I thought i would make a post based for the teen bodybuilders/lifters.
Most of us have trained since our teens and have learnt alot from trial and error, or just plain error lol.
If we were able to start again in our teens but with the knowledge gained through years of experiance that we have now, i'm sure our muscular gains would have doubled.
Hopefully, this post will help some members avoid the pitfalls most of us fell into with regards to our training, diet and supplementation regime.
Training
The most important thing to remember for a young bodybuilder/lifter is that more = less. When i trained years ago (and i'm sure many other members did too) i thought that by training bodyparts 3-4 times a week would help boost my gains.
This is when i learnt my first bodybuilding term, "over training" lol...
Large body parts like the pecs, quads, glutes, lower back etc need at least 72 hours rest after training before hitting them again in the gym. It sounds like heresy after we have read the Arnold Encyclopedia, but the most important hurdle to leap is to stop over training your body.
People will argue that the recouperation and repair of muscle fibres in a teen is somewhat faster than their older counterparts, but i believe in the term 'start as you mean to go on'.
By training muscle groups just once a week, you will see that your poundages will go up as the muscles are fresh and not over trained, you will have more energy for workouts and you will not be living your youth 24/7 down the local gym...
The next important hurdle to leap is the flaw of improper exercise form.
How many of us can admit to seeing 'billy back brace' at the gym swinging a barbell back and forth with his hips and legs thinking with the notion that his biceps are getting the best workout of there lives?! :lol:
Or "Mr 1" that seems to rack up so much weight on the pec deck, that the pads move 1" before slamming back to the starting position?! :lol:
We can all make jokes about these guys/gals but we have all made the same mistakes before and only because we know better, do we now laugh.
The body does not adapt and create muscle because there is X amount of weight on a bar, the body adapts because of the repeated stress that is placed upon the muscle, forcing it to adapt to handle the new 'stress' in future. If you have bad exercise form, the stress is taken away from the target muscle and placed upon others.
Example: Standing barbell bicep curls... by keeping your elbows pinned to your sides, keeping your back straight at all times and not swinging the weight with your hips, the biceps will get most of the stress from the exercise.
If you do the opposite and let your elbows carry forward and swing with your hips to get the weight up; your front delts, lower back and hip flexors will be doing msot of the work... defeating the object of bicep curls eh?
In the exercise/workout forum, i have selected useful websites that allow you to see the proper form for exercises. I have also made a beginners workout for those who are new to bodybuilding/lifting, i used it when i first started out and so have other members and the feed back speaks for itself. (had to put the plug in guys come on! lol)