Every person will respond differently to exercise and body building routines. Some of the things that will influence muscle development are your body type and genetics, your recovery ability, and your current level of strength. If you are just starting out or even intermediate you should never model your routine after an advanced or pro bodybuilder. If you start out following an advanced body building routine you run the risk of overtraining and injuries, that can set you back months.

Body Building Tips

You should set your goal and objective for body building to be reasonable and realistic. You will experience the fastest results and body changes in the first couple of months after beginning to work out. But as your muscles become more used to working out, your progress will start to slow down. To keep progressing you might need to follow better planned body building routines and a more specific diet.

You should keep your body building routines short and intense, no more than 30 – 45 minutes per workout, this also helps avoid overtraining. You should allow aproximately 48 hours to recover between each workout, this means you should have no more than 3 or 4 workout days each week. Just as important for building muscle as working out, is giving your body adequate time to rest.

Focus on Compound Movements

Compound movements are defined as exercises that target different muscle groups at the same time. These are different from the isolation exercises that intermediate and advanced body builders include in their workouts to bring out more definition.

To develop a sense of balance and proper exercise execution, most experts recommend that beginners start out with light free weights. The core of your workouts should consist of dumbbell and barbell exercises.

Recommended exercises

The squat is one of the most important exercises for beginners as well as advanced body builders. It is completely safe if done correctly and can do wonders for your body. The muscle groups involved include the core muscles, abdominals, lower back, the traps, glutes, quads or thighs, hamstrings and parts of the calves. 2 sets of 12 to 15 repetitions is a good starting point.

The bench press is another important compound exercise to have in your body building routines. It effectively hits the chest, shoulders or deltoids, triceps and some parts of the forearms and rib cage. Do 2 sets of 10 to 12 repetitions.

Then there is the bent over row that is easiest to execute using a barbell, this exercise targets most of the back, biceps, rear deltoids, and part of the forearms. Also here do 2 sets with 10 – 12 repetitions.

Other important exercises are the barbell or dumbbell curl, lying triceps extension and the military press. For these three exercises, again do 2 sets of 10 to 12 repetitions.

It would be a good idea to add ab crunches to the above exercises, do 2 sets of 12 – 15 repetitions.

Additional Tips

Do some warm-up exercises for 5 to 10 minutes before doing any lifting. A short jog on the threadmill is sufficient. Before each exercise you should do a light warm-up set to get a feel for the movement and preparing the muscles before doing each workout set. Finish you workout session doing some stretching for 10 minutes.

Don’t use weights that are so heavy that you can’t complete the sets using correct form. Using to heavy weights and bad form can easily cause injury or overtraining. Besides your body building routines, you should keep a training journal to keep track of your progress. You can gradually add more weight to each exercise as your strength develops.

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