The Beginners Guide to Bodybuilding

Adding lean muscle to a skinny frame is never an easy task to accomplish. Losing fat from a heavy frame is just as hard, if not harder, to accomplish. Many people are constantly seeking advice and guidance on how to start body building, strength training or just get into shape. Unfortunately, most people do not have access or the necessary information to begin such a transformation. This article is intended as a guide to help the beginners who wish to start living a healthier life.

A good beginning rule for weight training is to train one muscle group only once per week. Overloading the muscles can become damaging and may reverse the effects of weight training. Often times, rookie trainees will work out until their arms fall off, over-train, and lose muscle. Passion is good, but don't let your ego get the best of you. One muscle group per week may sound like under-training, but for the beginner one muscle group per week is plenty enough stress on the body.

When it comes to actually lifting some weights, compound exercises produce the maximum amount of stress on a multiple number of muscles. Compound exercises such as bench press, squats, dead lifts, and barbell curls require more than one muscle to lift the weight. Compound exercises recruit compound muscles and require more force, thus producing more muscles growth. It is best that the compound exercises are performed first, and then lifts that isolate each muscle should be performed last. The compound exercises require more muscle recruitment making them harder to perform. Also to make sure you are using heavy weight to ensure maximum stress is produced on the muscle or growth will not occur. Adding weight each session is a good way to prevent plateaus and helps maintain constant stress and pressure on your muscles.

Beginning with the simple step of using compound exercises followed by isolation exercises is a great way to begin any routine. Before starting any heavy lifting, doing 2 warm-up sets is crucial to help prevent muscle strain and tears. Then do 3 sets of 8 repetitions for the muscle group you want to work on. The first set you lift should have the least amount of weight. You should lift until failure or list as many as you can with eight being your limit. The second set you should be lifting until you cannot perform another repetition. The third set you should struggle to perform your last repetition still lifting your hardest. The fourth and final set should be you're hardest to complete. Lifting even two or three repetitions will be a great accomplishment. Make sure when you are lifting you always have someone to spot and watch over you. You never want to have 100+ pounds crushing your chest! So, if you want to get into shape, lose fat, gain lean muscle and tone up, work hard and follow these simple rules.