Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Motivation and planning: the keys to muscle gain success

By Jon Cardozo

What is the first thing you thought about when you decided to begin a muscle building program? Was it the exercises? Maybe it was about your nutrition requirements or which supplements you should buy. These things are important to consider, but there may be something else you're ignoring. Knowledge is crucial for success, and learning about things like specific weight training exercises and which supplements to take is certainly important. However, you may actually want to take a moment and look at your motivation.

Despite the need for such knowledge, you may be setting yourself up for failure if you don't stop and think about what it is you're trying to achieve. That's because lack of knowledge is only one cause of failure in weight gain and in every kind of new endeavor. A major cause of failure is the lack of planning and unclear motivation.

So, why not start off by defining exactly what it is that you want? Now, obviously we're referring to a weight training program, but this can apply to any area of your life. With regards to building muscle, decide what you want in terms of your future weight and body fat percentage.

If you don't know the answer, you should stop and think about how many pounds you want to gain based on your current situation. You may even want to discuss your fitness with your physician before you get started. You should also talk to a trainer or purchase a good muscle building course so you know exactly what you're getting into. Then you should divide your big goal into smaller goals to make things simpler for you.

Like we said before, knowing why you want something is pretty important. Knowing your motivation should not be underestimated if you want to succeed in building muscle.

When you start a new project you'll probably be pretty excited to get going. However, you'll almost certainly reach a point when things get tougher and you start to doubt your goal.

When this happens, you must return to the original reason that you wanted to gain muscle. Did you want to look more attractive? Do you want to be more physically fit so you could participate in sports? This is where you have to decide for yourself what exactly your motivation is. By the way, intrinsic motivation is far superior to extrinsic motivation. What does this mean?

It just means that you need to have your own reasons for wanting to achieve something along with a deep desire to overcome obstacles. You are far more likely to succeed in achieving your goal if it is truly your goal and not just the result of peer pressure or some other outside motivation. If you keep these things in mind, you are well on your way to muscle gain success.

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