Bodybuilding involves working out with free weights, exercise machines or your own body weight for the purpose of building muscle mass, strength, size and definition.
Men and women both can do resistance training with these goals. Most women will not bulk up the way men can because they lack the levels of testosterone that help build muscles. Professional female bodybuilders achieve their heft from serious training and eating in a specific way.
Divide Workouts into Upper, Lower Body
If you are a beginner to resistance training, start gradually so that you don't burn out or injure yourself. Divide your lifting workouts into upper and lower body sessions. For example, work the chest and back Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, while working the legs and abs Tuesdays and Thursdays.
This will allow your muscles to grow and to help prevent overtraining. Every time you train with weights, you create microtears in the muscle fibers. As they mend, this is how muscles grow.
Exercise Opposing Pairs of Muscles
Always work opposing or antagonistic muscle groups. Think of muscles as either "pushing" or "pulling" muscles to illustrate this idea. On chest and back days, you would exercise the muscles at the front of the upper body and also the muscles of at the back of the upper body. For example, you might do pushups, dumbbell chest press, bicep curls and front raises to work the front body. Next, you might do lat pull downs, standing tricep pull downs or lat pushups off a flat bench.
By working this way, you avoid developing asymmetry. An example of asymmetry is have large biceps but small triceps at the back of the upper arms.
Do Cardio Three Times Weekly
Don't ignore cardio workouts. The American College of Sports Medicine advises healthy adults get at least 30 minutes of cardio, five days a week. They do add, however, that if you lift weights at least twice a week, you can do three cardio sessions of 20 minutes of vigorous exercise.
This can be split into two shorter bouts, such as a 10-minute walking warm up and a 10-minute cool down after a lifting session or as a separate cardio workout.
The timing of your cardio will depend on how heavily and intensely you train. If you are working to sculpt rather than build mass, you could probably do 30 minutes of cardio and lift for another 30 minutes.
If you do advanced training of super sets, drop sets or sets to muscular fatigue, save your cardio for other days or hours before you lift.
Training Table
Eat to fuel your workouts by eating several smaller meals and snacks throughout the day. This helps keep your blood sugar level and will also help lose body fat. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has created a nutritional matrix called "My Food Pyramid" that provides sensible dietary guidelines.
The USDA recommends eating vegetables, fruits, whole grains, lean proteins, legumes, nuts, low-fat dairy foods, and non-saturated fats including olive, sunflower, flax and hemp seed oil.
Include some kind of protein with every meal and every snack. Divide your total body weight into grams as a basic guideline as to how much protein to consume.
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