July 12, 2007
All Natural Bodybuilding - Be Patient!
Rome wasn't built in a day, and your body won't be either. If you are interested in all natural bodybuilding, you must be patient. We all wish we could snap our fingers and get huge, but it doesn't work that way. Muscle growth occurs in spurts, so don't get discouraged. Patience is a virtue. If your training program and diet are appropriate, you will eventually achieve the muscle mass you are looking for.
Athletes are impatient by nature. They tend to be action-oriented individuals who enjoy a fast-paced lifestyle. Words such as easygoing and laid-back are rarely used to describe men and women who take the time to build up their bodies. Waiting is for other people. Athletes know what they want, and they want it now but once again: if you want to get muscle naturally, you really have to be patient.
Of course, this drive is often a positive virtue. Once you establish your muscle-building goals, you want to pursue them with total intensity. However, you need to remember that your body has its limits. The mind may be willing to constantly push the body to the edge, and for a while the body may be willing to go along. But inevitably the time comes when the body protests what it considers abuse. Your strength will stop increasing and may even decrease. If you continue in your ways, you could give yourself a cold or other illness, which will set back your training by several weeks, at best. You need to be patient. All good things come in time.
Be realistic about your all natural bodybuilding goals…
Be realistic about the amount of time it will take to reach your physique goals. Athletes sometimes set themselves up for disappointment by using unrealistic timetables when they want to get muscle naturally. When you first start training, you will experience relatively rapid increases in your strength and mass. This is due to the initial neuromuscular adaptations that occur when the body first "learns" how to work out. These rapid changes are very encouraging, but they can lead some athletes to expect equivalent gains over the long term. Unfortunately, the rate of growth decreases as time goes on. You need to resist the temptation to continually increase your volume of training in an attempt to keep your gains on track. Building the ideal physique takes time. If you pile on so much intensity that you wind up overtraining, it will take even more time.
Muscle growth occurs in spurts. For reasons that are still not totally understood, the body's adaptations to exercise do not have a direct relationship with the amount of effort expended. There are, of course, hormonal fluctuations that occur over time. Changes in your diet can also be a factor, as can variations in stress levels and other lifestyle considerations. Yet even taking these factors into account, you will likely experience periods when you seem to grow quickly and other times when your size gains appear to be minimal or nonexistent. Don't give up just yet. Exercise a bit of self-control and perseverance. Patiently continue with your current workout program for a while in order to get muscle naturally. It may not be the reason for your lack of growth.
If this situation continues for an extended period, you will need to change your training, diet or supplementation variables, and you can find many different ways to enhance the effectiveness of your training. However, once again you need to be patient. Don't presume that a workout variation is useless when you don't see growth in the first week or even month. These things take time. Continue with your new training variable for three months before moving on to the next change. If you constantly alter your training, diet or supplementation variables, you will never be able to figure out what works for you and what doesn't. Persistence and tenacity will help you get muscle naturally.