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Not Gaining Strength In The Gym? (12 Simple Fixes)
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The Key Mistake 90% Of Lifters Make In The Gym
A high percentage of guys looking to build muscle never see any significant results from their bodybuilding program simply because they're focused on the wrong things in the gym.
Here's the thing...
Building muscle is not about getting a huge pump... or “feeling the burn"... or making yourself as tired and sore as possible after the training session... or utilizing a bunch of special techniques like supersets or drop sets or forced reps.
All of these things can have their place in a well rounded muscle building workout plan, but none of them get to the heart of what consistently building muscle is actually about: improving your training performance over time.
Most people get this completely backwards.
They go into the gym with no set plan in place... winging things as they go... not tracking their weight or reps for each lift... and they assume that if they just show up and “get a good workout in” that they’ll see results. And yes, they may get some muscle building results, but often only in the initial stages, or very slowly.
To maximize your muscle gains and stimulate hypertrophy at an optimal rate all the way up close to your genetic potential, progressive overload needs to become the focal point of your training.
Muscle growth is achieved by challenging your body's existing strength capacity, which then triggers an adaptive response. If you’re constantly performing tasks that are already well within your muscles’ current ability (even if it produces a burn or pump or soreness) your body will have no real incentive to make any significant changes and your gains will be minimal to moderate at best.
It's only when you attempt something you’ve never done before that you force your body to adapt by becoming bigger and stronger.
This can take different forms in the gym: more weight, more reps, making a given lift more difficult (such as by slowing down the negative or using a static hold), utilizing more total volume, or higher frequency.
If you’re still a beginner or intermediate lifter, however, it's best to place your main focus on basic weight and rep increases as this is the simplest and most reliable way to achieve progressive overload in the first couple years of training.
Regardless of what method you use though, it's important that you be analytical and precise with your training in terms of where your current strength capacity lies at any given time and what you need to do to build upon it.
When you write things down - whether in a logbook or on your phone - you’ll achieve much faster muscle building progress because all of your workout objectives will be right in front of you. Your training logbook will keep you accountable every time you go to the gym, and you’ll know exactly what you need to do to get just a little bit better from week to week. This is one of the single most powerful bodybuilding tips to take into account.
Tracking your workouts will also let you know whether your muscle building progress is moving in the right direction. If you’re not getting stronger in some capacity every week or every couple weeks, you’ll know that something is off and needs correcting if you want to continue building muscle.
On the other hand, if you’re seeing continual improvements in your workout performance, then you’ll know you’re on the right track for the most part.
Progressive overload is the ultimate bottom line when it comes to building muscle, and over-looking it is the most harmful muscle building mistake that bodybuilding beginners make.
Other factors — muscle pump, muscle burn, muscle soreness, fatigue — are byproducts of that process, but they aren’t things that you need to specifically strive for in order to see results.
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