subject: How To Plan Out Your Muscle Building Routines [print this page] Some people will tell you that diet is the most important part of bodybuilding - this is nonsense. The most important part by far is program design, or in other words the exercises that you do, and when you do them.
Heres why;
You can have the worlds best diet, and you can be getting tons of rest, but if youre not stimulating muscle gains it all means nothing. Yes, diet and rest are important, but the bottom line is that if youre not stimulating muscle gains nothing will happen.
That said, the most important thing is to choose the exercises that stimulate the largest amount of muscle. This is the most efficient way to train, because you can train your major muscle groups faster, and therefore your entire body faster.
This is another area where so many people in gyms all over the world go wrong. They spend four or more days a week in the gym doing things like bicep curls, and tricep kickbacks.
Did you know that over two thirds of your muscle mass is contained in your legs and back?
In theory then, this means that if you gained 10lbs muscle, 6.6lb at least would go onto your legs and back. Therefore the most important exercises to do are the ones that affect your legs and back.
Golden rule of bodybuilding number one is to build the largest muscles in the body first - I wish someone had carved this on my forehead thirty years ago when I started hitting the weights - I reckon Id be a lot bigger now!
A welcome side effect of doing this is that it makes it easier to build the smaller muscle groups - a bit like dropping a stone into a pond - the larger the stone, the more ripples it causes.
This is also known as indirect effect - but please note it doesnt work the other way around - if you build the smaller muscles first, it doesnt make it easier to build the larger muscles.
This is why you often hear that Compound exercises are king.
For that, read dead lift, squat, chin, dip, bench press, overhead press - in that order.
Now it could well be that if youre starting out, youre not strong enough to squat with any weight on the bar, or to dead lift with any weight on the bar.
This doesnt matter - if you have to, start doing those movements with the bar only. Then very gradually add small amounts of weight to the bar each workout you do.
If youre just starting out (regardless of age - and I assume youve got doctors clearance if it was needed.), you could do three workouts a week, with just one set of ten reps for each exercise.
The most important thing is to get started, and once youve started, to stick with it!
As you get more experience, youll also get stronger, so you can add more weight to the bar. Then, you could look at doing say two work sets per movement, and cutting your workouts back to two a week.
The idea is to give work to the large leg muscles in the thighs, plus the back muscles - and the squat and dead lift are the absolute two best exercises to do this.
So when you plan your routines, make sure that you have plenty of compound movements in them - this is proven to be the fastest way to build your body up, regardless of your age and level of fitness now.
