How To Start Bodybuilding for Beginners

You will find a beginners guide to bodybuilding the way I would have appreciated it over 30 years ago. Oh and yes I have over 30 years bodybuilding experience. What I want to do is help you make smart choices at the beginning stages of bodybuilding so you don't waste hours and even years performing the incorrect exercises to match your goals.

Looking at a professional bodybuilder you might think all they do is eat a ton of food and lift heavy weights and the muscle just grows. Well unfortunately for those of you that want to look like the massive freaks in professional bodybuilding it just isn't that easy.

There are harder paths to take than you have to though. I want to help you down the path to success as a beginning bodybuilder. Starting bodybuilding can be very confusing when it comes to picking the correct exercises and correct diet for bodybuilding.

I am going to point you down the right path, the path of success for bodybuilding.

In bodybuilding and building muscle in general you need to focus on 3 things. Exercise is pretty obvious, Your diet is probably also very obvious and the third thing is rest.

• Rest is just as important and maybe even more important than the quality of your exercise. You don't ever want to be over trained because it will halt or even reverse your progress.
• Rest just isn't sleeping at night, it also includes cat naps during the day and just how much cardio you do while you are trying to build muscle.
• Here is your first lesson, when you are building muscle you want to limit the amount of cardio you perform as the cardio will slow down your muscle building progress.
• Rest is also for your mind, relax once in a while and take deep breathes think happy thoughts and try to pull your mind out of the rat race that is our lives these days.
• Try to de-stress as much as possible as often as possible. Stress will eat up muscle like you wouldn't believe.

This lesson Is around the exercises you perform, specifically the weightlifting exercises.

• Stick to compound movements as much as possible. Base the majority of your exercises around compound movements like squats, dead lifts, barbell rows, bench press and so on.
• Try to stay away from isolation movements as much as possible. If your a male you are probably wanting to build huge arm muscles. From experience I can tell you that doing chin ups, barbell rows, bench press and shoulder presses will help to build huge triceps and biceps.
• Do not train your arm muscles to hard, let them get trained by performing heavy back and chest work as much as possible.

Do yourself a favor and listen to what I am telling you. Your back and chest will be bigger and more muscular and your arms will actually grow by default.

So compound movements are the way to success if you are serious about building some muscle.

Nutrition is extremely important for obvious reasons. You need food to build muscle and keep up your energy.

Your probably thinking protein protein protein, well you are right you do need protein but eating to much protein and not enough quality carbs will drain your energy and won't build as much muscle as you might think.

• For protein shoot for 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per lb of lean body weight to build muscle.

• Next is carbs and fat. This should be obvious to you if your able to walk and chew bubble gum you are probably smart enough to know that potato chips and pop are not good for you.
• Eat nutritious foods like fish, eggs, lean beef, chicken, vegetables, oatmeal, brown rice.
• Drink a lot of water throughout the day.
• Protein shakes are great to take right after you work out and when you first wake up.
• Be smart about your food choices. Stay away from sugar, salt, fried foods, starchy carbs like white rice, white bread.
• Find out how many calories you need to maintain your current body weight and consume about 500 extra calories a day while you are trying to build muscle. You can even lower that number a bit if you find you are gaining more fat than muscle but always try to eat a bit more than what you need to maintain your weight. Spread your calories and meals out over the day eating 3 or 4 small meals and 2 or 3 snacks.