What’s up, guys.
Sean Nalewanyj here at www.SeanNal.com-www.BodyTransformationTruth.com.
I was recently asked this question on Q&A video that I did a while back and it said,
“What is the one thing you would wished you knew when you started lifting?”
I sat down to think about it and pretty quickly I came up with seven things that I wished
I knew.
I wanted to share those with you today in this video.
Now there’re definitely more than seven things that I did wrong along the way, but
these are just some of the main ones that came to mind first and foremost.
If you’re still a beginner yourself then hopefully you can learn from and benefit from
the mistakes that I made as it applies to your program, and if you’re more advance
then I’m sure some of these will sound very familiar and you can just use them as a reminder.
So, the top seven bodybuilding mistakes that I’ve made, in no particular order: Mistake
number one would be the overly aggressive dreamer bulk, in other words, having the goal
of wanting to be as huge and muscular as possible and then going ahead and eating massive amounts
of food and thinking that more calories automatically means more muscle.
So I’m about 5’8”-5’9”, this morning I weighed in at 174 pounds and in the past
I’ve actually been as heavy as 228 ponds, which for my frame is basically, just ridiculous.
I just wanted to gain as much size as I possibly could and I went completely overboard on calories
thinking that I was putting on a bunch of muscle, when in reality a huge percentage
of it was just fat, and I had to drop over 30 pounds before I started to look half decent
again.
This is actually one of the most common bodybuilding mistakes there is and most serious lifters
have probably gone through a solid dreamer bulk face at some point, but hindsight it’s
really just not a good approach all around.
Muscle growth is a slow and gradual process, your body can only build a very limited amount
of muscle over any given time frame and any calories that you take in beyond what your
body can use for muscle growth, those are just going to end up as body fat, and if you
get excessively fat then you won’t feel good, you won’t look good and you’ll have
to go through the whole tedious cutting process in order to get rid of it.
If I could go back I would’ve just stuck with a smaller calorie surplus and focused
on making gradual lean gains rather than trying to rushed things.
Bodybuilding mistake number two was not treating my joints with enough respect.
When you first start lifting and you don’t have any injuries, you sort of thinks you’re
invincible and that nothing can go wrong, and you just want to make gains at whatever
cost and that makes you liable to do plenty of stupid things in the gym, and that eventually
catch up to you and can cost real problems.
I can’t say that I always train with pretty good form, but I definitely made the mistake
of pushing the envelope a bit too far, thinking that more intensity automatically meant more
gains, so I used a lot of forced reps, heavy negatives, rest pause, always training to
failure and beyond, just thinks that when you [inaudible], but I was basically doing
them every single time I trained and as a result I ended up with issues in my shoulders,
in my low-back, my elbows, and the truth is that a lot of those things still affect me
to a certain degree to this day, so if I could go back I would’ve done more thorough warm-ups,
I would’ve included mobility work in my program and I would’ve dialed the intensity
back because training to that level just isn’t necessary to maximize muscle growth anyway.
Injury prevention should actually be treated as a primary concern because your ability
to train and build muscle, it hinges on the fact that your joints are healthy enough to
do so in the first place, and if you do get injured, depending on how serious it is, your
entire program can be pretty seriously compromised.
Bodybuilding mistake number three was being overly concern with small nutritional details
like meal frequency and meal timing.
Now, back in the first few years when I was getting into bodybuilding it was common knowledge
that you needed to eat a meal every two to three hours to stay anabolic and to keep your
metabolism boosted, or that you needed to have a fast absorbing whey protein and simple
sugars within ten minutes post-workout or that you needed slow released protein before
bed.
All these little highly specific nutrition strategies that are now generally refer to
as broscience and that we now know for the most part just not necessary.
Having to sit around all day worrying about getting in a meal exactly every three hours
or consuming specific types of foods at different times of day for various reasons, that was
one of the bodybuilding mistakes that cause a lot of unnecessary stress and forced me
to structure my day around food a lot more than what was necessary.
So if I could go back I would’ve just focused on meeting my overall nutritional needs for
the day as a whole and I would’ve just spaced my meals out based on my hunger and on my
daily schedule.
I would’ve gotten the same results that way and hugely simplified my eating plan.
Proper muscle building and fat burning nutrition is mostly just about the big picture and worrying
about exact meal frequency or exact meal timing, it can have that some application depending
on a person specific goals, but for the vast majority of people it won’t really make
any noticeable difference to the results.
Mistake four also ties in to nutrition and that mistake was being overly concern with
individual food as being good or bad rather than just looking at the overall dietary picture
as a whole.
I used to think, “Well, I’m a bodybuilder and bodybuilders eat canned tuna, they eat
chicken breast and brown rice and they don’t eat pizza or they don’t eat cookies, therefore
I should only eat clean food and I should avoid all junk foods”.
Again, nutrition is all about the big picture and as long as the bulk of your intake is
coming from, what we traditionally considered healthy, minimally processed whole foods,
then it’s not going to negatively affect your results if you include a bit of junk
food in moderation.
So if I could go back I wouldn’t have sat around eating tuna straight from the can,
or choking down certain protein shakes that I really didn’t want to drink, or thinking
that I could only eat brown rice and never eat white rice, or things like that.
I wished I’d just recognize that it mainly comes down to overall macro and micro nutrients
for the day as a whole, and not individual foods because that would’ve made my diet
a lot more enjoyable and less stressful as well.
Mistake number five an extremely common one but it has to be mentioned because I definitely
did this myself and that was over emphasis on supplements.
I used to have, behind my bedroom door, a bunch of shelves and at one point my room
pretty much look like a miniature supplement store.
These shelves were just stacked from top to bottom with all kind of useless crap; glutamine,
nitric oxide boosters, I took testosterone boosters, different types of protein powder
to suit different situations, a fast absorbing protein for post-workout and a slow released
protein before bed, I had pre-workouts, I had amino acid pills, just so many different
things, and this was for a teenager who only worked part-time and didn’t have a lot money
to spend in the first place.
Now, you guys know that I’m highly critical of the supplement industry now, and the fact
is that it’s completely justified because most of what’s out there is not worth your
money and it won’t have any real noticeable effects at all.
The supplement industry is basically just a big marketing machine and there really are
only a handful of bodybuilding supplements that are even worth trying, but of course
back then I wasn’t aware of that.
So if I could go back, especially at that stage, still being a novice I would’ve saved
probably thousands of dollars that I wasted, and just stuck with the basics.
So, shifting gears a little bit, mistake number six is that I wasn’t skeptical enough of
the bodybuilding advice that I was receiving from others.
A lot of times when you’re new to the subject and you don’t know a lot about it, you tend
to just accept it at face value what the experts in that area tell you.
So if some [inaudible] guy at the gym told me something about training or nutrition I
just assumed it was true, or if I read something online or in print I just assumed it was true
and I even assume that what people working in supplement stores told me was true.
I now fully aware that the bodybuilding and fitness industry is actually completely full
of misinformation and that some of the people, for example right here on YouTube, some of
the people who beginners look up to most, regularly put out misleading advice either
by accident because they don’t know better or intentionally to trying sell products.
Becoming aware just how much misinformation there is in the area of fitness it caused
me to become a lot more skeptical in other areas as well, which I think is a good thing
because it causes you to search deeper and look for more evidence behind things and find
the real facts rather than just accepting what anybody tells you at face value.
So if I could go back I would’ve been more scientific with my approach, I would’ve
taken the advice that people gave me and held it to sort of a higher level of scrutiny,
and if I had done that then maybe I would’ve been able to avoid some of the mistakes that
I’ve mentioned up until now.
Finally, bodybuilding mistake number seven is that, in hindsight I feel now I just took
the whole thing a bit too seriously and I should’ve had more overall life balance.
So I was the guy who would turn down invitations to go out because I was worried that I wouldn’t
get my meals in, I was the guy who would be training at gym at 09:00 PM on a Saturday
night or who would get stressed out going on trips because I thought I might miss the
workout.
At the time I thought it just meant that I was being hardcore and that I was sacrificing
to win, but in hindsight it was actually just unnecessary to take it to that extreme and
if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have revolved my life around bodybuilding
so much but instead I’d have bodybuilding be something that revolved around my life,
and I wouldn’t have just taking it so seriously in general.
Don’t get me wrong, I love working out, I love being in shape but realistically unless
you’re competing or you’re directly making a living from it, it actually doesn’t require
a huge amount of time and a huge amount of effort to get the body that you want.
It only takes a few hours per week of training, keep your nutrition reasonably on point for
the day as a whole, a couple basic supplements, sleep well and once you get into a routine
with it, it really doesn’t require a whole lot of thought or a whole lot of sacrifice.
So if I could go back now, I would’ve gone out more in my late teens and in my early
twenties instead of turning down invites because I thought it was going to interfere with my
muscle gains, I would’ve been more flexible with my diet, if I fell off track a bit I
would’ve realized that it wasn’t actually a big deal and I would’ve been just easier
on myself and realize that bodybuilding is not that serious and that fitness should be
something that adds to your life rather than being the sole focus.
Now that’s just me, if fitness is your sole focus and you’re genuinely happy with it
then obviously that’s fine, but in retrospect now, looking back and then having change my
ways a bit toward bodybuilding and fitness is something that I just do, but I don’t
think too much about and don’t get stressed out about.
I can say now that I’m definitely more content this way.
So a bit of longer video here, but I hope you guys found these bodybuilding mistakes
helpful.
It is kind of fun to think back on this stuff and see how much I’ve actually learn and
evolves since then.
So I hope you guys enjoyed it.
Make sure to follow me on Facebbok, Twitter and Instagram if you aren’t already.
If you want to get a step-by-step roadmap that outlines everything I’ve learned about
proper training, nutrition and supplementation, so that you can avoid all of these bodybuilding
mistakes I made and get the body you want without having to give up your entire life
or revolve your whole life around your program, then you grab my Body Transformation Blueprint
System by clicking here or by visiting www.BodyTransformationTruth.com the link is in the description.
The official website is www.SeanNal.com and feel free to share the video, like, leave
a comment and subscribe if you did find the advice helpful.
Thanks for watching guys and I’ll talk to you again soon.