Alex's Journey

Muscle growth, or hypertrophy is the increase of the size of muscle cells. The two biggest factors in increasing the size of our muscle cells are nutrition and strength training. The next biggest factor is something that men have 10 to 60 times more of, than woman.That factor is testosterone. Testosterone is a steroid hormone secreted in the testes of a male and the ovaries of a female, though small amounts are secreted by the adrenal glands.

When we do heavy intensive strength training, micro tears form in the muscle. This stimulates our body to build stronger muscles, ligaments, and tendons during the repair process. Enough time must be allowed for healing, to avoid Overtraining.

A weightlifting routine is needed during a fat loss diet to retain muscle. During bulking we use it to gain muscle.
Remeber that without proper diet, you will be severely undermining your results. See Bulking Nutrition.

Sets and Reps

A set consists of a number of reps done in a row. A minute or two of rest usually follows this. A rep is short for repetition. Or how many times you can raise and lower the weight without resting your muscle.  So lets say you picked up a weight and put it down 10 times in a row, thats one set of 10 reps.

Form

Using proper form with a reasonable weight is important to stimulate the muscle. We want to lift heavy yes, but not so heavy as to sacrifice form. A quick controlled contraction, then without pausing in a slow and controlled manner, lower the weight. Repeat and try not to lock your joints and pause at the end of a movement, we’re working the MUSCLES here not the BONE LIGAMENTS. You may see people swinging their back when doing curls or bouncing on their knees when doing shoulder press. You should avoid picking up their bad habits.

A good sign you’ve been using proper form and a good weight is when the muscle you targeted, is sore the next day.

Intensity

Intensity for us basically means were not in the weight room to talk and fool around. We want to be in and out, so were going to control the amount of rest between sets and exercises. 60-120 seconds between sets and 3 minutes between exercises will let us get the job done in under an hour. Some people advocate higher intensity for fat loss because it burns more calories, this is true however its not required.

Volume

Volume is the amount of sets we’re going to do. More experienced weightlifters will want to increase volume where as beginners will start with less.

Compound movements

Every bodybuilder beginner or expert includes compound movements in their routine. Compound movements are movements that involve more than one muscle. Plain and simple these exercises stimulate muscle GROWTH. Bench press, Squat and Deadlift are the big 3, other examples can include pull-ups(back and biceps) and shoulder-dumbbell press(shoulders and triceps).

Recording Your Lifts

Writing down the amount of weight, sets and reps, you use is a must to measure your success. People who are serious about changing their body composition will write and record their results and will be more likely to succeed.

The Routine

Okay let’s start with an example routine for a beginner

Monday
Chest: 3 sets of bench press 8-12 reps
Chest/Tris: 3 sets of Dips (max reps you can do)
Tris: 3 sets of flat bench tricep extensions 8-12 reps
Abs:  3 sets of crunches or knee ups 8-Max reps

Tuesday
Off

Wednesday
Back:  3 sets of pull-ups (max reps you can do)
Back:  3 sets of cable rows 8-12 reps
Biceps: 3 sets of alternating dumbbell curl 8-12 reps

Thursday
Off

Friday
Legs: 3 sets of Squats 8-12 reps
Shoulders: 3 sets Seated Dumbbell Press 8-12 reps

Saturday
Off

Sunday
Off

The important thing when designing a routine is to make sure exercises don’t conflict with each other. For example if you worked your triceps on Wednesday your triceps would be sore or not fully recovered for Fridays shoulder workout. This Routine will be good for any beginner looking to bulk up, If your goal is to cut fat and retain muscle, we would add 30minutes of cardio each day and on weightlifting days we would do our cardio before our workout.

Going to failure

For hypertrohpy (or muscle size) you MUST go to failure and sometimes BEYOND failure.

Progressive Overload

In order for your body to continue growing and adapting some form of manipulating the volume(amount of sets), weight, or intensity(rest) must be done. This can be done by following a program that works off percentages of your 1 Rep Max, or continually decreasing rest periods between sets/exercises or by increasing the amount of sets done in a session.