How to Get Ripped Without Steroids (Complete Guide)

Posted On October 6, 2020

Is it possible to gain muscle, lose fat, and get that ripped and shredded look naturally without steroids, HGH, and other performance-enhancing drugs?

The simple answer is YES.

In this article, I will show you how you can get ripped naturally using techniques and strategies that I have used to help thousands of clients throughout the years.

Unfortunately, actually gaining muscle and getting ripped naturally isn’t so simple.

Although Hollywood actors seem to be able to transform their bodies to look like superheroes in only a matter of weeks, it’s pretty well known that most of their transformations incorporated the use of steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs.

The same goes for many fitness gurus selling programs online. Some lucky guys are just genetically gifted, but you can usually tell an enhanced physique from a natural one by how big and cut they are.

But for every one of these enhanced physiques, you will find someone who is ripped, shredded, and looks natural.

So it definitely is possible. But what’s their secret?

Knowledge.

The ripped natural lifters know what works for them. They know how to vary their sets, reps, rest periods, volume, and training frequency to the point where their bodies will respond, and they don’t waste time on ineffective training and nutrition strategies.

The problem I see most often is natural lifters following a bodybuilding program that is specifically designed for enhanced lifters.

It’s important to understand that steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs completely change your physiology. The same training and nutrition programs that work for an enhanced lifter will not work for a natural lifter, and can actually hurt his or her results.

If you are looking to make some major gains without steroids or any other drugs, the steps below will help get you started on the right path.

Step 1: Train Each Muscle Group 2-3 Times a Week

Most old-school muscle building workouts train one body part per week. You have a chest day, back day, leg day, shoulders day, and arms day. You basically work the hell out of each muscle on its dedicated workout day, and then you wait a whole week to train that muscle again.

This works for the enhanced lifter because they don’t need the frequency of training per muscle that a natural lifter needs to stimulate muscle growth. But if you are a natural lifter, it will be tough to make any gains this way.

So how often do you need to train?

If you are a newer lifter or haven’t been training consistently hard for an extended period, I recommend doing full-body workouts that hit each muscle group three times a week with a one day break in between workouts.

This is the most effective way to build muscle and lose fat if you are just starting to train or get back into a more serious routine. If you have been training pretty consistently for a while, I recommend a push/pull or upper body/lower body split routine four times a week.

Step 2: Choose the Most “Bang For Your Buck” Exercises

One of the most common mistakes I see in the gym is natural lifters focusing too much time on isolation exercises.

The core of your workout should focus on exercises that create the most energy demand by working multiple muscle groups (compound exercises) at the same time, rather than ones that isolate just one muscle and have a lower energy demand.

Exercises like squats, deadlifts, presses, rows, pull-ups, and dips are great examples of exercises that work multiple muscles while creating a very high energy demand.

Although you can and should still do exercises like biceps curls and triceps extensions, etc., they should be considered secondary exercises. Keep in mind, your goal is to get a maximum return on your investment of time and energy, and you only have so much time per workout.

Step 3: Spread Volume Across Multiple Workouts

Go into any gym on a Monday and you will see everyone doing their “chest” day, moving from barbell bench to dumbbell bench, to incline, decline, chest flys, cable crossovers, dips, and any other chest exercise you can name.

This is a typical old school bodybuilding workout designed for enhanced lifters. It’s a ton of volume for one body part in one workout and is definitely overkill for the natural lifter.

Because you will be training each muscle group more frequently for a week, you want to keep the volume per muscle group lower per workout.

As a general guideline, you want to do somewhere between 15-25 sets per week for your larger muscle groups like legs, back, and chest and 10-15 sets for your smaller muscle groups.

Remember, this is to be spread across a week, not in one training session.

If you are a newer lifter or haven’t been working out seriously, I recommend staying in the lower range and adding more volume when your results start to slow.

Step 4: Stay in the 8-12 Rep Range

If your goal is to gain muscle, you want to lift the heaviest amount of weight you can with good form for 8-12 reps.

While doing fewer reps will help you gain strength and power, and higher reps will build your endurance, the 8-12 rep range is where you want to be if you want to gain muscle.

Exceptions would be when you are hitting some of the smaller muscles like shoulders, triceps, and biceps and are doing higher rep finisher type sets. But for the most part, try to stick to a specific number of reps for a particular period.

For example, if you are doing 8 reps per exercise, do 8 reps for the next four weeks before switching it up. Then you can move up to 10 reps for the next four weeks. The goal is to continually challenge your muscles to do something harder than they’re used to.

Step 5: Make Every Rep Count

Think quality over quantity. Your goal should be to make every single rep count (other than your warm-up set reps).

This means pushing yourself as hard as you can with good form to the point where you have just enough energy to finish that last rep (without breaking form), and maybe one or 2 more max, of each set. This is how you will build muscle.

If your goal is 8 reps, make sure you choose a weight heavy enough that it is extremely challenging to do 8 reps for every set. This will force your muscles to respond by getting bigger and stronger.

Once you can complete more than 8 reps through all your sets of that exercise, it’s time to add more weight, so reaching that 8th rep again becomes a challenge.

Step 6: Keep Rest Periods Short

Because your goal is to gain muscle and burn fat at the same time, it’s important to keep your rest periods short. Doing this will give your muscles just enough time to recover between sets while keeping your heart rate high enough to continue burning calories at an accelerated rate.

Keep rest periods between 1 to 3 minutes max, depending on your fitness goal. 

• If your goal is fairly split between losing fat and gaining muscle, you want to keep your rest periods between 90 seconds and 2 minutes.

•  If your goal is mostly to gain muscle, sticking around 2 to 3 minutes works best for more taxing exercises.

Step 7: Change Up Your Workouts

I’m not talking about doing a different workout every single time you hit the gym. Doing that can actually hurt your results because you do not give your body time to overcome the challenge you are placing on it to get bigger and stronger.

I’m talking about making smaller changes, like changing the number of reps, sets, rest periods, and changing some exercise variations about every 4 to 6 weeks.

This really is the secret to getting results.

It’s about making the small adjustments that keep forcing your body to adapt to the new challenge you place on it.

Step 8: Don’t Let Cardio Steal Your Gains

Believe it or not, cardio can turn into your worst enemy when trying to build muscle.

Doing too much cardio or doing cardio at the wrong time can actually prevent you from shedding fat and cause you to lose muscle! This is especially true if you are significantly restricting calories.

Does this mean you shouldn’t do any cardio at all? Of course not! But you have to know how and when to do it.

To get the most benefit from your weight training and your cardio workouts, you should do them on separate days.

To burn more calories in a shorter time, you can use High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) or other types of conditioning type cardio.

If you’re not a big fan of cardio, have some previous injuries, or are just starting to work out again, just walking at a moderately brisk pace for 30-45 minutes works.

The key is to do your cardio after your workout and for no more than 30 minutes. Although you can do HIIT cardio right after your weight training, you should keep it reasonably short (10-15 minutes) to prevent overtraining.

Another option that I use for many of my clients who are short on time are supersets and sometimes even circuits during weight lifting workouts, which basically combines both into one workout. This isn’t the best option, though, if your primary goal is to build muscle as fast as possible.

Step 9: Eat to Gain Muscle and Burn Fat

Eating to gain muscle and burn fat is a lot easier said than done.

Essentially you have to find the “sweet spot” between eating enough calories to stimulate muscle growth while maintaining a calorie deficit so that your body taps into stored fat for energy.

Many fitness professionals will tell you that this is not possible, but any experienced trainer who has gotten results with their clients knows it can be done, it’s just not easy. The key is to make sure that you are eating enough protein to build muscle.

Although you will find all kinds of different recommendations, I have found that at least one gram of protein per pound of bodyweight works best for most people.

If your primary goal is to just gain muscle, you must also make sure you are eating enough carbs and good fats.

If your primary goal is to lose fat and maintain muscle, you want to increase your protein intake and decrease your carb and fat intake.

Usually, increasing up to 1.2 grams of protein per pound of body weight works well, but some individuals respond well going as high as 1.5 grams. Anything more than that would be overkill.

Step 10: Get Enough Sleep

Sleep has way too many benefits to list here, but the most important one for the natural lifter is that sleep triggers the release of your natural human growth hormone (HGH), which plays a massive role in building muscle.

Your body needs 7 to 9 hours of sleep to recover properly and stay in optimum muscle-building mode.

If you can’t get at least a full 7 hours of sleep or more per night, you should try your best to get a quick nap in during the day.

Step 11: Try Supplementing to Increase Your Gains & Improve Recovery

Although you can definitely build muscle and get ripped without taking supplements, they can definitely help. You can also go broke spending money on all the different supplements out there.

If I could only choose two supplements, it would be a quality protein powder and creatine.

Protein powder is really more about convenience than anything else. It makes it easier to consume a high amount of protein without a lot of additional calories and fat.

The other almost “must-have” supplement if you are trying to gain muscle is creatine. It’s the one supplement almost everyone can agree upon to help build muscle.

What to Expect

Although you can’t expect to turn into Captain America or Thor overnight, you can expect to see significant changes in your body’s transformation in as little as 12 weeks. If you are a beginner or haven’t been lifting for a while, you can even expect quicker results.

Despite what you may hear in ads promoting supplements or workout programs, if your primary goal is to build muscle and you do everything right, you can expect about 1-2 lbs of muscle gain a month.

If you’re trying to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time, you may not see the scale move at all, but don’t let that discourage you. You might have lost 2 lbs of fat but gained 2 pounds of muscle!

Although the scale might not move, the way you look will certainly have improved, and this is the ultimate goal when you are trying to lose fat and gain muscle naturally.

Ready to take your body to the next level? Check out my Private Coaching if you want to take all the guesswork out of getting ripped.