Life of a bodybuilder: some interesting facts
Did you know that bodybuilders should eat more than 1g of protein per pound of body weight? Or that they need to eat every 2-3 hours? Did you know that they go to the gym a lot but you will be surprised how long they stay in the gym and what they do there? I thought I would write a quick article to clarify some things that bodybuilders do.
Most people think of bodybuilders or bodybuilding as a brutal sport full of big, dumb, callous jerks who try to make up for something and carry a serious inferiority complex with them. Have you seen the recent hit on bodybuilders by Planet Fitness lately? In it, anyone with big muscles is portrayed as dumb dumbass. Well, some may be so, but the same can be said for many people from all walks of life.
A bodybuilder has an incessant urge to work his body, to sculpt his body if you will, by using resistance training in a work of art. A hard, chiseled body, perfect in shape and symmetry and built from a healthy diet. In fact, a bodybuilder diet is truly amazing. Contains low-fat, high-protein complex carbohydrates, and tons of veggies. All food cooked to perfection with no added salt or fat. It may not be the most exciting diet to live on, but it serves them well in the body department.
Frequent bodybuilding myths:
# 1 – The bodybuilder goes to the gym all day and almost every day of the week. This is simply not true. Most professional and amateur bodybuilders will hit the gym 3-5 days a week and typically for about an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes at a time if they train alone. They learned long ago that if you train past this point, the body releases cortisol and simply uses its new hard-earned muscle for fuel rather than carbs or fat as it should. Train for an hour, go home … grow.
# 2 – Everyone enormous bodybuilders are in the juice. Is not true. With new advancements in supplements and a better general understanding of the body’s functions with regard to muscle growth and fitness, natural athletes have reached new ground in muscle development.
3 # – Bodybuilders go to the gym and exercise their entire body during their workout. This is usually the case; Go to the gym, exercise your chest and maybe a part of the arm (be it the biceps or the triceps), hit it from every possible angle. Do about 30 sets of exercises in total. Go home. Come back the next day or the next day, make legs, go home, etc. This grows a lot in your muscles.
4 # – All that muscle will turn to fat if you stop exercising. Again, it is not true. First of all, muscle cannot be turned into fat. Fat is fat and muscle is muscle. Also, most bodybuilders keep most of their muscles forever. Once it grows, it remains. Sure they can be made smaller. Muscle may shrink, but you’d be surprised how much is left forever. Normally, just overeating with inactivity will make you fat.
Here are some other facts that are interesting. Your muscle grows while you sleep. Exercising in the gym with heavy lifting will break down the muscle. The bodybuilder goes home and eats properly and then while resting (especially sleeping) the muscles will grow to compensate for the lift. Another interesting fact is that a typical natural bodybuilder will only gain 8 pounds. of muscle in your body every year. Yes, there are some stories of lifters gaining 20 to 30 pounds. a year, but firstly that’s not all muscle and secondly some are improved bodybuilders and get a little help with a needle. A natural bodybuilder can gain up to 25 or even 30 pounds of muscle in a lifetime of lifting. And believe it or not, this looks like a ton of muscle. Huge, powerful, hard and dense muscle in a frame. Think of a 175 pound one. slim guy and now thinks he weighs 205 pounds. or even more if genetics and proper training come into play.
Well, I could go on with this a bit longer, but I thought some of the basic facts would be interesting to someone who has not yet risen. Here’s a tip. Don’t worry if going to the gym is too big. You’re not going to be as big as Arnold Schwarzenegger for working out hard in the gym. If you could, then a lot of people would and we’d have like 200 million, Mr. Olympia, rich (from bodybuilding), he’s running all over the planet. It just doesn’t work that way. If you want to start lifting, get a coach or read up on it and go for it. You’ll get hard in all the right places and you won’t look like the giants of popular muscle magazines. Trust me.