TeenBodybuilding.com - Alton Hare - My Beginner's Guide!

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Don't waste years figuring out the right way to build muscle. Here is my guide for beginner's covering the basics of what you need to know for success.

A Beginning Bodybuilder's
Complete Guide

By: Alton Hare

"Hey I wanna get really big, I'm XX (years old) and I need help choosing the right routine and supplements. I was wondering if you could give me your or have one that's good. I have been lifting for nearly a year and a quarter on and off. Please write me back about routines and supplements cause I saw you lifting a lot and I was like "shit, that's what I wanna be like" thanks a lot."

This is an extremely common e-mail, the age varies and/or they have never lifted or only played around, but the answer is almost always the same. Young guys that have chosen bodybuilding, at an early age, who have already taken a huge advantage over guys who started later (like me) and are already making good habits. I admire and envy them, I wish I'd started that early. The only thing they need is direction, so here I am going to venture to give direction to everyone out there who has just started or who is just thinking about starting. I want to start with some basic principles.

First, when beginning train each body part only once a week, and the general rule is to train them in the order of largest to smallest. So, typically you would train quads/hams on Monday, back on Tuesday, Wednesday chest, Thursday shoulders w/ traps, and Friday biceps, triceps, and calves. This isn't the way I did it when I first started, but I wish I had because I wouldn't have over emphasized chest quite as much, since it would be in the middle of the week. I always trained chest/triceps first thing on Monday, with all my effort and concentration. Then I kinda walked through back and legs, I'm lucky I have genetically big and strong legs or those would have fallen severely behind also. So, start with the good, balanced split above and move from there, as you become acquainted with your body you will be able to figure out which days you should change.

Next, have a certain lift for each body part that you use as your "gain indicator". This should be a good, heavy, compound exercise. You should always do it first for a while. Good examples are squat and leg press for legs, barbell row, dumbbell row, or chins for back, flat barbell presses, or dumbbell presses for chest, military press or dumbbell press for shoulders, barbell curl or dumbbell curl for biceps, and skullcrushers, French presses, or close grip bench for triceps. Each workout your goal should be to do a little more on one of your sets on this exercise. The rest of the exercises in the workout matter, and you should go all out on them also, it is just easy to see gains when you have one lift you are paying close attention to and that is always at the beginning of your workout. If its always at the beginning, then your always fresh and you don't have to worry about something else maybe weakening it.

My set/rep recommendations. Starting out the most basic routine is best, 3 sets of each exercise, not including warm up. Two light warm up sets, first work set almost to failure, second work set to failure, and third work set you should do one forced rep. Reps in the 3-8 range, getting lower on each progressive set. This I've found to work the best, one guy online e mailed me for bench press help and he started doing this exact regimen and his bench started soaring. He finally got over his plateau and was on his way to the bench he wanted. Another (particularly skinny) guy couldn't get his squat to move, and I found out he was doing sets of 12-15, for five sets, so I told him to go lower and pyramid, for only 3 work sets. Voila, his muscles had the overload to stimulate them, and just enough volume to keep from over training.

There are routines for every body part I have found to be the perfect routine to satisfy the demand for a straight basic, meat and potatoes, beginning lifter's needs. For legs, first parallel squat, then leg press, then superset leg extensions and leg curls. Simple and very effective. For back, probably the routine I'm on now, except with chins: chins (you don't have to pyramid the weight here, if your not a good chinner you can just do each set as best as you can, unless you can't get any then you need someone to hold your feet and give you just enough help to get up), barbell rows, dumbbell rows, and seated cable rows. Rows are the name of the game with back, my back really started growing when I started really hitting the rows hard. Deadlifts didn't do it, chins helped a little with width, but rows really made my back stand out finally. Much like pressing does for chest.

For chest, my all time favorite routine will have to be what I put here, its what I've been doing for the bulk of my time bodybuilding, I've experimented with other routines and they just don't cut it. As a beginner, you don't need inclines, they'll just take away from what really matters, the flat exercises that stimulate the most fibers. Inclines just don't pack as much heat as flats do, they don't hit your pecs nearly as hard, and deliver fewer returns for the same amount of time. So, flat bench first for your three sets as I said, then flat dumbbell presses for three sets in the 6-10 range, then superset dumbbell flyes and cable crossovers. Beginners might want to take a minute of rest between supersets, depends on how you feel. For shoulders, I have settled into the routine I do now, rear lateral raises, side lateral raises (start with a dumbbell you can do for 8, then drop to a lighter one an do as many as you can, then drop to another lighter one then rest 2 minutes and do another set of 8), dumbbell military presses, and dumbbell shrugs.

For biceps, 3 sets of barbell curls in the prescribed manner, and 2 sets of hammer curls. For triceps. 3 sets of skullcrushers and 3 sets of dips. If you can't do a whole set of dips, put your feet on the ground and help yourself just enough to get another one out until you get eight. Finally, for calves I recommend five sets of calf presses on a calf press machine, pyramid up to your heaviest on the third set, and pyramid back down on the next two sets.

This is the perfect beginner's routine, it gets you acquainted with all the basics, all the core exercises you are going to use for many years to build your body. It focuses on increasing strength, allowing plenty of rest, short workouts, and enough intensity all put together to concentrate on growing your first pounds of muscle. Still remaining is the most important aspect, nutrition. Your gains will be profoundly retarded by a gap in your eating habits. Rule number one for gaining strength and size, take in a gram of protein for every pound of bodyweight that you WANT to weigh. Be reasonable, we all would love to be 300 pounds of muscle one day, but don't take in 300 grams of protein starting out. When I was 184 I wanted to get to 200, so I took in 200 grams of protein, now I wanna be at 220, so I take in 220 grams. I guess your bodyweight plus about ten percent is a good rule of thumb if you want to get bigger.

Beginners who take a look at the protein content of food quickly find out that they have to eat quite a bit to get this much protein. Good ways to get it are in chicken, turkey, milk, tuna, any kind of fish or fowl, steak, peanut butter, protein bars, and protein shakes. 100% Whey Protein by Optimum Nutrition is what I'm using now, it tastes good and is very reasonably priced. You would be wise to get a whey protein supplement and a "nighttime" protein supplement that contains milk proteins to take before you go to sleep so that you can recover better while sleeping. Good one is HDT Pro-Blend 55. One serving of that with 16 oz of milk should be taken every night before bed if you want to grow. Also you should always eat breakfast, a good breakfast for a beginning bodybuilder is 16 oz of orange juice and 2 servings optimum nutrition whey protein. Its absorbed very fast, which is what you need first thing in the morning. In the morning your body is in a semi-starved state because nothing has gone in for 8 hours (or however long you slept). It needs those nutrients quickly. You can bring a protein bar to school and eat it between bk and lunch. After school you can have one serving whey protein and 2 servings of Gatorade, and the same right after workout. That, along with dinner and your nighttime protein should be more than enough to cover even the largest budding teen bodybuilder.

Lastly, beginner's supplementation. The whey protein is a must, along with that vitamin C and E will improve recovery and boost your immune system so you don't get set back through illness. A good multivitamin should always be taken. After three or four months of training you could (and should!) start adding five grams of creatine to your after workout Gatorade/whey protein mix. If you want even more of a boost you can add 5 grams of glutamine to your pre workout shake and to your nighttime shake. This along with the routine I gave you will have you growing like a weed well into and past your first year.

You may notice I train chest, back, and biceps twice a week. I've found that, as I'm getting past the "beginner" stage I can handle a second workout each week, in fact it is beneficial at this point. If I'm sore I can take the second workout just far enough so that it flushes blood into my muscle and lactic acid out, and eliminates the sorness. I also get to hit my chest at the incline angle and do iso for my back. This should help me get a more "finished" look to my physique. You have to really know your body and what it can handle though to do a second workout or to train when sore. Training when sore is GENERALLY NOT RECOMENDED because it can induce a catabolic state. Get to know your body for a while, and above all BE PATIENT. Patience is definitely a virtue when first starting weightlifting, because it really takes a while for it all to settle in and for it to become second nature.

Finally, words on motivation. It's not my job to motivate you, just to inform you. But, I want to remind you of what you can do if you stick with bodybuilding and make it part of your life. I've gone from scrawny to big, and people really notice. Just look at what all the other guys on here have accomplished, and their still just teens, most of them started at like 16 or even later. If you're only 14 or so and you get serious with it, just IMAGINE what YOU can do! If you don't think you have the genetics, your just copping out, you'll never truly know until you try, so get out there and try. If you have any more questions I did not answer in this article, just e mail me and I'll respond promptly, until then, lift hard and heavy and feel the life that is in lifting.

beautifuldisaster420@yahoo.com