Body building is without a shadow of a doubt one of the most common interests among men these days. Body building is not just about building your body so that it looks good with well toned muscles, but also keeping you very healthy through the kind of work-outs that you do day in and day out. Weight training plays the most important role in body building.
Weight training is something which is very essential to build your muscles and make you look good. When you train with weights, it will be a unique experience for the first time as your body will be forced to cope with the pressure that you put on it. Also, for the first few weeks, bodybuilding weight training can take a heavy toll on you, as it takes that much of time at least for a healthy human body to cope with heavy training.
One of the most important things you need to know about weight training is that you cannot start off right away with heavy weights and strenuous work out schedules. Everything needs to have a proper schedule and especially in this case, you need to follow a certain pattern in order to achieve the best results in the shortest possible period of time.
First of all, you need to get in touch with an experienced bodybuilding trainer. A trainer is a professional who will be able to guide you in terms of training, nutrition, work out schedule, and many other things related to body building. Once you've got yourself a trainer, make sure you listen to him properly and do whatever he asks you to do so.
Bodybuilding weight training should be done with the right mindset and for this purpose a trainer's assistance becomes very much important. Also, you need to give enough rest to your muscles and nourish them with the proper kind of diet, as those two things are very important as far as building your muscles are concerned. Body building weight training makes your muscles bigger, stronger, and agile. For this reason, a lot of people are interested in weight training and even though not all of them may end up body building professionals, they love the aspect of weight training and the kind of impact it has on their lives and this is the reason why you see a lot of people are into weight training these days.
Free Weights vs. Machines vs. Bodyweight Exercises
For maximum muscle gain, the focus of your workouts should consist of free weight exercises. Not machines or bodyweight exercises. This is not to say that you should not use machines or bodyweight exercises, but they should not be the focus of your training. To get an effective, muscle blasting workout, you must stimulate the most muscle fibers as possible, and machines do not do this.
The main reason for this is a lack of stabilizer and synergist muscle development. Stabilizer and synergist muscles are supporting muscles that assist the main muscle in performing a complex lift. The more stabilizers and synergists worked, the more muscle fibers stimulated. Multi-jointed free weight exercises like the bench press, require many stabilizer and synergistic muscle assistance to complete the lift. On the other hand doing a bench press using a machine will need almost no stabilizer assistance.
Since machines are locked into a specific range of motion and help to support the weight along that path, they fail to stimulate the muscles that surround the area you are working (stabilizers). This is a mistake. If your stabilizer muscles are weak, then the major muscle group will never grow!
Free weight exercises like the dumbbell press or squat, for example, put a very large amount of stress on supporting muscle groups. That's why you will get fatigued faster and not be able to lift as much weight as you did on the machine. But you will gain more muscle, become stronger very quickly and have a true gauge of your strength.
If you use machines in your program, they should be used to work isolated areas and only after all multi-jointed exercises have been completed.
Beginners should begin with a limited combination of machine exercises, bodyweight exercises and multi-jointed free weight exercises. Before increasing the weight levels, they should work on becoming familiar with the proper form and execution of each. Soon, bodyweight exercises will become insufficient to stimulate growth and they will need to focus on more free weight exercises.
Multi-Jointed Exercises
The exercises that work the large muscle groups are called compound (or multi-joint) movements that involve the simultaneous stimulation of many muscle groups. These compound exercises should be the foundation of any weight training program because they stimulate the most amount of muscle in the least amount of time.
Here are the basic movements:
* Bench Presses (works the chest, shoulders, tricep)
* Overhead Presses (shoulders, tricep)
* Pull-ups/Barbell Rows (back, bicep)
* Squats (legs, lower back)
* Deadlifts (legs, back, shoulders)
* Bar Dips (shoulders, chest, arms)
They will overload your entire skeletal and muscular system like no machine could ever do, giving you and effective workout in a very short period of time. If you can only do a few exercises, then do these. They have been proven to encourage muscle and strength gain unlike any other exercises.
Lift Heavy Weight
To build mass, you must weight train with heavy weights. To consider a weight heavy, you should only be able to do a maximum of 8-12 reps before your muscles temporarily fail. A weight is considered "light" if you can do more than 15 reps before muscle fatigue sets in.
Heavy weights stimulate more muscle fibers than lighter weights. It's that simple. More muscle stimulation means more muscle growth.
Don't Overtrain
Heavy weight training puts a huge strain on your body, so adequate rest and recuperation after your workouts is essential. If you are prone to train too often, several things happen:
You don't give your muscles enough time to recuperate between workouts. If your muscles have not repaired themselves, you will not be at maximum strength for your next workout. Rest is essential. Other than eating, this should be your main focus.
You are setting yourself up for burnout or an injury. You must pace yourself. You want to be able to keep this up for a long time, not burnout before you reach your goals.
Contrary to popular belief, you do not grow while working out; you only grow when you are resting.
Both Lastelle & Mike Selcsum are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
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