Should Athletes Train Individual Muscles or Only Sports Movements?
Personal trainers have to know how to train people from all walks of life. I’ve seen bodybuilders, strength athletes, middle-aged men, obese housewives, trained athletes, newbies, weekend warriors, and about 100 other types of people and athletes. No one routine can be designed for everyone. Sport-specific movements might be prescribed for some athletes, while others might need a beginner’s routine, while others might only want to focus on powerlifting movements like bench, squats, and deads. We need to always be aware of the athlete’s goals when designing a workout routine.
Even in sport-specific niches like football, baseball, basketball, and soccer, or with other athletes such as powerlifters, bodybuilders, strongmen, and Olympic lifters, there is no one-size-fits-all training routine. You can’t take a baseball pitcher and train the pitching motion for 5 hours a day, 7 days a week. It just won’t work. So how do you train athletes who only need a small variety of movements to be successful at their sport?
Today we talk about testosterone, which is the “male hormone” in the human body. It may be hard to believe, but the hormone is present in both men and women’s body, so everyone has it.
This article will cover the following key points: correlations between behavior and testosterone, the psychological effects on the human mind, the internal and external changes in both men and women, a series of myths and reality facts and of course, a series of conclusions.
This will not be a post designed to sell any supplements. My purpose is not to defend steroids or testosterone boosters, not to bash them. These are the facts. This is the truth.
Testosterone and Behavior
In terms of behavior, there are some who believe high testosterone levels can cause aggressiveness and irrationality. But the truth is that, like any other hormone found in the human body, it influences our brain activity. This particular hormone intensifies the brain activity and the adrenaline levels in our body, so we become more and more agitated and we lose track of our peaceful calm side.
Frustrated? Tired? Upset? Ready for change? If you’re answering all of these questions with a loud YES from your living room, then you are in good company. And that’s why I keep writing these pieces, honestly — there’s a lot of frustration going on.
I look down at a body in progress and I think about everyone else doing the same. Are we on track? Are we falling off the mark? It just depends on your goals. But if you’re dreaming of abs, dreaming of a nicely sculpted body from top to bottom, then you need this guide too.
I know that it’s time to think differently about the way we work out, but in order to start down that path, you have to know what you’re up against.
You may have seen or heard cliche slogans like “Go heavy or go home.” You may have been asked “How much do you bench?” You may even be impressed by Olympic lifters, powerlifters, and professional strongmen, all of whom regularly use maximum effort triples and singles to prepare for competition, to try to set a personal record, or just as a component of their regular training routines.
Well guess what? None of those sports are like bodybuilding. Sure, Olympic lifters are typically pretty jacked, powerlifters and strongmen are just plain “big”, but very few of them could compete in a bodybuilding competition and hope to win, without first dieting and training like a bodybuilder for several months.
This brings us to the question – do bodybuilders ever actually have to test their 1 or 3 rep max on any exercise? Do they have to lift super-heavy?
This is one of the top offending bodybuilding myths. Have you ever canceled a workout or skipped training a body part because it felt sore, even though at least 48 hours had passed since you trained it? If you said “Yes”, then after reading this post you will never make that mistake again.
Your muscles will get sore when you use:
heavy weights
slow negatives
forced negatives
assisted negatives
drop sets
high volume
Do you need to avoid these training methods completely in order to prevent soreness, so that you can train again in two days? Not necessarily.
Should Bodybuilders Use Static Stretching Before a Workout?
It’s such a simple component of your workout routine that you may not even think about it. You might just automatically hit the mats before you train, to stretch every muscle group for 20 seconds. If you haven’t been reading Project Swole or other popular fitness blogs in the last 5 years, you might even think this practice is good for you. Think again.
If you have been reading fitness blogs, websites, magazines, or keeping up to date on regular fitness news, you would know by now that this myth has been debunked. It has been decided with 100% assurance whether you should or shouldn’t stretch before weight lifting. So what is the final answer?
Should Bodybuilders Restrict Their Intake of Dietary Fat?
We all know sugar is bad. It is fun to eat but it is bad for your body. It belongs on the bodybuilding blacklist, I’ve got no qualms there. We all know protein is good for bodybuilding. That is a simple and obvious discussion. But what about fat?
Possibly left over from the 1980’s war on fat, a common myth is that fat calories have no place in a healthy diet, let alone a bodybuilding diet. Around that time fat was demonized and carbohydrates were praised. The myth still lingers, but isn’t it time to let that battle go?
The Myth
A bodybuilding diet consists of lean meats like turkey, chicken, fish, egg whites, and fat free dairy products. Bodybuilding newbies learn this practice almost immediately. We must keep calories low, so we must keep fat consumption low. (more…)
Should Bodybuilders Do Cardio After Weight Training?
Spend some time in a corporate gym and you will see hundreds of bodybuilders lifting moderately heavy weight for sets of 10-15 reps, then you’ll see them hop on a StairMaster or elliptical machine for about 20-30 minutes of moderate intensity endurance cardio. There are many reasons for this behavior, the most common being that weight training is just a hell of a lot more fun than cardio.
Apparently the weights-first-cardio-second protocol is considered the most effective way for bodybuilders to build muscle and lose fat at the same time. But is it? (more…)
There are the hard-gainers, the obese slackers, the off-season bodybuilders, the weekend warriors, the overweight housewives, and a million other kinds of aspiring athletes. Everyone has a goal. Some goals are simply to lose weight, while others are mainly to build muscle, but for most people fat loss goes along with muscle gain for a variety of reasons – everything from general health, building a beach body, sports performance, competition prep, and even to combat aging.
The most popular fitness newbie belief is that you can gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. Every personal trainer in the world then tries to convince the newbie that he or she simply can’t try to accomplish both goals at the same time. Why? Because gaining muscle and losing fat seem to be mutually exclusive. (more…)
Can Bodybuilders Digest More Than 30 Grams of Protein in One Meal?
This myth has been around since the late 1970’s, and I really can’t figure out why or where it originated. There are about a million theories about how much protein, fat, and carbs should be eaten each day, each meal, even each hour. Most bodybuilders are concerned about eating exactly the right amount of protein, because they want to maximize muscle gain but they also want to avoid any excess calories, even from protein, getting stored as body fat.
So, how much protein should we eat in a single meal? How much can our bodies process at once? Some nutritionists say only 20 grams, while many professional bodybuilders consume as much as 100 grams in a single meal! What’s the truth?! (more…)
Another food myth. This time we have to decide if eating sugar is acceptable in a bodybuilding diet. Sugar can do some nasty things to the body, but it can also help sometimes. Let’s look at the pros and cons of eating sugar so we can decide how, when, where, and why to eat sugar, if at all.
The Myth
Similar to eating before bed, the sugar myth is another controversial subject about which everyone seems to have an opinion, whether educated or not. The two common opinions on sugar are as follows:
Sugar will cause obesity, diabetes, and rotten teeth, so it must be avoided at all costs.
Artificial sweeteners are bad for your health or taste horrible, so we must use sugar in our meals, drinks, and recipes.
The first opinion, that sugar has no place in a bodybuilder’s diet, is the most common myth that needs to be debunked. The second opinion is gaining in popularity, and although there is some sense in this approach, it too can be over used. (more…)
You hit the gym like a maniac. You want every rep to burn. Every set has to be a max rep attempt. Maybe you even enlist a spotter to help you eek out an extra rep or two. Is training to failure or past failure a good practice for bodybuilders?
The Myth
“The only rep that counts, is the one you can’t finish.”
To grow as a bodybuilder you need to push every set to failure. That’s how Arnold and all the great 70’s bodybuilders trained, right?
Some of the following techniques, called “Weider Training Principles” are used to take each set past failure:
forced reps
forced negatives
rest pause
partial reps
drop sets
This is how bodybuilders have trained for years and it’s how bodybuilders should train today. Is it right? (more…)
Bodybuilders are subjected to a million different tips about what to eat, when to eat, and how to eat. We are constantly looking for new foods and diet strategies to help us gain muscle but not fat, or to lose fat but not muscle.
So what is the truth? Should we listen to Oprah? Should we listen to Mr. Olympia? Is Atkins right or does Intermittent Fasting work better? As an individual you need to try different strategies in order to see if they work best for you.
The Myth
It is common knowledge that if you eat before bed, those calories will stored as fat. It might be considered common knowledge, but is it true?
The Truth
For athletes looking to gain muscle mass and strength, one strategy that I have used and recommended to clients over the years, is to eat within 15 minutes of going to bed at night. Not junk food. Nothing full of fat and carbs. Instead it should be a small meal of slow-digesting protein with an optional small amount of complex carbohydrates.
