In our position as strength athletes we are only too happy to assume that we know our body and our way of life in favor of the body muscle growth control as well as possible also to beat the catabolism. With all the conscientiousness, surely nothing should go wrong, right? Unfortunately, this is not quite true, because believe it or not, you may also have habits that help you get rid of your muscles in no time. You're just wondering how that can be possible if you always get everything out of your body in the gym. We would like to give you the answer based on five extreme examples that depict behaviors that you, under warranty, can not always completely free yourself from.
Way 1 - You do not focus on the training
Maybe you are a very communicative person and show yourself in the gym usually very sociable. This degenerates in that you have many training acquaintances, with which of course the obligatory small talk must be held. This is basically not a problem as long as you do not lose your training focus. So it's not uncommon for your warm-up program to be halfhearted and just casually roll it off while you're discussing the results of the Football Champions League with a gym buddy. Even if it does not seem particularly tragic at first, sooner or later this behavior will drag you through your entire training program, leaving the focus on the track. The bottom line is that the amount of stimulus applied to your muscles decreases, which can lead to stagnation and, in the worst case, to a decrease in muscle mass. But what to do? The solution is simple in itself. Concentrate on each sentence and each repetition as if it were an attempt to correct your one-rep-maximum significantly upwards. Of course, this does not mean that you, like many of the pseudo-pros, have to run around in the studio with a crazy "do not bother me, or eat you" look, just that you're able to focus on the small one Talk to move to later.
Way 2 - Your eating habits are very bad
Are you also one of those recreational athletes who have a tendency to indulge in fast food or rather plan on having four or five cheat meals a week instead? Yes? Then, with purposeful confidence, you are on your way to ruining your hard-earned progress. And this is not only because of the extra calories and the not very high-quality nutrients of pizza, chips and Co, but rather because you get into a spiral from which you can escape very badly, because if you too much Eating junk foods has been proven to increase the need to consume more junk food. Why this is so tragic is obvious, because most foods that fall into this category contain a whole range of additives that can greatly affect the interaction of hormones in your body or even harm you from a metabolic point of view. So make sure that a large part of your diet consists of as natural as possible products that you ideally prepare yourself. Eat enough complex carbohydrates, high-quality proteins and healthy fats, and then you can afford to stop once a week at one of the major burger chains. Cheat Meals, while important to the psyche, should remain the exception in terms of maintaining your hard-earned muscles.
Way 3 - You listen too much to your stomach
You certainly know these days when you had a hard day at work, at school or at university, and therefore are no longer necessarily tempted to torment yourself in the gym. After all, it does not matter, because tomorrow is another day. There are also these weeks in which nothing seems to converge, you already go on Wednesday on the gum and you simply have no desire for training. Also not bad, next Monday, it finally starts again with the chest workout. Okay, time to wake up, because that's the kind of behavior that causes your muscles to burn off due to the irregular stimulation. You should be referring to Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know, the guy from Terminator. When he was in college, late in the evening he did not have the urge to learn any more, especially in a foreign language. But he kept forcing himself to go through exactly one hour at least, no matter what he wanted. And you should know the rest of the story. Arnold not only achieved more in bodybuilding than any other athlete before him, but also put on a unique career in the field of film and politics on the floor. So, pull yourself together and get your discipline up to scratch if you want to keep your muscles long term.
Way 4 - You are celebrating too much
Of course, you've already heard from scientific studies that alcohol can help keep the body healthy. The conclusion is clear. You call some friends and stick to the findings of science as part of a classic party weekend. In this context, however, you overlook the fact that the alcohol consumption declared to be beneficial in the course of the relevant studies is lower than true dimensions than you may dream. Unfortunately, this dose is equivalent to about three bottles of beer per hour, not three bottles per hour. On the contrary, alcohol, especially in large quantities, has an effect, inter alia, on the release of stress hormones, which in turn impede your ability to regenerate. In plain English you lose not only in performance through training by a high alcohol consumption, but directly harm your muscles. Once or twice a month a few drinks are completely ok for recreational athletes. A single flush is already deadly to the muscles.
Way 5 - You see the training as a job
Sometimes things just change in life. If you were previously highly motivated to go to the studio, this process has perhaps already developed into a mere routine activity. The training will stress you, you just go, rinse your time and go again. You just see the training as a job, which causes you to start losing your lust, which lowers your motivation. At the beginning, you may avoid only a few sentences, but in the end you will leave entire parts of your body asleep and devote yourself instead to "more comfortable" parts of your workouts. You just burned out. Needless to say, that this already leads to the loss of muscle mass in the medium term. But it is all the more important that you know how to escape such a situation. The solution is simple. Just do something different for a while, so that your muscles, tendons and joints as well as your nervous system can recover. Go biking, running or meet regularly with like-minded people for a non-committal kick. In this way, your entire organism recovers and regains the physical and mental freshness after only a few weeks to get back into training full of verve. If you do not change the situation, you lose a large part of your trained muscles for a short or long time.
