John Meadows talks about the most common mistakes he sees bodybuilders make today.
Everyone makes mistakes. The important thing is to not assume you’re perfect and instead admit when a mistake was made and learn from it. That’s why we turned to John Meadows and asked him what are the biggest mistakes that he sees bodybuilders making today. These listed mistakes can be used as a guide to help improve your efficiency and ability to build the ideal physique you’re looking for. Check out our latest GI Exclusive interview above – where John Meadows breaks down the most common mistakes bodybuilders make today.
Nobody is perfect. The sooner you can realize you’re making a mistake the sooner you can learn from it. In fact, improvement is all about mistakes. Instead of beating yourself up over an oversight or error – use it to adjust and evolve your diet or training technique.
That process is most apparent in pro bodybuilding competitions. After a competitor battles on stage, they often look towards the judges to see why they received the score they did. It’s a valuable moment to learn exactly what the judges are looking for. And then the hard work is trying to adjust your routine to best make those changes and succeed.
John Meadows is a former competitive bodybuilder who now helps train pro bodybuilders today. He is deeply involved with the bodybuilding community and works with both veteran and up-and-coming bodybuilders throughout the industry.
That’s why we thought he was the perfect person to ask – what are the most common bodybuilding mistakes happening today? You may not be making all of these mistakes – but it can be a helpful guide for what just might be the biggest oversights the new generation of bodybuilders are making.
John Meadows starts off by stating one of the biggest mistakes he sees today comes as a direct result of social media. He believes that the constant ability to see incredible physiques on apps like Instagram create a warped perception of how bodybuilding really works. More specifically, that bodybuilders now attempt to stay extremely lean all year.
The reality is that in order to improve your physique, you need to go through adjustment phases throughout the year. If you want to build more size, you can’t stay extremely lean for the entire year. You need to go through a bulking phase to help build more mass – then cut it down to a lean look once you’ve achieved the size you want.
Bodybuilders today feel so much pressure to appear lean for social media – that it is actually hindering these bodybuilders’ ability to build bigger and better physiques within a timely manner. It’s slowing down the process towards bigger success.
The other big mistake is one that you might not expect. John Meadows believes that there has been advice growing in popularity within the bodybuilding community. Advice that he believes is actually wrong and should be debunked.
John Meadows believes that young bodybuilders are being advised to train less hard. Due to this, the past few years have produced bodybuilders that don’t train as hardcore in the gym. While it’s true that there is a limit to how far a bodybuilder should push in the gym – Meadows thinks the advice has become over-exaggerated in recent years. This causes bodybuilders to train with less intensity than is needed to succeed in the sport.
The good news is – John Meadows thinks that the newest crop of bodybuilders are starting to amp up the intensity again. Based on the bodybuilders he has seen recently, he thinks a new era of hardcore training athletes is on the way up in bodybuilding.
You can watch John Meadows’ full comments in our latest GI Exclusive interview segment above!
