10 tips from a bodybuilder for beginners

10 things that every beginner needs to know when going to the gym. Bonus, each tip is accompanied by one for the advanced, to use it when you reach that stage.

1 - Learn to do the exercises correctly

Tip for Beginners: Most see in rounded rear halls for rounds, partial jaws and partial presses for no particular reason. Take time to learn to do the exercises properly and you can train your whole life with constant progressions. You start with the weight of your body, then progress to the bare bar. Then when you really learned the movement, add weight slowly and steadily. If you do not have a perfect weight-free technique, what's the point of adding discs to the bar? When you have a perfect technique, heaven is the limit!

If the movement is not correct, you will not be able to get it. You can not run before you learn to go, so first learn to go! Look at our exercise base and put them into practice.

Tip for advanced: After learning and improving your technique you can use the following methods to specialize your workouts. For example, if you want bigger thighs, do more Olympic-style squats (the top bar on your neck and legs). Make Olympic strikes for the explosive force (after lifting your shoulder strap to the ears), classical strains for force and sumo straights to develop your heels and femorals.
2 - Learn basic principles

Tip for beginners: Learn to make all variations of genuflexions, straights, racks, tractions and presses. Learn these exercises and 70% of the war is won. These exercises are mandatory for anyone who is serious about strength and muscle mass. The basis of all workouts must remain compound, multi-articulated exercises - teach them, master them, repeat them and improve them. A 10 sets of kickbacks or rebounds will have much, much greater effect than the same number of sets on a device.

Advice for advanced: After learning the basics, you can improve any exercise by manipulating the tempo (the pace at which you lower and lift the hardships). This will make your exercise harder, you will stimulate more muscle fibers, and you will have a variety of exercises. For example: Make 3 sets of twelve repetitions of genuflexions. Do the first 4 reps with a two second pause at the bottom, then do the next 4 lowering the weight in 5 seconds. Finish the set with 4 "normal" reps. Or make 3 sets of 10 reversing traction repetitions. Take the first 5 repetitions with a 3 second pause and a 3-second lowering of the body. Do the rest of the 5 explosive reps.
3 - Consolidate your strength

Tip for Beginners: You will not have big legs if you make 50 kilograms and you will not have a big chest if you push 10 kg dumbbells. No one is born by making 200 pounds and pushing 150 pounds from the chest - increasing strength requires time. Assuming you've learned how to do basic exercises, you also need strengths in your training program, that is, doing a lot of repetitions with heavy weights and longer breaks between sets. Do 10 sets of squats of 3-4 reps each, or 8 sets of 5 reps. In order to increase your strength it takes a lot of weight, which will not allow you to do many repetitions. And in order to have enough stimuli, a larger number of sets is needed to get a high enough volume (training volume is the total number of repetitions and sets you are doing at a training session).

More breaks are needed between such sets to recover completely. Do not forget, muscle strength is especially an adaptation of the nervous system, more than a muscle adaptation; And the nervous system takes a little more time to recover after a hard set than the muscles. As a first step, you should have as your target to make gestures with a weight equal to that of your body. If you have 70kg, you should train yourself to make a 70kg rear bump.

Advice for advanced: Once you have strengthened your strength, try to vary the number of repetitions you do in compound exercises per week. To constantly vary, the number of repetitions brings new stimuli and strengthens your nervous system. It helps you not to overdo it.

Here's an example:

    Week 1: 10 sets x 3 reps
    Week 2: 8 sets x 5 reps
    Week 3: 6 sets x 8 reps
    Week 4: Two waves of 5/3/1 reps

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4 - Learn the Olympic exercises

Tip for beginners: Olympic exercises are frustrating, difficult and require a lot of time and practice to teach them correctly. But if you master throwing and snatching, throwing into force and pulling out in force and other such exercises, then any other bodybuilding exercise will look easy. Benefits include power, strength, flexibility and coordination. Take time to learn.

Tip for advanced: After learning, do Olympic exercises 1-3 times a week. Activate the nervous system, give you mobility, put your blood on the move and so the rest of the training will seem easier. Do this at the beginning of a back, leg or shoulder workout:

    Rear: throw, 5 sets x 5 reps.
    Shoulders: Rigged, 6 sets x 3 reps.
    Legs: snapped, 3 sets x 5 reps.

5 - Make the entire range of motion at all exercises

Tip for Beginners: Always take the entire range of exercise to all the exercises, especially the basics. Fold down to the bottom, touch the chest with the dumbbell when pushing for the chest and pulling the chin by the bar. Hypertrophy (muscle growth) is much higher when you have a full range of motion than when you do partial repetitions. Such an approach also protects you from injuries.

Advance tips: Making the entire range of movement is just as important when you're advanced, but using repeat parts allows you to expand a set, which is useful to increase muscle tension and cause greater pumping.

For example, at pushing the lying down, you can do this:

    10 complete reps
    10 partial reps
    How many forced reps you can

6 - Keep your flexibility

Tips for beginners: The more flexible / mobile you are, the less likely you are to get hurt. And you'll be even more functional in day-to-day life. Take 5-10 minutes of dynamic stretching per day, possibly separated from the workout. It is a minimal investment but very useful in the long run.

Tip for advanced: As the muscle mass increases, mobility is affected. And sometimes only dynamic stretching is not enough. Learn to stretch weights and invest in a few visits per month to a chiropractor.

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7 - Change is good

Tip for Beginners: If you want to train for a long period of time, you learn to always change what you do in the strength room (angles, sockets, exercises, sets, repetitions, technique, etc.).
The key is to constantly stimulate your body in new ways than always doing the same thing. You always have to do it in one form or another, but the way you do it requires variation. It is the most useful tool to progress steadily. Remember, the strength training base is the same since the 1900s; In time only the methodology has changed.

Advanced Tip: Combine giant sets and descending sets. It seems crazy, but it will definitely dangle your body. Do not use this method until 3-4 weeks. And do it at the end of the training.

Chest giant set in descending style, 2-3 sets of 24 reps:

    Impressed with dumbbells 8/8/8
    Fluturari la deck deck 8/8/8
    Improved with dumbbells declining 8/8/8

There is no pause between the exercises, it goes directly from one to the other. At each exercise, there are 8 repetitions, then the weight is reduced by 50%, there are another 8 reps and then the weight is reduced again and another 8 reps are done. So each giant set has 72 reps.

8 - It takes time

Tip for Beginners: It is said, Rome was not built one day. You will not become Mr. Olympia, and you will not downgrade world records in just a few years. You have to be realistic! Focus on constant improvements from training to training, however small they are. Over time they will accumulate.

Advance Tip: To correctly record your progress once a year, a DEXA test that measures your muscle mass and fat. So you know exactly how you're progressing. Of course a good option to use more often is the mirror.

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9 - Train intensely

Tip for Beginners: You will always think you train hard, until you see someone who trains hard. Whatever you do now, you can improve and intensify! And no, you will not overeat. It is good now to make 10 squats with 80 kg. But motivate yourself to train to make 20 repetitions of 80 kg. Do not be afraid to add weights and sets to training. Increase the intensity at each training. There are 3 rules to succeed in the gym and in any sport: a lot of work, lots of work and lots of work!

Advice for advanced: Every time you think you train intensely, at the end of the set ask yourself this question: if someone would hold you a gun at the damp and tell you to do a repeat if you do not shoot .. Could you do it anymore? If so, then you can do more than that! If not, you have reached your limits.
10 - Find a coach / training partner

Tip for Beginners: The best progress you make with people who have more knowledge than yours. They push you to your own limits. Healthy competition is a good thing, so surround yourself with people who know what they are doing and listen to them!

Tip for advanced: All major champions have a coach. It does not mean that you are inferior and do not know what to do if you have a coach. You can learn from them, just as they can learn from you.