body building body building schedule Building Muscle maximum muscle gain weight lifting weight lifting exercises weight lifting sessions

By D. Champigny

Body building requires a lot of time and effort on your part, so you always want to get the maximum muscle gains from each visit to the gym. So it's important to understand how to organize your lifting sessions. If you don't, you probably won't get the optimal results from your body building schedule.

body building schedule, weight lifting sessions

Take the standard full-body workout, done 2 or 3 times per week. To maximize your results from your weight lifting you want to put most of your efforts into the biggest muscle groups, since that is where your greatest muscle gains will come from. And because they're your biggest muscles, you need to hit them when your energy levels are highest - at the beginning of each weight lifting session.

That gives you the order the exercises are to be performed in:

• Legs
• Back
• Chest
• Shoulders
• Triceps
• Biceps
• Abs

Since the goal in body building is to build lean muscles proportionately, the bulk of the exercises performed at each weight lifting session should be compound exercises. A compound exercise is one that focuses on one main muscle group, but rather than isolate that group it also involves 2 or more of your joints and 1 or more additional muscle groups to a lesser extent.

This lets us organize our weight lifting session even further by adding in the exercises for each bodypart:

• Legs - Squats
• Back - Bent Rows
• Chest - Bench Press
• Shoulders - Overhead Press
• Triceps - Lying Triceps Extensions (skullcrushers)
• Biceps - Standing Barbell Curls
• Abs - Weighted Situps

Be sure to check with your doctor and get the go-ahead before starting any exercise program, and discuss the specific exercises you'll be doing in case any existing conditions would be compromised. And whenever possible, always train with free weights. The machines in most commercial gyms may look enticing and you may be able to use heavier weights, but most have the weight traveling along a fixed path.

Because it's the machine, not you, keeping it to the proper path, your supporting muscles aren't involved. This builds 'gym strength', not functional strength. When called upon to use those major muscles outside the gym you stand a much better chance of being injured, since your smaller supporting muscles haven't developed equally on those machines.

There two other factors that enter into body building you'll need to discover to organize your weight lifting sessions, but both are dependent on your own personal physiology. First is the number of sets and repetitions you'll perform for each exercise. Your rep scheme should be based on the type of results you want - lower reps with heavier weights to build strength vs. higher reps with somewhat lighter weights to build muscle mass. Then you can set the number of sets once you know how many reps are in each set.

Second is the number of days per week you'll work out. If you're doing full-body workouts you'll want to hit the gym 2 or 3 times per week, always on non-consecutive days. If your body heals quickly after each workout you may want to go Monday - Wednesday - Friday, while if you find that's too much and you're staying sore between workouts you might want to hit the gym on Mondays & Thursdays.

If you're not doing full-body workouts but doing some type of split-routine instead, again you'll have to figure out what works best for your own body. In any case, by paying attention to what works for your own body, you'll soon know how to organize lifting sessions to meet your body building schedule and goals, getting maximum muscle gains from every weight lifting session you do!

back bodybuilding fitness athletes lats lifting weights muscles obliques shoulders v-taper back weight lifting exercises weight lifting for weight loss

By D. Champigny

When lifting weights for bodybuilding or fitness athletes, male or female, one of the main goals is building that perfect body image. And while men and women usually differ in their desired final look, both want that sexy v-taper to their back...

Achieving that look isn't just the result of building a bigger back though. Three different sets of muscles play a role in building a v-taper appearance - your obliques, your latissimus dorsi (lats) and your medial deltoid muscles. In other words you want a narrow waist, wider shoulders and a nice sweep to your back to join the two.

weight lifting for weight loss

Keeping Your Obliques Narrow 
Your obliques are the muscles that run down the outside of your waist just above the hips. Working the obliques is done with twists, either seated with a bar across your shoulders or with kettlebells. The problem here is that they respond just like any other muscle - the heavier the weight you use the bigger the muscle grows. Normally that's what you want from your workouts, but with obliques the bigger they get the wider your waist is and the blockier your appearance.

Widening your waist will detract heavily from the appearance of a v-taper and lessen the impact of your overall figure. That doesn't mean you can't work your obliques though - just stick to either indirect training for them from the other exercises you do or do your seated twists using a broom handle instead of a weighted bar.

Building Your Lat Sweep 
Your lats provide that nice sweep from your waist to your shoulders, and the more you work them the better and wider your v-taper will look. To build their width, pick exercises that stretch them fully and force you to pull your arms back down towards your side. Using an overhead pulley to do seated lat pulldowns is the most obvious - after all, that's why it's called LAT pulldowns.

You can also add to the width of your lats with one-arm rows done on a weight bench. Instead of using a straight up-and-down movement for your reps, start at the bottom with the weight further forward, in line with your head. As you pull the weight up use a sweep to bring it up beside your hip then lower it back down as low and as far forward as you can safely stretch. As always, keep your torso parallel to the bench throughout the exercise and avoid the tendency to let the back roll side to side.

Wider Shoulders To Complete The Look 

weight lifting back exercises

OK, obviously you can't actually widen your shoulder joint or safely move the shoulder joints further apart, but you sure can pack a lot more muscle onto your shoulders to give them a wider appearance. Anyone serious about lifting weights will want to build all 3 shoulder muscles - front, medial and rear deltoids - evenly, but for building a v-taper it's the medial or outside head that makes the most difference.

Compound exercises like upright rows and overhead presses will build the medial head, and be sure to use side dumbbell raises as the isolation exercise to build your shoulder width. Often referred to as lateral raises, these are the only exercise that focus almost entirely on the medial delts - just be careful not to raise your arms above parallel at the top of each rep as this can damage your shoulders' rotator cuffs. Don't overdo the weight, either - be sure you can finish each rep in strict form and opt for more reps, at least 12 - 15 reps per set.

Beyond training those 3 areas, be sure you're not carrying extra bodyfat around your middle as that will also detract from your v-taper. While that should go without saying, it's not unusual to see novice bodybuilders and fitness athletes still sporting those tell-tale 'muffin tops', so be sure you're not letting a few extra pounds of fat diminish your hard-won physique.

Hit the weights hard every time you're in the gym and enjoy the impact of your great v-taper back on the beach next summer!