No gear needed.

If you had no idea before now, natural lifters and bodybuilders using gear are two completely different animals. The process of building muscle is different for ever individual of course, but when outside sources come into play, all bets are off. If you have some great genetics and see yourself making quality gains without the use of some kind of anabolic substance or if you’re a lifter who just believes there’s a purity in making gains without gear, then you’re going to have to know how you can push your body without breaking it down.

Volume

When it comes to building muscle it’s all about reaching hypertrophy. A great deal of natty lifters usually follow many of the old school programs of the Golden Era, meaning that a great deal of them focus on high volume training. The thing is you can push your body a bit too far at times and will need some time for things to get back to normal. You do want to train at a higher volume, but once you trigger protein synthesis and hypertrophy then you should begin to slow things down and close the book on the session. Unlike lifters on gear, the higher volume that a natty will use can end up doing more damage to the muscle than can be recovered from naturally. That means if you’re going to do high volume it’s best to find the sweat spot to where hypertrophy begins, make a note of it, and end the session before too much damage is done.

Frequency

Another thing that the natural lifter should consider is the training frequency of particular muscle groups. Unlike bodybuilders on gear, when you train a particular muscle group just once a week it’s not enough to get the exact results you require. A natty should be training each muscle group two to three times a week to see optimal growth. This makes full body workouts more appealing for naturals as they can train hard three times a week and allow themselves time to recover in between.

Training Split

Speaking of training splits, the program that has been proven to be beneficial for gear users and naturals alike is the P/P/L (push, pull, legs) method. The program encompasses all the major muscle groups in the body depending on the exercises you use. Pushing usually are exercises the develop the chest while pulling emphasizes back muscle growth. Legs is pretty self explanatory. By mixing in different P/P/L exercises three times a week it will allow you confuse your muscles to ensure consistent growth as well as give you time to recover every other day.

What kind of program are you on?

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