For Beginners

Getting started
Being a beginner once, I can relate to how you felt on your first visit to a gym. You leave home thinking that all you need to do is enter the gym, work on the machines and you will see amazing results. Upon reaching the gym, you look around and see many machines and people doing all sorts of exercises. You feel lost. You have always thought that you have some muscular development already (although you don't) so you wear a tight singlet, but now you see guys with real muscles, arms the size of your head lifting amazing poundages. You even see an old man in a corner with a physique that puts you to shame. Welcome to the gym!

Learn to crawl before you walk!
A mistake alot of beginners make is to embark on their bodybuilding journey without doing any homework or reading up prior to it. If you are reading this now, you are making a pretty good first step! Generally, people think building muscle is a fairly easy thing to do and their approach is often based on assumptions, random people's teachings and stuff that they saw on TV. I have seen many beginners come into the gym and start doing random exercises.

You will need a strategic training plan that specifically triggers muscle growth. Training plans can be diverse in terms of exercises and routines, but the fundamentals would be very similar. More on this in the Training Section!

Just Working Out Won't Build Muscle
Unlike most other sports like soccer, basketball or track and field, you can't see significant progress in bodybuilding by just working out. A bodybuilding diet will be required to make any muscle growth possible. Protein is the only macronutrient that the body can use to build new muscle. Do you know that most people consume only 20% of the protein they need even for a sedentary life? So how much protein will you need to build muscle? How do you do the math? More on this in the Nutrition section!

Supplements
Most people assume that sports/bodybuilding supplements are magic potions and an easy way out for building muscle. The fact is, supplements are just powdered food, extracts of the right / necessary nutrients from normal food products. The fancy names can be misleading. For example, a "Weight Gainer" might sound steroidal, but its really just a protein and carbohydrate powder made from cows milk and botanical carbohydrates. Do read my Supplements section, to find out more.

What kind of progress will you see?
Provided you get your diet right, you will see the most growth during your first year. One can gain up to 10kg (22 lbs), teenagers might even gain up to 20kg (44 lbs) due to their hormonal surges from puberty! The drastic changes in the initial stage is caused your body being shocked into adapting to the sudden workload and the availability of nutrients for it to do so. Thereafter, growth will slow down to perhaps 7kg (15 lbs) per year or less. A good rule of the thumb is to try to gain 1kg (2.2 lbs) every month. This might not be much, but if you do that for 12 months, you can potentially gain 12kg (26 lbs)!

"Bulking and Cutting" versus "Clean Bulking"
Going high on the calories to support muscle growth might make some people gain a little bodyfat too. This has created two schools of thought in terms of building muscle. On one hand, some bodybuilders believe in 'Bulking and Cutting' phases. During the 'bulking' phase, they go very high on the calories to make gains without regard to how much bodyfat they gain. Once they have accomplished their goal, they will then go on a 'cutting' phase where they lean out via a lower calorie diet. Most do this 'cutting' phase specifically for a bodybuilding contest, photoshoot, etc and balloon up again as soon as its over. In fact most competitive bodybuilders follow this school of thought.

Others, (myself included) prefer "Clean Bulking", namely minimizing fat gain during bulking by not exceeding the calories by too much. Perhaps those who are starting out and already holding extra bodyfat might prefer this method. Good news for you is that the new muscle you gain will definitely increase your metabolic rate, and you might loose bodyfat as a result even at high (but not excessively high) caloric ranges.

Rest and Recovery
Many people believe that muscles grow during workouts, and prolong their workouts for 3 or 4 hours! In actual fact, muscles can only grow during sleep, after 5 or 6 consecutive hours of it. Therefore, you should get at least 6 hours of sleep, especially on training days. Your body will focus on processes like liver detox and vital organ maintenance during the first few hours of sleep. Muscle maintenance and recovery will only be carried out when everything else is fulfilled. So rest at least 6 hours to ensure that your body can reach the muscle recovery and growth stage of sleep! Zzzzzzzzz

Over Training
Over training is when your workload exceeds your body's capability to recover from it. Here are some examples of over training:

- Training for too long
- Training too many body parts
- Training for too many consecutive days without a rest day
- Training a particular muscle group for too long or doing too many sets
- Training a particular muscle group too frequently

The concept of weights training is to provide a workload, which causes small tears in your muscles that trigger recovery and growth. This process has limitations. Crossing the limits will leave you with too many tears and/or in too many muscle groups. If your body gets overwhelmed by the amount of recovery it needs to do, it will protect itself by shutting down so that you won't be able to cause more tears. Your body will need extra protein for vital organ recovery etc etc, therefore, it will break down your muscle fibers for the protein it needs. It will release stress hormones like cortisol and estrogen. Those increase body fat, and slow down fat burning. This is actually a protective mechanism that tries to maximize the use of your body's reserves and minimize its output. All the stress hormones will make you feel extremely tired and lethargic. You will not be able to get up from bed, soreness will last longer, fatigue sets in, headaches, bad mood and you start getting sick easily. As you can see, over-training slows down your progress and will cause problems in your daily life. Do keep a look out for symptoms of over-training, and listen to your body. Take time off training if its necessary. You will be better for the gym when you get back.


Well, I guess that is about it for an overview. A little more homework on your part and you are ready to go! Check out the other sections for more.