done, which is way more important than a slight strength boost that you’ll potentially get, assuming you make it to the gym later on in the day.
#3 Drink Coffee
This goes hand in hand with another thing you may want to do first thing in the morning, which is to drink coffee. Of course, coffee isn’t required, but it could benefit building muscle growth, especially if you train in the morning. Ricardo Mora-Rodríguez, Jesús García Pallarés, research shows that a dose of around 250mg of caffeine in the morning raises neuromuscular readiness to perform close to afternoon levels. Caffeine also increases your performance and motivation to train.
So, if you train in the morning, consider drinking a coffee or maybe a pre-workout supplement with caffeine beforehand.
#4 Taking a Cold Shower
Another thing that can boost your energy and provide motivation in the morning is taking a cold shower. Now, taking a cold shower isn’t going to make your muscles grow on its own, but taking a cold shower will increase your energy levels and your mood while benefiting your mental toughness. In other words, your ability to do things that might be uncomfortable or you don’t really want to do.
Many people experience that if they take a cold shower in the morning, they become more productive throughout the rest of the day because they’ve already had their first win and got the momentum going, and that can help motivate you to actually do your workout. On top of that, cold showers can reduce inflammation in your body.
One of the ways a cold shower can do this is by decreasing levels of TNF-alpha, which is a potent molecule that increases inflammation. This is a beneficial effect because excessive levels of inflammation can slow build muscle growth tips. So, go ahead and take a cold shower in the morning, especially if it’ll motivate you to make other good decisions throughout the rest of the day, like eating wellhealthy food and getting to the gym.
#5 Eat a Good Amount of Protein Early On
Another highly beneficial habit for muscle growth is to eat a good amount of protein early on. Most people struggle with taking in enough protein throughout the day, and protein is very filling, so when you’re trying to build muscle, protein is the likely macronutrient that’s going to give you problems as far as eating enough of it. That’s one reason why it’s a good idea to have a sufficient protein source along with your breakfast.
Even though you can build muscle with intermittent fasting, for many people, cramming meals into an 8-hour feeding window can make it difficult to consume the calorie surplus they need to in order to support build muscle growth tips. The second reason why you want to have a sufficient amount of protein for breakfast is that various Caoileann H Murphy, Tyler A Churchward-Venne, studies show that spreading protein intake more evenly throughout the day across at least 4 meals can produce better muscle building results than having either a skewed protein intake that drastically changes from meal to meal or having fewer meals throughout the day.
#6 Wake Up at the Same time most mornings
The next habit is actually the first thing that you want to do. Set an alarm and wake up at the same time most mornings. Obviously, on the weekends, you can sleep in some more, but going to bed and waking up around the same time every day is one of the best ways to enhance the quality of your sleep, as shown by a number of studies.
Sleep is almost right up there with diet and exercise in terms of its impact on build muscle growth. X Xu, M P Conomos, research also shows that people with a regular sleep schedule tend to be leaner than people without a sleep schedule, regardless of how many hours they sleep per night.
So, one of the best ways to stay consistent with your sleep schedule is by waking up around the same time every morning. If you’re consistent with the time that you wake up every morning, you’ll likely also naturally start falling asleep at around the same time every night.
#7 Pack A Lunch
Now, if you leave for work or school in the morning, you’ll also want to pack a lunch. Not only does this allow you to have a more evenly distributed protein intake, but it also helps you hit your calorie surplus target for the day. If you don’t pack a lunch, you can order something out, but you probably won’t know how many calories and macros it contains, and most of the time, there’s extra oil or sugar added, while protein gets minimized because it’s more expensive and that makes it more difficult to stay lean while building muscle.
Also, by having your lunch prepared beforehand, you’ll be able to get a bite in, even if you’re busy with work and you don’t have the time to go out and order food.
#8 Get Rehydrated
Another thing you should do in the morning is get rehydrated. The average person loses about 10 to 14 ounces of water throughout the day through respiration, and a large percentage of this loss happens during sleep.
The exact amount you lose when you’re sleeping is largely determined by whether you sweat at night and whether you breathe through your mouth or your nose since mouth breathing causes more water loss. Because of this water loss, it’s likely that you’ll be in at least a slight state of dehydration when you first wake up, which actually impairs muscle growth. The reason is that dehydration reduces protein synthesis and raises protein breakdown rates within build muscle cells, making it harder to build muscle and recover from your workouts.
Rehydrating first thing in the morning is even more important if you happen to work out in the morning because even if you’re slightly dehydrated, research shows that it can also reduce your motivation to train, increase feelings of fatigue, and decrease exercise performance. So have a glass of water when you wake up, especially if you wake up feeling thirsty.
#9 Get Bright Light Exposure in the Morning
Next, it can definitely highly help to get some kind of bright light exposure in the morning or at least in the early afternoon. Light exposure has a significant impact on your circadian rhythm, also known as your internal clock. This internal clock impacts a wide range of physiological processes, including the release of hormones.
For example, it influences cortisol levels to rise in the morning to make you feel more awake while inversely causing cortisol to drop at night in place of melatonin to help you fall asleep. One of the best ways to support your circadian rhythm is by exposing yourself to bright light in the morning. This signals your internal clock that it is, in fact, morning, which is likely why studies show that morning bright light exposure improves feelings of alertness, vitality, performance, and enthusiasm. And doing this first thing in the morning will help you fall asleep in the evening. This is highly beneficial because high-quality sleep is vital for build muscle growth.
#10 Supplement With Vitamin D
Now, if you don’t get much sunlight, you might want to supplement with vitamin D in the morning. Vitamin D is crucial for your body, but the problem is that 41.6% of people in the United States are deficient. A deficiency in vitamin D is not only detrimental to your well-health, but research also shows that your vitamin D levels influence strength development, exercise performance, and your recovery from workouts. Studies also show that men who have sufficient vitamin D levels tend to have significantly higher testosterone.
For example, in a study where well-healthy men took 3,332 international units of vitamin D daily for a year, they ended up with 25% higher testosterone compared to those who took a placebo.
#11 Meditate
Finally, one last thing that you might want to do every morning is Wellhealth build muscle meditate. It’s well known that excess stress is bad for pretty much every aspect of your wellhealth life and well-being. In fact, it can even cause you to die sooner. But excess stress can also impair muscle growth and your gym performance. A study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found a 9 times greater percentage change in the thigh circumference in a low-stress group compared to a high-stress group.
Another study saw a two-fold difference in the rate of recovery between low and high-stress subjects. In other words, having a lot of psychological stress had the participants’ recovery capacity cut in half. Fortunately, meditation can help. You don’t need to spend any money either.
9 Worst Things to Do Before Build Muscle Tag
There are many things that you can do to improve the quality of your workouts, but most people don’t realize that there are also many things that you should never do, especially before your workout. These can range from small mistakes that make you feel a little weaker or lower your rep count to much bigger mistakes that completely ruin your workout.
So if you want to see optimal results from your workout, whether you’re trying to build muscle or burn fat, you’ll definitely benefit from this video because I’ll be going over the five main things that you should definitely avoid before hitting the gym.
#1 Never EAT a big meal too close to your Workout
The first is never eating a big meal too close before your workout. Now, there are a couple of reasons why this is a bad idea. First, when you eat and start digesting the food, your body will naturally direct blood flow to your digestive organs. On the other hand, when you work out, your body will naturally direct blood flow to your extremities, specifically to the building muscles that you’re working. This puts digestion and exercise at competing odds.
So, essentially, both are fighting for more blood flow and neither gets the amount necessary for optimal digestion or performance. So, while the food sits in your stomach, you can easily feel bloated, heavy, nauseous, and even throw up. But even if you don’t full-out vomit, it will take away your ability to perform at your best.
Another reason why you should avoid eating a ton directly before your workout is because digestion itself requires a lot of energy. That’s why after a big meal at a buffet or at a Thanksgiving dinner, you feel like all you want to do is go to sleep. So you definitely don’t want to feel lethargic and tired before or during your workout.
Now, unfortunately, not everyone digest food at the same rate. So there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. Some people will need more time to digest their food fully. As long as you finish eating about two to three hours before your workout, you should be okay. Just keep in mind that meals that are high in fat or just contain a really large amount of food will take longer to digest. So plan accordingly.
#2 Drinking Too much Coffee or Pre-workout before you start working out
Another mistake revolving around taking an excess is drinking too much coffee or pre-workout before you start working out. Caffeine is a very common and helpful supplement to take before your workout. There’s no doubt that it can help give you more energy, lift more weight and boost motivation as well as focus.
That’s why caffeine is the main ingredient in pretty much any pre workout supplement on the market. The problem is that taking in too much caffeine can lead to more contractions in your colon and induce more bile production, which will increase bowel movements. This is why caffeine is known as a natural laxative. So, you want to have a manageable amount of coffee or pre-workout, or you’ll find yourself sitting on the toilet between your sets.
On top of that, having an upset stomach or feeling more urgency to use the bathroom will be the beginning of your problems. That’s because if you have too much caffeine before your workout, it can create a whole slew of side effects that can legitimately ruin your day.
Some of these side effects include restlessness, insomnia, rapid or abnormal heartbeat, anxiety, heartburn, and increased blood pressure. And just one of these side effects like heartburn, for example, is already enough to significantly decrease your performance. So don’t go having cup after cup of coffee before your workout. And if you’re taking a pre workout supplement, make sure you’re taking the recommended dosage on the back of the bottle.
#3 Stretching Before Lifting Weights
The next big mistake I see many people getting wrong is stretching before lifting weights. And not all forms of stretching are bad before a workout, but most people will engage in static stretching. And that’s something that you don’t want to do until after you’re done working out. For those who don’t know, static stretches are done by stretching or elongating a muscle and holding it in that stretch position for a given amount of time, usually 20 to 30 seconds.
An example of a static stretch for hamstrings would be the sit and reach. Dynamic stretching, on the other hand, is an active form of stretching where you move back and forth through a full range of motion rather than just holding one position. An example of this for the hamstrings would be a stretching drill known as Frankenstein’s. While dynamic stretches like Frankenstein’s help prepare your body and your muscles for activity, static stretches do the opposite and tend to affect your muscles performance if done before your workout negatively.
Studies show acute effect of passive static stretching on lower-body strength in moderately trained men that runners can’t run as fast, athletes can’t jump as high, and weightlifters can’t lift as heavy after passive static stretching. Meanwhile, dynamic stretches and exercises don’t have this effect. So the truth is that, contrary to popular belief, you absolutely do not need to stretch at all before your workout. But if you do decide to stretch, go with dynamic stretches that you can incorporate as part of your warm-up and save the static stretches for after your workout when your muscles have already tightened up and it’s time to get them to loosen up and relax.
#4 Performing Cardio Directly Before Lifting Weights
Another similar mistake is performing cardio directly before lifting weights. This is actually something that many people do as a warm-up but there’s a good chance that it’s hurting you more than it’s helping. The main reason why is because it’ll once again reduce your performance and most likely force you to either lift lighter weights or reduce your reps. This is because glucose is the main source of energy that your body uses to lift weights.
When you eat carbohydrates throughout the day, this glucose is stored in your muscles and in your liver in the form of glycogen, and it’s released and broken down for energy when your muscles require. Unfortunately, if you do cardio before you lift weights, you’ll burn through a lot, if not all, of that precious glucose that would have helped you push yourself and perform better with the weights. If you want to perform cardio and lift weights within the same workout session, it’s best to save the cardio after the weight training. You’ll wind up using the glycogen to push yourself while you lift weights and then you’ll be able to use oxygen and body fat for energy when performing the cardio.
Keep in mind, warming up by walking on a treadmill for five minutes before lifting weights won’t have much of a negative effect, but if you do more intense cardio like running and if you do it for longer lengths of time, like 15 to 30 minutes, it’ll negatively affect your weightlifting sessions.
#5 Drinking too Much Water before a Workout
The next mistake that you want to avoid is drinking too much water before a workout. Now, I’m not spend too much time on this one, as it goes hand in hand with eating too much food or drinking too much coffee. With water, the issue that many people run into is that they become obsessed with the concept of staying hydrated, and when they don’t meet their daily water target, they try to slam it all down at once before their workout.
And of course it is good to stay hydrated throughout the day and to ensure that you’re drinking enough water, but it’s usually not a great idea to drink a ton of water either directly before or even during your workout. The reason is that, once again, your blood flow will be directed to your extremities when you’re working out, and if you fill your stomach with a ton of water, you can wind up feeling nauseous and experiencing cramps throughout your workout.
Your best bet to avoid the situation is to simply drink small amounts of water here and there in between your sets as your workout progresses and then make sure that you’re drinking water consistently throughout the day so you don’t have to take in a massive amount all at once.
#6 Shouldn’t Drink Alcohol Before A Workout
The next one is pretty obvious, but it is worth mentioning that you shouldn’t drink alcohol before a workout. Now I know at one point or another you’ve probably felt like Superman after drinking some alcohol. This could end up motivating you to hit the gym or do a calisthenic workout at home, but I highly recommend that you don’t. One reason for this is because alcohol is a depressant. This means that it’s going to slow down things like your reaction time, your coordination, and your balance. Not only will this make your workout less effective, but it’ll also make it much more dangerous and you can wind up with a serious injury if you’re not careful.
Another big problem is that if you work out right after drinking alcohol, your blood alcohol content will still be elevated. So imagine that you’re breaking down your muscles and you’re creating tiny microscopic tears in your muscle tissue. As I mentioned earlier, your body will direct blood flow to those muscles that you’re working, and normally, that’s a great thing since the blood will carry in nutrients and energy into your muscles and carry out the byproducts that create fatigue, like lactic acid, for example.
But when you drink alcohol and work out afterwards, that alcohol you drank is then carried by your blood cells to your torn up muscles. Just imagine how great that is for not only your workout but also for your future recovery and your overall results. Not too great.
Finally, the last issue with alcohol is that it really dehydrates your body quite a lot. So if you combine that with a workout that makes you sweat a lot, it can lead to all kinds of negative side effects.
#7 Never Train Your Core Directly before a weight training workout
Next, we have core training. That’s right, you should never train your core directly before a weight training workout. Your core is involved in almost any weightlifting exercise, even if you don’t think it is. Even an exercise like the bench press where you’re lying down still requires a lot of your core strength, not only for stabilizing your body, but also for transferring the strength from your lower body to your upper body. Your core connects your upper and lower body.
So, if it’s shot from a hard ab workout, even seated or lying down exercises will negatively affect performance. There are also plenty of other upper body exercises like pull ups, for example, that are highly dependent on your core strength. And you may not consider it, but your performance will definitely drop if you stick pull ups after abs. On top of that, if we look at lower body exercises, not only do we create performance issues, but we also create safety issues that can easily end up causing an injury. Exercises like squats and deadlifts are highly dependent on your core strength to stabilize and assist your lower back.
If you compromise your core strength with an ab workout and then go on to do heavy barbell squats, there’s a good chance that you will round forward and hurt your lower back. So I repeat, never, ever, ever perform exercises like squats and deadlifts directly after training your core. And suppose you’re looking to make improvements with resistance training in general. In that case, you’re always better off hitting your core after you finish lifting weights or simply leaving it for a separate day entirely.
#8 Taking Some Pain Reliever Before a Workout
Another common mistake is taking some pain reliever before a workout. These can range from Tylenol to Advil to full-out muscle relaxers. The truth is that these are only good ideas to take after your workout, regardless of how sore you are or how sore you think you’ll be.
In fact, studies show that exercising while on ibuprofen can lead to gut problems and even full out intestinal injuries. Also, it only makes sense to take a muscle relaxing pain reliever before lifting weights, as this can lead to an injury since your body will be slower to respond when you’re pushing past your threshold. So, if you are so sore before your workout that you can’t even imagine exercising without taking a pain reliever, it’s probably in your best interest to skip that workout for that day. If, on the other hand, you’re more so afraid of future soreness, my best piece of advice is to suck it up because it’s not worth creating gut issues just to decrease soreness that will naturally get better over time anyway as you adapt to your workouts.
#9 Don’t Take A Long Nap Before Your Workout
Finally, last but not least, you want to take a short nap before your workout. Even though there’s nothing wrong with taking a short nap, sleeping for too long can have the opposite effect of what you’re probably looking for. When you take a short 20 to 30 minute power nap, research shows that it leaves you feeling more energized and refreshed. However, sleeping for too much longer than that will most likely leave you feeling more lethargic and tired than you were before taking your nap. So, if you are tired before you hit the gym, feel free to nap; keep it short. That about wraps it up, guys.
