- Elite bodybuilders excel at building lean muscle while keeping body fat low.
- It takes intense dedication and commitment to have a competition-ready physique.
- But the right plan and exercises can help you make better gains even if you aren’t going pro.
Bodybuilding is the competitive sport of packing on lean muscle to sculpt an aesthetic physique — and the training techniques pros use can help you make gains even if you aren’t Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Getting totally ripped involves discipline and careful planning just as much as it requires tough gym sessions, according to Sadik Hadzovic, a professional bodybuilder and fitness model with more than a decade of experience in competitions, including the elite Mr. Olympia contest.
“One of the biggest surprising factors in a successful bodybuilder is the ability to sacrifice short-term gratification to reach their ultimate physical goal and become the .01% of the world,” Hadzovic, who is a brand ambassador for C4 Energy, told Insider.
The best bodybuilders in the world follow basic rules around building muscle and burning fat that everyday athletes can also use to achieve their fitness goals.
Simple strategies like planning your training cycle, picking the right exercises, and understanding your nutrition needs can help you get the most out of your workouts and diet without making your physique a full-time job.
You need a structured plan to build muscle like a bodybuilder
The first major rule of bodybuilding is that you’re not likely to make progress unless you know what your goal is, according to Hadzovic.
Changing your body takes time, since it can take months or even years to build significant amounts of muscle. And, while it’s possible to do both at once, most effective workout programs help you set a priority and work toward it for at least a few months, personal trainers previously told Insider. Without a specific goal, it can be easy to waste time on random workouts or yo-yo dieting.
Instead, be proactive about mapping out what you hope to achieve, and the steps you’ll need to get there before you dive in.
Bodybuilding workouts focus on time under tension
To plan your workouts like a bodybuilder, you’ll want a program with exercises to maximize hypertrophy, or increasing muscle size.
Building muscle involves breaking down the muscle tissue with resistance training such as lifting weights. The more you stress a muscle, the more it can adapt by growing back bigger and stronger, Andre Adams, a bodybuilder and National Academy of Sports Medicine master trainer, previously told Insider.
Research suggests some of the best muscle-building workouts involve time under tension, making the muscle work with evidence-based techniques such as:
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Eccentric exercise: focusing on the lowering or lengthening portion of an exercise such as descending from the top of a pull-up or bringing the weight back down from the top of a bicep curl.
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Isometric holds: contracting the muscle in a static position, such as a plank. This can be combined with other exercises as a “pause rep” by holding briefly at the bottom of a movement.
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Tempo exercise: slowing down a movement to create more tension on the muscles, such as counting to five as you lower into a squat.
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Drop sets: completing a set, then lowering the weight to immediately perform another set, repeating until you can’t do another rep even with lower weight.
To build muscle effectively, it’s important to push your muscles hard enough to prompt them to grow back bigger and stronger. You’ll also need to keep upping the challenge over time to continue making gains, a principle known as progressive overload.
“Your bodybuilding success will fall entirely on you and your ability to work even when you don’t feel like it,” Hadzovic said.
Bodybuilding requires intense discipline with diet, routine, and recovery
Lifting weights isn’t the only requirement for bodybuilding — you also need to manage your nutrition, including eating enough to build muscle, and keeping a stricter diet when you want to burn fat, bodybuilder Holly Baxter previously told Insider.
Staying committed to your routine can be a huge challenge, according to Hadzovic.
“When you think of bodybuilders, you’re often thinking about physical strength, but bodybuilders also possess a tremendous amount of mental strength,” he said. “The ability to not only push through the workouts but to conquer the other 22 hours of the day. Every single rep, every single meal, every single drop of water, and every single moment to recover,” Hadzovic said.
For the average person, you may not be able to rearrange your whole life for your fitness goals, but you do need to prepare to be patient and stick to your plan consistently and long-term to see results.
You also need to take your rest just as seriously as your workout if you want your muscles to grow, being sure to get plenty of sleep and making time for active recovery, movement that improves blood flow to your muscles without adding extra strain, bodybuilder Stan Efferding previously told Insider.
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