What's going on everyone? It's TJ from Rugby Muscle, and today we're gonna be talking about muscle building, and in particular, the biggest roadblock that you will have to gain in muscle. So if you really wanna pack on as much muscle as you can, or if you struggle to gain muscle, you wanna watch this video? Oh, hey, would you look at that? We're matching. So we are matching. Anyway, so today's video we are going to be discussing the biggest roadblock, and I put roadblocks in brackets because actually there's two different roadblocks because there's two different types of people, and we're gonna discuss those today because both roadblocks continually prevent people from making gains. As you can see here from the illustration, those roadblocks, no matter if you in either of these two camps, you will stumble across these lower roadblocks, and if you don't negotiate them properly, you will end up not getting the gains that you could get and you end up significantly short changing your. On the amount of muscle that you can grow. And it's quite a simple enough fix, but it's, it can be difficult to do. So it's, it's worth getting into like why these problems come about. First and foremost, we have to understand that gaining muscle is actually quite a simple thing. It's,, just not overly complicated as much as bodybuilders and fitness folk will try to overcomplicate it with you with different methods, you know, like drop sets giant sets and. Different pump methods and different terminologies that they'll use. All this stuff is just to essentially, promote special stimulus or promote special growth. It's more about, entertaining people, right. Both in the gym and as far as getting views, getting clicks and stuff goes, right. If we look at why it's put out, why this message is put out by a lot of people, it's because that's the stuff that gets the likes. Continually lifting week to week and doing similar stuff week to week, making small improvements and just lifting enough, that's just not going to sell. You know, back in the day, a magazine subscription to that you would buy every single month or a click or a like or view. On social media, on YouTube, on websites like it's, it's the funky stuff that gets the views, and that's gonna continually be the case, right? It's the novelty and it's the idea that this, there's something special going out there. Reality is you just need to lift enough, okay? You don't need to do any special technical things. You don't need to do any gimmicks, and you could gain the most amount of pos muscle possible for your body. Doing that, you would never, you could, you could never do a gimmick in your life. You could never take a supplement in your life and you could pretty much reach your maximum natural potential. We're not gonna talk about special sports supplementation or, or anything like that on this video. Just know that that is there, that's something that could obviously increase the amount of muscle that you can hold, but we're not gonna entertain that, in this video. So we're just gonna talk about your, your natural muscular potential. You would never need any, I mean, you could do these threshold gimmicks because they keep you entertained in the gym and they would keep you going to the gym cause they're kind of fun to do. That would be it, right? If you would, you know, as as boring it is to get the likes and the clicks and the views. It's also can be somewhat boring for people if their only pursuit is gain and muscle just doing the same thing over and over and over again. But the reality is that's what it takes to gain muscle. It doesn't have to be the same thing, it just needs consistency. Right? He's consistency of you showing up in, in the gym, and that doesn't necessarily have to be. You know, just doing hypertrophy specific training or just doing any special techniques, because it's been shown in many different sports, in many different pursuits where people have been going to the gym, they've gained significant amounts of muscle, where that's not just their only focus, right? CrossFit is a perfect example. ,You know, they're not ever really lifting to really try and gain muscle. They're, they're trying to perform at their best. The muscle comes as a byproduct, muscle comes as a byproduct a lot of the time for power lifters, for, other strength athletes as well, for, even for rugby players, right? When we are training for rugby, it's a good thing that. Training to gain muscle isn't overly complicated because we've got to train for power, for speed, for, aerobic fitness, for anaerobic fitness, for, all these different other pursuits for mobility, For all these different things that we need to, accomplish to improve our rugby performance. It would, it would be a mistake if we only trained to gain muscle, right? And luckily, We can train for all these other things and probably still got, get most of the effects that that comes with gaining muscle. So most of the time it's not anything to do with the training that needs to be over you specific. Yes, you do need to train hard. That's a given and I'm taking that, if you're watching this video, you probably are already doing that, and yet you still might be coming against one of these roadblock. The reality is with gaining muscle, it just needs consistency. It doesn't need consistency as saying you have to do, you know, the same squat variation every single week, four years on end. You just need to be doing some sort of squat variation. Including a leg press that could even, you know, you could even circumvent that process, but you can't circumvent continually lifting weights for, you know, months to years on end to achieve the amount of muscle that you really want to. Jonathan Sexton, for example, here, he's looking pretty jacked in this picture, right? He's. He's not a bodybuilder, he's not training to, to get huge biceps specifically, you know, and doing the, the maximum amount of things that he can stimulate. He biceps yet he's got decent growth here because he's been doing it for years and years on end the only caveat to that is probably your, your sleep and your recovery, right? If you continually lift weights and, you know if, and you are eating enough, which I'll get onto but you're only sleeping for two to three hours a night or less than five hours a night consistently. You might be hamstring in yourself as well in terms of gaining muscle, but otherwise, right, if you're sleeping enough, if you're getting recovery. And you're staying consistent. You're going to, gain small amounts of muscle, and so small after the first couple years that you won't notice it until you look like 10 years down the line because it is really, really small progress. And the way I would sort of, you use an analogy for this would be walking versus running versus driving, right? Your pursuit. gaining muscle is actually like a bear with me here because this might not hold up, but we'll try and we'll try and work it out together, right? It's a 200 mile race or a 200 kilometer race, and the reality is when you're gaining muscle, you, there is no free ride. Okay? When supplement companies come at you with this special supplement that's gonna help you out this crazy, uh, matrix supplement of special blends, or this crazy fitness program comes out that is promising you like extra, extra gains, this is the secret thing that you're missing or the secret technique that you need to add, or the tweak in your technique that you need to change in order to gain muscle. They're promising you, um, a free ride. They're promising you a, a drive. They think that you are going to be able to drive to win this 200 mile race. The reality is any extra effort that you do put towards muscle building, say you go from, um, 20 sets or say you go from three sessions a week where muscle building is the focus to six sessions a week. Yes, you might be able to. Increase your speed in that race. But I would liken that to running rather than driving. You're not driving, you're not getting that amount of speed increase. Right. And you are also, when you are running compared to walking, you're also like, it's a lot more tiring. You're also gonna need to take a break at some point in the future. It's, it requires significantly more effort. Whereas if you're walking, you can still progress, you know, comparatively closely to the. Right? Particularly if you are trying to run that distance, you can progress relatively close, but you could also do it whilst doing other things. You, you know, when you're, whilst you're running, you not, might not be able to, take out your phone and do other things. You might not be able to eat. Whereas when you're walking, you can do all those things whilst walking. Right? So that analogy would be doing, the other things would be, you know, training your speed, training other things. And at the end of the. you could also walk a similar distance, but for a longer time before you would need a break. I think that analogy kind of holds up, but the only difference would be that you know, when you are, what happens with most people when they're running is they have to, they run themselves and they have to so hard that they potentially either pick up an injury or they have to stop. And the. As far as this analogy goes, they regress. So maybe the, the, the race isn't just a 200 mile race to a, a, a stagnant distance or destination. Maybe it's someone that keeps moving further and further away. So when you're stopping, you are actually regressing. That happens a lot with people when they're trying to gain muscle, and therefore they lose that momentum. Whereas if you are just continually walking, there's a good chance that you're going to continually build muscle. It's just at such a slow rate that you don't notice the distance that you're covering as much. That's kind of what training looks like when it comes to gaining muscle, particularly for rugby players, but for the general population as well. And so the biggest roadblock that actually comes for most people is this consistency. Not necessarily even the gym because we're taking care of most of that, but the biggest roadblock is actually their consistency with their nutrition. That is the biggest robot that I see for the vast majority, if not every person that there is in gaining muscle. You have to be consistent in other areas. Yes, but like I've already said, it doesn't take that much with training. Most people are doing enough of training, but they're still not gaining the muscle. Right. Most people are still, getting in the gym as much as they need. They're doing enough to promote some growth, but they're not consistent enough with their nutrition in order to, gain a really noticeable amount of muscle. It actually, if you adhere to your nutrition in the long term, that is what's gonna make the big difference when it comes to, you know, a year's worth of progress. And obviously once you add that year to two thes to three years, to four years, that is what's gonna make the difference when it comes to really making a noticeable change in your physique and a noticeable increase in your muscle as your playing career goes on. Right? We go back to that picture of Johnny Sex. He has always been quite skinny, you know, as a, as a rugby player, but actually in the later end of his career, look at these, he's no longer skinny, right? yes, he's somewhat wrapped in cotton wall by the rfu, but he's clearly grown muscle throughout the years of his. And so in order to stay consistent, there's two different roads that people will find themselves in. two different categories of people road. One is if you're someone that naturally under eats and you struggle to gain muscle, you struggle to gain weight, you're naturally a skinny person, You could be someone that prides yourself in eating healthily, right? So, you know, if I was to suggest that maybe adding cereal into your diet would help you, you'd say, Nah, cereal's unhealthy. It's, it's sugar, or whatever you've more often than not try to eat healthy. More often than not. You, you're not that hungry, right? You could skip a meal. and not really notice it if you just aren't much of a foodie. If you are convinced that this could be like a little bit of a past trauma from someone, but it could be, if you are convinced that food is bad, that eating calories, excess calories is bad, your default mode in general if you are in this category is to undereat, right? And you're gonna short change yourself because you're continually undereat. I particularly remember a client check in that I had a couple weeks back with one of my athletes who's trying to gain muscle and he got stressed out from work and he said, You know, I, I didn't meet my, my calorie goals. I didn't eat enough for this day, but I didn't eat. It's not that bad though. I didn't eat any junk. The reality is, for his situation, eat in some level of junk or, or some level of quote unquote unhealthy food, sugary food would actually be what he would need to do in order to gain the muscle, meet his goal. So actually he would. Sort of rethink that whole process. And that's what I told him, right, is that actually in these situations when you're stressed out, going for some. easy to eat food that isn't the healthiest actually is a better idea than under eating, because under eating is selling yourself short when it comes to giving yourself the calories, the fuel that it needs in order to add tissue. Remember when we're adding tissue to our frame, we're adding muscle to our frame. We need the energy in order to build that. The energy to build that muscle has to come from somewhere, and as a human being, it has to come from your food. So solutions for these people are gonna be some things like the basic one would be set protein and calorie targets and be accountable. So that's now your goal is to make sure that you are eating enough. Okay. And that's the main thing that there is a lot of people that aren't chronically undereat don't do this. And the. They're gonna continue to chronically undereat. Bringing that awareness and, and sticking to that goal is gonna make a huge difference because you're gonna find different ways to, to meet that calorie goal. You're much more aware of it, and you're not gonna go back to your default of undereating and not gaining the muscle that you want to gain. A lot of these people will be fearing unhealthy food. Don't do that. Just view the food as the fuel, right? So however you need to hit your calorie goal, you're going to do that. You doesn't have to be 100% junk, but that you might need some sugary food, some cereals, some sweets, you know, quote unquote unhealthy foods to get there. You can also, get a real good advantage if you find certain foods that you find appetizing, that you want to eat, that you get excited to eat. That also give you quite a lot of calories. If they're really simple, even better, right? So that you don't have to spend 20, 30 minutes cooking up a meal and maybe if you're preparing 'em ahead of time, same thing, right? Constantly have food on hand that can help you, eat enough food to get to your calorie goal. Another good idea for these people would be to eat more often, I think just finding extra windows is a really good idea because these people get full quite quickly. If that's you, you get full quite quickly. If you eat, have to eat a lot of food in order to gain muscle. Spreading that out over six meals or five meals as opposed to two or three makes each meal each serving that much more easier to do it. If you have three huge meals that you have to eat and you've only got those three times that you eat, that could get overwhelming. Whereas if you can find little times to get snacks in, that's a great idea. If you are someone that's trying to diet, I actually more often than not advise against snacking because it just, it's just food where you don't need food. Whereas if you are someone that under eats, you need food. So find extra opportunities to get in that energy, to get in that fuel, to build that muscle. There really is for these people. When you go back to your default mode, you're gonna undereat and you're going to. fueling this system that you were trying to put in place in order for you to grow muscles. So the reality is, most of the year, if not all of the year, as long as you're not getting, you know, significantly overweight is going to be spent in a surplus growing that muscle, it's not, it doesn't have to be a lot, right? But, you know, if you stay lean, you can gain up to, you know, 10 extra pounds during a year, 20 pounds over the course of two years, or even 20 pounds in one year would be, you know, not un fathom. right? And it would be much easier for you because your standard is to undereat be much easier for you to lose that excess fat. So that would be a really good solution for you if you are an under eater. And the reality is that once you hold yourself accountable, once you get used to it, it gets easy. If you're in the other road, if you're someone like me, you might naturally overeat. You're a naturally bigger person who gains weight, good or bad, easily. You can still find it very difficult to gain lots of muscle in the long term because you always look forward to cheat days. You struggle to diet to lose fat, and you enjoy food in general, right? It's very easy for you to overeat, which more often than not means that you are not in a state of a or not in a calorie surplus. You end up having to undereat. You have to end up having to die in order to lose weight. That happens way more often than you would think. And because you have to continually diet to lose fat, you're putting yourself in a calorie deficit, which makes it that much more difficult To gain that muscle mass because you might constantly be in a state where you're trying to diet, particularly when you're training, right? You're selling yourself short on the amount of muscle that you can grow. Your primary objective is continually to lose fat, so therefore you're never in a good place to gain muscle. Continuing, as we've already discussed, gaining muscle is such a long term endeavor that you don't want to be dieting for tho that long term. You want to be spending as much of that time in a surplus, fueling yourself, fueling good quality training and fueling good quality muscle growth so that you are then prepared to continually gain muscle. that solution for these people is to get and stay fairly lead. You don't have to have visible abs, you don't have to be completely shredded year round, but staying fairly lean so you don't have to constantly diet is the answer. And then the solution to those or the solutions to get to that answer is gonna be basically the opposite of what I said for road one, right? Yes, you'll still set your protein and calorie targets, but there's gonna be less than what you would like. It. You're gonna try and make your meals as healthy as possible, as filling as possible, because your default is to overeat, put on too much weight, put fat, and then have to diet. So we're trying to avoid that. We're trying to still find and prepare simple foods, but we're trying to find and prepare simple foods that. Are feeling for you? again, the opposite would be that you are, rather than in road one where we we're trying to get as many eating opportunities as possible for road two, you're probably gonna enjoy bigger meals less often as you can still get a nice big milk. But if you eat more frequently, you could tend to overeat. And that is re, you know, that's gonna. Lead to you gaining too much weight, too fast, and then having to die it off. You wanna be gaining most of the year. So keep sticking with this process and long term you will be sorted. And so in conclusion. Just understand that muscle gaining takes a long time, and also it's massively genetically influenced, right? So you, you might not be able to put on, if you're someone that's 140 pounds or someone that's like 60 kilos, you're probably not gonna be a hundred kilos or 220 pounds any time. Soon or ever. Right? And trying to circumvent that time, trying to circumvent those genetics is kind of fruitless. Instead, what you should be doing is settling into a routine that's comfortable for you and spending as much time in a small surplus so that you are fueling yourself, fueling hard training and fueling recovery year round. If your default is to overeat, you know you need to push for more. You need to control that so that you're not spending loads of time dieting. If your default is to undereat, you need to push for more. You need. More, you know, based around a, a calorie goal, and then get used to that and settle into that routine so that you can stay accountable and stay gaining muscle in the long term. One to two pounds a month is enough that will facilitate long term muscle growth, was giving you and allowing you to perform at your best and at the end of the day, Good as you can hope for, add those months up and you'll get something significant. I hope this video really helps you out. If you are interested anything rubbing muscle, check out the links in the description below. If you've made it all the way to the end and you aren't subscribe, make sure you hit subscribe for more videos or just give us a good old thumbs up. Any questions that you have on this or any, notes that you have on muscle building, let me know in the comments below. If you haven't got any thoughts to add, then you know, just comment for the algorithm. Helps lot. Bye.