Body Building For Beginners
The key to body building for beginners is to perform Compound Exercises with perfect form and get your diet right. I can’t stress this enough, and to work up in weight incrementally.
You can probably lift more than the weight you should begin with, but the key is to do the exercises consistently.
Beginners tend to over-train and get disappointed by slow results, however, remember that body building also requires perseverance and the capability to stick to the plan regardless.
The secret to build and toughen muscles are compound exercises, after performing this and gaining enough strength, the next step would be performing isolation workouts.
Compound exercises are ones in which at least two joints are used to do the exercise movement, so for chest & triceps, you’ll want to do DIPS or BENCH PRESS, for lats and biceps you’ll want to do PULLUPS or LAT BAR PULL DOWN, for legs… it’s SQUATS and then DEADLIFT (which also hits your lower back).
For your shoulder & triceps, you’ll wan to do MILITARY PRESS, CLEAN & JERKS or SQUAT PRESSES.
CALF WORK, because of the unique nature of that muscle group, requires the intensity of CALF RAISES & DONKEY PRESSES which only work one joint, so they tend to be an isolation exercise.
Once you have designed your exercise scheme, you need to figure out the reps and sets.
It’s suggested that beginning bodybuilders, for the first two weeks do light weights and high reps to get your muscles primed for the growth phase, so you want to start with 1 or 2 sets and work your way up to 4 or 5 sets of 12 to 15 reps (this includes your warm-up sets).
Then you’ll want to swap out exercises, so if you’ve been doing WEIGHTED DIPS it’s time for BENCH PRESS, and you’ll want to raise the weight maybe 15 or 20% and do less sets and less reps (say 2 or 3 sets of 6 to 8 reps), stay on this course for two weeks, then it’s it time to bring the weight back down and do 4 or 5 sets of 10 to 12 reps for one week, then you can jump up in weight from the heavy phase, but do less reps and sets.
The key element here is to a) switch up the routine so your body has to constantly adapt b) build strength and mass by alternating what intensity of weights you pump. What this adds up to is one set of heavy exercises per week with other days comprised of light yet repetitive actions that would best burn fat while increasing your power and stamina.
Once you’ve been on the compound exercise cycle for about 6 weeks, you can start to slowly work in isolation exercises, these are exercises that use one joint to move the weight.
For example, do the barbell or PREACHER CURL, instead DUMBBELL CURLS. You want to do the FRENCH PRESS instead of ONE-ARM TRICEP PRESSES, LEG EXTENSIONS instead of LEG PRESSES, and so on. Once you attained the mass and definition you were aiming for, you can now start adapting more unique exercises. Although it’s nearly impossible to do “spot work,” you can eke out specific gains by alternating your routine and the reps/sets combinations.
For instance, when doing EZ-BAR BICEP CURLS, instead of doing 4 or 5 sets of 12 to 15 reps, do two sets of 21s; 21s for BICEP CURLS are when you do 7 reps of vertical to 90 degrees, then 7 reps of 90 degrees to the full contraction, and then finally 7 reps of the full motion… all without a break. That’s a burn that you won’t forget, and it’s a great way to shock you muscles if you’ve reach a plateau.
At the start, you might find it hard to follow, however note that the discipline to continue makes or breaks body building program.
Also, getting more than enough rest and eating right, actually eating more than ever have before.
Your diet is the most important thing whether you’re first starting out or a seasoned pro. The right diet will play a major part in your improvement; however a bad diet will undermine the effects of the workout.
Let me leave you with one more thought. Top trainers have often said that until you can perform bodyweight exercises, you have no business lifting weights.
For that reason, you may want to start out doing bodyweight exercises.
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