Top 10 Tips For Reaching Your Bodybuilding Goals

Top 10 Tips For Reaching Your Goals!

Many people find it hard to reach their specific goals for a number of reasons. Some give up after not seeing any gains and some can’t seem to find the motivation. In any case, here are the top 10 tips on keeping to your regime and making sure you reach your goals.

Set Realistic & Specific Goals, Aims & Objectives

A goal is what exactly your plan to achieve.
Sets of aims are the things you expect to achieve along that way to reach your goal.
Objectives are the short-term things you want to achieve to reach longer-term aims and goals.
An Example

Your goal might be to gain 10lb of muscle in 5 months.
Your aims might include reaching personal bests in your bench press and squat and also eating a clean diet to reach your goal.
Your specific objectives may include trying to lift more weight in each workout.
Use The S.M.A.R.T Technique
Many training individuals use this technique to ensure their goals are within reach

Specific Your goals must be specific to you
Measurable You must be able to measure your progress
Achievable There is no point setting a goal to gain 30lb of muscle in 3 weeks; it just won’t happen.
Realistic Make sure you take into consideration your lifestyle and how much you can achieve realistically.
Time-Phased Set a time frame for your goals; this will make you concentrate fully on the matter in hand.

Be Patient
Changing your body composition is not an easy task! It takes dedication and motivation for extended periods. If you are looking for a dramatic change within a few weeks you will probably be disappointed, but be patient, if you are doing the right things your body will change.

Many people give up just as their body is changing and fail to see the real results that can be made. Having said this make sure you set your goals using the S.M.A.R.T technique.

Eat Smaller, More Frequent Meals
Eating more frequent smaller meals will keep you from hunger pains and over-eating. Having 3 meals daily can leave you hungry between meals and more prone to snacking on bad foods.
Eating smaller meals also has smaller effect on insulin. This hormone is important for nutrient deposition, but eating large meals can spike insulin leading to possible fat storage.

Eat The Right Foods
Your diet is key to reaching your goals. Make sure you research what foods are appropriate for your goals and how many calories you should be consuming on a daily basis.

Keep It Simple
Making an elaborate plan may not be sustainable in the long-term. Make sure you plan is as simple as possible so you can stick to it day in and day out. Many fad diets or workout regimes make sticking to them almost impossible, but if your plan is simple, easy to follow and easily repeatable you can be confident in your ability to reach your goal.

Give Your Best In The Gym
If you are serious about doing you best treat the gym as your place of work. It isn’t somewhere to socialise and talk to friends for 10 minutes between sets. Get in the gym, work hard and intensely, do you job and then leave.

Perform Exercises Correctly
Make sure you use correct form and tempo in all your exercises. Performing exercises incorrectly can lead to injury and inferior gains. As a guide most exercises should be quick on the concentric movement (a count of 1) and slower on the eccentric (a count of 1,2).

Let Your Body Recover
Over-training will completely stop your gains and lead to injury. Training muscles too often will not give them enough time to recover or grow and lead to no muscle growth. Training intensely 3-4 times a weeks is plenty, any more and you will run the risk of training your muscles too often and not building any new mass.
You should also schedule a week off every 10-12 weeks to let your body fully recover from the onslaught. Remember your body recovers and grows outside of the gym so it is important to rest.

Be Consistent
One of the top tips is to be completely consistent with your plan. If you are not consistent with your diet and training you are not giving yourself a chance to succeed. You should stick to your plan seven days a week and not three or four. Of course you can ‘cheat’ every so often, this will give you a break! You can take one meal a week, or one hour a week to do exactly what you want and eat exactly what you want!

Accept All Responsibility
If you haven’t reached your goal be completely honest with yourself. Could you have done better? Could you have tried harder? Could you have eaten cleaner? These are important questions you must ask yourself so you can re-evaluate your aims and take a step forward.

Always strive to do better and improve and only then you will be rewarded with the results you deserve.