So, you've made the decision that you want to be a bodybuilder. Or maybe you just want to lose some excess belly fat that accumulated over all those years without training and tone your muscles to avoid embarrassment on the beach? In either way, this article will explain you the basic concepts of body building and resistance training to help you get in shape for the summer. This article is intended for beginners.

Tip #1: Set your goals, but keep it realistic

Your goals should be achievable. You can't lose 20kg or look like Ronnie Coleman or Arnold Schwarzenegger in 4 weeks time if you're a beginner. In bodybuilding, as in any other areas of life, setting unrealistic goals will bring you failure. Simply don't expect to get your results too quickly, because there's no shortcut and only systematic, long-term hard work can bring results in bodybuilding. Forget about all those miraculous diet or exercise programs, that promise to make you lose fat or gain muscle quickly – they are all scam.

The best proof that getting results in bodybuilding isn't easy and quick, is that the most men and women don't look fit even after prolonged periods of exercising. Most of them stop pursuing their bodybuilding goals after some time because they can't see any quick results and they give up after a month or two with a deep feeling of disappointment.

Therefore your goals should be realistic and you need to give yourself enough time to complete them. Let's say you want to lose 5kg of fat for the upcoming Summer. It's virtually impossible to lose that amount of body fat in 1 month in a healthy way, so you should start working on your weight loss goal at least 3 months before Summer. That would make your goal realistic in this case.

Same with gaining muscle, which is an extremely slow process that involves much hard work and devotion. In fact, gaining muscle is way slower than losing fat and you normally shouldn't expect any visible results until 6 months of exercising, provided you eat and sleep right during that period.

Tip #2: Keep it as simple as possible

Many beginner bodybuilders tend to think that they need to workout a specific muscle group from possibly all different angles to achieve any results, for example they do bench presses and incline bench presses because they think they would stimulate their chest muscles better and yield quicker results.

For a start, however, there's absolutely no need to variate your exercises for a specific muscle group. As a beginner you should strengthen the given muscle by gradually incrementing the weight you're putting on, instead of switching angles. There's no reason why you should do incline bench press when you're still too weak to do standard bench press correctly or with enough weight to stimulate growth.

Therefore, if you're a beginner, you should keep your training plan clean and simple and limit the type of exercises you're doing.

Tip #3: Avoid isolation exercises

You've probably heard about isolation exercises and that isolation is good when exercising a particular muscle group. Although some of the strength training gurus like Pavel Tsatsouline, RKC won't agree with this statement I don't condemn the concept of isolation as a whole, because on some occasions isolating a particular muscle group can be beneficial especially if you're a bodybuilder. However I don't recommend isolation exercises if you're a beginner!

Remember that in the human body there are 660 to 850 muscles (depending on study method), small and big, that are all responsible for performing movements of your body in various directions. You can't isolate a specific muscle group, e.g. biceps in your workout if all the surrounding big muscle groups and smaller muscles aren't strong enough to stabilize the movement during your isolation exercise, e.g. bicep curls.

If you're a beginner, you should start with compound exercises instead, that would strengthen your muscular system as a whole because you need to build a “basis” before you move on to the next level in bodybuilding. That basis would be your smaller muscle groups that are strong enough to stabilize movement with heavy weights as well as overall strength of your body that would help you with your progress in bodybuilding.

A good examples of a compound exercises are deadlifts, pushups, pullups or kettlebell exercises such as swings and kettlebell snatches. You should do them as often as you can for at least 2 to 4 months before even thinking about going to the gym. You can do them easily at home with no or little equipment – no upfront investment, no gym subscription required. Those simple compound exercises are really all you need for a start if you are a beginner bodybuilder.

Tip #4: Forget about supplements

As a beginner bodybuilder you don't need any supplements and all your nutrients you take should come from the healthy foods that you eat at your regular meals. Taking supplements at this initial phase of your training is a pure waste of money and if you want to spend your cash on Creatine or Weight Gainers I suggest you donate it to an earthquake relief organization instead because you'll see no effect whatsoever from taking them.

This is because your body isn't used to hard training and your muscles are small and weak and they don't need any extra protein than the protein that comes from your regular food to grow bigger at this level. As you progress your protein “expenditure” will increase and introducing supplements may be beneficial. However, supplements shouldn't be considered only after 12 months of hard training at the earliest.

Tip #5: Measure your results

We mentioned before that you won't see any change in your looks before a couple of months of hard work and this is very true. However, as a beginner bodybuilder you can measure your results in strength increase, which will normally occur very quickly. And sometimes you could be amazed how much stronger you got within a very short period of time!

Initially, your strength index will explode compared to yourself from before you started exercising, but the strength gain will gradually slow down as you progress. This is normal and don't panic. Just measure and record your results to make sure you're still making progress. The best way to record your results is a pen and a piece of paper. Just write your results down and make sure to do that 1 pushup more the next time.

After the initial couple of months you'll also notice that your looks start to change slightly. Now it's the time to take your bodily measurements and write them down. Measure your belly, chest, biceps and legs. Write it all down. Re-evaluate your progress systematically, but no more often than once a month.

Good luck!