In our previous articles, starting with Body Building – Where to Begin and Preparing Your Body and Muscle Coordination for Body Building, we provided some of the basics of getting into the body building routines, which included the crucial aspects of goal setting, mental and physical preparation and conditioning. Within this article we will take a look at increasing the actual workouts, as well as the intensity of these body building activities.

The same principles discussed within the conditioning process should be retained here, however the volume of workouts should increase, actually double in order to take the body building program to the next level. This can typically progress from the third week onwards, and your body should be ready to proceed accordingly. The amount of sets that are completed per major muscle group or body part should be around three sets each, but more importantly one has to ensure that the form and manner of the sets and techniques are absolutely correct, which again highlights the importance of getting the basics right from the very beginning when it comes to body building.

With the increased amount of ‘work’, that your body building routine will be placing upon the body it is important to implement a strategy that is commonly referred to as split routines, which is essentially breaking up the full body workout into two separate body building phases. This is due to the fact that the increased amount of workouts and the intensity will be too much for the body, and may also impact upon your time available in the gym.

Within the split routines for body building it is recommended that the two workouts be done twice a week for a total of four workouts, this will allow for sufficient time and energy to complete these, whilst also ensuring that the body gets the required rest, as previously discussed. The first workout should include body building focussing on the back, shoulders, traps, and chest, whilst workout 2 would typically focus upon the triceps, biceps, legs, lower back and abs. The amount of repetitions here should also increase which has a joint benefit of increasing volume and intensity of the body building activities.

As the workouts progress over the weeks you will come to realize that the body is getting used to the added activities and workouts, and which will indicate in due course the need to progress to the next level, however one has to remember that one of the biggest mistakes made by beginners in body building is that they tend to go too heavy in terms of weights and intensity before they or their bodies are actually ready. So rather progress steadily throughout the plan and measure the results of any body building activities in line with the goals and objectives that were setup in the beginning.

Within the next article in this series, Sport and Supplements will be discussing an all important issue of warming up and cooling down, one of the most often forgotten about processes within any workout, fitness or body building program.