The Heart of Successful Bodybuilding Training is Scheduling

When a bodybuilder steps onto the stage and begins to pose to show off his phenomenal muscle development, that is not the hardest work of the sport.  The real labor of being a bodybuilder is developing a schedule of training and executing that training schedule religiously.  When a bodybuilder's training program is developed, both the sequence of exercises and the frequency are crucial for him to see he muscle development he wants take place.  The schedule of exercise is one of the critical factors for the success of the workouts.

It is not true that working out ten times a week will be more effective at building muscle than work out five times a week and obeying the schedule designed by your coach or trainer.  Discipline is at the heart of seeing success in bodybuilding and that discipline means staying on schedule, exactly the way that schedule was written.

A bodybuilder's schedule is created to maximize muscle growth based on how muscles react to stress.  While it is true that bodybuilding training often puts tremendous stress on the focus muscle groups, that stress is controlled so as not to exceed the real capacity of the muscle at the stage of training that it is in.  Bodybuilding coaches and trainers know well that a relatively short and fast workout is more effective than many workouts or workouts that go on for a long time.  Most good bodybuilding workouts can achieve the goals of steadily building muscles in forty-five minutes.

There is no magic formula for the perfect bodybuilder's workout schedule.  That is why working with a trainer to gauge where your individual abilities lie and the condition of your muscle development is crucial.  By understanding what your body can handle in terms of training for strength and endurance, a schedule can be written to workout at proper intervals and to allow your muscles to recover in an orderly fashion as well.

The process of muscle growth is one of breaking down old muscle and allowing the natural recuperative ability of the body to grow stronger muscle in its place.  That process takes 48 hours from the time of the workout.  That means that the rest period between workout sessions is just as important to muscle growth as the workout itself.  It is during the rest periods in your workout schedule that muscles develop, recover from the workout and then rejuvenate themselves and grow.

Another very important part of your bodybuilding workout schedule is the sequence of exercises during the workout.  In order to achieve that perfect symmetry to your shape, muscles in every focus muscle group should be developed in a coordinated fashion.  That means that your workouts will use a compound exercise approach where you might focus on the upper body with some lower body on Monday and use entirely difference exercises on Wednesday.  Circuit training, when properly balanced will achieve the same goals.

As a rule, a four-day workout schedule with religiously kept rest days between workouts is a good development plan for most bodybuilders.  The actual workout periods should be planned out so that you move from exercise to exercise in a continuous stream of workouts that give different muscle groups exercise but do not over stress any one muscle group.  If you come away from a workout session with damage to a muscle group because of working it too hard, that hurts your overall plan for muscle growth because you then have to develop a recovery plan.

Your trainer or bodybuilding coach can help you develop a training schedule that lays out a path to bodybuilding success over a period of weeks and months.  Once that schedule is written, it will call upon you to use your discipline and dedication to your bodybuilding goals to keep that schedule without fail.

That means that you are in the gym exactly when you are scheduled to be there and that you neither add nor subtract any part of your exercise plan from any daily workout.  By being scrupulous and exacting about keeping your workout plan perfectly, you will see steady muscle growth and progress toward your goal step by step.  And step by step in bodybuilding is the only reliable path to winning the big competitions that lie in your future.