The Basics Of Body Building Workouts
If anything were absolutely required in order to make body building workouts successful, it would be consistency. This is an absolute and those who do not approach their workouts with this in mind simply will not find themselves very successful in their goals. Now, this does not mean that a person needs to train every single day, twice a day, for six months in a row. If you are not specifically training for the Mr. Olympia contest then you probably will not want to go that route! However, if you are looking to get in shape, burn fat, build muscle and increase your health you will need to set aside a few days a week for your body building workouts and then you will need to make those workouts worthwhile. If your training is infrequent then results will either be minimal or they will be non-existent. If you want to succeed then you are going to need to invest the time that is required.
Determine Your Ultimate Goals
When beginning any bodybuilding workout, you want to first lay out your goals. What are you trying to accomplish? Do you want to get huge, big and strong? Or are you looking to lean up so that you look especially hot during beach season? Whatever your goals may be, there is a bodybuilding workout for you. First, you should take measurements of your entire body. Take a measurement of your chest, your biceps, your thighs and your waist. These will be your benchmarks that you can use to gauge your progress; and also what you'll use to determine how to tailor your bodybuilding workout.
Get Big
If your goal is to get big, you'll want to keep your weights high and your repetitions low. If, for instance, you want to build your chest, choose a weight that allows you to go through the entire frame of motion but that's just difficult enough to complete the last couple of reps. A good rule of thumb is to do a warm up set to determine if you should go up or down in weight from your previous bodybuilding workout.
Lean Up
If you're looking to get leaner, you want to make sure that your weights are low but your reps are high. This will allow you to complete your workout more quickly, which increases your heart rate and your metabolism. Also, try to do some sort of cardio between sets. This is called cross training and it keeps your metabolism high in order to burn as much fat as possible.
Four Day A Week Program
On a baseline level, if you are a beginner and you need some quality body building workouts to follow it would probably be best to dedicate four days a week for a mass building program. During this four day a week program, it would be best not to hit any body part more than once a week and make the entire week a cross training routine that hits the entire body. Cross training here refers to mixing up exercises for body parts and does not necessarily refer to mixing cardio workouts into the routine, but if you did wish to add cardio there is nothing wrong with that at all. While this may not seem like an elaborate workout program that is because it isn't an elaborate one! Instead, it is a very simple program that is quite helpful and effective and can greatly aid in achieving one's goals.
No matter which exercises you choose for your bodybuilding workout, make sure that you are working each muscle the same. You don't want to end up with a lopsided body and, besides, if a body part lags behind, it could seriously hurt your progress. For example, if you constantly work your chest and biceps but you neglect your back, you will never get bigger than you are right now. All of your muscle groups should be worked out at the same pace. A good way to get all of your muscle groups in is to do a bodybuilding workout split. That is, work different body parts on different days. This will keep your muscles worked and will allow you more rest, which is essential to any bodybuilding workout.
Play around with different exercises, reps and sets until you get an idea of what works for you. Just remember to keep it safe, don't lift anything too heavy for you and remember to keep your expectations realistic. Any bodybuilding workout takes time to show results so with time and patience and lots of hard work, you should have the physique you're after in no time.
