Becoming involved in Bodybuilding is a very rewarding experience. Bodybuilding is a process of using weight training in order to increase the size, strength, and balance of the muscles in your body, as well as decrease bodyfat. This is done through progressive resistance training, which means you must regularly increase the resistance (weight) you use as the muscle grows stronger

Increasing resistance is possible due to the body's ability to adapt to stress by becoming stronger in response to the stimulus of exercise. Simply put, when you work a muscle hard, the fibers are actually damaged or broken down and the body responds by repairing the muscle and making it slightly bigger and stronger to prepare for the work to be repeated. If the work (exercise) is repeated frequently (with enough rest in between for the repair process to take place) with increased resistance each time, theoretically, the muscle will get progressively larger and stronger. That is the main idea of how bodybuilding works.

It is a simple process, but there are many variables that can affect how fast and how much the muscle will grow. These factors include, but are not limited to, the following:

Nutrition

Rest

Intensity of workouts

Frequency of workouts

Nutrition is a huge part of successful bodybuilding. I recommend educating yourself on the topics of nutrition and supplements. One way to keep informed in this area is to subscribe to a good Bodybuilding magazine such as Flex or Muscle & Fitness. Both of these fine bodybuilding magazines have many great articles each month dealing with diet, nutrition and supplements.

Proper rest is extremely critical to muscle growth. In this day and age, it is not unusual to get less than 6 hours of sleep a night for a lot of people. I recommend trying to get at least 8 hours if at all possible, even if you need to take a nap! Muscle growth mostly occurs at night, during sleep, which makes it very important to get a lot!

Workout intensity is something that entire books have been written on. I recommend reading up on this topic as well. Flex and Muscle & Fitness deal with this topic in depth. Basically you need to find the right amount of intensity to trigger muscle growth. When a bodybuilder is just starting out, it does not take much to trigger new muscle growth. However, the body will quickly adapt to repeated stress and this can cause muscle growth to slow or stop all together. When this occurs, bodybuilders refer to it as a "plateau". This is the time to increase the intensity of your training. The muscle must be subjected to a new kind of stress that it is not used to in order to stimulate new growth. Fortunately, there are many methods of changing the workout intensity, but that is beyond the scope of this article.

Frequency of workouts is something that will vary from bodybuilder to bodybuilder. A bodybuilder may workout anywhere from 3 to 7 days per week. you will want to try several different schedules to see what is best for you. You must give your muscles enough of a break between workouts to repair themselves, but you don't want to wait too long between workouts or you will not get maximum results.

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