Weights training activates muscle growth (hypertrophy). Many bodybuilders only do weights training, but no aerobic (cardio) work at all! We should incorporate aerobic exercises as well. Weights training has countless benefits like hypertrophy, strength, strengthening of bones and joints, and indirect fat-loss, but it's effects on heart health and fat loss are not as prominent as cardio exercises. Aerobic work increases your stamina, energy levels, contributes directly to fat loss and most importantly, improves heart health.
Practicality: Imagine being the buff dude among your friends, but being the first to run out of breath when walking up a slope. Embarrassing, isn't it? This will happen to many bodybuilders, particularly because we hold more muscle weight than normal people. Also, the high calorie diets required to add muscle will/might increase your body fat levels as well. Aerobic work can tilt the balance in your favor. More on aerobic and cardio exercises in the
Fat Loss and
Abs sections.
Weights Training
What kind of exercises do I do?
In the gym, you'll see all kinds of weird contraptions, some even resembling torture chairs! So which do you do? I would recommend you go for free weight exercises (using barbells and dumbbells) as much as possible. Machines restrict the range of motion and the eccentric portions, making the exercises a lot less beneficial. Which particular exercises to do? I personally feel that there are no correct or wrong exercises. Every exercise is a correct exercise as long as you do it correctly. What do I mean by do it correctly? Read all about "Form" below and you will understand.
Form
Form is when you do an exercise in a slow controlled manner, using your mind to ensure that a particular muscle group you are working out is doing most of the work. Here is something you can try to understand it better. Get a barbell and do a few reps of bicep curls. You probably just felt a little breathless, warm and a little soreness in the biceps.
Now get the bar again. When you lower the bar, do so slowly and deliberately FEEL your biceps stretching. When you curl, deliberately FEEL your biceps pulling your forearms towards your body. Now, you'll realize you feel a different kind of soreness in your biceps. They would also look bigger, as blood flow into them increased. This is due to the fact that you used your mind and forced your biceps to do most of the work. That is what "form" means. Basically it is
mind to muscle communication to ensure that the correct or targeted muscle group is doing most of the work.
It takes practice and focus to get your form right. Form makes the difference between reaping the benefits of an exercise, or just wasting time and energy. I have noticed that a lot of guys going to the gym to show off how much weight they can lift. Doing this, especially in the beginning stage will slow down your progress. Reason being your objective of working out a particular muscle group changes to moving the weight from point A to B instead. This will throw off your form and instead of training a particular muscle, you will move the bar from start to end with other unnecessary muscle groups. I'll use the bench press as an example. When you decide to forgo your form and show off how much you can lift, you will end up using your delts and triceps excessively to assist in the lifts. In the end, you will not really train either of those muscles to the best extent possible, and risk getting injuries.
Think about this phrase, "
take a light weight and make it feel heavy by doing it slowly". As you grow, your strength will catch up and you will be able to handle much heavier weights with proper form. So don't sacrifice your energy and muscle building time to show off. Develop the muscles first and let them do the talking later. It would be a good idea to find out which exact muscle group is supposed to do most of the work in any exercise before you perform it. This will help you to narrow down your focus and form.
How do I train all the necessary muscle groups?
I see many people do a full body workouts. If your goal is to develop new muscle, this is not a good idea. Your body can only grow so much at a time. Train too many muscle groups in one session and your body will have too much to recover from, it will never be able to add much new muscle if any. Split all the muscle groups up and train 2 or 3 muscle groups per session. You should hit all the groups at least once a week by having 3 to 4 sessions throughout the week.
What are the various groups and how do I split up?
You can split the muscle groups into major and minor parts. Basically a major part is a bigger muscle group and a minor part is a smaller group.
Major parts:
Chest, Back, Deltoids, Quadriceps and Hamstrings
Minor parts:
Biceps, Triceps, Forearms, Traps, Abs and Calves
How often do I train them?
Basically, you just need to hit every muscle group once a week. A good way to go about it will be to train one major part and 1 or 2 minor parts each time you hit the gym. A sample beginner's training plan for a week would look like this:
Day 1: Quads, Hams, Calves, Abs
Day 2: Rest
Day 3: Chest, Delts Triceps, Cardio
Day 4: Rest
Day 5: Back, Biceps, Forearms
Day 6: Abs, Cardio
Day 7: Rest
As you can see, all the muscles groups are trained within the week, only 3 groups tops per training, and 1 rest day for every 1 or 2 training days. This is only a weights training plan. You should throw in at least 30 minutes of cardio once to thrice a week to keep bodyfat off and keep your heart healthy. You can do cardio after weights training, or on a separate day. Take note that its a bad idea to hit your cardio right before your weights training.
Strategic Arrangement of Muscle Groups for Training
You will notice that certain muscle groups mostly push weights away from your body, while others pull weights towards your body. For example, the chest, deltoids and triceps primarily push weights away, while the back and biceps pull weights towards yourself. Many people do a weekly split involving a push day, a pull day, and a legs day.
This is a great way to arrange your training cycle. It makes logical sense, because for example when you do back exercises, your biceps, traps and bracialis will assist in all the movements. By the time you are done with back training, your supporting "pull" muscles, namely the biceps, traps and bracialis are "half trained". Thus, it will be a great time to do a few more sets for these muscles, and you can let them rest for the rest of the week. It can take 3 to 4 days for your muscles to recover from training. Training them again within this period will interrupt their recovery and slow down your progress. This way, your next workout will be a push day or legs day, where the pull muscles won't be involved, thus they won't experience any interruption to their recovery.
In summary, its ideal to train the major muscle groups together with their supporting minor muscle groups in the same workout. If you do the opposite, for example you train back and triceps, when you go into your chest day, your triceps are not recovered yet. Thus it will affect your chest training as your triceps are tired and not optimally supporting your chest exercises, and they will also experience an interruption to their ongoing recovery.
How many sets and reps?
3 to 4 exercises for major muscle groups, and 1 to 2 exercises for minor muscle groups
Do 1 to 2 warm up sets before the very first exercise, using very light weights for 15 to 20 reps
Do 4 working sets for each exercise, using more weight after each set. Ideal rep range will be 15 to 6 reps. Do every set to failure. If you can do more reps than what you predicted to do, just do the extra reps until you reach failure.
Some Exercises for the various Parts
Chest
Bench Presses (Flat, Inclined or Declined bench)
Smith Machine Bench Presses (Flat, Inclined or Declined bench)
Dumbbell presses or flyes (Flat, Inclined or Declined bench)
Dips
Cable crossovers
Bench Press
100kg Incline Bench Presses
Cable Crossover + Push Ups Superset
Back
Lat pull downs, Pull ups, Seated Cable Rows, T-Bar Rows, Dumbbell Rows
Barbell Rows
Deltoids
Shoulder presses (using Olympic bar, Smith machine or dumbbells)
Side, Front or Bent Over raises
Olympic Bar Shoulder Presses and its benefits in Pro-Wrestling
Quadriceps
Squats, Leg presses, Leg extensions, Lunges, Hack squatts
Leg Presses
Hamstrings
Deadlifts (especially stiff-legged deadlifts), Hamstring curls
180kg Stiff-legged Deadlifts
Biceps
Bicep curls, Preacher curls, or Hammer curls (using barbell or dumbells)
Bicep Curls
Triceps
Skull crushers, Close-grip bench presses, Pulley pushdown, Overhead dumbbell extensions
Traps
Shrugs (barbell or dumbells)
Abs
Decline bench sit ups, hanging leg lifts, gym ball crunches
(Will add more demonstration pics soon :D)
