The 3 Top Reasons You're Not Gaining Muscle

Not getting the results you want despite spending hours at the gym each week can feel very frustrating and confusing. Especially if it feels like you’re checking all the right boxes by going to the gym consistently and following the same routine. What if there was a way to hack growth and start getting the results you want? Fortunately, IFBB Pro Sadik Hadzovic shared with us 3 reasons why people don’t grow in the gym. Follow Sadik’s 3 tips to start getting the results you deserve.

1. You're Not Training Hard Enough

We all know that guy that shows up to the gym and they train their jaw muscles more than their chest. Now that doesn’t mean you can’t have a good time in the gym, I love to have a great time there. But I walk in with a purpose, with an idea. I walk in with blueprint of what I want to execute, when and how. It’s easy to go to the gym every day and just go through the motions. How many times have we done the same workout, in the same order, using the same weights? If that sounds like you, I want you to challenge yourself. Increase the weight and decrease the rest between sets. We don’t need 3, 4, or 5 minutes between sets to recover, we need 30-45 seconds.



2. You're Choosing the Wrong Exercises

How often do you go to the gym and use machine after machine? Or cable after cable? Listen, the smith machine is great. The cable machines are great. But nothing puts on quality mass like free weight compound movements. I need you to get underneath that barbell. I need you to get underneath that set of heavy dumbbells. I need you to row heavy weight. Like I always say, you’ve got to row to grow. If we just use machines, we’re going to stay stagnant and not make that progress that we deserve.

3. You're Doing Excessive Cardio

We’re all guilty of this. We look great, we want to do more cardio, we feel good. But we start getting adverse effects. It starts to take away from the physique and flattens you out like a pancake. Instead, what you can do is HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training). It’s proven that HIIT training burns more calories and maintains your muscle mass better than doing steady state cardio for hours and hours a day. There’s been many times in my professional career where I was 4 weeks out of a show, and I kept increasing the cardio. But what’s really happening is I was taking my body from being round and full all the way down to being soft and depleted, completely ruins your look. I love cardio, it’s got so many health benefits, it’s great for your heart. But we work so hard to build this muscle that we don’t want to burn it all away. What I suggest is doing cardio for no more than 4-5 times a week and HIIT training for 20-30 minutes.

If you’re in a place in your fitness journey and you feel like you’re no longer making the results that you deserve. You need to stop and ask yourself, “am I making one of these 3 mistakes?”. And if you are, it’s not too late to change it because tomorrow is a new day, and a new opportunity to bring your best.