A Way Of Life, Not a Hobby

If becoming a professional bodybuilder is your ambition, it is important to keep in mind that your struggle to gain muscle goes far beyond the gym walls. It involves how much you eat, how much you sleep, and the activities you are involved in. Your lifestyle will determine your bodybuilding success. You must eat right, and treat your body right, which means cutting out harmful drugs, especially alcohol.

One really great feature of modern bodybuilding is all of the monetary opportunities that have opened up to bodybuilders recently. However, success as a professional bodybuilder can be short-lived, as is the case with a lot of things in life, and it doesn’t come to everyone. Once you focus on your dream and work at it, there’s nothing stopping you from becoming like Lou Ferrigno, with a career spanning from the Incredible Hulk series to the Hercules movies and, in recent times, the King of Queens TV show, among others, not to mention his celebrity training business, despite obstacles he faced as a young kid.

Everyone seems to have the perfect fitness remedy, the hottest gadget or radical diet certain to help you lose fat and keep it off. The truth is there isn’t just one way to get in shape, and one type of exercise will not give you the results you are looking for. Some of today’s most popular training methods are weight training, running, yoga, Pilates, kickboxing, and spinning.

In order to be successful in bodybuilding, you need to have the right attitude. More muscle mass with less body fat is the ultimate goal that we as bodybuilders must keep our eyes on. Make the most of the time you have available to train – even if it’s only three times a week. Here are some guidelines every successful bodybuilder follows:

1. The successful bodybuilder examines his/her obligations and fashions a bodybuilding plan that suits his/her circumstances.
2. He/she prepares all meals beforehand (including liquid meals) in order to avoid missing meals.
3. If the plan is affected for any reason, rather than being miserable about it and leaving it, the successful bodybuilder will adjust it.

One of the greatest tools you can use in bodybuilding is visualization. Visualization takes practice in order for you to become good at it. Bodybuilding champion Boyer Coe used to cut out pictures of bodybuilders from magazines, and paste a photo of his face on their physiques. To use this technique you must pick a bodybuilder with a similar body type to yours.

Without goals you’ll be like a rudderless ship drifting without any sense of direction. You’ll go with the flow, and if you ever become successful, it will be by accident. In order to achieve success in your bodybuilding program, your goal should be clearly defined and ingrained in your mind. If you don’t know what your target is, how can you hope to shoot at it and get it?

As in any other discipline, in bodybuilding, there is a great deal of guesswork regarding the diverse techniques and procedures for success. This guesswork often leads to bewilderment and frustration on the part of the aspiring bodybuilder. The following truths are guaranteed to improve your physique:

1. Lift increasingly heavier weights
2. Consume at least one gram of protein per pound of body weight
3. Get sufficient sleep
4. Acquire a positive psychological outlook
5. Learn to cope with pressure
6. Incorporate aerobics into your program
7. Eat healthy fats
8. Avoid overtraining
9. Use supplements
10. Become educated in all aspects of bodybuilding

Doubtless, you’ve read innumerable articles on how essential it is to set objectives for yourself in order to be successful. As vital as objectives are, however, a lot of people don’t know how to correctly use them in their lives. A good way to do this is to set up small objectives or stepping-stones on your way to your big goal – a technique successfully used by eight-time Mr. Olympia Lee Haney.

Life as a Female Bodybuilder

Outside of the competitive world, most female bodybuilders have the same ambitions in life as ordinary people. They are still mothers, wives, sisters, and professionals in other fields. Women rarely have supplement companies come knocking at their doors with wads of cash, magazines do not hound them for pictures and personal data, in fact, most professional female bodybuilders make very little money from bodybuilding.

Life as Ronnie Coleman

American bodybuilder and eight-time Mr. Olympia Ronnie Coleman is regarded as the current leading jockey of the sport. Coleman became a police officer after graduating from Grambling State University in 1989 with a degree in Accounting. He continues to work as a reserve officer in Texas. He was the recipient of the 2001 Admiral in the Texas Navy Award for outstanding achievements in bodybuilding and the promotion of physical fitness.

Life as Arnold Schwarzenegger

Schwarzenegger’s extraordinary personal story has been told lots of times: that of the flat broke Austrian boy who left his country for the United States to become a one-man business and entertainment empire before turning his attention to politics. Arnold began training with Kurt Marnul, the former Mr. Austria, at age 14, and at 17, he officially started his competitive career.

Life as Chris Cormier

Chris Cormier has been hired for dozens of guest posings at fitness centers, expos and other events over the years. A self-proclaimed people person, Chris says he loves to spend time with fans after a guest posing. Perhaps the most important thing he can do at guest posings, he says, is to help vulnerable teens find a better life by turning to bodybuilding.