Have you seen professional athletes recently?

What is the secret to their lean, muscular physiques?

Genetics? Money? Time?

Of course all of these play some role. I've had the opportunity to train many professional athletes, and I can tell you that the real secret is their training programs. I can't give you the genetics, money, or time of a professional athlete, but below I will show you some of the principles for how to build muscle and lose fat like a professional athlete. These are some of the principles that I use when training pro athletes, and now you can use them in your own training programs.

Aggressively Positive Mindset

Above all, high-level athletes have a very positive mindset. This manifests itself as high self-confidence, and is sometimes referred to as cockiness. This mindset starts with positive self-talk. We all talk to ourselves in our heads. You know that voice that talks to you when you lift that heavy bar off the rack. Does is say, "I got this. Easy weight," or does it say "Holy crap this heavy"?

Changing from negative to positive self-talk is a difficult thing to do, and can only be done through lots of practice. However, the practice is worth it, because positive self-talk magnifies the results of every other aspect of your program. If I give two otherwise identical people the same training program, one who attacks every set because he believes in the program and himself, and one who believes he is destined to never gain weight or strength, who do you think will have better results? I have repeated this experiment hundreds of times with the Athletic Muscle System. Without fail those who believe that they will never gain weight struggle to put on even 10 pounds. While those who believe in themselves every step of the way gain 30 pounds or more.

This isn't magic, or "The Secret." Your mindset affects every action you take. If you think that nothing will help you gain weight, how motivated do you think you'll be to stick to your diet and training program? Not very. Contrast this with someone who believes that they can get bigger, and that each meal and training session is another step in the right direction.

Training Background

Every pro athlete has played sports and trained for years before ever reaching the professional level. This gives them an advantage because they have a high work capacity. Their bodies are able to train hard for hours and be ready to go again the next day. If you haven't been playing sports for years, you probably don't possess this quality. However, dedicating a few weeks out of the year to build your work capacity will greatly enhance your results on every program you undertake in the future.

High Volume of Training

The schedules of professional athletes can be grueling. They can train for 20 hours or more every week. This is a huge volume of training which burns thousands of calories. Pro athletes can accomplish this without overtraining because they have the time, work capacity, and a variety of training protocols.

While you may not have the time of a pro athlete, you can build your work capacity over time (as mentioned above) and you can vary your training. In other words, there is no way that you could do 20 productive hours of strength training per week. So you need to throw in other types of activity. Things like cardio and recreational sports fit the bill here. If you have a job and any other interests in life you probably can't get 20 hours per week. So, to start calculate how many hours of activity you currently do. Then try to add an hour per week until you feel like you can't handle any more.

High Calorie Intake

High-level athletes are known for eating enormous amounts of food. This is true across all sports and all positions. This enormous food intake is not particularly healthy either. Pizza, cookies, donuts, and soda are all staples. Despite this diet, these athletes do not gain fat, they gain muscle. The reason for this is the aforementioned high volume of training. Almost everything they eat is used for energy or recovery.

In terms of health this is not optimal. Optimally you want all of your calories to come from natural sources like meats, dairy, whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. But in terms of body fat percentage you can eat pretty much anything, provided your volume of training is high enough.

In conclusion, none of these tips are going to turn you into a professional athlete, but they will help you look like one.