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Bodybuilding is:
"The process of developing the musculature of the body through specific types of diet and physical exercise, such as weightlifting, especially for competitive exhibition." or "exercise that builds muscles through tension" .
So basically, if you've ever lifted weights and/or used weight machines, or been on a diet to change the composition of your body, you've been bodybuilding.
The first thing you need to do is establish what your goals are, what you want to accomplish through your fitness training. Based on what you come up with, you will decide how many days you want to train per week. |
| Principles |
 Days/week- Work each body part out no more than once every 5-7 days. I stick to once every 7 days, as it gives more time for rest and growth, and also makes scheduling workouts easier. If possible, work 1-2 body parts per workout, 3 at the utmost. Training schedule might look like this: Monday-Chest, Tuesday-Back, Wednesday-Rest, Thursday-Arms, Friday-Legs, Saturday-Shoulders, Sunday-Rest. Working with weights five days a week is effective and gives you an opportunity to rest after two or three days consecutive days of heavy training. It is also easier than four days per week because in five days, you cover all the major muscle groups on a different day and don't have to combine two muscle groups like shoulders and arms for example, in the same day.
 Duration- Keep your workout under 1 1/2 hours in length, preferably under 1 hour. Sixty-ninety minutes in the gym is a perfect amount to spend weight training. Any more than that can be counter productive. Fitness activities like running, soccer, and basketball, are ok to do for a longer period. With weight training you are putting a lot of stress on your muscles, joints, and after an hour or so, they become fatigued and can inhibit further progress.
Sets-Total sets per body part per workout should be kept around 9-12.
 Order of exercises- Arrange your exercises to go from compound movements, which involve multiple muscles, to isolation movements employing only a few muscles. As such, always start your workout with your major exercise, be it bench press, squat, deadlift, pull-ups, military press, or another powerful, compound movement. Remember, go from large to small when it comes to exercises. Always go to failure on your last set of an exercise. You should reach failure or near failure on your preceding workout sets, but always go to failure on your last set.
 Intensity- Intensity is the key aspect to achieving results. The greater the intensity, the greater the progressive overload and the greater the results will be, as the decrease in rest between sets forces muscles to work harder whilst in partial recovery. Without intensity you can lift as much as you like and you will still only obtain very minimal results as the progressive overload principal only works when muscles are hot. The basic way of increasing intensity using weights is done by pyramiding training i.e. where the weight goes up as the reps come down. This system of training is the standard as muscles respond much better to this progressive overload training, rather than simply performing all sets and reps going straight into 85% of your 1 rpm. |
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