How long bodybuilder

A novice adult lifting weights three hours per week can expect to gain four to 15 pounds per year without the use of steroids or hormones. After two years of lifting this person should expect just three to 10 pounds of annual gains. After five years this growth will slow to about two to seven pounds per year.

After lifting for 10 years this person can only expect to naturally gain up to two pounds annually. If you lift more often you can expect bigger gains.

If you lift for seven hours per week you can expect to gain eight to 20 pounds annually. They almost all do variations of programs that seem to tap into the fundamental nature of the body and its muscles and produce the most dramatic results. They have discovered in what ways you have to train if you want to look like a bodybuilder.

Almost anyone who reads physique magazines or spends any time working out in a serious gym knows how a basic bodybuilding program works. But it seems relatively few understand why it works. And achieving this basic understanding is very helpful when it comes to introducing variations in your own workouts that keep your interest at its maximum without reducing the effectiveness of your training. One of the most fundamental aspects of a training program is sets and reps. How many reps should you do of how many sets and how much weight should be involved.

Again, most experienced bodybuilders know that the traditional approach which has worked for many champions is the following:. Then I spoke to Dr. Fred Hatfield — Dr. Squat — and he introduced me to the idea of time under tension. And that made a lot of things clear. Training sends signals through the nervous system that inform the body it is under physical stress and needs to respond and adapt.

If you were to overload a machine it would burn out. If you overload the body — by just the right amount — it increases its capacity. It responds directly to the physical stimulus you create. So what bodybuilders have done over the decades is uncover what is in effect the underlying computer code of the body, the software that governs how it responds to physical demand. Time Under Tension is a measure of how much resistance a muscle contracts again and how long it remains subject to this resistance.

For the most part a single standard rep of an exercise will be about 1 second. So doing 10 reps your muscles will be under tension for 10 seconds. While the amount of time under tension will vary somewhat among individuals and body parts it turns out that amount of exercise volume that best creates the bodybuilding effect results from doing about 4 to 5 sets of 4 to 5 exercises. Exactly what bodybuilders themselves discovered by trial-and-error over the decades.

Another thing to take into consideration is the different ways muscles can respond to different kinds of workouts. A year-old student who is able to eat times a day and get plenty of rest will have more time and energy to recover than a year-old man working construction for 50 hours a week and going home to help his wife care for a couple of children before he can manage six hours of sleep until waking up to get back to work.

You will also have to experiment with different amounts of training, as Dorian Yates did, to find out what's best for you. Maybe you will make excellent gains training five or even six days a week, or you may find that kicks you into overtraining rapidly, and you ultimately learn you do best when hitting the gym four days a week or perhaps even three. Very few people require or can recover from weight-training workouts that exceed the minute mark.

The only two muscle groups that should take you that long, due to their size and complexity, are your back and legs. Any other body part should be done in an hour or less—and shoulders or arms shouldn't take more than minutes. If you routinely go well over those limits, you're doing one of two things: wasting a lot of time between sets and exercises or doing far too many exercises and sets. If you're not a powerlifter doing single-rep maximums on the bench press, squat, or deadlift, you don't need 5 minutes between sets.

You should be moving quickly and with purpose, getting a great pump and keeping it. Stay off your phone and don't waste time yapping with people. Save that for before or after your workout. Get warmed up, then soldier through the workout at a good pace. Many people train too long because either they just don't know any better and assume more training will deliver superior results, or they have no way to gauge when enough is enough. You can't always go by fatigue, especially since many of us live on pre-workout formulas and energy drinks that keep us wired for hours.

I suggest using the pump in your muscles as a measuring stick. Arms are an easy muscle group for this. There will come a point when even though you're still getting your reps in and your strength hasn't crashed, you start losing the pump. That's when it's time to end the workout. Nothing else you do on that day is going to stimulate any additional muscle growth, but it will tap your recovery reserves. You want to find that sweet spot where you've done just enough damage to your muscles to force them to adapt and grow, but no more.

In the words of eight-time Mr. Olympia, Lee Haney, "Stimulate, don't annihilate! We are a different breed from the average person who has a gym or health club membership.

Most of them dread exercise and will find any excuse to skip a workout. If you're reading this, I bet you're the opposite. You get to the gym no matter how busy you are, no matter the weather, or even if you have a minor injury or illness. Your dedication and consistency are what separate you from the rest. They can also be your downfall because you hate taking days off from the gym, even when your body is telling you it needs them. Pay attention to your energy levels and even your enthusiasm for training.

They are often reliable indicators of whether you're training as much as you should be or overdoing it. Never worry that a day off will set you back. If anything, it will probably help you. The solution to most problems when a person has failed to see any progress in weeks or months is simply to take a few days or even a full week off from the weights.

In fact, it's a great idea to leave the weights alone for a week times a year.