The discipline of bodybuilding can benefit anybody, even those who are not hoping to compete in bodybuilding competitions one day. But that discipline is about a lot more than just lifting weights and pumping up. The diet of a bodybuilder is crucial to his or her success in sculpting that perfect shape.
It is important to understand what a bodybuilding diet is doing to help you accomplish your goals. The difference between fat loss and weight loss may seem like a small distinction. But it is quite important. A well balanced bodybuilder’s diet puts a much greater emphasis on fat loss and less on weight loss. There are some very good reasons for that.
Despite the big emphasis in the culture about the trials and tribulations of weight loss, anybody with a little discipline can do it. The formula is simply to use up more calories every day than you take in through your diet. So if you need 3000 calories a day for your basic daily activity, you simply craft your diet to eat fewer than that and you will lose weight. The tricky part is making sure that the calories you do eat are balanced with all of the nutrition and energy supply so your body doesn’t begin to burn up muscle instead of fat.
A diet that would be a disaster for a bodybuilder’s development goals would be one that as high in sugar but low in nutrition. Even if that diet was carefully measured so that the dieter was eating fewer calories than he or she would burn up based on lifestyle and body weight, that weight loss would be detrimental to the goals of building muscle. Because the body would require more calories than is in the diet but it was not being provided with sufficient nutrition, the weight loss will come from muscle rather than from fat loss as is desired. You will get smaller but your body to fat ratio will not change or it will get worse.
Another mistake bodybuilders sometimes make is to work out very aggressively but not compensate for that additional use of calories in diet. By keeping their diet low based on an activity level that was measured before aggressive training took place, the bodybuilder would not be replacing valuable nutrition that the body needs fast enough.
For a couple weeks, this kind of strategy would seem to work well because you would lose weight very quickly. But the stress you will put on your metabolism would kick the body into an emergency mode and you will stop losing fat. Instead, the body will start to consume muscle because it would think it was starving and it needed that muscle for energy to keep the organism alive. Not only is this inefficient in terms of your bodybuilding goals, it can be dangerous over time.
Of course, none of us can hit the ideal bodybuilding diet but it helps to know what it looks like. The goal is to assure a smooth transition of your body that works well with your level of working out each week. Instead of dropping the calorie level severely, try for a moderate reduction of calories. So if you calculate that you would ordinarily need 3000 calories a day, shoot for 2700 or so which creates a deficit from diet but not a severe one. But be sure that diet is well balanced so you hit all of your nutrition needs and goals despite the reduce calorie quality of your meals.
You will naturally lose more calories from your workouts each week. But because the natural calorie depletion is not caused by an extreme diet, you will not experience loss of muscle or bone tissue because of the lower calorie intake. The body does not go into extreme metabolic shutdown so it burns fat for the extra energy it needs, which is the goal.
While these guidelines are good to understand so you are an intelligent guide of your own health and development, it is always good to get help form your trainer or from reading or good bodybuilding websites (like this one). The more educated you are, the better you will do at developing and staying on a bodybuilder diet and exercise plan that will lead to your ultimate success.
Need more ideas? Here are some successful Body Building Techniques
The most successful body building techniques incorporate proven weight routines. A weight routine is a set of exercises, done in repetition, that develops specific parts of the body. For example, to build chest muscles, a body builder may use a weight routine that incorporates flat bench press (3 repetitions), bench dumbbell (2 repetitions) and inclined bench press (3 repetitions). The other important function a weight routine serves is to split a training program so different muscle groups are used.
Building Biceps
Dumbbells are a common piece of equipment used to build bigger biceps. The most popular technique to get the desired result is to hold the dumbbell closer to the inside of the plates. Routines for building biceps include dumbbell curls either inclined or standing, or both.
Building Chest Muscle
Good chest muscle building exercises are routines that incorporate bench presses and flyes. An even more effective way to build chest muscle is to split the chest into 3 zones – upper, middle and lower. By working each separately, using exercises that specifically target that area, you can build up some impressive chest muscle fairly quickly.
For instance, do your upper chest exercises on a 30-45% incline bench. Incline barbell and incline dumbbell flyes are excellent for working upper chest muscles. On the other hand, the lower chest muscles are best exercised using a 30-45% decline bench. You would use decline barbell and decline dumbbell flyes to build these muscles. A flat bench works best for the middle chest muscles. So you’d do flat barbell and flat dumbbell flyes on a flat bench.
Moving Onto Shoulder Training
The shoulders are made up of 3 main muscles – the lateral, anterior and posterior deltoids. Effective shoulder training to get big shoulders requires working all 3. The anterior deltoid usually gets some work in chest workouts. To build up the lateral and posterior deltoids requires additional exercises targeting these two muscles. Generally the best way to do this is with heavy barbell and dumbbell pressing in short reps as opposed to a lot of rep work with lighter weights. You should also focus on shoulder exercises that work effectively with progressive overload, a technique used to progressively add more weight to what is being lifted.
Matching Up The Back With Back Exercises
The back is one area many body builders overlook. But if you want your back to match up with those impressive chest, shoulder and bicep muscles, you will need to include back exercises in your bodybuilding routine.
Good workouts for the Lower Trapezius or lower back muscles include stiff-legged good mornings and hyper-extensions. For the middle back muscles or Rhomboids, you can do a seated cable row and bent-over barbell rows. Your Latissimus Dorsi will benefit from wide-grip lat pull-downs and pull-ups. And last but not least, try upright rows and barbell shrugs for your Trapezius.
But before starting any body-building workout, be sure to warm up properly. This will reduce the risk of damaging muscles and tendons. Stretch the muscles you’re going to be working. Also avoid lifting more weight than your body can capably handle to avoid serious injury.