There’s always a reason why you’re not getting the results that you want. It’s finding that reason that’s the challenge. After all, there’s no reason why you wouldn’t build lean muscle if you trained a few times a week and watched what you ate.

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In part one of Plateau Busters, I gave you 5 methods for more muscle growth. Now I’m back with 5 more methods to help you bust out of any training sticking point that you can ever encounter.

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You know how it is. You’ve dieted for awhile and you’ve made some great gains then it stopped. You amp up the cardio, workout more and drop your ever decreasing calories and see a tiny, if any, result then it happens all over again. Why do you have a slow metabolism and what do you do about it?

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Skinny guy and hardgainer, two terms that have taken a life of themselves over the course of the past few years due to the proliferation of the internet. Guy from all ages across the world have seemly taken pride in referring to themselves as skinny guys and hardgainers. As a matter of fact, I can consider myself one since I’m so tall that it’s naturally easy for me to be skinny. While most skinny guys and hardgainers focus on training to build muscle, 99% of their results will come from skinny guy diets and hardgainer nutrition programs.

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If you would like to know a huge training mistake that I’ve made so you can avoid it then you need to read this post(I’m going to tell you my story first then get into some myths about bodyweight training)

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Lower ab. You know the lower ab right? That area on your six pack that just won’t pop out. The sexy lower ab area that everyone wants but almost no one can get. It’s almost funny when I look at all the lower ab information on the market today. Everyone wants to talk about the lower ab exercises that you need to be doing or the sets and reps and while that’s all cool, it isn’t as necessary as people make it out to be. Why? Because you’re fighting a uphill battle that can’t be won with just exercises. So here’s 15 lower ab tips and a lower ab workout.

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It’s time, you’ve trained hard for months and now you’re ready to start your figure competition diet
to lose the last bit of fat and prime your body for your contest. You look everywhere online for figure diet tips and all you’re left with is a bunch of ideas and zero action plans. You could start out and just go with a standard low carb diet or you could look up your favorite figure competitor and get your figure competition diet from them. It’s better then just reading the internet for days right?

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If you spend any amount of time surfing the internet and visit any of the popular (or not so popular) fitness message boards and look for any topic concerning six pack abs diets, fat loss diets or just building muscle in general you’ll come across various recommendations. One of the more popular is the idea that you should consume 1 gram per pound of bodyweight if you are looking to build muscle or lose fat.

Now I want to start out by saying that for the most part I do agree with the general recommendation of anywhere from 1.0 to 1.6 grams per pound of bodyweight. I feel that while these blanket recommendations are bad, they do make life easier, most people don’t consume enough protein so giving them that recommendation will do.

What most of the research doesn’t factor in, is the diets who wants six pack abs, have to compete or has to do photo shoots. Things change when we look at someone who needs to be very lean. It’s not a want, you either have that six pack or you don’t get the photo shoot or you don’t place well. Dieting is a prolonged caloric deficit and we have to jack up our protein intake since our carbohydrates are so low for variable periods of time.

The problems begin when we look at our current bodyweight and determine our protein needs based on that bodyweight that we’re not going to be at for much longer. You’re better off basing your recommendations on the bodyweight that you’ll be at on stage or at your goal weight. This is going to apply for the housewife who wants to lose 10 pounds or someone that’s 55 pounds overweight and needs to start losing weight.

So determine your goal weight then determine your target bodyweight. So if you have to be at your target goal in 16 weeks then start dieting. Obviously this has to be assessed on a weekly basis. In my experience, male physique competitors should use anywhere from 1.2-1.5 grams per pounds of bodyweight and women will benefit from 1.0-1.2. Not competing? That’s fine, most people will see significant fat loss results with just .7-1.0 grams of protein based on their end goal weight.