Frequently Asked Questions
If you have any question, please send it to me by email at 
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Questions
Does the info on your website only apply to men or also to women?
Do you want to be my personal trainer?
Is there a shorter way to say True Natural Bodybuilding?
How much muscle will I gain following your training program and diet?
What should an ectomorph, a mesomorph, and an endomorph do differently?
Do you prefer isolation exercises above compound exercises?
What is the best possible physique true natural bodybuilding can generate?
Are natural bodybuilding contests drug free?
Answers
Does the information on your website only apply to men or also to women?
What makes muscles grow in men, also makes muscles grow in women. What makes men lose body fat, also makes women lose body fat. Although women have by nature much smaller muscles than men, mainly because they miss the big quantities of the natural anabolic sex hormone testosterone, which is produced by the male testicles, I believe that the training and nutrition to optimize muscle growth and minimize body fat are essentially the same for men and women. So yes, I believe that almost all information on this website is also applicable for women.
Do you want to be my personal trainer?
If you want to learn in 2 weeks what I have learned in 20 years, of course. However, I don't have much free time, and I may live very far away from you.
Is there a shorter way to say True Natural Bodybuilding?
Sure, if you find the words "True Natural Bodybuilding" too long to write or to pronounce, you can abbreviate it as TN bodybuilding. And a true natural bodybuilder would become a TN bodybuilder.
How much muscle will I gain following your training program and diet?
I think it is fair to say that I've gained in total about 50 lbs (23 kg) of muscle mass by the age of 25 thanks to true natural bodybuilding. I also think it is fair to say that if I would have been able to train uninterruptedly without any injuries, in a well equipped gym, and having enough financial resources to optimize my nutrition, especially in terms of protein intake, I would have been able to build these 50 lbs of muscle in about 5 or 6 years. So my training program and diet enabled me to build about 9 lbs of muscle per year. Depending on your age, genetic potential, and other factors, you might get better or worse results than me.
What should an ectomorph, a mesomorph, and an endomorph do differently?
An ectomorph is someone who is by nature very skinny in terms of body fat as well as muscle mass. Usually ectomorphs are not very hungry, have difficulties eating enough, and have a hard time building muscle mass and even body fat.
An endomorph is someone who is by nature rather big in terms of body fat. Usually endomorphs are very hungry, eat more calories than they should eat, tend to become over weight, and have big difficulties losing body fat.
A mesomorph has an athletic physique, is muscular by nature without having excess body fat (between 10 and 15%). He has the most favorable genetics for being a successful bodybuilder.
It doesn't really matter very much which of these body types you have. Every bodybuilder should basically follow the same training program and healthy high protein diet. An ectomorph should however focus a bit more on ensuring that his daily calorie intake is high enough. If your appetite is really too low to eat enough calories per day, you might find it easier to get some extra calories from liquid food such as milk, juices, protein shakes, and weight gainers. An endomorph, on the other hand, should keep his daily calorie intake under control, limit his daily fat intake, and add some cardiovascular exercises to his training program in order to lose some excess body fat.
Do you prefer isolation exercises above compound exercises?
Compound exercises involve more than one joint and muscle group. Well known examples are the barbell bench press (pecs, triceps, delts), barbell shoulder press (delts, triceps), barbell upright row (trapezius, delts, biceps), bent-over barbell row (upper back, lower back, delts, biceps), barbell deadlift (quads, hamstrings, glutes, lower back, forearms), leg press (quads, hamstrings, glutes, calves), barbell squat (quads, hamstrings, glutes, calves).
These are great power exercises to develop strength, and they contribute to the overall development of your body because they target many secondary muscle groups next to the primary muscle group (first mentioned between brackets) for which they are mainly intended.
The negative aspect of compound exercises, which often use nearly all of your body's muscles simultaneously in order to lifting very heavy weights, is that they require enormous amounts of energy. You might get totally exhausted before you were able to stimulate the primary muscle group intensely enough to induce serious muscle growth. At the same time you also heavily involved many secondary muscle groups that you were not planning to train in that particular workout, and thereby interrupting their recovery and growth period.
By doing exercises that involve only one specific muscle group, or by performing an exercise in such a way that you isolate one particular muscle group (maximize the involvement of the primary muscle and minimize the involvement of secondary muscles) you can 100% focus all your physical and mental energy and intensity into that specific muscle group, and thereby maximizing its growth stimulation.
In summary, by isolating the targeted muscle group I am able to put more intensity into it, and I don't interrupt the recovery and growth process of the other muscles that I train on other days. Indicators such as muscles pump, muscle soreness, and muscle growth have proven that this works better than compound exercises for me personally.
What is the best possible physique true natural bodybuilding can generate?
This is a very difficult question because it depends from so many different variables. Genetic potential, which differs so much between individuals, is definitely one of the most important factors. Let's limit the question here to those people who do not have any rare genetic mutations that result in abnormal muscle growth or hormone levels.
Personally I would estimate that a Body Mass Index (BMI) of about 28.5 with a body fat percentage of about 5% is close to the maximum result obtainable through true natural bodybuilding. This assumes that a bodybuilder with the best possible genetics succeeds to fully develop all his muscles through training and nutrition without ever using any performance enhancing drugs or unnatural food supplements.
The best example of a famous bodybuilder I can think of, who comes close to this best possible true natural physique is Steve Reeves. Steve competed in the 1940's, when anabolic steroids where not yet generally used by competitive bodybuilders. I am not saying that Steve was completely drug free, however, he might have been. He certainly didn't use the massive quantities and many different kinds of very powerful drugs today's bodybuilders use.
I also advice you to read this article on the maximum muscular bodyweight and size potential that can be achieved without using any anabolic drugs. It also comes with an interesting calculator that helps you estimate your personal maximum potential in terms of bodyweight and body part measurements.
Are natural bodybuilding contests drug free?
Just as the Olympic Games, natural bodybuilding contests are supposed to be drug free, and even drug tested, but still everybody knows they are not. As soon as you organize contests at a certain level, where lots of money and/or honor can be earned you will get athletes that use drugs. In a sport such as bodybuilding, where the drugs are so effective that they give a huge advantage over fellow competitors, the seduction is enormous. When one athlete makes the step, the rest has to follow or accept losing.
In no other sport drug use is as common as in bodybuilding, that even separate natural competitions are organized next to the normal competition. However, this doesn't mean at all that athletes participating in these natural bodybuilding contests are really drug free. On the contrary, drug use is at least as common in natural bodybuilding as in any other sport, especially in the high level contests.
The reason why natural bodybuilders use drugs is very simple: the drugs are extremely effective, it is very easy to pass the doping tests, and the rewards of being a champion are very seducing.
None of the natural bodybuilding federations have the money to organize serious drug testing. In the best case, a few athletes are urine tested on the day of a big contest. A single urine test costs several hundreds of dollars, and a more advanced blood test cost a multiple of this. Only a few tests cost already more than the total prize money in a natural bodybuilding contest.
Even the best doping tests can only find a limited number of prohibited drugs. Athletes are not tested for growth hormone, insulin and IGF-1, which are very powerful hormonal drugs frequently used by bodybuilders. There even exist anabolic steroids that cannot be found by doping tests, or that become undetectably only a few days or weeks after ingestion. None of the doping products can be found back in the urine or blood a year after administration.
Because no doping test can find drugs taken more than a year ago, natural bodybuilding federations don't even require their competitors to be drug free for more than a couple of years. In practice this means that someone can use any drug he wants for many years to boost his training intensity and build huge muscles, and still be welcome in the natural contests as soon as he stops using for a few months.