Mix Your Creatine With Tea – Creatine, no matter the brand and no matter what it says on the pot, just will not mix with the liquid it’s meant to. My Prolab creatine said on the front ‘easy to mix and tasteless’. That’s just not true – it tastes horribly bitter and collects in a little pile at the bottom of the glass. Maximuscle even admit this, advising you to mix it with your protein shake which is actually a really good idea and works great for mixing. Problem is apparently your body can’t utilise it as well if it’s taken with protein. The other problem is that Maximuscle also recommend bodybuilders take it five times a day when loading – far more than most people would use a protein shake. The solution? Mix it with tea – if you have sugar too it’ll counter the bad taste and the hot water will make it more soluble.

Have Pepper With Your Raw Eggs – Eating raw eggs is a quick way to get your body all the amino acids. If you’re like a lot of people though you might well find this… well… completely disgusting. A simple solution to improve the taste is to add pepper with makes it more savoury and a slightly nicer consistency.

Mix Tomato With Tuna – Again, plain tuna, as many bodybuilders eat it, is just unpleasant and bland. Mayonnaise is far more delicious (in fact it’s ultimate), but sadly it’s also very calorific. However, what’s actually good for you (high in antioxidants) and also mixes very well with tuna is a good old fashioned tin of chopped tomatoes.

Train Outside Sometimes – Training outside will let you work on your tan at the same time as improving your muscles. At the same time it’s a change of scene which kick drives the body into action, and supplies you with energy and vitamin D in the form of the sun.

Wash You Face After Working Out – It counteracts the contribution of a sweaty face to spots.

Do ‘Express’ Sessions When You’re Tired – If you’re really tired and don’t think you can manage a workout, then you should try and squeeze out just a couple of exercises. Maybe press ups with dips, and then leave it at that (make sure both target the same muscle group). This way you will still get a workout, but more to the point you will probably find yourself getting energised enough that you end up doing a full work out anyway.

Exercise in the Morning – It will wake you up and mean you don’t end up putting it off later.

But Wait Ten Minutes – In the first ten minutes of waking up your spine is more susceptible to damage.

Read Ingredients on Supplements – That way you can research yourself whether or not they work, and can avoid overdosing on regularly used additives. For example, vitamin B6 is in everything, but overdosing can lead to nerve damage.

Take Hot Showers – They improve your body’s production of growth hormone. As does sprinting. So there you go.

Take Supplements at Night – Other than immediately following a workout, the night is the time when your body is at its most anabolic.

Keep a Note of Your Progress and Routine – Keeping a training diary is good for many reasons. It gives you motivation to workout by showing you that you’re constantly improving, and by making you have to face writing down your failures if you take yet another day off. But it also allows you to tweak your routine and then see exactly how that’s affecting your success. For example by adding an extra day and seeing how much size you lose or gain as a result, or by adding or taking away individual supplements and testing just how well they’re really working.

Make Sure You Measure Bodyfat Percentage as Well as Inches – Because you probably aren’t just training for size and it may look as though you’re getting worse when in fact you’re getting more ripped.

Always Eat More Than One Piece of Protein – Other than raw eggs, no single source of protein contains all the amino acids (and eggs only do if you eat both the yolk and the white). For that reason you shouldn’t rely on just one protein source.

Get Lots of Rest – When you workout you cause tiny microtears in the muscle fibres, it isn’t this process in itself that causes hypertrophy (muscle growth), but rather the fact that when they are repaired the body builds them back thicker to protect against future damage. That means you need to rest in order for it to grow.

Use Nitric Oxide – Nitric Oxide is one of the few bodybuilding supplements that genuinely can improve your workouts and gains to no end. If you train with nitric oxide, it increases the size of your veins to allow more blood flow to the muscles, resulting in turn in a greater sensation of being ‘pumped’ as well as greater vascularity and more energy in the gym. It also means that if you take it before you go to the beach you’ll look twice as good…

Do CV – Neglecting CV is a mistake that many bodybuilders make because they fear it will lead to the body’s cannibalism of their muscles. This is actually only true if you’re making another mistake – not eating enough carbs. In fact, CV will not only strip your body of fat improving definition, but will also strengthen your heart stopping you from having a heart attack…