Saturday, January 31, 2009

Should you believe those bodybuilding magazines?

By Jon Cardozo

It's hard for a new weightlifter or bodybuilder to sift through all the information, especially online. As you would expect, a beginner will look for advice from a trusted source.

Many times that source will be the magazine shelf at any number of bookstores. Bodybuilding magazines are quite popular and often inspire a beginner to try to reach new heights.

However, beginners should be aware about something before they believe everything they read in a bodybuilding magazine. Unfortunately, these magazines often recommend supplements because they want to make money, not necessarily because the products really are helpful.

Sometimes the supplement company and the magazine are one of the same. However, even if the supplement company is a completely separate corporation, that doesn't mean you can believe everything in the magazine. Remember that magazines make money with advertisements, so they're unlikely to contradict any advertisements from supplement companies.

This wouldn't be such a problem if most readers realized this and had a healthy dose of skepticism when reading such ads. It also doesn't help that many of the claims made by the supplement industry are questionable at best. Unfortunately, too many people take these ads as the gospel truth without doing some much needed investigation.

This brings us back to a critical concept of bodybuilding which tells us that supplements should not be the basis for a muscle building program. A few supplements can be useful for the advanced trainer who is trying to maximize his gains and has already developed a solid weightlifting and diet program.

Most supplements, however, are either useless or are simply not necessary. The essential components of any bodybuilding program will always be progressive resistance training and increasing one's daily calories. Looking for shortcuts when you have not even mastered the basics will simply lead to disappointment and a lot of wasted money.

How do you learn these fundamentals of muscle building? Well, hiring a personal trainer can be pretty expensive, so that may not be the best option for you. Nevertheless, there are some good courses online that can teach you what it takes to build muscle naturally. - 15438

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