Friday, October 28, 2005

a few more bodybuilding tips




  • Don't believe everything you read in books. Many articles written in muscle magazines are written from a 'hard core' perspective. When they say that you must wait at least 48 hours before training a muscle group again, that is because they are doing 5-8 exercises per body part. If you are doing a full body program where each body-part is only worked with 2-3 exercises, you can get away with training 2 days in a row. In fact, one of the fastest ways to fatigue the muscles is through full body training on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, with Wednesday and Sunday as recovery days.
  • If you sustain a joint injury, some exercises can add to the pain.
    • Shoulder: upright row, pec deck, lat pulldown, incline dumbbell press.
    • Lower back: squats, deadlifts, back extensions, any exercise where you are bent at the waist.
    • Knee: leg extension.
  • Don't fall into the trap of only doing "Beach Weights"! This is when you primarily train chest and biceps, just the muscles people like to show off. This will lead to an imbalance in the joints, which will cause injury. But more importantly for the person looking for substantial increases in muscle mass, it will limit your growth. The back muscles make up a huge portion of the upper body so by building it up you will give the impression of a thicker, more muscular body which in turn will make your chest stand out more. The same goes for the arms. The triceps make up 2/3rds of the arms and the biceps 1/3rd but most young guys primarily train biceps. Work the triceps hard as well and your arms will grow 2-3 times faster!
  • The best repetition range to build muscle and add size is 8-15. The weight used should fall into this rep range. If you can get 15 then it is too light and you need to increase the weight . If you can't get 8 out then it is too heavy and you need to decrease the weight.

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