TIPS
1. Define Your Challenge
Write down your ultimate physique goal and how you’d like to look. Include weight, body fat, and any physique improvements you’d like to see. Now divide it by 3. That’s roughly your 90-day goal—to get you a third of the way there.
2. Make Time For Your Health
Work up to 60 minutes of physical activity each day. That doesn’t mean you’ll be on the weight-room floor seven days a week, but strive to get some kind of activity—even if it’s a walk with your dog or a leisurely bike ride. Take advantage of great weather when it happens by taking your workouts outdoors. If you’re new to fitness, start with two 15-minute sessions or three 10-minute sessions to help you become acclimated.
3. Be Around People Whose Goals Align With Yours
Friends can help in other ways too. Surround yourself with five new friends at the office, school, or in your personal life who are committed to health and fitness. People who choose healthy lifestyles will engage in behaviors that will rub off on you. Similarly, if your friends are just the opposite, they’ll likely reinforce the wrong kinds of behaviors.
4. Avoid Comparing Yourself To Others
Instead, compare yourself to you of last week. If you make every week better in some way than the preceding week, you’re moving forward and making progress. Aim to improve yourself 5-10 percent versus last year’s version of you. It’s hard for any of us to feel good about ourselves when we try to measure up to physique athletes who may have been training for a decade or more. What these champions have in common with you is that they decided to improve their fitness one day, and then came back for a second, and kept going.
5. Avoid Comparing Yourself To Others
Instead, compare yourself to you of last week. If you make every week better in some way than the preceding week, you’re moving forward and making progress. Aim to improve yourself 5-10 percent versus last year’s version of you. It’s hard for any of us to feel good about ourselves when we try to measure up to physique athletes who may have been training for a decade or more. What these champions have in common with you is that they decided to improve their fitness one day, and then came back for a second, and kept going.
6. Read To Get Motivated And Learn
An easy way to get inspired and increase your knowledge of fitness, training, and nutrition is to commit to reading one online fitness article each day. Thousands of such articles cover a huge number of areas on this site alone! You won’t know everything there is to know in a week, but knowing a little more every day helps you better understand the what, why, and how of what you’re doing. Here’s a starter’s guide to fitness terms that’ll help you find your way around the gym. Just be aware there’s a ton of garbage advice available on the Web, so stick to sites you trust.
7. Try A New Recipe For A "Clean" Meal Once A Week
Not everyone loves to cook. However, anyone can turn simple recipes into tasty meals that are clean and loaded with protein by starting with our Recipe Database, which lists more than 1,400 healthy and clean recipes.
8. Get A Heavy Dose Of "Vitamin L"
Watching the news today can be totally depressing, and that’s on top of your own set of problems. So laugh as often as you can. My favorite comic relief is watching reruns of “The Big Bang Theory,” but there are any number of comedy shows you can easily download to lighten the mood. Just make sure you turn everything off at least 45 minutes before bedtime—and that includes your phone
9. Focus On Form First
If you’re working out with weights, the single-most important factor early on is learning how to use proper form—not lifting as much weight as possible! Most gyms offer an initial training session with a personal trainer when you sign up for a membership; study up on those exercises, or peruse a beginner’s routine from the Bodybuilding.com library. Good form ensures the proper muscle groups are targeted and reduces the risk of an injury. Just watching how somebody else does a movement in the gym is like Russian roulette: sooner or later, you’re going to pick up bad form. This site contains photos and videos on how to do hundreds of exercises right in the Exercise Database.
10. Use Math To Build Muscle
Commit this fundamental process of muscle building to memory. You train given muscle groups by subjecting them to an overload and volume (sets + reps) of work they’re unaccustomed to. That’s the training stimulus. However, the microdamage to muscle fibers takes a few days for repair and growth, and it requires good nutrition (especially protein and carbs) and recovery, so what you eat and how you rest are important in the muscle-building equation. You do not build muscle in the gym; that’s only where you initiate the muscle-building process!
11. Learn The Basic Multijoint Movements
The best mass builders are the basic multijoint exercises, which you should be focusing on during your training. “Multijoint” simply means that more than a single pair of joints—and the muscles that attach to them—are at work. For example, when bench pressing, your shoulder and elbow joints are involved, which recruits your chest, delts, and triceps. These types of exercises have been shown to be superior for developing muscle mass by increasing the muscle-building hormonal response. Single-joint exercises don’t deliver near the same muscle-building pop.
12. Choose The Right Rep Target And Weight
If you’re looking to add size, choose a weight that barely allows you to complete 8-12 reps with good form on each set. That’s the range exercise scientists identify as being the best for building muscle. If you can do more than 12 reps, add weight so that you’ll be doing fewer reps. If you can’t reach at least 6, reduce the weight a bit. Simple, right?
13. Turn Up The Volume—On Your Sets, Reps, And Load
There are a number of variables that affect muscle growth, like exercise selection and rep range (which relates to “intensity”) but another one is volume. That’s the number of sets x reps x load per body part. Though you won’t be doing much total volume as a beginner, you’ll be adding exercises and sets over time for each muscle group. Higher-volume, multiple-set protocols consistently have been shown to be superior over single sets when it comes to building muscle.
14. Rest 60-90 Seconds Between Sets
Because muscle growth is determined in part by the accumulation of substances that build up over the course of your workout, taking rest periods that are too long allows them to dissipate. But cutting your rest periods too short means your body won’t be recovered sufficiently. That’s why exercise scientists recommend that you take about 60-90 seconds between sets.