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While your efforts to become a successful natural bodybuilder will necessitate following a program of training that is specifically designed to build muscle mass, it is important to appreciate that living a generally healthy lifestyle is a central part of achieving balance and happiness as well.
So, while weights and the like are an essential part of your bodybuilding efforts, lifting weights is an anaerobic sport, an activity that does not give your heart and lungs a workout.
Consequently, you should also consider practicing aerobic sports like swimming or cycling, and if you can find something that you really enjoy doing at the same time, so much the better. Taking up something like swimming will greatly increase your endurance and stamina, and if you enjoy it as well, it inevitably makes the necessary hard work in the gym seem that much easier to bear.
The bottom line is that becoming a successful natural bodybuilder is not something that is going to happen overnight, and there will be times when your progress might seem slower than you would like it to be.
It is at times like these, when having other things in your life, things that you can turn to for enjoyment that are nevertheless good for you, will sometimes be the escape valve that you need. Without this escape valve, you come back to the fact that you will be stressed, you will be tense and you already know how this can adversely affect your efforts. This is not to suggest that everything you do should relate to exercise. Indeed, your life should definitely not only be focused on exercise, because rest is an essential part of being a successful bodybuilder.
There is also a school of thought that maintains that too much aerobic or cardiovascular exercise can increase the production of cortisol, so it is essential that you keep your cardiovascular exercise in the ‘fat burning zone’.
This is one reason why, for a non-competitive bodybuilder, the best time to undertake aerobic exercise is immediately after a weights session.
By doing so, you ensure that the excess glycogen in your body (the first source of energy that your body turns to before it starts to burn the fat) has been exhausted by your weight training before you start exercising. Therefore, as soon as you start aerobic exercise, you are straight into the ‘fat burning zone’ the minute you start.