I am writing this article to create awareness about the guys who are enthusiastic about bodybuilding and join different gyms for their bodybuilding/ fitness programme. Always pay special attention to availability and quality of instructors in the gym because they play vital role in bodybuilding programme of bodybuilders. Below I will highlight 5 important reasons which will highlight the importance of gym instructors:

1- Gym instructor is the one who is there to guide you about having a well organized workout plan. Workout plan is very important if you want to get good results because it keeps you focused and is tailored according to your body capacity and requirements. Only a good instructor in the gym can understand your body structure and capacity and provide you a plan which is customized as per your needs. So it is a very important aspect of having gym instructors of good quality in the gym.

2- Next comes your diet. Diet is of prime importance in your bodybuilding and a well balanced diet can really produce good results. Again, a good quality instructor can suggest you about your diet plan which again is customized as per your body structure.

3- Third important thing is that you take supplements to get a bit of extra results for bodybuilding. Getting a good supplement which is free from any steroid elements is very important. Role of a good instructor comes into play here again because he advises you correctly that which supplements are good and can be taken.

4- Another important thing is to have a proper rest plan to make sure that you are not over-training your muscles and giving them enough time to grow. A good instructor gives you a proper plan which focuses individual muscle groups to ensure that you do not over-train them and provide them with a good chance of rest.

5- Last but not the least, a good instructor is always there in the gym for your guidance and support to make sure that you are doing exercise right with correct method. Initially, he teaches you how to do exercises by himself performing in front of you and then keeps an eye throughout your training programme to make sure that you are following the instructions that he gave you for training of your muscles.

You must have heard about a number of big factors that affect your bodybuilding. These factors include great workout plans, nutritious diet, use of supplements, your rest plan etc. But there are a number of factors which affect our bodybuilding equally but we often ignore them or do not pay much of the attention. Location of our gym is a similar factor which may not be given due importance but certainly has a lot of effect on our bodybuilding programme. Let me explain how?

Suppose you are starting bodybuilding and you want to join a gym. Now which gym is good for you? Apart from various other factors, location of a gym does matter and must be given proper attention during gym selection phase. Say you join a gym which is at a fair amount of distance from your home or from your working place. Now initially when you are enthusiastic about gym, you will be going regularly and doing your exercise. But after few days or may be after few weeks, you will start skipping your exercise just because of the fact that you are not getting time to go to gym which is at a distant place. Keep in mind that out of all the factors which affect bodybuilding, consistency is really the key for success and getting best results. If you start skipping the gym (which you would tend to do if it is at a distant place), you are actually washing away even your previous efforts.

So make sure that you select a gym at a distance where you can easily go and get your exercise done even if you are busy. I have seen a number of guys who initially join gym enthusiastically but then start skipping just because they start feeling that gym is far away and that is why punctuality is not possible. In some cases they leave the exercise altogether. So if you are planning to go to gym directly from your work place, make sure that gym is in a comfortable range of distance. If you prefer to go gym from home, again the same strategy of less distance matters. So guys, do pay attention to such small factors and do not ignore them because these are equally important for you to see best results

Let us first define frequency training. Frequency training means when you train your body with a particular weight more number of times. I can give you an example here. Say you are lifting dumbbells and each of 3 Kg. Now frequency training would mean that you continue with 3 Kg of these dumbbells and keep increasing number of repetitions or number of sets in your exercise. Similarly, intensity/ weight training is exactly opposite to it. In weight training, you tend to keep your reps or workouts constant but you keep increasing weight. Say you are lifting 3 Kg dumbbell and doing 10 reps per session with 3 or 5 sessions. Intensity training would mean that you keep increasing your weight but your reps or sets remain constant.

Now question arises, which approach gives best results? Let us now see that what happens when we lift weights. Basically when we lift different weights during our workouts, we actually end up splitting and tearing muscle tissues. As a result, muscle tissues repair and grow themselves. Keeping this logic in mind, you can easily get the idea that if we lift heavy, we are going to split more tissues and muscles and when they repair and grow, we get huge muscles. On the other side, if we keep weight same and just increase the reps, we are not going to tear a larger muscle tissues to gain heavy results. Lifting heavy weights puts heavy stress on muscles and makes them split larger and in return, when they get repaired and grow, we see great results.

So if you are a bodybuilder and trying to get good results, always try to go for intensity exercise instead of focusing on frequency exercise. Another drawback for having frequency exercise would be that you lock your strength at a particular level and do not go beyond that. Even if you do, it’s very slow and eventually your result suffers.

Beginners are the most important guys to focus on because they are new to the gym and are very ambitious to do something really big and quick. Such a time is very crucial and important and there is a need for proper guidance to the bodybuilders at this point of time. Therefore a well thought workout plan should be prepared for the starters to make sure that they get a right start.

I have seen many ambitious starters in the gyms, trying to do beyond their stamina, capacity and experience. Why it happens so is because they are new at gyms and see different experienced bodybuilders lifting heavy and having tough and hard workouts and try to copy them. Doing so, they totally forget that the guys they are trying to copy have months or years of experience and stamina and hence have reached at this level. Anyhow, following bodybuilding plan works well for beginners:

1- Pushups are very beneficial and play a vital role for chest building, shoulders and arms. You lie on the ground with your chest facing the ground and arms shoulder width apart. You slowly lower your chest till it is few inches above the ground and then lift it slowly with your elbows locked and not moving sideways. You can perform 3 sets of this exercise with 10-12 reps per set. You may also add weight by decreasing the distance of the arms and this automatically acts as added weight.

2- Second important exercise for biceps is with dumbbells. You hold dumbbells in each hand and keep your arms straight away from your body. Now keeping the elbow locked, you twist your arm towards your shoulders slowly and then bring back to original position.

3- Next good exercise is called bench press. In this exercise, you lie down on a bench and lift dumbbells or rod with weights in the upper direction and then slowly lower it till your chest. It is a simple exercise which can be performed very easily and is effective for chest building.

When you start bodybuilding, you need to act on the following good pieces of advice to get great results:

1- If you are a smoker, make sure that you leave smoking when you start bodybuilding. Smoking, by the way, is not good by any means at all and should be avoided even if you are not a bodybuilder J. However, during bodybuilding, it should be avoided to get good results.

2- Similarly, leave your habit of drinking alcohol. Alcohol really hinders muscle growth and you need to leave it or reduce its intake to a considerable extent to make sure that you get bodybuilding results.

3- Do not over-train your muscles. Over-training puts negative impact on your muscle growth because it damages your muscles to an extent that either they cannot repair themselves or recovery time increases considerably. Make sure that you do not train a particular muscle group or individual muscle more than twice a week. Train muscles twice a week and allow them to have proper rest and repair period.

4- Take smaller chunks of food 5-6 times a day. It ensures that you get steady flow of energy for your muscles throughout the day and this is important for muscle growth during bodybuilding.

5- Try to focus on intensity training rather than frequency training. This means try to lift heavier weights instead of doing more number of reps on smaller weights. Intensity training really helps muscles to grow big. But make sure that you do not start lifting heavy straightaway. Start from small and slowly grow big.

6- Make sure that you are consistent in your training programme. This is the most important advice to you. It is of no use if you do your exercises with gaps i.e you perform first week and then get away for the 2nd week and then may be come back again after few weeks. Consistency is the key to bodybuilding and for any other sports.

Bodybuilding is about workouts and training hard in the gym. Bodybuilders normally believe that more hard you train your body often in the gym, better results you are going to see. Well, folks, this is not the case. Training harder no doubt is good for getting muscles but training hard on regular basis without providing proper recovery time to the muscles and body leads to bad effects and negative results.

Let us first define over-training. Over-training means that you are training a particular muscle or muscle group more times a week than actually it should be. Over-training also means that you are not allowing your body to have certain amount of rest before you re-train it.

Next question which comes to our mind is that how do we know that we are over-training our muscles? I will explain here a few symptoms which can guide you and let you know that you are actually over-training your body. First symptom could be that you feel that your number of sets or reps is decreasing even when you are doing your exercise with a steady weight. If you feel that it is happening from quite a few days, this indicates that you are over-training your muscles. Second symptom is when you have the ability to perform exercise but still you do not want to do it. Or, you feel that you get fatigued earlier. This indicates fatigue of your central nervous system and you need to take rest for a couple of days to get out of it. Similarly, you may find muscles fatigues when you can still workout but your muscles do not let you do it.

Question arises, how to make sure that we do not fall victim to over-training. Answer is very simple; do not train your muscles 6-7 days a week. You should be training muscles only 3-4 times a week and must focus on compound exercises rather than individual muscle exercises. Compound exercises make sure that you train more muscles per session and as a result, get time for proper rest. So make sure to avoid high frequency of training muscles in the week and allow body to repair muscles by having 7-8 hours of rest per day.

Since the bodybuilding trend is increasing day by day and not only young guys but also young girls are getting into it, it becomes important for these beginners to keep in mind certain important points. These points are listed below and must be kept in mind:

1- Bodybuilding is not a magic. It is a sport like many other sports and requires time to produce results. Just as you need time and effort to become a good squash player or a good football player, same is the case with bodybuilding. If you think that the day you enter the gym you will get big muscles, then you are living in a fool’s paradise. Normally I have seen in the gyms that young guys, who have just joined the gym, are very enthusiastic and right after the first day exercise, they take out their shirts and start finding muscle growth. This is absolutely a shit. No player can become a champion right on the first day of his learning period. So keep in mind that bodybuilding is just like other sports and will take time (may be a year or so) to produce good visible results. Some guys who are muscular physically may take a bit of less time as compared to the skinny ones but results would not start coming straightaway.

2- Most important point which beginners must note is to avoid use of drugs or steroids for quick bodybuilding. I have seen young guys taking heavy drugs just to get quick results. I would emphasis again that there is no short-cut to bodybuilding and it needs proper time and efforts to produce results. Young guys who have just joined the gym are very enthusiastic and want quick results. They read different magazines and go over the internet in search of such supplements which claim to give massive muscles in days or weeks. Believe me that such drugs are steroid products and they may give you some quick results but also cause various side effects to you which can be very dangerous. So do not get mislead by various advertisements in magazines or over the internet because such advertisements are there to sell products and least attention is paid to health of the user.

3- A big mistake which starters normally commit is that they see experienced bodybuilders in the gyms and get inspired and start lifting very heavy weights straightaway just because others are doing the same. They forget that other bodybuilders are experienced and have spent time and effort to reach at this level. So always start small and gradually and slowly move to heavier weights.

You must have heard a number of times about the importance of proteins during bodybuilding. Pick up the magazines, go over the internet and read material from different other sources, you will find protein and protein everywhere. Protein plays a vital role in muscle building and using high protein foods is strongly recommended. Proteins consist of building blocks known as amino acids. Amino acids are small units of proteins and huge number of amino acids makes proteins in our body. In this article, I am going to tell you some best and easily available protein sources which can really play vital role in your bodybuilding programme. These sources are:

1- Chicken, known as white meat, is perhaps the best quality protein available because not only it is high in protein but also low in fats. Chicken is easily available item and you can easily add lots of it to your daily diet. You can use chicken by boiling it, grilling it or through baking as well.

2- Next to chicken is fish. I am keeping it at second place due to the fact that it has a higher portion of fats as compared to chicken. No doubt it has high protein value of good quality but fat content is also a bit higher. Fish contains some fats which are also useful for our body like it has omega fatty acids which play role in controlling our cholesterol. Fish is available in great variety and each type of fish has its own value.

3- Beef comes next due to the fact that it has high fat content and some of which is not healthy. When you go out in the market, you must try to buy the beef which is lean and has least amount of fat. But beef has good quality protein and contains B-12 as well which helps muscle building greatly.

4- Eggs and dairy products are also very good sources of proteins but again, their fat content is higher.

5- You can also use whey protein supplements which are instant source of proteins. These supplements are easily digestible and provide good quality of protein to our body. You can use such supplements right after the exercise workouts to get protein which can help your muscle repair and growth.

Keep in mind to add lots of protein foods when you start your bodybuilding programme.

While most of the guys prefer joining gyms for their bodybuilding programme, a few also try to do it at home due to the fact that they do not find enough time to go to gym or perhaps they do not have gym near their homes. A few guys cannot afford heavy gym fees and hence try to do bodybuilding at home. When we talk about bodybuilding, perhaps the most important thing we look at is the chest building. I will explain below a few good exercises which can bring excellent results for chest building at home:

1- Most important chest building exercise is push-ups. You can perform it easily with your hands either on ground or at any elevated area. Put your hands down with your arms straight. Now you slowly take your chest down with all weight on your arms/hands and slowly bend your arms. When your chest is only a few inches above the ground or the surface, you slowly lift it with your elbows locked i.e they should not move sideways. You can decrease the distance between the hands to increase weight which will result in high intensity training.

2- Lifting dumbbells is again a good exercise for chest building. You can lie on bench and hold weights in both the hands with your arms straight upwards. Now you slowly bring the weights down towards chest with your elbows perpendicular to the direction of the arms. You need to lower the weight till your elbows become at a lower level than your shoulders. You can gradually add weights to increase intensity level of your exercise.

3- Backward dips are also good. You can stand between the two parallel bars and lift yourself up by putting hands on bars and lifting yourself up gradually. Once you are up, you need to lower your body in the same way till your elbows become perpendicular to your direction of motion.

This chest building plan can really help you a great deal to build your muscles and get a great chest.

Bodybuilding is all about training yourself and therefore you need some good tips to make your training effective. I am giving you 10 great tips which you can follow to see excellent results. These are:

1- Use multi-vitamins during your exercise periods because multi-vitamins are really required by our body in any case. These vitamins help various body parts to perform better and hence produce good results.

2- Eat food with some good quality proteins before and after your workouts as pre and post supplements. Pre-eaten food gives you energy to undergo heavy training and post-eaten food makes sure that you get the calories which were burnt during exercise and get your energy back. It is advised that you take pre and post supplements 30-45 minutes before and after exercise.

3- Split your food intake and divide it to 5-6 times a day. It makes sure that your body keeps getting energy all the day long.

4- Focus on intensity training rather than frequency training. Intensity training means that lift heavy which will give boost to your muscles.

5- Always warm up your body before starting your exercise. It ensures that you do not fall victim to injuries because starting heavy training straightaway is dangerous for your muscles and can cause muscle cramps or invite injuries. Warming up for 4-5 minutes prepares your body for lifting.

6- Make sure that you do not over train your muscles because then your muscles may find it very difficult to repair themselves. Training any muscle or muscle group twice a week is sufficient for growth.

7- Perform around 10 repetitions per set with 3 to 5 sets per session. Going beyond this number can again fall in to the category of over-training which is not good.

8- If you are training in summer, try to take lots of water to avoid dehydration. Dehydration could be very dangerous especially in summer and you should take water or any liquid too often during training.

9- Follow a good workout plan which keeps you focused in your exercise. Just going gym and start doing random exercises is less effective as compared to when you follow a certain workout plan.

10- Last but not least, take good supplements to ensure that you get better results. Supplements should not be any steroid product but must be advised by a proper trainer or physician.