How To Start BodyBuilding/ 7 Must Know Tips for Best Results

Ready to get serious about body building? Knowing how to start bodybuilding with these proven and essential building blocks will keep you safe, progressing, and meeting your goals month after month. In truth, your success will depend on what’s happening between your ears just as much as weightlifting; and this is the place to start.

Even if you aren’t interested in bodybuilding as a career, these are the building blocks to transforming your body. Anybody in any gym can call themself a bodybuilder. But if you’re serious, know that the commitment to bodybuilding requires quite a bit more than an occasional trip to the weight room. Taking control of your body will demand hours a day devoted to the gym, 3-5 days a week.

These 7 tips will keep you on the right track and motivated to keep going when the going gets tough. So, if you’re still with me let’s look at 7 essential steps involved in getting started.

How to Start Bodybuilding?

1. Start With A Physical

Because bodybuilding is different from just working out a few times a week, the first step is be sure your body is healthy and ready for the challenge. It’s a good idea to have a full medical physical before you start. (This step is even more important if you have not been exercising at all, or very little up to this point.)

When you tell your doctor what you’re up to, there’s a good chance he can throw in some good advice about your diet, nutrition, and supplements that will keep you strong and healthy.

2. Weight Training

Resistance and strength training naturally lead the way when it comes to bodybuilding workouts.

Everyone into weight training doesn’t necessarily want to bulk up like yourself. So, your protocol may be different than other people working out. People who are strictly pursuing a well toned body do more repetitions and less weight.

In order to build muscle mass and bulk up, you will want to shoot for fewer repetitions and heavier weights. You always want to shoot for the amount of weight and reps that will carry you to very point of failure, while ensuring you can execute the last rep.

3. Workout Schedule

Different pros have different routines, and if you don’t have a coach, you will make the call. Some pursue lifting 4 days a week.. Others go for 5 consecutive days. Then there are the 3-day workouts that alternate between exercising and rest.

monthly calendar workout schedule
Your own workout schedule with rest days keep you progressing

The bodybuilding workouts that employ every day for 4 or 5 days aren’t likely to be any more effective than the day on day off routines. However, it’s important to remember there are always two equally important parts to any routine: work days and rest days.

In order for muscles to build strength and mass while avoiding muscle strains and injuries, rest days are a must. When you’re just learning how to start bodybuilding the best plan could be 3 days a week with rest days in between each intense workout day. The other option could be to target specific muscle groups on different days and opt for a 5-6 day workout schedule.

More important than your schedule is consistency and regularity. With that in mind decide on the routine that best fits your present schedule for ease of sticking to it.

4. Full Body vs. Split Workouts

Split workouts utilize a 4 or 5 day workout schedule. They alternate between upper and lower body muscle groups with the days. Some split workouts further break down the workouts to building abs one day, chest muscles another day, arms another, and etc.

Full body workouts typically work all the muscle groups into the same day, and often include your cardio workouts. Using full bodybuilding workouts like these are usually 3 days of the week with each work day followed by a rest day.

Both types of workouts are effective and generally produce similar results when the schedule is strictly adhered to.

5. Bodybuilding Diets

Nutrition is extremely important to and has a heavy influence on how your bodybuilding workout goes. And it’s important to start out with a proper diet right from the beginning. Paid bodybuilding programs and professional coaches usually include suggested nutrition guidelines and even specific meal plans.

Most any bodybuilding workout diet will be built around a high protein diet and moderate carbohydrates. Most bodybuilding diets advise eating 6-8 small meals a day instead of fewer and larger meals, while limiting carbohydrates.

6. Bodybuilding Supplements

Building muscle mass, the backbone of bodybuilding, is extremely stressful to muscles. The more and more often you stress your muscles, the more mass you get. Getting ripped entails ripping muscle fibers to shreds with every workout.

Your muscles depend on amino acids as the building blocks to repair and create muscle growth. Without enough amino acids from protein your workouts will fail to produce the results you want.

Evidence suggests that creatine, a popular dietary supplement, may enhance the effects of vigorous exercise on strength, muscle mass

Source

Your primary protein resource should be from natural whole foods in your diet whenever possible. However, when you are into extreme workouts day after day, there’s a good chance your regular protein rich diet just isn’t enough to meet the needs.

That’s when quality protein supplements can make the difference. Protein shakes are usually the go to product to be sure you get all the nutrients needed for superior muscle growth. The key is quality, reading the labels for unneeded and unhealthy ingredients, and all natural. Look for soy, whey, glutamine and creatine products for best results.

7. Training Log

Believe it or not, keeping up with your progress with a training log (training journal) is one of the most important aspects of bodybuilding. Just look around the gym and it’s easy to see that most people are on a hit and miss program. Either they’re doing the same reps and weight for a lifetime, or they really have no idea if their progress is increasing, decreasing, or staying the same?

You can purchase journals made for the purpose, or merely use a $1 spiral notebook. Either way, keeping track of everything involved in your reps and weight for every muscle group is really the only way to track your progress. And the key is to keep the training log by your side at all times, and take the time to make entries on the spot.

You will never be sorry you started a log when you start your bodybuilding. There’s a good chance you will regret it down the road if you don’t. Keep track of your workouts, your body weight, your diet, and take pictures of yourself as you make your gains.

With your training log you will know exactly when and how much to increase the weight you’re working with, if you are over or under training, and if your muscle mass is actually increasing. This vital information is always at your fingertips and only a glance away.

Summary

Getting to the body you want doesn’t happen overnight. It will take time, consistency, accuracy, a lot of effort, and dedication to pull it off. However, managing and taking control of your body is one of the most rewarding activities you will ever pursue.

Make eating the right nutrition, focusing on performance, form, precision, and sticking to a predetermined routine the backbone of all your efforts and the results will come.

Bodybuilding workouts are everywhere. They come in all forms and some focus on losing fat, some encouraging muscle growth. Learning how to start bodybuilding shouldn’t be difficult when you priotize workouts, personal goals and nutrition.

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