Many gym-goers see training as a higher pursuit, pushing themselves physically and mentally to their limits. It seems that only when you leave the gym completely exhausted can you achieve optimal muscle growth. Now, we don’t want to spoil your fun, but that goal, optimal muscle growth, is best achieved by limiting the training stimulus where necessary, allowing for optimal recovery. Training is a matter of stimulate and go: go to the gym, stimulate your muscles, and go home. And rest well at night to recover from your workout and let muscle growth take its course.

ARNOLD

But what about professional bodybuilders like Arnold? Who sometimes train twice a day and do endless sets per muscle group? All under the motto no pain, no gain or Go heavy or go home? True, but those are strength athletes who use steroids. With these substances, your body can handle a flood of sets (volume), trained to muscle failure or even beyond (intensity). In short, training to the limit and still recovering fully quickly.

This is also reflected in nutrition: steroid users can consume large amounts of food all day long without gaining fat. If you’re a natural, you’ll only eat an extra 200 to 500 calories for muscle growth. If you eat more, it’s inevitably stored as fat.

TRAINING FOR NATURALS

Natural bodybuilders should be aware of limited recovery capacity. This means you should follow these guidelines:

• Do a maximum of 10 to 20 sets per muscle group per week (beginners 10, advanced 20), spread over two or three workouts per week;
• Do a maximum of 10 sets per muscle group per workout (so no bro split where you do endless sets per muscle group in one workout);
• Don’t train all sets to failure. Use 1-3 RIR (i.e., keep one to three reps “in the tank”). If desired, train the last set of an isolation exercise to failure.
• Wait 1 to 3 minutes between sets (shorter rest is good for your fitness but comes at the expense of mechanical tension and therefore muscle growth);
• Don’t train more often than necessary. As a beginner, you can already get your training volume down to three workouts a week.

With these rules, your workouts may be less painful than you might think, but that doesn’t make them any less effective. Natural bodybuilding is a discipline in itself, especially compared to powerlifting and cardio training.

So don’t let heated online coaches or overweight bros at the gym get you down. With the above rules, you’ll still train hard, but without exhausting yourself, and with maximum muscle growth.