The practice of building muscle mass to compliment ones physique has been around for a long time.
It has, however, grown exponentially in popularity over the last couple of decades to take its place as an internationally recognised and accepted sport with a huge global following.
Bodybuilding has found particular relevance in our modern health and fitness conscious society and has spawned a multi million dollar industry that continues to grow apace.
For those considering physique training as a profession or merely as a means to get fit and looking good, here are some bodybuilding basics regarding how the process of building muscle mass works.
Our muscles are the motive machines that allow us to move ourselves, objects around us, breath, smile, frown and maintain our circulations.
They are dense bundles of tissue fibre that contract and expand when stimulated by electrical impulses controlled by our brains.
These tissue structures have clearly defined forms and masses but can react to changing environmental or physical demands by growing if need be.
This growth process is usually dormant under constant, unvarying demands, but kicks in when the body senses a danger of injury to itself by an increase in that demand.
If you have never chewed gum before and suddenly start to work your way through a dozen packs a day, you will quickly reach a point where your jaw muscle start to hurt.
This is as a result of damage to the muscles as a result of the sudden increase in work load.
The next noticeable change would be a subtle change in your facial profile as the jaw muscles grow to compensate for the additional demand.
This is the basic physical process responsible for successful bodybuilding.
Muscles are pushed beyond their normal operating parameters, sustain damage, and grow to prevent further trauma.
It is necessary to push your muscles to those levels, or to failure as it's commonly known, for them to show spontaneous growth.
This process may seem fairly simple and, fundamentally, it is.
Our bodies are, however, a lot smarter than we may think.
As soon as the extra demand is compensated for the growth process shuts down and the body slacks off again.
For this reason it is essential for sustainable muscle growth to keep the body guessing by constantly increasing the extent of the demand and varying the type, frequency and duration of that demand.
This is why it is not wise to follow rigid schedules of exercise but rather to alternate exercising specific muscle groups to prevent what is known as a plateau, or the point where the bodies self preservation process takes a time out and stops building muscle.
It is also good practice to add variation within specific exercise routines, changing the number of sets of exercises and the number of repetitions in each set.
One of the most commonly neglected parts of a sound bodybuilding regimen is rest.
Most tyro bodybuilders think that a constant schedule of exercise is sure to pack masses of muscle on in short order.
The truth is that the regeneration or growth process takes place during rest, particularly during sleep periods.
Deny yourself rest and especially sleep and you're going nowhere fast.
A sound training schedule includes adequate rest periods to allow for the body to react to the exercise and build muscle.
To recap, muscle growth is a natural bodily defence mechanism that protects the body from damage resulting from increased muscular demand.
This muscle growth occurs naturally in response to muscle damage and to encourage this response one has to exercise the specific muscle group to failure, or in other words to the point where you cannot do another rep.
Muscle growth plateaus or stops once the body has compensated so you need to maintain variation in your routines.
And lastly muscle growth only takes place during rest periods so adequate rest is critical to bodybuilding success.
This is a basic description of the physical processes involved in building muscle mass.
In the next article we will look at the very different principles of weight or fat loss and muscle gain and how to adapt your routine to maximise each.
We will also touch on how your diet as bodybuilder can be tailored to suit these two very important and different parts of successful bodybuilding.