You are young, you are full of energy and you want to go to the gym to work out and start lifting weights. So how can you make the most of your time in the gym, get stronger and build bigger muscles in the shortest amount of time?
Whether you’re in your teens or twenties, to really maximize your results you must first get your ego under control. It’s not easy, especially since the main reason young people start lifting weights is insecurity. Arnold Schwarzenegger became the biggest bodybuilding star in history, but it started because his brother was always beating him up and his father referred to him as his “his daughter.” Nimrod was a common name in Africa, but when Nimrod King moved to Canada, he was mercilessly mocked by children, and he became the Canadian bodybuilding champion. There are many other examples, but suffice it to say that there can be a lot of emotion and ego involved in his decision to go to the gym.
Many others start lifting weights because they want to get better at sports, at school, after school, or on the weekends. While that is an admirable and appropriate decision, ego often enters the picture once they walk into the gym and see others there, or have teammates or competitors working there as well. It’s easy to get caught up in all of this, especially if your local gym has a number of immature and insecure older lifters working there, the kind who goad you or make fun of less experienced or less strong athletes like you.
Here’s the scoop: You’ll never be able to build strength, build muscle, or burn body fat as easily as you can in your teens and twenties. You’re in the “sweet spot” for hormones right now, especially testosterone. Bodybuilding for teens is like a snowball rolling downhill: every year you get bigger and stronger, and every year your efforts take you further as your testosterone increases. Bodybuilding for people in their twenties is like sailing at high speed: your testosterone levels continue to rise until around age 24 and then level off, not going down as much as you’ll experience in your thirties and beyond. With adrenaline, testosterone, growth hormone and the like creating a “growth cocktail” in your bloodstream, your teens and twenties are definitely the best time to lay the foundation for a fantastic body for life…
This is BIG news for boys in their teens and men in their 20s: it means you can gain more muscle and get stronger faster, so hit the gym regularly. It’s also great news for teenage girls and women in their twenties… You won’t have to worry about building huge muscles, since your testosterone levels are much, much lower. But you’ll still get stronger quickly, and your muscles will be noticeable by their shape and density rather than their size. And teens and twenties of both genders will love the way their body fat levels drop as they burn off any remaining ‘baby fat’.
But this is where the ego often takes over… Gyms are full of guys who work their chests and arms like crazy, with only a little work for their backs and legs. The results are seen on beaches everywhere: young men with ravishing upper bodies and chicken legs (perhaps that’s why board shorts have replaced Speedo-style bathing suits). For the ladies, you’ll spend hours on a treadmill, running at a steady pace the entire time, and maybe, just maybe, do some light work with the smaller dumbbells. He is looking for bigger arms, she is looking for lower levels of fat and a fit looking body.
Not only are they both on the wrong track, but they’re both wasting the best anabolic window of their lives!
Since your body chemistry is making this the best time of your life physically, now is the time to use the most powerful lifts to multiply your results. Forget doing a lot of chest and arm isolation exercises, men; in fact, at his age, training the arms directly is unnecessary. They will get more than enough growth and strength gains from the big compound movements you use to build your biggest muscles. And ladies, nothing will burn more fat and make you stronger than doing the exact same exercises as men.
What you should focus on is squats, deadlifts, incline rows, pull-ups (eventually weighted pull-ups), bench press, and upright rows. Period. Those 6 exercises, done correctly with the right amount of weight, will make you totally strong: your biceps, triceps, and forearms will get stronger and bigger just by being the assistants during your big lifts. For boys and men, decide if your primary goal is size or strength; while the two go hand in hand to a great extent, different workouts favor one over the other. For strength, keep the reps low: only do 5 reps per set, use the heaviest weight you can move while maintaining perfect form, and complete 5-10 sets of each exercise. To shift focus to size, lift weights that only allow you to do 8-12 reps, taking about 4-6 seconds per rep, for 4-5 sets.
Most girls and women, on the other hand, aren’t training for muscle size but rather for strength and speed for other sports or simply to get stronger as well as reduce and maintain lower levels of body fat. For this, use the same set and rep scheme as above to build strength. Start with whatever weight you can handle correctly at first, no matter how light it is, and add more weight as your body gets stronger. Don’t let anyone in the gym give you a hard time or tell you what you should be lifting; focus on the strength you currently have and increase the amount of weight you lift as your body allows. Forget all the little ‘toning’ and ‘shaping’ exercises you hear or read about: nothing will burn more calories than big compound lifts like squats and deadlifts.
Sticking to those ‘Big-6’ exercises for at least your first two years in the gym will put you on the path to the best physique your genetics will allow. Mixing too many cardio or isolation exercises will only rob you of the energy you could be putting into your compound lifts and reduce the time it takes for your body to recover from each workout; obviously, the higher your power output, the longer your recovery time. . If you still feel like you have a lot of energy after your workout, next time add one more set to each exercise or just slow down each rep; Either one will get you further.
On the subject of steroids and other injectables, it’s simple: You don’t need them and you don’t want them, no matter what your trainer, your friends, or the fans at the local gym tell you. Male or female, if you consistently work out lifting heavy weights, it will still take YEARS to even get close to your genetic potential, so why spend your money on upgrades now that your body has that powerful NATURAL combination to aid you in your quest?
Another benefit you get from your hormone cocktail is faster recovery between workouts, assuming you make sure you get 8 hours of sleep a night or more; remember that your body only repairs and rebuilds itself while you sleep. For most people in their teens and early twenties, the best results in the gym will come from a full-body workout done three non-consecutive days a week: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, for example. example. Make sure you know and follow healthy nutrition guidelines and stay hydrated, get enough sleep and you’ll be shooting towards your best body at a fast rate; just do your best not to let your ego become a series of roadblocks or, worse yet, lead you down a dead end. If you’re going to be lifting weights and expending all that energy in the gym, you’d be foolish to settle for anything less than the best possible results!
