9 things

One morning, while looking back on my 21 years of bodybuilding, I thought "If I could go back in time and teach myself what I know now about bodybuilding training, I would get to where I am now in a fraction of the time.". Isn't that a perfect way to start your day with a completely depressed thought? Tears aside, I don't want you to have to wait that long to become a smarter exerciser. That's why I want to share with you the nine most important things I wish I could teach my 16 year old self, so you can learn from my experience.

1. train in all repetition ranges

Everyone develops a preference to train in a certain repetition range. Maybe you like the strength and muscle density that comes with a heavy workout with low reps. Or maybe you prefer the pump and muscle fullness that comes with a higher repetition range. Either way, you should recognize that each rep range has its benefits, especially when it comes to building muscle.

To develop bigger muscles, you should train holistically. A good rule of thumb is to spend about 1/3 of your training time in a repetition range of 2 to 6 repetitions, 1/3 of your training time in a repetition range of 7 to 13 repetitions and the other third in a repetition range of 13 or more repetitions. This will ensure that you will grow in every way a muscle can grow, including myofibrillar hypertrophy, which comes from using heavy weights and low reps AND sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, which is stimulated by higher reps with a more moderate weight.

2. don't train to muscle failure all the time

You've been told your whole life that hard work will pay off. While this is mostly true, here's my training mantra: it's better to train smart than train hard. Training to muscle failure can be beneficial, but it's also very taxing on the body, which is especially true for the nervous system. More specifically, training to muscle failure is helpful in terms of muscle endurance and even mass, but it is less effective when it comes to strength gains.

Therefore, when performing sets of 2 to 6 repetitions, you should stop one or two repetitions before reaching muscle failure. For sets of 7 or more repetitions (where the goal is to challenge the muscle metabolically), you can go to muscle failure on the last one or two sets. In short, training to muscle failure is a concentrated stimulus that puts the body under a lot of stress in a short period of time. This is a helpful but merciless technique.

3. keep squats in your training program

Even if you're not a powerlifter, you should be doing squats pretty much all year round. The benefits are too numerous to do anything else. Squats have a high level of force transfer to other muscle groups. In general, if you can move a lot of weight on squats, you can move a lot of weight on leg presses, but just because you can move a lot of weight on leg presses doesn't necessarily mean you can move a lot of weight on squats. Because of the specific strength requirements of squats, you need to train them to be good at them.

One of the reasons that squats should be a permanent part of your leg training is that they work muscles that would otherwise probably not get enough attention. You've probably been told that because squats are a heavy basic exercise, you should always do them first in your workout and with heavy weights/low reps. While this is certainly true if you're a powerlifter, squats for bodybuilding purposes don't always have to be performed first or with heavy weights. You can perform squats at the end of your leg workout with lighter weights and still reap the key benefits of this exercise. Whether it's traditional squats, front squats or safety bar squats, you should keep squats in your program - you will benefit both visually and functionally.

4. keep a record

A chef writes down his recipes so that he can reproduce something that has worked well. As a bodybuilder, you should do the same. Whether it's something you've read or something you've come up with yourself, you'll stumble across things that have worked very well for you over the course of your training career - and at some point you'll probably want to try those things again. However, you can only do this if you know exactly what you did back then! Keep a record of every set and repetition you do. This may seem a little tedious at first, but it only takes 3 to 5 seconds to do this after each set. Eventually, your training diary will turn out to be something worth its weight in gold. You should also make brief (or detailed if you wish) notes about other things like workout variations or modifications you like, injuries you suffer from, aches and pains you feel, etc. A good rule of thumb is to keep a detailed training diary until you have no more room for improvement. It will show you without a shadow of a doubt what is working for you and what is not.

5. at the first sign of tendonitis you should do something!

The same applies to injuries. But tendonitis in particular can develop into a very stubborn problem. The tendons are basically specialized "ends" of the muscles that firmly connect the muscle to the bone. For this reason, you will inevitably strain your tendons and your muscles every time you train with weights. I'm sure that if you pulled a muscle, you wouldn't continue to strain it with hard training - so why do we bodybuilders continue to strain a tendon that is already inflamed?

Once inflammation has developed in a tendon, it tends to spread like a bush party and will rarely go away on its own - and practically never if you continue to strain the tendon. However, if you take care of tendonitis early on, this problem will soon be a thing of the past.

Some of the most common tendonitis conditions that occur in bodybuilders include

• Biceps tendinitis - noticeable in the anterior shoulder region
• Medial epicondylitis - aka golfer's elbow, felt on the inside of the elbow arch
• Lateral/lateral epicondylitis - aka tennis elbow, which can be felt on the outside of the elbow arch
• Triceps tendinitis - felt on the distal triceps (just above the elbow on the back of the arm)
• Patellar tendinitis - felt at - or just above - the bony prominence of the tibial plateau (just below the kneecap)

The saying "prevention is better than cure" applies perfectly to tendonitis - always remember this! Instead of trying to be macho (aka stupid) and train through the pain, use a combination of ice, rest, etc. to stop tendonitis at the first sign.

6. build and maintain a good strength base

Training for physical appearance can make things a little confusing in terms of tangible training goals. Since you don't necessarily have to be strong or have good endurance, you have nothing but the scales and the mirror to monitor your progress.

However, even if strength isn't your end goal per se, being strong in certain key exercises (or movement patterns) can make it much easier for you to make muscle gains. Here are what I would consider the typical key bodybuilding exercises that serve as an indicator of your strength:

• Horizontal press (i.e. bench press)
• Rowing
• Vertical press (i.e. shoulder press)
• Vertical pull (i.e. pull-ups)
• Hip extensions (i.e. squats, deadlifts *)

* Although deadlifts and squats are listed as options for developing hip extensor strength, they are different enough in terms of muscle recruitment that it would certainly be beneficial to be strong in both of these movement patterns. As your body development improves, it may be useful to ensure that you also have sufficient strength in the following supporting movement patterns:

• Elbow flexion (i.e. bicep curls)
• Elbow extension (i.e. lying tricep presses, tricep presses on the cable pulley)
• Knee flexion (i.e. leg curls)

In addition, you should divide your rowing strength (aka horizontal pulling) between upper back rowing movements (shoulders abducted 60 to 90 degrees) and latissimus rowing (shoulders abducted 0 to 30 degrees).

Why so complicated? To use the familiar analogy, it's hard to build a house on sand. Likewise, it's hard to build a muscular, bulky body on a body that doesn't have good strength in all the basic movement patterns. Do yourself a favor and develop a solid strength base. If your strength ever falls short in any of the basic movement patterns, you should train to rebuild that strength base. In short, trying to get muscular when you are weak is like trying to ride fast on an emergency bike.

7. use a variety of techniques and programs

There are hundreds of different training approaches available to you, but once you've tried even two types of training, you'll already have developed a preference for one of them. Well, that's human nature, but it can also hold you back. Sticking with one type of training for too long will stall your progress sooner or later. Instead, you need to regularly expose your body to new and unique stimuli. This is the only way to ensure that all components of your muscles are stimulated and forced to adapt. The most obvious way to change the stimulus is to change the repetition range, which we have already covered in point 1. A less obvious type of change that bodybuilders will benefit from is power training. Power is defined as the amount of work done within a unit of time, but in a more bodybuilding-friendly context, I would say that power is the ability to move a weight quickly.

Plyometric exercises are a perfect example of this. Olympic weightlifting exercises such as power snatches are also good examples of power exercises - and furthermore an example of an exercise that we bodybuilders can really benefit from. If you take 4 to 6 weeks to focus on power training, you will develop better recruitment of the fast contracting motor units. This improved recruitment will allow you to recruit your fast-twitch muscle fibers faster, which will result in greater muscle growth. But when it comes to variety, I'm not just talking about power training - even something completely different like yoga can have benefits for your body development. I'm not suggesting that you replace your weight training with yoga four to five times a week, but doing some yoga fairly regularly will do wonders for improving your flexibility and range of motion. Your body is a complex and dynamic organism - don't subject it to the same stimulus over and over again at the expense of other stimuli. Instead, use things like powerlifting. Yoga, sprints, etc. to support your bodybuilding efforts.

8. don't develop training ADHD

The main reason people don't get results from a training program is simply because they don't give it the time to work. In other words, they suffer from exercise ADHD and can't focus on a program long enough for it to produce results. It's natural that after a few weeks with a new exercise program, you'll want to try something else. This could be because you find the new program boring, that it doesn't give you a great pump, that it's too hard, that it's too easy, or that you've read about another great workout program. Resist this temptation. While it may be normal to get bored with a program, it's not normal to give in to those feelings of boredom every week or two - and it's not ideal. Just as it would take longer to learn Spanish, French or English at the same time, it will take longer to get results from a training program if you are constantly switching back and forth between that program and two others. I said in point 7 that you should use a variety of techniques, but that doesn't mean you should use one program this week, another program next week, and a third program the week after that. The key to success is this: use a variety of programs and techniques, but once you decide on a program, stick with it for at least four weeks, with eight weeks being the norm. This will give that program time to "do its work" and bring about the changes in your body that it can.

It's better to stick with a workable exercise program and get everything you can out of it than to suffer from exercise ADHD and bounce back and forth between excellent programs.

9 Have fun while training

At first glance, this tip may sound silly, but it's actually the most important tip in this article!

If you don't enjoy your training in at least some way, then you will either find excuses not to train or only train half-heartedly. And this will get you nowhere. Having fun while exercising might clash with many of the tips above, but it's up to you to decide which rule trumps the other. For example, let's say you do a powerlifting program for 6 weeks to increase your maximum strength. But after three weeks, you hate this workout because you find a low-rep workout boring and you miss that skin-bursting killer pump that high reps and more volume give you. If you hate your workouts so much that you want to skip training sessions, then it's probably time to make a change - no matter how long you're supposed to stick with this program. Just be honest with yourself, your feelings about training and your goals.

It's perfectly fine to like certain types of training and hate others. However, you should be mature enough to take responsibility for your choices. If you say that you want to get more muscular more than anything else, but hate doing the type of training necessary to achieve this, then you have a problem. The reality is that you're probably not going to become a professional bodybuilder. And if bodybuilding isn't going to be your livelihood, then you're doing it for fun. So make sure it's fun. And always remember the following...

The BEST workout program is the one you'll actually do!

By Clay Hyght, DC | 10/09/10
Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/9-things-i-wish-i-knew-when-i-started-bodybuilding