Want to make more gains, bro? Build muscle easier with some of my best fitness tips.
Getting fit is challenging. Someone always gets hung up on something.
Something is always holding them back from reaching their potential.
Follow these 10 fitness tips to take your physique to the next level naturally.
Fitness isn’t always easy. It’s a constant battle against bad influence.
True fitness requires knowledge of the enemy and how to conquer it.
Knowing the ropes makes it much easier to integrate fitness into your life.
After a while it becomes second nature.
These are the 10 best fitness tips I’ve ever used. They are a part of my life.
I’ve adopted them as my own and suggest you do as well if you want to life a healthy life.
Some of these tips have to do with diet and nutrition, others have to do with building muscle and weight loss.
There’s something here for you. I’m sure of it. After reading this you’ll have something you can do IMMEDIATELY to start living a healthier life.
The 10 Best Fitness Tips for Better Heath, Happiness, and Building Muscle
#1. Honor the Progressive Overload Principle
Progressive overload is numero uno when it comes to building muscle.
This has been proven time and time again by scientific research, personal practice, and real-world observation.
It’s in our nature to grow in order to meet environmental demands.
Constantly increasing the weight you lift is how you increase both strength and muscle size.
You need to consistently train near the top of (or above!) your current strength range.
Training near your max is how you unlock greater muscle mass gains.
Anything less is under-training, and under-training is a waste of time.
#2. Understand Muscle Anatomy
Understanding muscle anatomy helps me visualize my muscles working while training.
Seriously, just google the muscle groups and look at the images. See how the muscles are shaped and connected.
You don’t need to have a doctoral degree to understand basic human anatomy.
understanding how muscles function and how they are connected to your bones helps understand how to best train them.
The act of visualizing your muscles working while lifting is called mind-muscle connection. Mind-muscle connection is critical to develop muscles to the fullest potential.
Mind-muscle connection is when you can feel the sensation within your muscles while training.
This feeling helps you control and contract the muscle harder. once you develop mind-muscle connection you will inevitable get ripped, buff, shredded and otherwise jacked.
Understanding how muscles are built and function helps you select effective exercises.
#3. Train Muscles from Many Angles
Training at many angles is important for muscle development. Training muscles at different angles changes the range of motion, muscle fibers recruited, and determines which muscle fibers are elongated and contracted.
For example, if you do bench press only for chest for too long, the exercises loses effectiveness.
It’s when your gains begin to slow that you need to make a change.
Benching from different angles trains the chest muscles differently. The new angle engages muscle fibers in a different way. This creates more overall strength and muscle fullness.
So, if you’re feeling flat or your muscle growth has plateaued, change your angle of attack!
#4. Get Under a Barbell
There’s a direct correlation between people who look great naked and those who spend time under a bar regularly.
You get under the bar with bench press and squats.
Squats are by far the best option.
If you want to radically change your physique and possess superhero strength – squat a lot.
Squats should be the cornerstone of your training routine, no matter what!
Only fools will try to convince you otherwise.
Nothing is more gratifying than jacking up 300+ pounds on your back with nothing but your body and will.
Plus your legs will look tremendous and finally fill out those skinny jeans of yours.
Get obsessed with squatting – For girls it will make your booty and legs look incredible. For guys, same – girls look at guys’ butts, too.
Not squatting is effectively undermining your progress and potential in every way. Why would you short change yourself by not maximizing your time in the gym?
Bottom line: If you want to make gains, get under a damn bar!
#5. Time Under Tension
This is a big one so read carefully:
Slow. Down. Your. Reps.
I see people make this mistake all the time. They jerk and jack the weight widely through the air.
When you move the weight too fast you lose muscle tension.
Feel the muscle move the weight.
Take your time with each rep consciously lower the weight as far as you can and then slowly bring it back up as high as you can. Hold it at the top and bottom position for a full second.
Take 2-3 seconds to move the weight up and another 2-3 seconds to move the weight down.
Focus on feeling your body work. Understand how the muscle responds to the weight.
Deliberate, fully controlled repetition is how you sculpt a physique.
Don’t relax at the top or bottom of a rep, either. (Unless you’re doing forced reps)
Keep focused and keep pumping. Maintain constant pressure on the working muscle.
Slow it down, Tiger. Just slow down your reps. Focus on technical mastery.
#6. No Pain No Gain
It’s going to burn a little.
Train hard and you burn the muscle down. It doesn’t stay down though. Muscles come back stronger than before. They raise like the Phoenix ready for a tougher challenge.
Yeah, it’s going to be hot and it’s going to be uncomfortable.
But once you see results, you’ll be hooked. That’s how I was anyway. After I saw the results, I began to love the process.
#7. Focus on What You Can Do
As a human being, there’s probably more you can’t do compared to what you can do (currently speaking that is; you can do anything with work).
If you can only do one pull-up. Do one pull-up.
Then do another one, and another one, and another one, and another one, and another one.
Keep doing one pull-up at a time until eventually you can do two in a row.
You build strength and muscle over time. Progress occurs in proportion to the effort you put into your training.
Realize that your physique is a constant project. You’re either gaining or losing. Every second of every day you’re either getting better or you’re getting worse.
Make sure you’re gaining by training regularly and eating the right way, because if you’re not building you’re decaying.
Focus on what you can do, not what you can’t do. Eventually you will be able to do the things you can’t, if you do what you can enough.
You create your masterpiece one stroke at a time.
In addition to doing things you can, you must constantly challenge yourself to do things you think you can’t. Take a step outside your comfort zone.
#8. Train Over Your Head
I borrowed this term from Vince GiRonda who was a proponent of “training over your head.”
What he meant be this was to train more intensely than you can comfortably manage.
For example, if you can bench press 135 pounds for 5 reps. you should train with 145 pounds and try to get 5 reps with the heavier weight.
You have to put in maximum effort to grow. Train this way regularly and you will become bigger and stronger.
It’s impossible not to and long as your nutrition is on point.
#9. Stop Complaining
You can either complain or gain.
Read that again and let it sink in.
If you want it bad enough, you’ll find a way.
You’ll never get in the gym if you keep finding problems with process. All that energy spend bitching and making excuses can be used to find solutions.
Getting fit is as easy or as hard as you make it.
Change your perspective and watch the magic begin to happen.
#10. Eat Right!
News flash! Holy shit! Knowledge bomb comin’ in hot:
You gotta eat right in order to make gains.
I what you’re thinking: We’ve all heard this before – You need to eat right to build muscle and lose fat.
Everyone ‘knows’ they should eat right, but nobody knows how to eat right.
Medical studies and personal observation reveals that, collectively, we really don’t know how to eat right. Because if we really, truly, knew how to eat right, we wouldn’t have a health epidemic.
You need to eat well for health and for fuel.
Without good food, a workout is worthless.
You need to replenish energy stores as well as provide material to build your body.
The following is just one of many examples I could make:
After a workout, you deplete your body of ATP, which causes fatigue. You also put your body in a negative nitrogen balance, which is not good for building muscle.
Eating protein will put your body in a positive nitrogen state. so your body uses it to repair muscles in a process called protein synthesis.
You need to eat well in order to get the nutrients your body craves. Without these essential nutrients, you’ll crash.
Two of my best fitness tips for healthy eating are Meal Prep and Eating all-natural foods.
Bonus Fitness Tips
#11. Practice Binary Decision Making
Everything you eat or do should be an ‘either, or’.
Either you eat that thing, OR you don’t.
Either you workout 5 days a week, OR you don’t.
Do not compromise. Do not negotiate. You will drive yourself crazy. Any concession you give yourself creates a chain reaction of bad things.
For example, when I was dieting hard for my bodybuilding contest, I crazed sweets.
I argued with myself and finally reasoned that I could have ‘just a taste’ or granola cereal.
That taste turned into me eating an entire bag of granola.
You see, giving in even a little is a slippery slope. Just don’t do it.
“What’s the fun in that? That’s no way to live! Don’t you want to enjoy your food?”
You have to think like a robot to look like a machine.
An example of binary decision making is “I will not eat sugar until June.” Then all you have to do is not eat sugar until June. Keep it simple.
No sway or you will stray.
Be binary with your decision making. It will save you time and prevent emotional stress.
Hey! Great post. This is definitely a good checklist and reminders for all the body-conscious people out there.
Thanks, Sarah!
Yes, it certainly is.
Get fit or Get Fit.
Discipline is a choice.
Eating right is simple but not easy.
All great TRUTHS you are writing.
You always have a choice. What’s it going to be?