Feel like it’s time to up your workout game? If you’ve been focusing on muscle building for quite some time and are now looking to figure out how you can elevate your progress and do more, it may be time to check out what supplements are available. You’ve done protein powder, creatine, BCAA’s, and all the pump products out there. Now you’re looking for something a little more powerful but still safe and healthy for your body.
It’s time to take a look at prohormone pills. These bodybuilding supplements are designed to help boost the natural release of hormones in your body, ensuring that you are able to optimize the protein synthesis process that is taking place, leading to a greater muscle growth response.
It’s important that you don’t let yourself become misled, however. You can’t just take prohormone pills and expect the weight to come on without doing much else. You do still need to work for it. Those who work hard in the gym, putting in the necessary time and work will always see better results than those who don’t.
Let’s go through some of the necessary steps you need to take to build more muscle with prohormones.
Focus On Compound Lifts
Unless you are at a very advanced state where you’ve nearly built up as much muscle as you feel you’re going to need and are now just looking to fine tune your physique, you want to focus as much as possible on heavy compound lifts.
The reason for this being these are the exercises that will deliver the greatest ‘bang for your buck’, so to speak. They work the highest number of muscle fibers at once since they target more than one muscle at a time. This means you get a greater growth hormone and testosterone release on your own, which is now amplified since you are taking prohormone pills.
You’ll have a hard time growing serious muscle doing moves like bicep curls, leg extensions, and lateral raises. But throw in some barbell back squats, barbell rows, and barbell presses and you’ll soon see yourself getting larger.
Check Your Diet
Likewise, you can’t expect not to pay attention to the nutrition side of things and grow muscle no matter what supplements you’re taking. Prohormones help set you up for success. They aren’t going to do the work for you.
By using them, you position your body in a state that is far better suited to building up lean muscle mass should you follow the correct action plan.
The prohormones you take can help improve your hormonal output so your body is primed to increase protein synthesis and build more lean muscle mass. If you are not feeding your body sufficient calories to build that muscle with though, you are going to see a lack of results.
You must consume more energy than you burn off in a day in order to build significant muscle mass tissue. No prohormone – or other supplement for that matter – is going to change that fact.
Make sure your diet contains sufficient calories, as well as enough protein and carbohydrates. Dietary fats should be at a reasonable level, but most people will see best results on a moderate fat, higher carb diet. Prohormones can help improve insulin sensitivity, which favors your body’s ability to utilize carbohydrates as a fuel source and store them as muscle glycogen.
Check Your Volume
As you go about your workout plan, it’ll be very important that you are applying the principle of constant overload. This means that what you did last week is no longer good enough. You need to do more. You need to give your body a reason to grow so that it can get stronger and bigger over time.
Monitoring your volume is often the best way to do this while seeking muscle growth gains. Since most people will eventually hit a limit in how much progress they can make adding more weight to the bar, volume becomes the next step.
While it would be great if you could simply add two 2.5 lb. plates to the barbell every workout, eventually you’ll fail because you just aren’t strong enough to make that jump. At that point, you increase the volume until you get strong enough that you are.
Adding more weight should always be the number one priority (unless it poses a significant injury threat) however when you can’t do that, then add more reps and sets.
Volume plays a key role in hypertrophy, so try and do more each week until you are at a point where doing more is unrealistic and you should just increase the weight instead.
There is a fine line with volume where too much puts you on the verge of overtraining and you do want to make sure you don’t cross that. The good news is that prohormone stacks can help enhance your body’s ability to tolerate greater volume, so you will do more than you’ve ever done before. But still, watch out for those telltale symptoms you are doing too much volume. These include:
- Achy muscles and joints that don’t recover
- Lack of enthusiasm in the gym
- Difficulty sleeping
- Changes in appetite (usually the loss of)
- A general feeling of malaise and fatigue
- Loss of libido
Notice these and it may be time for a deload week and consideration given to cutting back on your volume slightly going forward.
Focus On The Mind Muscle Connection
Finally, as the prohormone pills prime you for growth, you want to ensure that your body is ready to do that growth by dialing in on the mind-muscle connection.
This means focusing on squeezing and contracting the right muscle tissues as you go about each exercise to ensure they are the ones being worked – not other muscle groups.
It’s easy to let other (strong and sometimes bigger!) muscles take over, meaning they will continue to get stronger while the actual ones you want to target get weaker.
Some good suggestions to help you focus on the mind-muscle connection more are to:
- Lift slightly lighter weight. Often going too heavy means it becomes impossible to isolate the target muscle.
- Lift slower. This gives you more control to feel the squeeze as you do the exercise.
- Take L-Citrulline. This is a pump product that you can stack with your prohormone pills and will help improve blood flow to the muscles and boost your focus and concentration
- Think about your breathing. This gets you ‘tuned into’ your body, which also tends to improve the mind-muscle connection.
If you take your prohormones supplements and get all of these lined up, there is no question that you will start seeing better results from your workout plan. Remember that no supplement will ever replace the value in hard work, dedication and persistence. You need to put in the work to see results but with the help of the right mix of products, progress will come naturally and your motivational level will stay high.
For more info on how to enhance your workouts read our blog The Five Things You Must Do Pre-Workout.
