Back to Basics Bodybuilding for Beginners Part 1 Compound Exercises

Bodybuilding is probably the first sport that comes to mind when you think about supplements and it’s because of this that people who are looking to start bodybuilding or just weight training in general often look to supplements as a quick route to success. The truth is when it comes to bodybuilding there is no quick route to success it takes allot of time and effort to develop a muscular physique.

When you start out bodybuilding your main focus should be to build a solid foundation, you want to work out your entire body it doesn’t matter if you work out once a week or every day you want to ensure every major muscle group gets worked out, this is why compound exercises are found in almost every workout designed for bodybuilding.

People new to bodybuilding often fall into following a training program published by one of the big names in bodybuilding and the reality is that although you may have some success following this routine early on you will end up at a plateau.  Its vary rare that any two people will experience the same gains from the same training routine, you need to understand your body and develop a program that works for you and the best base for any bodybuilding routine are compound exercise’s.

The three big Bodybuilding compounds:

There are three main compounds when it comes to bodybuilding and these are the Bench Press, Squat and Deadlift – through these three lifts alone you can work out most of your body and by utilising variations of these lifts you can make an effective training program, these three lifts should be the core of any bodybuilding program and will act as a base for you to build from.

Working out the weight to lift and maintaining correct form:

Now you have the three basic core lifts used in bodybuilding you need to ensure you are using the correct form, the use of improper form will hinder your muscle gains and can even lead to injury. When starting out perform each exercise with no weight, this is especially important for people completely new to weightlifting. Once your confident that you are performing the motion correctly you want to add weight to the bar start with a light weight and gradually increase this weight until it becomes difficult to lift the weight for 8 repetitions while maintaining correct form and avoiding any jerking or swinging of the body to force the repetition. This is the Starting weight for the exercise and can be worked out the same way for all three of the exercises mentioned, once you have this weight you should aim for 3 sets of 8 repetitions taking one or two minutes rest between sets.

As you continue to work out and get stronger you will be able to lift this weight for more reps, once you reach a point where this weight can be lifted for 12 reps you want to increase the weight again slowly until you can lift the weight again for only 8 repetitions while maintaining strict form.

Rep ranges and set amounts are a largely debated aspect of bodybuilding and although as I mentioned earlier in bodybuilding very rarely will two people get the same results from a training program, for beginners using the basic 8-12 rep range over three sets of compound exercise’s is often the starting point for anybody starting out in bodybuilding.

Setting up your Bodybuilding training program:

When setting up any bodybuilding program it’s important to allow your muscles time to rest and recover, when structuring a training program with the aim of promoting muscle growth you need to realise that muscle is built at home resting not in the gym lifting weights. With this in mind you want to try to work each muscle group once a week to promote muscle growth across your whole body that’s why compound lifts like this are the perfect foundation for your routine, they can be done on separate days or on the same day and because they utilise different muscles they will not conflict with each other, knowing which muscles are worked by each compound exercise will allow you to group these with isolation exercise’s (single muscle orientated lifts) on the same days to prevent over training the muscles on different days, for example if you were to do Bench press on a Monday you could also include Dips, close grip bench press, incline and decline bench press and triceps pushdowns all of which target the same muscle groups your triceps and your chest – this is often referred to as a Push/Pull/Legs ( PPL) split where you do specific types of exercise each day devoting a full workout to the muscle groups used in each exercise – press being chest and triceps, pull being back, shoulders and biceps and legs speaks for itself. Abs and calves are small muscles that in bodybuilding are often trained when they feel ready usually a minimum of one days rest after a thorough workout but will rarely take longer than 10-15 minutes to train.

Alternatively you could do your entire body in a single day so just do Bench Press, Squats and Deadlift and do this anywhere from one to three times evenly space through the week. This sort of training program is also effective especially if you only devote a single day to working out and the same as the PPL Split you can incorporate isolate exercise’s to each of the muscle groups however try to restrict your workouts to 45 minutes no more than an hour and a half really this is also another highly debated topic but as with rep ranges and sets 45 minutes to an hour is often considered normal for a workout.

They key to a successful training program is working each muscle group to promote muscle growth without overtraining, overtraining or just not getting enough rest will lead to injury and prevent you from achieving your full potential.

Summary:

In Summary when you’re starting out in bodybuilding you want to base a training routine on the three compound exercises as a foundation, train your entire body over the course of an entire week and aim for 8-12 reps over 2-3 sets, don’t forget to allow time for your muscles to rest and you eat a balanced diet.

In my next article I’ll go over isolation exercise’s as well as Dips and pull-ups two of the most commonly avoided exercise’s that can really help your gains if done correctly and added into a training program.

- Article by  Nick Birch