The Chosen One

The following article will cover what I (LukeT) think are the top 8 biggest mistakes newbie bodybuilders make, and some of my suggestions on how to get around them.

Note: These are not in any particular order, and some may seem to contradict each other, but read carefully.

1.) Daily Full Body Exercising

This is a very common and equally detrimental way of bodybuilding. Daily weight lifting is never recommended itself, but full body on a daily basis is bodily suicide. You need to give your muscles time to heal, every time you workout you are causing invisible micro-tares on your muscles and that takes time to heal. For typical bodybuilding purposes you would want to follow a 5-day split routine. Generally you will work two muscle groups (no, not arms, or legs counting as one group, bis or tris counting as one group) a day and abs are usually optional any day you wish. Many people will have three muscle groups on certain days, or some won’t give their forearms or traps a day of their own, as they don’t give abs a day of their own. The 5-day split is not however the only routine you can use to body build, but for general bodybuilding it is seen by most as the most conventional, although for sports training many people have their own variations commonly including a lot more cardio. The fact of the matter is daily full body exercising simple isn’t realistic, not if you want to make any gains and stay out of an electric wheelchair anyway.

2.) Not Enough Rest Between Sets

This is another very common one. When you are working out and you start to feel that ‘burn’ it is more often than not being caused by lactic acid build up. True, after a hard day of bodybuilding the muscle groups you work will get sore, but you don’t usually really feel it until the next day sometime and then it lasts maybe 3-4 days depending on the intensity of your exercise. If you are feeling sore immediately after working out, or during a work out it is probably lactic acid. When lactic acid builds up it really interferes with your ability to complete a set. I advise no less than a minute for rest between a set for sure, but would recommend a minute and a half to two minutes. There is a chance that this is contrary to a work out routine you are following, if this is the case then this part can be ignored, but chances are if you are following such a workout routine you are advanced enough in bodybuilding to already know anything I’d be explaining in this guide anyway.

3.) Not Enough Rest At Night

This is without a doubt the most common mistake any bodybuilder makes, whether consciously or ignorantly. I, as well as almost everyone has to admit that they are guilty of this one too many times. It’s a fact that these days most people living in wealthy countries go to bed late and get up early for school, work, or whatever have you. This is not good for your bodybuilding, and sleep is when you make all your gains. Now you will hear lots of variety on the amount of recommended and/or required nightly sleep, some as low as 6 hours, some as high as 12. I will try not to go to any one extreme, I would say minimum of 8 hours if at all possible, and 10 would be convenient if possible. Personally when I get on bad stretches I get as little as 4-5 hours of sleep a night for weeks at a night. I pay for this with lack of gains, no one wants to follow a strict and hard workout/diet regime and reduce their results by a large portion by the easiest and by far most enjoyable part of bodybuilding – sleep!

4.) No Warming Up

Warming up is very important to a good prosperous workout. If you don’t warm up properly before working out you won’t get your heart going. If you don’t do a bit of cardio first your blood isn’t going to get pumping and you won’t be able to workout to your maximum potential. Stretching is equally important as cardio prior to working out. If you don’t stretch, or think it is a waste of time you will be working out with stiff joints. Without loosening them up you are seriously risking potentially severe injuries. Stretching is not meant to be taken as a joke, would you rather ‘waste’ 5 minutes before your workout 5 days a week, or spend 8 months without being able to body build from a torn rotator cuff? I recommend about a 5-10 minute treadmill or stationary bike ride at a moderate and consistent speed before working out, and about 5 minutes of stretching, or however long it takes to get any key points.

5.) Proper Form When Lifting Weights

Proper form is arguably the most important part of the workout. Lifting straps will help you out, but they are not recommended if you are reading this, because you are presumably a newbie. If this is true, you haven’t developed important stabilizer muscles throughout your back and abdominal area yet, if you start using a strap now you will likely never build these stabilizers. Also, straps are essentially pointless for a true bodybuilder, because unlike power lifting bodybuilding has nothing to do with numbers. If you can dumbbell curl 5 lbs for a good rep/set ratio, or if you can dumbbell curl 2 tons for a good rep/set ratio it doesn’t matter either way, as long as you are making good gains either way. The general guideline regarding form is to keep your back straight. This applies primarily to squatting and dead-lifting. I’m not trying to say form isn’t important for every exercise, but for these two it is particularly important because instead of just sacrificing gains you are also sacrificing your health with poor form. My advice on form is to go to the following links, or search http://www.google.com or whatever search engine you prefer yourself.

Proper dead-lift form: http://www.stumptuous.com/baddl.html
Proper squat form: http://www.stumptuous.com/badsquat.html
For others you can use a search engine, I won’t take the time to get specific links because with other exercises it is not as absolutely important that you know right away.

6.) Poor Or No Diet

Dieting is arguably the second most important thing about bodybuilding, second only to the working out itself. You could ask ten random people on the street what the importance of a calorie is, and chances are good that none of them would know the answer. I will list a few common and important things found on nutritional information labels and the importance of them.

Calories: Calories are important for a count of whether or not you will be losing weight. As a rule of thumb, if you burn more calories a day than you take in, you will lose weight. The opposite is true if you wish to gain weight (more intake than burn daily). Calories also provide you with energy, however you want clean calories, not for example calories from soda pop, which is known as empty calories.

Carbohydrates: Carbohydrates, or carbs for short which is how I will refer to them unlike calories are measured in grams. Carbs should take up the majority of your food intake, more than 50%. The exact figure varies depending on your body-fat%, if you’re cutting, bulking, ect. There are several types of carbs, but the main three groups are: Starch (or complex carbs, this is the main kind you should aim for in your diet for energy), Sugar (this is what you should attempt to avoid, however there are some types of sugar such as the lactose in milk which act differently from standard sugar, lactose is alright as long as your body can handle it), and finally Dietary fibre (Fibre is important too, but not as much as complex carbs).

Protein: Here we are, the granddaddy of them all. Protein is responsible for the healing and repairing of old tissue and the creation of new tissue. For most people 1 gram per pound of lean body mass is all that’s needed, but for a bodybuilder 1.5-2 grams or so is recommended.

Cholesterol: Cholesterol shouldn’t be much of a concern to you, pretty much if there is a lot of it in your food, you shouldn’t be eating it. Note that cholesterol is measured in milligrams, not grams so don’t be freaked out to see numbers like 60, or even 600 in some unhealthier foods on the label.

Fats: There are healthy fats (peanut butter, almonds, and other sources) but there are also unhealthy fats (pizza, ect.) you definitely want to avoid unhealthy fats. If there is a small amount in your tuna, or chicken, or anything it is nothing to worry about. Trans fat.. Is the devil! Avoid it at all costs.

Sodium & Potassium: It is recommended to keep these relatively low, especially if you are having blood pressure problems. Sodium is essentially salt.

My advice is due to the fact that you will need a large of amount of carbs and protein on a daily basis, and the fact that it cannot all be absorbed and used by the body all at one time it is ideal to split your meals up into smaller portions but with a higher frequency. I could write an entire article much longer than this one on diet alone, so I’m going to keep this brief for this article. You are pretty much going to want 6-8 or so meals in a day, aprox. 2 hours apart from each other, with a pre-workout and post-workout meal being most important.

7.) Diet Is Not Everything

My intention of this is not to contradict any other peoples advices you may have heard before, but be warned you may have been mislead. In my experience people have the tendency to grossly over exaggerate the importance of diet. You may call me a hypocrite seeing as how I just made a big rant about the importance of diet. Well, diet is definitely just as important as I stated. It is however still not the most important part of bodybuilding and never will be. I’ve heard ridiculous claims such as 60% of bodybuilding is diet, that’s utter blasphemy. I stay continue working out, at least until you have a job of your own if you are having trouble following a diet due to economic reasons. If you don’t have a valid excuse to not following a strict diet than this section is not for you, but if you absolutely cannot follow a good diet than don’t fear. Just hold up until you are old enough to pay for your own sustenance. My advice though is I strongly recommend you to tone down the intensity of your training routine if you cannot eat a good diet, because you will find yourself to have less energy, and with too little protein you won’t be able to recovery as easily. Also, get used to maintaining or cutting as sadly it is nearly impossible to bulk (cleanly that is) while not on an even half decent diet. It shouldn’t be a major deal keeping your caloric intake up a little over your calories burned per day; however your body fat% won’t be so pretty because you’re going to have to willfully eat fatty and empty calorie foods which can be tricky after learning what a truly good but truly expensive diet is like.

8.) Supplements Are Not Everything

True, used correctly supplements can generate amazing gains; however they are definitely not necessary. It seems to me there are three major types of guys using supps (short for supplements). There are newbie’s, like you guys who are supposed to be reading this, who tend to stockpile on things from EFG stacks, cell-tech (biggest rip off in supplementation history), creatine monohydrate, fat-burners, and the list could go on for weeks. Then there is the more middle road, experienced but not semi-pro or full blown pro bodybuilders who are often content with simple protein and multi-vitamins. Then you have amateurs (semi-pros) and IFBB professionals who go overboard, as they have no choice or else they will be surpassed. A lot of what they take isn’t supplements at all though; it’s pro-hormones or anabolics. My advice is to ease off of the supplementation if you can help it. Try starting with some basic ON or whatever you prefer whey or even casein protein, whatever you want and some multis. Note the amount of iron in the multi-vitamins, you want it to be low or preferably zero. If you still feel that you would benefit or need say creatine, then feel free to try it out, assuming you do your homework prior to trying.

Thanks for sticking through the long read, hope it benefits you in some way!

Actual Size

Very good so far thanks.

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