Bodybuilding Links

As you have probably noticed in my previous posts, I like to add to the text some links where you can find detailed information on the post topic. This post is intended to be a repository with links to the sites that are commonly referred in the posts, and which contain a lot of bodybuilding information that you can use as a reference when designing your training program.

• Bodybuilding.com - The largest and most complete bodybuilding site online!
• Bodybuilding Supplements, Exercise and Workout - Provides valuable information on bodybuilding supplements, exercise, workout, equipment, fat burning food, diet, weight gaining and much more...
• Drug Free Bodybuilding - Learn more about the tested bodybuilding from a top five natural competitor
• DrugFreeBodyBuilding.com - Natural Bodybuilding - Build Muscle Mass - Are You Ready To Learn The Training, Diet And Supplementation Secrets That Can Help You Build Your Body As Quickly As Genetically Possible?
• ExRx.net (Exercise Prescription on the Net)
• IronMagazine.com - Bodybuilding & Fitness Magazine!
• Lift for Life - Natural Bodybuilding at it's Finest, Lift for Life.com. Over 200 pages of bodybuilding articles and information for the Natural Bodybuilder
• Muscle 101 - Everything you need to know to achieve all your goals
• Natural Bodybuilder - Expert advice and information to help you reach your bodybuilding and fitness goals

Exercise Selection for a Complete Muscle Development

When designing your training program, you are faced with the decision of choosing a set of exercises for properly training each muscle group. There are a great amount of different exercises (probably several hundred), thus complicating this selection. This post presents some issues you must take into account for performing an adequate exercise selection.

Exercises can be classified depending of the type of movement performed. On one side, compound exercises involve two or more joint movements and thus stress several muscle groups. On the other side, isolation exercises involve only one joint movement at a time, stressing only one specific muscle. Compound exercises are superior to isolation in building muscle mass. However, although you can build plenty of mass using only compound exercises, isolation work is mandatory for a complete muscle development, because it allows emphasizing on every muscle striation. Your routine for a given muscle should include movements that hit that muscle in different ways and from different angles using both compound and isolation movements. That is why you should include 2-3 exercises when you work each muscle.

Some movements offer the possibility of being performed using free weights (barbell and dumbbells) or machines. Free weights provide a more complete work and are better at preventing muscle imbalances, since they involve stabilizer muscles more than machines. Therefore, the basis of your routine should be using free weights. Machines have to be minimized except of some exceptions like the cable station and the leg extension, but don't look down on machines because they can be used to introduce some variety occasionally.

Your selection should avoid dangerous exercises that can lead you to injury. There are some popular exercises (e.g. behind-the-neck pulldown or behind-the-neck shoulder press) that involve movements with wrong biomechanics, being a chance to injury yourself. In a future post, I’ll go deeper in the trouble with these exercises.

However, your exercise selection should not be immovable. The muscles grow because they accustom themselves to the stress being put onto them. If you train a muscle always in the same way, your progress will slow, and possibly even halt because your body adapts to the motion, and no longer needs to build new muscle to do that motion. The key is varying your workouts every 4-6 weeks by altering one or more factors (i.e. number of reps, sets, tempo, exercise selection, etc.).

For supporting your exercise selection process, you can find a comprehensive exercise directory in the “Exercise Instruction & Kinesiology” section of ExRx.net site. Each exercise description contains the preparation and execution instructions (demonstrated with an animated gif), the involved muscles and the exercise classification (compound/isolation, push/pull, etc.). The Bodybuilding.com site provides another complete exercise directory in its “Exercise Guides” section, including video guides for describing the exercises correct execution.

Designing a Beginner’s Program

This post is intended to provide advice to those just arrived to bodybuilding when they have to design their first weight training programs. Unlike is commonly believed, beginners need special training. It makes no sense to start with complicated programs used by people who have been training for years. Beginners must stick with simple programs with the basic exercises.

The main goal of beginner’s training, lasting approximately 3-4 months, must be adapting your body to training and stress. In this training stage, it is important that you spend the time in learning the groove of the movements, because at this stage you are building the mind-muscle connection, which, if wrong, can let you to injury in the future. Good news are that during this stage you will progress easily and your muscles will grow rapidly (perhaps the more rapidly that they ever will).

When designing your program, avoid typical beginner’s mistakes, such as focusing only on the muscles you like, e.g. chest and biceps. You have to give attention to all body-parts and focus on learning the basic exercises, such as deadlifts, squats or bench press. Start out light, use proper form, and practice until you've got the hang of each specific movement. Then, and only then, you should start adding on more weight.

Beginners can use a full body workout, training each muscle every workout. Train 3 days a week in non-consecutive days using, for example, the following pattern (W means workout and R means Rest): WRWRWRR. Beginners can also benefit from a 2 day split workout. Split options can be, for example, upper body on day A and lower body on day B or push movements on day A and pull movements on day B. Train 3 days a week in non-consecutive days using, for example, the following pattern: ARBRARR-BRARBRR. Use two, maximum three, exercises per body-part at three sets each. Pick a basic exercise for each muscle and build your workout around them. Stay initially in the 12-15 rep range without failure until you’re familiarized with training and the exercises.

Training is important, but don’t forget that adequate nutrition and rest is mandatory for achieving results. Eat several small meals throughout the day (every 2.5-3 hours) including enough protein (1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight per day). In addition, drink plenty of water and sleep at least 8 hours per night.

These and other guidelines for developing your beginner's program can be found in the article “Laying the Right Foundation” by Matt Danielsson and also in the article “Progression of Training” included in the I.C.E. Training Program developed by Big Cat.

Workout Details: Sets, Reps, Rest, Duration and Frequency

When designing your weight training program, you are faced with questions about how many reps/sets to perform, how long to rest between sets or how long/how often to train. There is not a unique answer to these questions, but there are some basic guidelines that must be respected. This post intends to provide you with these basic guidelines in order to properly decide your workout details.

The number of reps is usually a cause of concern. As a general guide, the 1-5 rep range is more appropriated for strength training, the 6-12 rep range for hypertrophy training (i.e. muscle growth) and above 12 reps for endurance training. However, optimal training combines cycles of different rep ranges, stimulating in this way both fast-twitch and slow-twitch fibers. In any case, always perform a strict movement (mastering the weight during the whole rep and using a full range of motion) with a prolonged contraction (feeling the pump and the burn in the muscle).

The number of sets can also vary greatly. On one side, it depends on your recuperation. Doing more sets than you can recuperate from is a shortcut to overtraining. On the other side, the amount of sets should stimulate as much fiber as possible and should be enough to train the muscle consistently (using different exercises to target all muscle sections). Depending on the muscle, the number of working sets per muscle (excluding warm-up) can stay between 3 and 10. When deciding this value, don’t forget that you have to keep your workouts short (preferably less than 1 hour) because after that time cortisol secretion will inhibit GH/testosterone output, causing muscle breakdown and limiting your gains. Your goal should be intensity. Focus on each set and give always 100% (don't save yourself for the next set).

Rest between sets determines also the intensity of your workout. As a rule, take the time your muscles and your nervous system need to recover. Attempt to keep the time as short as possible. Nevertheless, take into account that the time needed for recovering when training with heavy weights and lower reps can be longer than the time needed when using light weights and higher reps. Similarly, big muscles recover slower than small muscles. Finally, take care to do some flexing and stretching between sets to keep the muscle warm and avoid injury.

Workout frequency is another important decision. A muscle grows only when recovering from intense training. Don’t train again a muscle until it is fully recovered (this can take several days). Go to the gym 3 o 4 times per week and train each muscle once a week. Going more often stresses the body, impedes recovery, and can lead to overtraining.

To conclude, I want to provide you with some links where you can find additional advice on how to decide the appropriate values for the workout details discussed in this post. Check the article “The Sets and Reps of It” included in the I.C.E. Training Program developed by Big Cat, the article “The Complete Guide to Beginning Bodybuilding” by Bill Geiger & Larry Shackelford, and finally the “Workout Details” section of Muscle 101 site.

Understand How Your Body Works: Muscle Physiology

Alike anatomy, knowledge about body physiology constitutes an important basis for developing better training programs. This post summarizes the basic concepts about muscle physiology covered by Mark Strasser in his article “Muscle Types, Strength Gains, and Energy Systems used in Various Sports”. This article focuses in two aspects of muscle physiology: muscle energy systems & muscle fibers.

Muscle Energy Systems. Energy is supplied to your muscles from the food you eat, which is broken down into usable blocks of energy called ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate). ATP is the primary source of energy for muscle contraction. The energy is derived from removing a phosphate ion from ATP, resulting in ADP (Adenosine Diphosphate). Your body makes ATP available for muscle contraction through three main energy systems:

• Phosphocreatine system: This system comes into play mostly during very intense workloads lasting up to 20-30 seconds. It is very fast, and can supply ATP for more muscular contractions in milliseconds by combining ADP with the phosphate ion from the phosphocreatine molecule.

• Glycolytic system: This system is the primary energy source in activities lasting between 30 seconds and 3 minutes by breaking down muscle and liver glycogen stores. The waste product is lactic acid, which leads to muscular fatigue. This system is anaerobic, as no oxygen is immediately necessary for energy production. However, from the 3rd minute of exercise this system becomes aerobic, since energy production occurs in the presence of oxygen.

• Oxidative system: This system provides the body with energy during exercise of long duration and moderate to low intensity by breaking down the body's fat stores. It is known as the aerobic system, as oxygen is necessary for energy production.

Muscle Fibers. There are two different types of muscle fibers: slow-twitch and fast-twitch muscle fibers. Slow-twitch fibers are predominately used in endurance activities. They are not likely to grow in size as much when trained and rely mainly on the oxidative system (aerobic metabolism) to obtain energy. Fast-twitch fibers are especially activated in explosive movements. They have great potential for growing in size when trained and rely mainly on the glycolytic system (anaerobic metabolism) to obtain energy.

When training with high number of reps you activate mainly slow-twitch fibers, while with low number of reps you activate mainly fast-twitch fibers. However, sets in the 1-5 rep range don't activate as many fast-twitch fibers as sets in the 6-12 rep range. The 1-5 rep range is more appropriated for strength training without increment on size.

You can also find some additional information on muscle energy systems and muscle fibers in the “Anatomy and Physiology” section of Muscle 101 site. Moreover, Derek Charlebois provides a detailed description of the chemical reactions occurred during energy generation in his article “Bioenergetics & Energy Release”.

Mental Skills for Successful Bodybuilding

Believe or not, your mental condition plays a fundamental role for achieving your goals in bodybuilding. Results will only come if you are strongly convinced about your implication in bodybuilding and fully involved in your weight training program. This post summarizes the basic skills needed for developing an appropriate attitude for achieving success in bodybuilding.

Compromise. Evaluate if bodybuilding agrees with your goals. Bodybuilding is not about lifting heavy weights. Bodybuilding aims for a complete physical and mental development. The work that you do in the gym is as important as your work outside. Training is a key concept, but it is almost useless without proper nutrition and adequate rest. If you are not ready to assume this fact and its implications, perhaps bodybuilding is not your sport.

Motivation. Bodybuilding is hard: intense training sessions, diet, days when you are not so keen on going to the gym… You have to be fully motivated to face with that. Visualize your success. Establish long-term as well as short-term goals, and stay focused on them. Use the accomplishment of these goals to motivate yourself.

Consistency & Patience. Training only occasionally will not involve any muscle improvement. Unless you are sick, there is no excuse not to go to the gym. Don’t miss workouts, follow your schedule to the letter and do your best every single workout in order to achieve your goals. But you must have patience. Muscle will not grow out of proportion overnight. Persevere with your work and stay motivated and results will come.

Positive thinking. “I can’t” is a phrase you should ban from your vocabulary. If your mind can't visualize success, your body sure will not do the job for you.

To conclude, I want to recommend you the “Desire & Attitude” section of Muscle 101 site about the importance of staying motivated and positive attitude to achieve your goals in bodybuilding.