14 best tips for beginner body builder

If you’re starting out in bodybuilding, there’s one thing you need to get clear before almost anything else: You probably have a lot to learn if you want to be truly successful. Don’t get me wrong; bodybuilding isn’t necessarily complicated and you don’t need a university degree to do this stuff right, but there’s probably a lot more to this stuff than you think, and if you haven’t yet started acquiring good knowledge on the subject, now is the time to do so. To set you off on a good start, we have compiled a bunch of tips especially targeted at beginners (and in many cases equally applicable to people who have been at it for a long tim). Enjoy! Rome was not built in a day. Bodybuilding takes time – a very long time, in fact. A Beverly Hills mansion usually takes a lot shorter time to build than a great body. If you want to succeed at this stuff, put in the work day in a day out, week after week, month after month and year after year, and don’t worry so much about how long it takes. If you’re just starting out you’ll see measurable results in a short time, and if you keep doing things right you’ll get GREAT results somewhere down the road. Be patient. It’s worth it, trust me. Make injury prevention one of your primary concerns. Seriously. Don’t trivialize that stuff – you’ll regret it sooner than you think, and perhaps for a lot longer than you think too. If you train in a way that will get you injured, remember that you probably will NOT be able to train properly – or at all – when you ARE injured. Injuries are going to mess with the results you get. Train safely and correctly – at ALL times. Focus your training on becoming stronger in the big exercises. Many, if not most, of today’s top bodybuilders started out lifting for strength and power. A program like 5×5 can be absolutely fantastic for beginners, helping them gain strength and mass and giving them a solid foundation for even more mass down the road. Besides, it’s fun to lift more than others at the gym, and that will probably motivate you to keep going there! Focus on the major exercises like bench presses, bent over rows, standing presses, squats and deadlifts. Get super strong in those while eating like a mad man, and you WILL get bigger. Free weights is the way to go, not machines. Free weights offer a range of advantages of machines, so focus your training around free weight exercises. Sometimes, beginners are adviced to use machines “because they are safer than free weights.” That kind of advice is stupid. Start using free weights from day one, and you’re LESS likely to get injured down the road than if you start out using just machines. Learn how to perform every exercise perfectly. This will not only help you stay injury free, but will also help you get faster and better results from your efforts. Have someone at the gym help you learn the exercises properly – someone who is NOT a fellow beginner. Oftentimes, less is more. Doing more won’t always help you get more. For instance, many find that when they reduce their training load, they get better results. Shorter workouts are generally much better than long ones – I usually spend around 45 minutes in the gym at a time, and never 90-120 minutes like I sometimes did in the past. A whole body routine three times per week will be better than most split routines. For beginners (and in many cases more experienced bodybuilders too) a whole body routine done three times per week will be hard to beat. When you’re starting out, you don’t need to blast your muscles with tons of sets to get results. Perform as little as 2-3 sets per body part, and you’ll be able to hit the gym again 48 hours later – which is actually ideal given what we know about protein synthesis as a response to exercise. The kitchen is as important as the gym! What happens in the kitchen is of crucial concern to your bodybuilding success. You have to eat correctly – and probably eat a lot too – if you want to get big and muscular. Simply put: that means getting ample amounts of protein throughout the day, sufficient amounts of ALL vital nutrients (yes, even the “boring” vitamins and minerals need to be watched!), plenty of clean food, and lots of carbs (particularly after training) and good fats. Typical bodybuilding food includes clean meat, fish, protein supplements, rice, various vegetables, fruits, eggs, nuts and seeds and on. Make an effort to learn all you can about food, and apply it. Correct eating is vital to your success. Sleep and rest – get plenty of both. Your muscles do not grow in the gym (even though it may seem that way when you have a great “pump”), they grow when you rest and sleep. Get at least 8 hours of quality sleep every night (in fact, make great sleep one of you your priorities in life, it’ll do you good in more ways than you can count) and make sure you get plenty of sleep Keep a training journal from day one – or, at least, from today! Keeping track of what you’re doing is going to be of immense help down the road. Write down everything you do in the gym, and – if you have the time for it (I must admit, I sometimes don’t) – everything else that’s relevant, like diet, what’s going on in your life right now (stress etc), number of hours slept, any illnesses and so on. Understand that the best advice rarely come from the biggest guy at the gym. Many beginners make the mistake of assuming that the biggest (or most well trained) person at the gym automatically also knows the most about training and nutrition and everything else that relates to bodybuilding. In our experience, that is rarely the case. There are plenty of reasons why someone would get absolutely huge without being qualified to help you do the same, and these include – but are not limited to – a superb genetic make up, drug use and so on. Of course, this doesn’t mean you should ask some Woody Allen lookalike for help either, even if they claim to be an expert on the subject. Instead, get a feel for who knows their stuff by looking both at the results they’re getting AND their reputation as a good source of information. Keep a relaxed attitude towards sports supplements. Many bodybuilders focus WAY too much on supplements, something which probably does more harm than good. After all, supplements can only give you so much, and if you focus too much on something that doesn’t matter all that much, it probably means that some other area is going to suffer because it gets too little focus. Sure, use some supplements like multi vitamins and protein powders and whatever else you may need or be deficient in, but don’t go overboard on the stuff – there’s no need to, and it probably won’t help much either, at least not at this point. Don’t train like the pros. One crucial mistake many beginners make is to try and emulate what the pros do in the gym – which doesn’t work very well at all. You may think you’re doing something smart, but instead you’re going to look like a complete clown to anyone who has a clue, and your results will suffer too. Pros can train the way they do because they have years and decades of training behind them, absolutely exceptional genes, and probably a helpful pharmacist as well. This is probably not the case with you, so your training probably needs to be different from most of the dudes on the cover of Flex Magazine. Get a good training partner. Having a good training partner can be a fantastic aid to your bodybuilding success. Find someone who is (ideally) more experienced than you, positive, dependable (if they miss a workout, chances of you missing one may increase substantially) knowledgeable and willing to push you on a consistent basis so that you reach your goals.