bodybuilding diet for beginners plan

[music] so you got 4 workoutscovering the whole body over a 6-day period. having said that,you gotta be flexible. if you need an extra day forrecovery, then take an extra day so that'll become 4 days over 7. some people may need even more,you gotta listen to your body. if you need more days to recoverthen, you know, just extend that cycle into 7 days or 8days or whatever you need.

extra negatives are atool that you can use to increase the intensity. basically, you gotthree phases of strength. the weakest phaseis the positive or the lifting of the weight. that's the weakest phase. the second phase ofstrength is the static. you're stronger on the static. and then the thirdphase is the negative.

unfortunately, a lot of peoplethink in terms of just lifting weight so for instance,a bench press, they lifted theweight to the top. all right, job done andjust drop it back down and do another one. they're missing half of the repand possibly the most important half of the rep because moremuscle damage occurs on the negative than on the positiveand it's the damage to the muscle that the body repairsthat then becomes muscle growth.

so you're missing the mostimportant part of the rep if you don't emphasizethat negative part. and even when you've gone tofailure on the positive part of the exercise, your muscle hasn'tgone to true failure because there's still strengthleft in the negative. so that's why i advise sometimesdoing additional negatives at the end of the set. if you've got atraining partner. if you're on a machine and it'ssafe, for instance, you're doing

bench press on a machine, youreach failure, you do a couple of forced reps, yourpositive strength is depleted. you failed but you still gotsomething left in the negative so you can get somebody to raisethe weight to the top and lower it slowly down for a couple repsuntil they can't control it, that way, you've depleted every,you know, every area of the rep. in off season, a moderateamount of cardio, i think, is good for yourcardiovascular conditioning. you need some decent amountof cardio to recover

between your sets. so 25, 30 minutes three times aweek, moderate cardio i think is good for some conditioning. it's also good for recoveryfrom the workouts because it helps--you're pushing bloodaround the system, get rid of the waste productsfrom the weight workouts. i prefer to do them on days thati'm not in the gym or if you, you know, if your scheduledoesn't permit that and you have to do it on the days you weighttrain, i would much prefer to do

it away from the weight workout. i've known for years for my ownfeedback that if you do cardio after weight training, it kindof interferes with the recovery. the priority is recovering fromthat workout and rebuilding the resources, so it's much betterto do your cardio separately. and funnily enough, scientificstudies are coming out now and proving this if you do cardioafter weights, your strength gains are less than if youdid weights on their own. i do a small amount of ab work

but there's noadditional weight. it's just body weight,short movements, crunches, reverse crunches, leg raises. of course, if you wanted to getthicker abdominals, you could use extra resistance butmost people don't because aesthetically, you don't wantto build too much muscle in the midsection 'causeit spoils your shape. so just very controlled, shortmovements, basically abdominals is just to bring thesetwo points together.

so sit-ups and so on,not in the most effective. i found just simple forwardcrunches and reverse crunch where you bring your hips uptoward your chest and reversing that movement, that'spretty much all i needed. sure, you can do once a weekwhen you're in a mass cycle, but i wouldn't recommend using extraweights 'cause it's gonna build thickness in the obliquesand it's gonna, you know, it's gonna spoil your symmetry. i do several sets, justconcentrating on the contraction

and having more control,especially when you go on stage, controlling the abdominals andwith the posing and everything, you need to be connectedwith the muscle in order to control them. there's a debate,what's better, machines or free weights? neither, you know. they're both toolsthat you can use. as long as you're working themuscle, you're working it

to failure, it doesn'tparticularly matter if it's a machine or a free weight. there's advantagesand disadvantages. the advantages with thefree weight, of course, we're all built differently. we're all different heights. we all got different lengths oflimbs, different attachments and everything where a machineis just built in one way. a free weight, if you lift thefree weight and i lift the free

weight, it will take a slightlydifferent pathway because our bodies are built differentlyso that's the advantage of a free weight. it works with the individual'sbody where a machine, you're locked into a groove. the advantage of a machine isthat you can isolate the muscle without too muchoutside involvement, especially if you gotinjuries, they're very useful and there's morecontrol involved.

so if you want to go extranegatives and so on, of course, if you're doing a free weight,bench press is very awkward to do extra negatives at the end. you'd have to lift the weightto the top and lower it down and it's just not practical andit's not really safe, whereas a machine, you're doing a machinebench press, you can get your training partner to lift at thetop and you can control it and it's safe. so there'sadvantages and disadvantages.

i use both in my training. i use free weights. i use machines. you know, the main thing is aslong--it's more like the effort that you're putting inrather than the tools that you're using. i've always worked with atraining partner just because working to failure,it's not practical. if you haven't got a trainingpartner, you at least need a

good spotter, somebody thatknows what they're doing. if you're, you know, if you'regoing to failure with a--on an incline press with a freeweight, for instance, if you go to failure and there's nobodythere spotting you, it's very dangerous so you can get stuckwith that weight on your chest. so you need a good trainingpartner or at least a spotter, you know, to assist you in thoseexercises where it's not safe and practical to do itwithout a training partner. so, for me, they're essentialbut, of course, you know, you've

gotta have a trainingpartner that has the same goals as yourself. i think that's very important. you know, i cangive guidelines, but obviously it variesfrom one person to another depending on their metabolism. i usually start with aprotein recommendation. if somebody's training hard andthey're trying to build muscle and put on body weight, i wouldrecommend a ballpark like 1-1/2

grams of protein foreach pound of body weight. so if you weigh 200 pounds, forinstance, 300 grams of protein a day, that's what youshould be aiming for. and your body can only utilizeso much protein at one time and it doesn't stay in your systemfor very long so that's why i recommend eating--breaking thatprotein requirement down into five or six small mealsthroughout the day and that's where a protein supplementbecomes very important. that's something i've alwaysused since i've started training

because to get, 300, 400 gramsof protein a day from solid food is very, very difficult and, youknow, if you're working and so on, it's not practicalto eat chicken breast every couple of hours. so a protein supplementis very useful to get that requirement in. as far as an energy requirement,carbohydrates, it's gonna vary quite a bit from oneindividual to another. so i can give you a, you know,a guideline and basically if

you're putting on body fat withthat level, then you have to bring it down a little bit. if you're not gaining weight, then you have to goup a little bit. whatever proteinlevel you're taking, times that by 1-1/2 to 2. three hundred grams of proteina day becomes 450 to 600 grams of carbohydrate a day. that would be a good guideline.

and again, break it upthroughout the day and keep good source of carbohydrates,you know, fairly complex carbohydrates that are brokendown slowly, released into your bloodstream slowly soyou don't get spikes of blood sugar and big drops. so we're talking oatmeal,brown rice, sweet potatoes, vegetables, things like that. you need fats in your diet. there was one time back when istarted training where it was

just high protein, carbohydratesand super low fat and i found with a little bit more fat inmy diet, definitely my strength went up and i got better gains. you know, you're gonnaget dietary fat if you're eating eggs. i wouldn't justeating egg whites, i would throw a fewegg yellows in there. if you take allthe yellows out, you're taking someof the aminos away.

so let's say you'rehaving ten egg whites, i would say have at leastthree yolks in there as well. you know, steak, you're gonnahave natural fats in there and a couple of tablespoons a daywith omega fats mixed omega fats to make sure you're gettingall the essential fats. chicken breast, turkey breast. beef is an excellentsource of protein. it's just, you know, if it'svery high in fat, obviously you don't want that but you canget--i used to get lean ground

beef almost as chickenbreast and it's a better and more completesource of protein. so beef is a goodsource as well. so eggs, chicken breast,turkey breast, beef, fish is fine if you like it,i'm not a big fan myself, then a protein supplement. those are main sources. i used to train after two mealsso i'd have a big breakfast, you know, oatmeal, eggs and soon, a couple hours later,

i'd have a shake, a proteinshake, maybe a banana or a small amountof carbohydrates. about an hour to an hour anda half before i trained, 30 minutes before i trained,i'd take a pre-workout kind of stimulant supplement. after training, i wouldtake a small amount of simple, quickly-digested protein likea whey isolate along with some simple sugars, dextrose,sucrose, it doesn't matter as long as it's simple sugar.

then you're gonna getthat insulin reaction. the body's gonna releaseinsulin and it's gonna help push nutrients towards the musclesthat are depleted at that point and that's a good timeto take, you know, extra glutamine, creatine. if you're taking creatine,that's an excellent time to take it. you're gonna absorb moreright after the workout with the simple sugars.

i got a lot ofexperience with injuries. i had enoughinjuries over the years. i've learned as i went along. i was a young guy when istarted, i got injuries and there's really no--therewas no good advice around. i'd go to my m.d. and, of course, they don'tknow much about sports injuries. they just tell you to rest andtake some anti-inflammatories. if you've got an injury,a small injury,

it's good to take care of it. you know, what happens if you'vegot an injury, if you got a small tear in the muscle, yourbody will repair that but it repairs it with scar tissue. scar tissue is not flexiblelike normal muscle tissue. it's not elastic so ifyou could think about like an elastic band. if you snapped an elastic bandand then stuck it together with glue, with a lump of glue, itwill be fixed but it will no

longer be elastic and there's agood chance that that lump of glue, at some point,is gonna snap again. so if you get a little injury, ithink deep tissue and massage is the best thing to do. and you get somebody in thereto break that scar tissue down, bring blood into the area andtrying to get the healthy tissue back there and do that beforeit becomes a severe injury. that's what i'velearned over the years. and, you know, regularchiropractic is very helpful

as well to keepeverything in balance. don't wait tillyou've got an injury. if you're putting a lot ofstress on your body, if you're doing a lot of weight training,i think it's a good idea to have regular chiropractic care,just maybe once a month, something like that. i used to do strengthbecause i mean strength is a good indication. if you're getting stronger,you're getting bigger

and vice versa. so i would do body weight. i even used to do measurementslike measure my arms. the stuff might sound a bitold, old school, but if you got various factors there, you cansee if they're all increasing. so you could do acouple of measurements. you could do your bodyweight on the scales. you could do yourstrength levels and see how that increases from month to monthand have a goal each month.

even if it's, "this month, i'mgonna put on 2 pounds," if you did that every month at theend of the year, it's 24 pounds. it's a huge gain. i don't do pictures in offseason, but i did getting ready for a contest, every week,getting ready for a contest so that way i could trackhow my body was changing and actually helped me a lot. when i won the first mr. olympiain 1992, i kept every week pictures and what i noticed waslike practically 5 or 6 weeks

out from the contest, i was moreor less in contest shape and i kept coming down and losingweight and losing weight. and it may have got a littleharder but what i realized is i was actually losing muscle. so the next year, i wasdetermined not to do that and i didn't make that mistake andthat's why i was able to make this huge increase from 1year to the next, like 16 or 17 pounds of muscle from1 year to the next. and everyone's like,"how is that possible?"

well, you know, i had a greatyear of training so i probably did put on 5 or 6 pounds ofmuscle, which at a pro level, that's a great gain, but moreimportantly, i didn't sacrifice 10 pounds of muscle like isacrificed the previous year. so it's really helpedthe learning process. something that reallyhelped me over the years to keep motivated is keeping a journalwith nutrition, with training. what i used to dois every month, write down wherei'm at presently.

this is my body weight. this is my nutrition. these are my max weights oreight reps on like ten key exercises, and then i would setmyself a short-term goal, which is like in 1 month'stime, i want to do this. and it's gotta bean achievable goal. for instance, if you could justadd 5 pounds to your bench press in a month, if you coulddo that every month, then that's 60 pounds atthe end of the year.

that's a huge gain. so it's important to have goals,short-term goals, maybe monthly goals and maybe a long-term goalat the end of the year and break it down into little steps. instead of looking at, "the end of the year, iwant to achieve this," how are you gonna get there? you gotta take smallsteps to get there. so monthly goals and writingthem down i think it makes them

more--much more powerful. what i would do before aworkout, i would look at my journal and i would keep arecord of every workout as well. after a workout, i wouldwrite down, "this is what i did today," you know, "inclinepress, 200 times 8 reps," and i would review that before i wentto do the workout the next week. "okay, that's what i did lastweek and that's my goal to beat this," you know? "i did 8 reps with 200 orwhatever, this workout i'm gonna

"do 9 reps or 10 reps or i'mgonna do the same reps with 205," just small incrementsand get that goal in your mind. know which exercises you'regonna do before you go to the gym, which order you're gonna dothem in, what your goals are for those exercises, rather thanjust wandering in a gym and

bodybuilding diet for beginners plan,thinking, "oh, i'm doingchest today, what shall i do? what do i feellike doing today?" and having no clear goal. if you got no clear goal, you'revery unlikely to get anywhere.