When competitive bodybuilders appear in contests, they adopt certain poses that are designed to accentuate certain muscle groups in the body.
The effectiveness of the poses being adopted is a significant factor in deciding which bodybuilders win competitions, so it is believed that many top bodybuilders spend up to half their training time perfecting these poses.
There are many techniques adopted for gaining muscle mass, with the chosen strategy to some extent depending upon whether the individual concerned is bodybuilding for personal satisfaction or for competition purposes.
There are individuals who can work on gaining muscle mass slowly and steadily, people who can continue to do so almost without any apparent limitations.
In contrast, there are many individuals who very quickly reach a limit beyond which they cannot gain any further muscle mass because they do not have any particular natural qualities that enable them to 'bulk up' quickly.
Individuals who fall into the latter category are often termed 'hardgainers' because they find it very hard to gain any further muscle mass after they reach a certain level.
There are many reasons why this happens to some people and not others, many of which will be reviewed in this report.
People who reach a plateau in this way apart, the most common technique adopted by bodybuilders is to do whatever is necessary to acquire as much additional muscle mass as possible until an acceptable threshold has been reached (in the case of a recreational bodybuilder) or until a major competition is imminent for the competitive bodybuilder.
After this, the individual concerned will then spend some time working on accentuating muscle definition rather than adding any extra mass.