Daily Bodybuilding Tips

Any individual that is considering giving bodybuilding a try should realize that it takes a lot of patience, perseverance, and discipline to succeed. Within the first few weeks of working out, almost everyone achieves gains. Afterwards, a great deal of stagnancy settles in. This can lead to people quitting prematurely. That is a shame because it is not necessary if one follows these tips:

1. Always keep workouts simple. Begin by training one or two times during the first week. Lift mainly light weights since this will aid in getting the feel of exercise and understanding the differences between using machines and free weights. You could also hire a trainer or instructor during the first sessions in order to learn basic exercises.

When your arms grow stronger and become able to carry most of the load, you can switch to barbells which are an improvement over dumbbells. Barbells also help you achieve proper balance and deliver quicker movements. Eat simple food groups designed to add protein, carbohydrates, fiber and essential fats to the body as opposed to spending a lot of money on expensive bodybuilding supplements.

2. Keep mostly all of your workouts reasonably short. Those new to the game need to remember it is only possible to gain muscle mass when the body remains at rest. Muscles will not grow during an actual workout session. The initial workouts should stay below 30 to 45 minutes in duration. Start with a 5 to 10-minute warm-up session and move on to a short stretching session. A five minute cool down is helpful.

It is helpful to provide your body with enough adequate rest so that the muscles can grow effectively. When you head to the gym too often, you may end up causing overtraining. This is not going to help your muscles grow. When you wake up the next say and feel sore, it is best to take the day off. This way the body can relax a little and recuperate.

3. Always set solid goals. Before you launch an excursion to the gym, outline a proper working plan, goals and clear objectives. This includes clearly defining your reasons for bodybuilding, your planned achievements, the time needed to allocate for workouts, and your overall monetary investment. And always be sure goals and plans are realistic and attainable.

Too many denizens of the gym will eventually quit during the very first few months due to the fact they set objectives that are tough to reach. Top experts will recommend embarking on a program designed so that you may effectively recover from the workouts in an effective manner.

There are three main pillars of bodybuilding to pay attention to and they include exercise, nutrition and rest. You should have a combination of these many components in order to gain quality muscle and maintain it over time.

Here is a tip to aid in sticking with your planned regimen: try and find a training partner who shares your same goals and schedule. This way, you can help each other bring out the best in each one's performance. You could both maintain a dual training log to make sure your sessions work out properly.

Try to invest the bulk of your focus on performing the most basic of exercises that will stress a multiple of muscle groups simultaneously. Common exercises such as this and include the squat, dead lift, military presses both front and rear, bench press, bent rows and barbell curl. At all workout sessions perform 8 to 12 sets of exercise. Avoiding performing isolation exercises until you have a few months of basic mass building concluded. Working on body parts in isolation after some mass has been added will lead to a unique and defined physique.

Always perform a light warm-up exercise prior to moving on to 1 or 2 working sets. 8 to 12 repetitions each set should be enough to deliver results while also avoiding continuing onwards until the muscles fail. Never neglect any single body part through the course of the body building career you launch. Far too often, beginners will neglect legs and calves and instead focus entirely on the upper body and maintaining lagging body parts.

Feel free to visit my website for more information on body building tips, workouts & articles. We have for you a lot of free weight lifting programs, articles and routines.

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If you take the advice of most personal trainers you'll be exercising your abs at the end of your workout. That means you'll workout abs many as two different body parts before you get to your abs! Seriously what kind of workout do you think you're going to get by working out your abs after you've already worked out and are probably exhausted?

If you really want to target and WORK OUT your abs then what you should do is hit your abs first in your workout.

Not only will your abs be a lot stronger at the beginning of your workout but you'll also notice the results will be a lot better as well.

What I normally do is an interval training set of ab exercises and some kind of cardio to warm myself up before the real weight training workout.

If you are happy with your ab development then I wouldn't change a thing but if your progress has plateaued then this change is exactly the type of thing that your body may need to continue growing and developing.

The key with working out in the gym and when weight training is always to prioritize the main muscle group you want to target eatly in your workout when you are strongest.

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One of the most commonly asked questions so many aspiring bodybuilders want to know is “How to Get a Big Chest”. Why? Because having a thick, muscular chest is very impressive to say the least. Whether your goal is to compete as a professional bodybuilder, or you are just out to impress the girls, learning how to get a big chest should be your number one priority.

To get right into it, there are typically two main exercise types which you need to be aware of being; Isolation and Compound. If you want to know how to get a big chest fast, you need to understand what these exercise types mean. Isolation exercises are those of which work only one muscle over one joint e.g. dumbbell chest fly’s. Compound exercises are those that work more than one muscle group over two or more joints.

Compound exercises are generally done at the beginning of your workout and should make up at least 80% of your total workout. Without boring you with all the theory behind building lean muscle, let me give you an example chest workout demonstrating both compound and isolation exercises. This was one of my original chest building routines and is designed to hit your chest from multiple angles to maximize the development of the Pectoralis Major and Minor muscles (Pec’s!).

How to Get a Big Chest – Chest Workout 1

* Incline Dumbbell Bench Press – 3 sets (12, 10, 8). Compound exercise
* Dumbbell Bench Press – 3 sets (12, 10, 8). Compound exercise
* Dumbbell Fly – 2 sets (12, 10). Isolation exercise
* Decline Barbell Bench Press – 2 sets (12, 10). Compound exercise

This chest routine will put sufficient stress (overload) on your muscles to make them want to grow. You’ll notice that we have primarily used dumbbells and compound exercises for most of the workout. Why? Because if you want to build a bigger chest, these are the exercises that you are going to have to do.

It has been proven through numerous studies that free weights are much more effective at building muscle mass than machine weights. Free weights put your body under higher physical and mental stress in the three dimensional world that we live in. Your body adapts by developing a high mental focus to recruit every muscle fiber available to lift the weight safely through all planes (Frontal, Median, Horizontal, and Sagittal).

Some common mistakes…

A common mistake inexperienced bodybuilders make is following the routines from bodybuilding magazines which involves them doing 20+ sets per muscle group. This is a big mistake! The routines that professional bodybuilders use are the routines which you need to be taking anabolic steroids for. Period!

Your natural body simply can’t cope with those high volumes, split workouts which require you to be in the gym 6 days a week for hours on end. This type of training will most definitely lead to overtraining before you know it. If you over-train your muscles you will never experience how to get a big chest - or body for that matter.

Now, there are some basic rules to using the program above which must be followed;

How to Get a Big Chest – Rule # 1

The best chest exercises to build rock hard muscle mass are without a doubt compound exercises performed with dumbbells. Stay clear of machine weights and make free weights (dumbbells/barbells) your two best friends.

How to Get a Big Chest – Rule # 2

The repetition range outlined in the program above should be the maximum amount of reps you can do with a particular weight without any assistance. If you can do more reps than specified above, simply select a heavier weight. You won’t get big looking at the big weights so get in there and show them whose boss. Saying that, remember to always use a spotter where you can to avoid injury to yourself.

How to Get a Big Chest – Rule # 3

Always remember that REST is the most important factor of muscle growth. The general rule of thumb is 60-90 seconds rest between sets, and 72 hours rest between training the same muscle group. Do not train your chest every day. I see it all the time and these guys are not getting any bigger. In fact, it’s laughable!

How to Get a Big Chest – Rule # 4

Always use proper lifting techniques and strict form. Sadly, this is where most beginner bodybuilder and weightlifters miserably fail. Their high enthusiasm coupled with their low knowledge is a recipe for disaster. Any exercise you perform should be done correctly to maximize muscle growth and to prevent serious injury. If you don’t know how to do an exercise correctly, ask one of the trainers in your gym, I’m sure they will be more than happy to assist.

A good place to start to ensure your lifting technique is correct is to time your reps in your head. For example; let’s say you were doing bench press. For the concentric phase (pushing the bar away from your body in this case), you would count “one thousand” in your head, or out loud if you prefer but you might get a few strange looks from the other guys in the gym. One second is how long it should take for the bar to travel from the chest to the arms extended position. For the eccentric phase (lowering the bar to the chest), you would count “one thousand, two thousand” in your head. Ensuring that you don’t bounce the bar off the chest, you would then have a count of “one thousand” before pressing the bar up through the full range of motion. By adding a count of “one thousand” or one second at both ends of the repetition, this will prevent you from cheating and pretty much force you to have better form.

This is just the tip of the iceberg as far as learning how to get a big chest fast and obviously we can’t cover everything in a single article. An excellent free resource I have found recently is called “The Top 20 Ways to Screw up in the Gym” and can be downloaded completely free by clicking on this link. I guarantee that you will be already making a lot big mistakes in the gym that are sacrificing the massive gains that you’ve been working so hard to get. If you haven’t already got this e-book, get it now – it’s free!

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