Beginner Bodybuilding Tip: Build Your Foundation FIRST

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Beginner Bodybuilding Tips: Build Your Foundation FIRST

Video Transcript:

That advice is to try not to over analyze your physique in the beginning stages in terms of which muscles you think need more or less work. Instead, just focus on building muscle equally throughout your entire body and on building an overall foundation of muscle size and strength before worrying about any potential lagging muscle groups or weak points.

First off, as a beginning lifter, there's a pretty good chance that you probably don't even truly know what your actual weak points are yet. You might have inaccurate expectations about what a proportional physique looks like or you might think that certain muscles are supposed to be growing faster than they currently are, and you also don't have enough training under your belt to know how well or how poorly each muscle group on your body is going to respond over time, since everyone has certain muscles that grow faster or slower than others depending on their genetics.

The second issue is that trying to work on weak points early on in your training is likely going to take your focus away from other muscle groups that are just as important to build, and you'll end up with uneven development and your overall physique won't progress as quickly as it could.

A lot of bodybuilding beginners will tend to focus on what they consider to be the "showy" muscles like the chest or the arms, when the truth is that every muscle plays an important role in bringing your physique together.

The third issue is that by not focusing on developing your entire physique evenly you might actually be increasing your risk for injury as well.

If you're constantly favoring certain movement patterns over others (for example if you're doing a lot of compound upper body pressing and not enough pulling, or you're performing more work for your quads without also developing your hamstrings) these things can eventually throw your body out of balance and increase the chances of joint issues catching up with you later on.

So, bottom line here, as a bodybuilding beginner your focus in those initial muscle building stages should be on developing your overall physique evenly as a whole and on getting the fundamentals down first.

Things like learning proper lifting technique and developing a good mind muscle connection, applying basic progressive overload and getting stronger on all the major key lifts, gaining an understanding of bodybuilding nutrition and how to eat for your goals in terms of calories and food choices, getting into a rhythm and staying consistent with your workout plan... and then later on once you've added some decent muscle and strength to your frame (I'd say 6 months of consistent proper training is a reasonable time frame for people with average genetics) you can optionally start looking at prioritizing certain parts of your training to address weaker lagging muscle groups.

If at 6 months in it's blatantly obvious that your chest just isn't responding well even though you're using proper technique and enough total volume and intensity, or your quads are growing but your glutes aren't, then it might be fine at that point to increase the volume or the frequency for a certain muscle or increase the exercise variety for it.

P.S. If you found these muscle building tips helpful, make sure to get your personalized training, nutrition and supplement plans using my interactive video presentation below:

[Sean_Nalewanyj]

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[atrain-wrje]

Long story short, don't over complicate things, do compound lifts and hit EVERY muscle group. Learn how to do exercises with the right form. BANG!

[abdulsami]

hands down the best fitness channel I have found so far and I am comparing this to many of the top ones (who have millions of subscribers )

[emppupelikone]

this is so true. for the first 2 years i lifted i was doing a bro split - made some great gains but really my weights werent going up too much. i was overthinking everything - now just focusing on strength

[maypalmer]

Simply FABULOUS information, Sean!! Once again, you hit it out of the ball park on this one! Great job!

[MomYePlans]

I just found your channel and love your videos! They are so informative and I love the way you explain things! Not sure what your viewer demographic is but could you make a video geared towards beginner female lifters? Thanks!

[md]

This is perfect timing. I've been trying to decide if I should do a standard upper/lower or ppl, OR if I should specialize on shoulders and traps for 6 weeks, then chest and biceps for 6 weeks, then back for 6 weeks (while still working everything- I was considering Lyle McDonald's specialization strategy), because I know building up the traps and shoulders first would probably give me the illusion of size quicker than a non specialized routine. Which still might be true, but your reasons to avoid specialization as a beginner outweigh that

[MAGAMAN]

I just recently went back to the basics with the 5-3-1 workout. Doing mostly compound movements like bench, squat, deadlift, overhead press. I also do bent over rows on bench day and standing rows on OHP day. Everything is responding very well, except my bench. I know I'm getting enough volume when I bench, so maybe I need to add in a second bench day?

[adityavekariya]

Really great i have been telling this to people for years.

[marcelimarilag]

Great advice as always from you Sean! New lifters be like, oh I have small arms, I will perform 20 sets of arm curls to get big arms! LOL

[Santiago-ppje]

As a beginner i should start with full body 2-3 times per week right? and there's 6 movements (all i know for beginners maybe there's more)

1. Knee dominant movement (Squats)
2. Hip dominant movement (Deadlifts)
3. Horizontal push (Bench/Dumbbell press)
4. Vertical push (OHP)
5. Horizontal pull (Rows)
6 Vertical pull (Pull up)

And i noticed there's 4 exercises for upper body and 2 for lower, isn't that an imbalance, should i add more exercises for the lower body or more sets?

Thanks for reading

[hemrajsinghgheeseewan]

very nice tips Sean.
Can you do a video about muscle grouping and also give some workout program.

[renag]

Hey sean you should make a video about arching your back during bench press

[ultrafloss]

Great information as always and you're looking more youthful Sean!

Thanks very much. 😀

[christie]

How does someone even dislike any of your content?

[RaisedFlipper]

Yo Sean:
Every man has envisioned his life in this way, at least once. A life as a martyr to his dream, his God.

[nikosarampatzis]

Great content Sean i like it that finally someone tells things simple and how it is without fancy b.s. There are two questions i wonna make, i saw in an old video of yours saying that the body works as a whole so if we didnt train our lower body properly and now we do we will expect also better gains for the upper body is that the case or things change from that time of the video, also i would like to ask something completely different and this is that when we say for example that someone can gain a certain amount of muscle we talk only about myofibrillar hypertrophy or also the liquid that comes from sarcoplasmic hypertrophy?

[joliosad]

this is so correct thanks for info man
but what about weakpoint stratige

[eyedike]

Great video Sean.

My beginner question- I'm nine months in and developing well, however I'm missing some key lifts. In particular, deadlifts.

What's the best way to learn to do these big compound exercises safely? I've heard horror stories, and my worry is I'll get this wrong and put myself out for weeks.

I don't really want to pay for a PT, trial and error seems too high risk and video instruction doesn't seem practical in the gym! How do people learn???

[spakbage]

Hey man, I just found out that i have thoracic kyphosis., what
exercises can i do instead of ab cable crunches and sit ups? Thanx