Did You Say “I Can’t Build Muscle”?
by Brian Cannone
Anyone who believes that they cannot build muscles and get some definition has simply been misinformed. The human body WANTS to develop muscles and is ready to begin doing so at any time. The reasons that someone has failed to get the muscles that they want are usually pretty simple. For example, the following list of reasons are usually the “culprits” behind someone actually beginning to believe that they can’t build up their muscles:
- Diet – if you just skim the literature about things like “six pack abs” and true muscle definition you will find that you frequently encounter the following statement: you must have almost no body fat to have defined muscles. This is not only a fallacy but is also a travesty because it gets a lot of folks in trouble. First of all, you CAN get muscle definition with some fat on your bones, and secondly, if you are striving for zero body fat you could be derailing your body’s ability to make muscle.
Here’s how it goes: you starve your body of the energy it needs from things like carbs and fats by eating a scant diet. Your cells begin processing things differently and stop storing energy in the normal manner. Instead, your body actually attacks the muscles for their stored fat, and this means that any “bulk” is going to vanish, and it could even mean that you just can’t develop the way you want.
- Rest – if you are also avoiding rest in between workouts and not getting adequate amounts of sleep or “down time,” you can also derail your muscle building as well. Just consider that you have to allow the body time to “heal” if you want to see muscles increase in size. If you just keep “ripping and shredding” on a too frequent basis, you are degrading the cellular health in the muscles and body, and making it harder and harder for the body to function properly.
- Routine – a lot of new bodybuilding or fitness modeling professionals give up to quickly on a routine. Instead of waiting the six to eight weeks that the author of a routine suggests, many will stop doing the exercises within only a few weeks of starting and that also prevents them from getting the benefits of what seemed to be a proven routine.
If you avoid the pitfalls identified above you are likely to stop saying you can’t build muscle and start wondering how to begin targeting all of your growth!