16 Muscle Building Mistakes I REGRET Making!

If I could go back 30 years and show this kid the video I'm about to show you here today, I would. The point is, I've made some muscle building mistakes along the way, both in the kitchen and in the gym. What I want to do here is share with you my 16 biggest to prevent you from making them as well. So we kick this off with maybe one of the more embarrassing admissions, but that's what this video is about. I actually opened up my magazine as a kid and I thought that I'd look like this. Like Shawn Ray. Just by simply doing what he was doing. I kind of wasted a whole hell of a lot of time in the process. And if I only knew that it wasn't just the routine of 36 to 40 sets of chest that was creating this physique, I probably could have been doing something a lot more productive with my time. Like a lot less junk volume that would have led to a lot better results. And not just that, a lot less of the body breakdown that would come along with trying to copy these routines. That led to some of the other mistakes I'm going to reveal to you next. Mistake number two is not realizing soon enough that not all oats were created equally. You see, because as a kid I ate a lot of these, thinking I was doing something healthy. Except the problem with that is, along with my two servings, because one was never enough, came 28 grams of sugar. If I look at the sugar in this, there's zero. We know that when we're trying to build muscle, what we eat is going to dictate the results that we get. And loading your body up with sugar, again, even at an early age, is a big mistake. Know the difference. This here is about 10 grams shy of a can of soda. Not likely what you're looking for when you're trying to build muscle. This next one's kind of a double regret because I mentioned already how I follow those bodybuilding routines to the point of actually breaking down my body. See I've talked about before the fact that I wasn't really blessed with the greatest of feet. Matter of fact, these flippers here have set me up with some pretty chronic knee issues that I deal with even today. But doing those marathon workouts in that given state, realizing that every single set produced more pains than gains, well, I probably should have done something along the way to intervene. But I didn't. Because I felt that I should just keep doing what I was supposed to be doing. All those squats, all those leg extensions, I just kind of did what I was told to do. But back then, I didn't know any better, and I don't know whether or not I should blame myself more for not respecting my own body's limitations, or for continuing to do what I shouldn't have done in the first place. Regret number four has to do with not knowing the value of the unshrug when it comes to building a bigger chest. Now let's face it, I never had the greatest chest and still don't to this day, but I think a lot of it goes back to the fact that every single chest exercise I performed was dominated by a shrug during it. What I'm telling you is, it's very easy to consciously get rid of that by simply unshrugging your shoulders and being aware of that on every chest exercise. On a bench press, if you take your shoulders and forcefully bring them down before you initiate the exercise, it does something very important. It puts the shoulders back, and it puts the chest at the first line of defense. In other words, the chest will be the muscle that gets preferably recruited at the bottom of every single bench press, making it more productive for its gains. I could do this on a crossover, and I could do this on a dip. Literally, on every single chest exercise, the gains that you see because of the better recruitment that you get is noticeable, and it's definitely something you want to make sure you're not doing as well because if you are, it could be the very reason why you don't see the chest gains that you're after. Mistake number five was actually being much too rigid with how I ate, and I paid the price for it. It wasn't until even as late as my New York Mets days that I became more flexible, or slightly thereafter. We used to board the plane for a 12 game road trip out west and be handed an envelope just like this with nothing but $100 bills and cash in it, which was part of our daily stipend as our meal money. Well, a lot of the guys actually just keep that money and add it to their salary at the end of the year. I would have pretty much nothing left over because I was spending mine on making sure I could eat a very particular way. So, I would go out to L.A. and I'd actually sit down in the restaurant. They would sell eggs for about $18 or so for two eggs. I said, can I just get some egg whites and they want to know, well, how many do you like? I'm like, I usually eat six egg whites. They'd come back and bill me $36 or even more, $48 for the six egg whites, and I would actually pay it because I was so obsessed with the idea that maybe not eating my egg whites in the morning would cost me either in terms of a percentage or two of body fat, or not being able to look a certain way. So, I became a lot less rigid and more flexible after, when I actually started living at home and my wife opened up my horizons to other foods. What happened? I actually got more muscle mass, I actually stayed just as lean, and I think I'm much better off for it. This next regret of mine was actually one that became fully apparent to me once I became a physical therapist. That is, undervaluing correctives in terms of their ability to help us build muscle because they seem like the little exercises. The ones that you don't really want to do. But the real power of corrective exercises, especially when you do them consistently, is that they plug those leaks. They fill in the gaps that allow the bigger muscles, the ones that get more of the attention, to actually do their job better. So you can improve your strength if you do correctives. You can improve your aesthetics if you do correctives. Even just doing external rotation can actually improve the appearance of the chest by putting your shoulders back in a better posture. There's so many benefits that come from corrective exercises that elevates them to equal importance in your workouts. Again, I wish I had paid more attention to it a lot earlier age because I don't think I would've been broken down at the age I was either. These things will work, and they'll work really well. So this next one is another one that's a little bit embarrassing because it reveals how much I disliked the gym early on in my training. It's certainly how I disliked the discomfort of training because I shied away from the discomfort of contraction when I probably should've been reveling in its ability to actually create muscle growth. So let me explain a little bit. When I talk about, all the time, moving a weight through space, I talk about not just lifting it up and down, but actually contracting it through space. With that is going to come, likely, a lot of discomfort. Maybe even a feeling of cramping. I discussed this on the Andrew Huberman Podcast a few months back. That's actually a great thing. You should be seeking out a contraction discomfort. Almost a cramping type feel because it helps to build my muscle connection. You can almost tell whether or not you've got a good ability to grow a muscle if you have that discomfort capability when you contract it. You have to be able to get that muscle to a point of discomfort and not shy away from it, but revel in it even if it limits the number of repetitions that you can perform. The contraction is key in realizing this more quickly than I did is going to serve you well. Mistake number eight was actually not honoring my natural sweet tooth because I grew up literally eating everything that you see on this table for breakfast. I was a total cereal guy. However, when I first started to get serious about what I was eating and I tried to support my efforts in the gym, I got rid of everything I possibly could that I thought might be a problem for me nutritionally. However, it wasn't really honoring that whole idea that I never really got rid of my sweet tooth, even to this day. So what do I do? I make sure that even in my healthier approach to eating, I have ways to placate that sweet tooth that's still there. So I have my yogurt in the afternoon, which – don't judge – still gives me a little bit of a treat, especially if I add some whipped cream on top. I have my frozen yogurt that I talk about every, single night as somewhat of a treat for my sanity to keep me on track. I even have my own protein shake every, single day that tastes literally like a chocolate fudge brownie. The idea is, without having some of these outlets to still keep me satisfied, knowing that the sweet tooth will always be there, I wouldn't have been able to stay consistent with what I eat. For me, that's the key. Being consistent has kept me the way I look and has allowed me to build muscle as I got older. Mistake number nine was actually a crucial oversight when it came to building muscle. That was forgetting about the eccentrics on pulling exercises, specifically. There's a big difference between push exercises and pulling exercises. We know that when we're doing a pushing exercise, like a bench press, we don't forget the eccentrics because we do it to protect ourselves. That weight can come crashing down on you. However, when it comes to pulling exercises, the weight is almost always falling safely away from you. On a curl, it's just going to drop away from my body. If I did a row, the weight is going to drop away from my body. If I did a pulldown, the weight is going to rise back up, safely to the stack. So there is no threat of the weight, and therefore, there is no reminder for you to actually slow it down. One of the main drivers of hypertrophy, one of the big three, is eccentric overload. By forgetting to slow down the eccentric and create that internal muscular damage that is a stimulus for new growth and repair, it's a big mistake to make, and one you want to make sure you're not doing. It's certainly something you can learn from me. Speaking of overload, when it comes to building muscle you're going to want to make sure you're progressively adding load. It doesn't limit itself to just the weighted exercises. I think one of the big mistakes I made a long time ago was not applying that to bodyweight exercises as well. You see, what I would do is perform more repetitions of the same exercise. Really try to drive up the number of reps I could do, rather than try to drive up the difficulty of the exercise variation I was using. Rather than continuing to just bang away at, let's say, 100 pushups a day, how about doing maybe 40 or 50 of a more difficult, more overloading, challenging variation of the pushup? That's where I think people should spend more of their time. The same thing when it comes to pullups. Instead of just trying to continue to increase rep, after rep, after rep, be satisfied with fewer reps if now you're handling more load with the addition of some weight. Remember, calisthenic exercises are still exercises. They're just utilizing a different form of resistance. Forgetting to apply additional levels of resistance is going to hold you back. Mistake number 11 is one that I've been talking about for a long time. That is, if you don't prepare, you prepare to fail. When it comes to having your meals ready and what you're going to eat, your nutrition has to be on point and it has to be consistent. Here's a couple of things I recommend that you do. Number one, have something available in bulk. In terms of protein, a big bag of frozen chicken. Here. Sweet potatoes. Tons of them up here, already in prepared containers. That was gotten from Stu Leonard's catering menu. I told you guys to utilize the catering menus of these places where you can buy them in bulk and not have to spend as much. But take it to the next step. That is, if you can, prepare the actual plate that you're going to eat ahead of time for the week. It doesn't have to be the same food, but what I'm talking about is that the slightest slipup, the slightest inconvenience where you don't feel like putting together even the stuff that's already in your freezer and put it on a plate, and you reach for something else, you could fall off of your plan. And when you do, there goes the consistency, and all of a sudden, now you're back on track to a bunch of bad meals. So, my next big regret was not realizing sooner that I actually was not the athlete that I thought I was. You see, not all athletes are created equal, and that means you probably shouldn't hydrate the same way. See, I thought I was Michael Jordan. I grabbed Gatorade all too often as my sole source of replacing my lost electrolytes. The big problem is, I wasn't running up and down a court, sweating my balls off for two hours like Jordan was. I was performing maybe 30 sets of a chest workout with about three minutes of rest in between. It's not the same. So, you didn't have to be replacing electrolytes at all. As a matter of fact, I should have just been drinking water. This was just a bunch of sugar and a big mistake. So, number 13 turned out to actually be my lucky number because it's where I realized the value of the face pull. You see, the face pull is something that, again, might fall into that corrective exercise category that I've already told you about. It's not something you should be overlooking. But beyond that, it's not just a corrective exercise. It's a muscle building exercise. One that's incredibly important for building up the muscles of the upper back and mid-scalp area that we just don't often train enough. You can never get enough strength and development in these upper back muscles to counteract the postural demands and overuse that we get from a lot of our pushing exercises that we do. So, believe it or not, when I was 13 years old I accidentally ran into the value of the face pull. Because I had that 5lb Marci dumbbell of mine that I just kind of moved around in all kinds of motions to try to feel like I was doing something at least respectable in the gym. It was the time that I actually leaned over and tried to pull it straight back that I realized how difficult, but beneficial it was for my upper back. I guess that's where you could say the benefit of the face pull started for me. Of course, then I forgot all about it and never did it again for 20 years until I realized now how important it is as far as its role in training, and it should be part of everybody's training routine. Hopefully, you won't forget about it after today. I've shared some pretty big regrets so far, but this might be one of my biggest of all time. That is not realizing that the most important supplement that I could actually put in my body is right here. Just regular water. For so many years I literally just used thirst as the determinant factor of whether or not I should be taking a drink. So what I do now, and I've learned my lesson big time, is I start my day every single day – I've covered this tip with you before – with two bottles of water sitting right next to my sink in the morning. I have to chug them down first thing when I wake up. The good news is, it kickstarts a lot of good things happening, but most importantly, it's at least providing my body with a jumpstart on the water that I'm going to have to sustain for the rest of the day. By doing it first thing, I do remember a lot more now, and I don't just use thirst as my guide for whether or not I should be drinking. The idea here, guys, is that muscles are 70% water. If you think that you can walk around chronically dehydrated and get the most out of your muscular development, you're making a big mistake. Don't make the same one I was. So this next one is one that I actually wish I learned a hell of a lot sooner, and it wasn't until I gained my education as a physical therapist that I did. It's trying to train through an injury, rather than around an injury. There's a big difference. It was the appreciation that I got from understanding just how interrelated all these little muscles and bones are to each other, and how we have options if we just know what to do. You see, for years I mentioned earlier that I had troubles with my knees, and rather than banging away at the exercises that were just exacerbating the situation and making it worse, I could have redirected my attention to something that would have allowed me to let the body and tissues heal, and still train and gain strength. I talk a lot about my torn labrum, and how I learned in later years to be able to train around that. In other words, not stopping training altogether, but not continuing to do exercises that inflame the tendons that are already problematic. So, when I did my chest training, exercises that would light me up every, single time, like a bench-press, were replaced with a simple crossover. No, it wasn't an ideal situation, but it was one that allowed me to continue to train where there was lots of pain before, and continue, most importantly, to stimulate the muscle and make gains until it was able to properly heal, and then I could get back into doing the bench-press. Having a smarter approach, and being willing to zig and zag, but still train, is a really important weapon to have in your arsenal, and the sooner you realize that you want to work with your body, rather than against it, the more uninterrupted your gains can be. And at number 16, we have to talk about the most important training variable of them all. Or at least, the one that we almost always forget, and that's the manipulation of time. Because time can be, literally, the great equalizer. If you forget to manipulate time in favor of things like reps, sets, and exercises, you could be making a giant mistake. Because time can dramatically increase the intensity of your effort. I have no greater example of this than one time when my sister told me, Hey, listen, we're going to church, and we're leaving in 15 minutes. And I knew I couldn't afford to miss yet another workout, so I did exactly what I would normally do in 45 minutes to an hour, in 14 minutes. And the amount of work that I was forced to do in that condensed period of time served to increase the intensity to a level I had never experienced before, but it planted a seed that would, later on, become a very important part of my training. And even the amount of time that you rest in between sets. If you decrease that rest to the perfect amount of time, you can get more out of your workouts because you keep that intensity high from set to set. It's actually part of our effective rep strategy that I've shared with you here before. If you want to actually try something that will show you firsthand what this feels like, make sure you check out the 100 chest workout, guys. I promise you, it's a different experience and I want you to give it a try. If you haven't already, make sure you click subscribe and turn on your notifications so you never miss a video. And also, if you're looking for full programs, guys, we have them at ATHLEANX.com. I hope you found the video helpful. Tell me what other things that you are dealing with that maybe I didn't cover here. I'd love to hear them down below. See you soon.