By: Sean Nalewanyj
Submitted: 2009-11-05 06:23:24 | Word Count: 845
If you're serious about making a solid commitment to natural muscle gain, you need to be very careful of whom you take advice from.
Since everyone is trying to make money, there are far too many non-credible "experts" trying to sell natural muscle gain pills and miracle programs that you don't need.
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To achieve natural muscle gain, be sure to stay away from these 4 bodybuilding myths.
Natural Muscle Gain Myth #1: To gain strength and bulk, you need to get a "pump" during your workout session. You'll get bigger muscles based on how much of a pump you achieve.
For those of you who are just starting out, a "pump" is the feeling that you get as blood becomes trapped inside the muscle tissue when you train with weights. Feeling bigger, powerful, stronger, and tighter is the typical sensation of a "pump" because the muscles swell up.
Although a pump feels great, it doesn't do much to help your muscles get bigger. The sensation can trick you into thinking you've had a huge workout, but the truth is that a pump is just increased blood going to the muscle tissue.
The only way that you can judge whether or not a workout was successful is through progression. The best way to tell if you are achieving natural muscle gain is by watching whether or not your reps or the weights that you use have increased from the previous week.
Natural Muscle Gain Myth #2: You will become slower and less flexible if you build up your muscles.
The fact is that amassing lean muscle mass will make you move faster than before. Your muscles are responsible for all of your movements, from throwing to running or jumping.
It's not hard to understand how having stronger, more muscular legs would mean that you are able to go faster on foot, just as cultivating bigger and more muscular shoulders gives you the ability to throw farther.
Natural Muscle Gain Myth #3: Every exercise should be by the book and perfect.
Although using good form during your workouts is paramount, obsessing over the perfect form will not get you very far. You can't achieve full muscle stimulation and you increase your chances of getting injured if you always try to do every exercise using flawless, textbook form.
Natural movement is important during exercise. It could be something as little as adding a slight sway to your back when doing bicep curls or using just a little bit of momentum when performing barbell rows.
Natural Muscle Gain Myth #4: Your muscles will not grow unless you "feel the burn!"
This is not true in the least. When you workout, lactic acid, a metabolic waste product, gets secreted into your muscle tissue, and this is what causes the "burn."
Having higher lactic acid levels might actually slow down your gains instead of speeding them up, and they have absolutely nothing to do with muscle growth. Staying within a 5 to 7 rep-range (instead of a typical 12 and above) can help slow down your lactic acid production.
