2. Concentrate on each exercise you do; try to develop a mind-to-muscle link, whereby you are keenly aware of your muscles contracting against the resistance. Don’t just start a set with the idea of simply getting the weight to the top using any means possible.

3. Don’t “cheat” on an exercise. Don’t utilize body swing or momentum to complete a contraction, no matter how difficult the exercise may become. Cheating increases momentum, which, in turn, diminishes muscular involvement in the exercise and, hence, reduces the exercise’s productivity. Your goal is to involve as many muscle fibres as possible.

4. Your training days will be Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Try not to engage in anything too strenuous on your “off” days, as this would cut into your recovery ability, which should be utilized only to overcome the exhaustive effects of the weight—training workout. Performing other activities affects progress. If you miss a training day, don’t panic and don’t perform two workouts back—to—back thinking you can “make up” for it. Let it go—the extra recovery won’t hurt your progress in the least and might actually help it along.

5. Perform each movement slowly and under control to ensure that the muscle group you are training is doing all of the required work and that momentum is not involved. Remember this rule of thumb regarding velocity: Lift the weight in two seconds, hold it at the top for another two seconds, and then lower it in four seconds back to the starting position.

Because this will be the first time that you have trained on this program, weight training will represent a major shock to your physiological system. It is important that you understand this concept. It’s the most intense form of exercise in existence, which is precisely why it produces such dramatic physiological results. Given these facts, doing more than the amount specified at this stage of your development is not at all desirable.

For this reason during your first month, perform no more than one set of each exercise listed, and no more than two sets should be performed during month two.

The vast majority of people who take up exercising with weights want to increase their present degree of muscle size. Unfortunately enthusiasm can be the bodybuilder’s worst enemy. Caught up in the throes of weight training, the aspiring trainee trains every day performs as many sets as can be tolerated, and then wonders why progress, if it comes at all, does so at an unbelievably slow pace.

While muscle growth is a slow process at the best of times, it doesn’t have to be excessively slow providing that you train properly. In fact, if you train exactly as some of the most famous and successful, you’ll be amazed at the transformation in your physique in just a matter of weeks. The reason is that weight training is powerful medicine that forces your body into a virtually instant response.

The harder you train, the faster your body overcompensates in the form of additional muscle mass, but also, the harder you train, the more rest and recuperation your body requires to bring about the physiological renovations in your physique. Therefore, your initial program should be based upon a three-day-per-week training schedule, which also happens to be among the top result-producing methods of bodybuilding.

The legendary Steve Reeves utilized this method exclusively in building his incredible physique. Mike Mentzer, perhaps the greatest and most massively developed bodybuilder of all time, utilized a three-day-a-week routine right up until the day he won the 1976 Mr. America title.

In short, the three-day-per-week system works extremely well for beginners and is responsible for putting more muscle on more beginners than any other system of training in the world. Again, once you hit the intermediate stage, you will have to back off on the frequency a bit in order to allow your body ample time to produce the gains that your workouts have stimulated.

Central nervous system. The central nervous system is of vital importance to both the aspiring and competitive bodybuilder (as it is to the rest of our species and any other species). Without nerves, our bones wouldn’t move, because our muscles wouldn’t contract. The central nervous system consists of the spinal cord and the brain; it functions in conjunction with the peripheral nervous system, which comprises the ganglia and nerves that reside outside of the brain and spinal cord. The nervous system appears like thousands of little wires that function as transmitters, receivers, and interpreters of data from all parts of the body. It is responsible for stimulating the muscles of the body to contract, which in turn make it possible to move. Damage to the central nervous system, obviously would impair the body’s movement potential. Movement itself is accomplished when the nervous system stimulates the muscles, which then move the bones that support us via the tendinous attachments around our joints, which are connected by ligaments.

Ligaments. Ligaments are fibrous bands that bind bone to bone. Their compactness determines to a large extent the flexibility of our joints. Great caution must be taken when you’re training because if a ligament is stretched too far, the joint that it holds together will become loose, resulting in permanent damage to the tissue. (This is why some football players are never able to fully recover from serious knee injuries.) A joint that has been thusly injured will often “go out” without warning, due to the instability of its overstretched ligaments.

Tendons. Tendons are the dense, fibrous bands at the end of muscles. Their function is to attach muscles to bones. Within the tendons are found the golgi tendon organs, whose function is to send signals to the brain to indicate stress and fatigue.

Generally the ache that you experience during strenuous exercise is being transmitted via the tendon and not the muscle.

Bones. The human body contains 206 bones that, collectively compose the skeleton. Muscles, as we have seen, are attached to bones by tendons and assist us in moving from one position to another.

Muscles. There exist three distinct kinds of muscle tissue within the body: cardiac, skeletal, and smooth. Cardiac muscle is the heart, while smooth muscle assists organs such as the stomach and intestines in the passage and digestion of food. Skeletal muscle, on the other hand, is responsible for moving our bones. As we’re looking to increase the size and strength of our skeletal muscles, it is to this group that we shall devote most of our attention. There are more than six hundred skeletal muscles, which yields a skeletal-muscle-to-bones ratio of almost three to one and accounts for our highly evolved dexterity and precision in movement.

In summary nerves stimulate our muscles, which in turn move our bones via the tendinous attachments near joints, which are connected by ligaments. When functioning with its parts in proper unison, the body is an intricate and complex piece of machinery. Our objective as bodybuilders will be to increase the efficiency of our “machine” through regulated periods of stress, or tension, upon the muscles, tendons, and ligaments in order to have the central nervous system transmit the signal for “overcompensation,” or muscle growth.

Fortunately the specialized vocabulary is not as intimidating as it may appear, and it’s not even necessary for the beginner to learn more than a quarter of it, since many terms in the jargon relate to more advanced techniques, those designed to add muscle mass to the seasoned physique. We will concentrate on the handful that will directly apply in your first few months of training. The following are terms you’ll need to know.

Rep. The contraction or extension of a given muscle group against resistance, typically performed from a starting position of full extension to a finishing position of full contraction, and subsequent return to the starting position. We call a series of such movements, naturally enough, repetitions – from which we get the singular form, rep.

Set. A collection of repetitions (anywhere from one to one hundred or more). Generally a brief rest of thirty to ninety seconds is taken at the end of a set in order to catch one’s breath and provide time for the muscle group involved in the set to partially recuperate. A typical routine calls for one to four sets of a given exercise to be performed.

Press. Any form of pushing the resistance away from the body with either the arms or the legs.

Curl. Any movement that involves pulling the resistance in toward the body with either the arms or the legs.

Clean. No, this doesn’t have anything to do with personal hygiene. Rather, it is the lifting of the barbell or dumbbell from the floor to the chest in one quick motion.

Poundage. The amount of weight or resistance that you will be using in your exercises.

Limit weight. The heaviest amount of resistance that you can lift for one repetition.

Routine. The sum total of reps, sets, – and exercises in any given workout or training session.

An easy change would be to start the workout in reverse order. Many people believe that you should always perform the workout from the biggest muscle to the smallest muscle and every workout follows the same progression. Change it around and you will be surprised at the result. If the workout is from bottom to top, then change it to be from top to bottom. Another method is to use only barbells for the workout and then change to a dumbbell only workout. The key is to make a significant change every four weeks. Keep changing it and you will keep the results coming.

I aim to increase the weight with every visit. That does mean that I sometimes cannot complete my full set of reps, but that leads to an increased effort with each workout. If you cannot complete the whole set, then try the same weight the next time. The results will come and the muscle growth will follow. Write down the target for each exercise and track your results. If you increase the weight by as little as 5% every two weeks then you will be lifting double the current weight within six months. Have specific goals and make sure you record each workout so that you can track your progress.

A simple way to accomplish a progressively more difficult workout would be to keep the weight constant but to use ninety seconds of rest on the first day, then sixty seconds the next day and thirty seconds the third day. Increase the weight for the next visit to the gym, again starting with a ninety second resting period. Don’t be surprised if you struggle to complete the workout. Using this method is definitely a humbling experience. Be prepared to get out of your comfort zone to increase muscle density and take your fitness to a new level.

If you don’t have a big watch handy, then take your watch with, or better still take the stop watch. Don’t be like most guys that are having lengthy conversations in between sets or staring at the blonde that started her routine on the treadmill. Rest between sets will have a definite impact on the results and resting one minute between sets is not the same as resting five minutes between sets. If you don’t keep the time between sets consistent from one workout to the next, then you will not be confident that lifting more weight is a result of stronger muscles or more rest. Stay focused and take control of your resting periods so that a can track measurable progress.