By Warrior Poet

Diet, hard work and desire are the key components of success in bodybuilding desire being the glue that holds the rest together. To make progress in this sport you have to want it otherwise the best laid plans will fail you.

I believe in periodization, which is the practice of setting a goal and a routine for each time interval, each routine must have it's own goal. There are rare times where I might string a couple of different routines together with the same goal in mind, but I mostly try and set different goals for different periods. A period is a 4 to 6 week time frame where I do a specific routine for a specific purpose. Some examples would be I would do a high intensity routine with lots of drop sets, super sets and giant sets to increase muscle mass. I may do a lot of compound movements using lower reps for a muscle hardening strength routine, now I can gain size on a heavy routine and strength on a intense routine but the focus is changed from one routine to another along with the exercises and rep count.

When you hit the gym there is only one speed for me, I am going to war and I conduct myself accordingly, I'm not saying I go into the gym acting like an ass and intimidate everyone my war is with myself not those around me. Your friends at the gym can be of great help to you, make friends and be polite at all times.

I believe that muscles should be worked hard and then rested so they can have time to repair, I always make sure that I wait 72 hours before I work that muscle again. I often only work a particular muscle group once a week, this is especially true with arms. Arms are used in all upper body exercises and should never be worked more than once a week, or you will have a hard time making them grow.

Concerning cardio for fat loss it is best to perform your cardio when glycogen levels are low, first thing in the morning or directly after a workout. If you train like I do (like a warrior) after a workout is definitely out of the question, I'm lucky if I can just make it to the couch. Cardio should not exceed 40 minutes in length or you may start to burn muscle from going into a catabolic state where the body goes into a state where it uses the amino acids in your muscles for fuel. This state can also occur during sleep, a good way to prevent this from happening is to take some slow digesting protein with about 7 grams of L-glutamine at night before you go to bed then a protein shake first thing in the morning.

To date these are the basic training principles with which I have had success, there are different body types who respond to different stimuli, these principles are very basic and I'm sure most people could benefit using them as a baseline while you find out what works best for you. I do not want to go into training specifics because that is very individual in nature. Hope this helps, I'm just passing on what I find helps me.

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