Health Articles for Bodybuilding

Never train through injuries. If an injury does not clear up quickly by itself, see a training-orientated injury specialist. Investigate the probable trigger of the injury (incorrect training), correct it, and do not let it happen again. And when you get an injury, investigate non-intrusive and non-drug therapies.

Those who hoist the biggest poundages do not necessarily have the biggest muscles. It is not just sheer poundage that matters. Individual leverages, type of training used, lifting support gear (in powerlifting), muscle composition factors, neurological efficiency, and lifting technique, among other elements, account for differences in muscular development among individuals of similar strength levels. But for every individual—keeping all other factors constant—if bigger weights are built up to, then bigger muscles will be developed.

Focus on the big basic lifts and their variations. Do this for most of your training time. Do not try to build yourself up using tools of detail. Leg extensions do not build big thighs, and pecdeck work does not build big chests.

You cannot get very powerful in the big and key basic exercises without getting impressive throughout your body.

For appearance-first bodybuilders, only when you are already big and strong (but without having gotten fat) should you even consider concerning yourself with attaining outstanding definition, and the finishing touches of perfect balance and symmetry. Build the substance before you concern yourself with the detail. Perfectly proportioned and well cut up “bags of bones” do not look impressive. If you concern yourself too soon with detail work, as is nearly always the case with bodybuilders, you will never be able to apply the effort, focus and recuperative ability needed to get big in the first place. What is by far the biggest deficiency in a typical sampling of gym trainees? Plain muscle and strength. Despite this most trainees arrange their training so that the last things they will ever develop are lots of muscle and strength.

If you want to add two inches to your arms, for example, bank on having to add thirty or more pounds of muscle to your whole body. You cannot do that by focusing your attention on your arms. Get your body growing as a unit, concentrating largely on leg and back work. About two thirds of your body’s total muscle mass is in your legs, buttocks and back. The shoulders, chest, abdominals and arms only make up about a third of your muscle mass, so do not go giving those areas in total any more than one third of your total weight-training attention.

While competitive bodybuilding and powerlifting act as terrific deadline creators, do not enter without expecting competition from drug users. Testing is either non-existent or such a joke that some of the most prominent “naturals” are well-juiced.

A much more realistic and fair type of competition is to set up something informal with a training partner, friend or pen pal. Make it bodyweight related for maximum reps for each exercise, e.g., squat 150% bodyweight, bench press bodyweight, and barbell curl 50% bodyweight. Set the date of the competition a few months away, structure a training cycle to peak on the meet day, gear yourself up for it, apply yourself with zeal to the preparatory training, and then give forth of your very best on the big day.

Alternatively, compete with yourself. Add an end-of-cycle test day to each of your programs. On the test day perform a fixed challenge workout radically different from how you normally train. Each time you do it, give your all to bettering what you did the previous time. Take a few days rest from your previous workout prior to the test session. Here are some suggestions:


You could impose a time limit if the reps will be very high, e.g., maximum reps within 15 minutes; and you could use percentages of bodyweight rather than fixed weights. You could even get away from regular weight-training exercises for competition days, or use a mixture. Use your imagination and find some movements you would enjoy performing. For example, you could perform your maximum number of floor pushups (perhaps put a time limit on it), walk with a given pair of heavy objects for time, hold a 2-inch bar loaded to 100 pounds for time, etc.