# Top 10 Tips To Successful Teen Bodybuilding



## Wiggy (Nov 29, 2009)

Found this article and thought id share it.. its a good read if u get chance IMO.. By Vince DelMonte

*Top 10 Tips To Successful Teen Bodybuilding [Part1] *

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*Teen bodybuilding* is flourishing at an alarming rate, as enthusiastic teens hit the gym day-after-day. We can't really blame them, can we. Teen bodybuilding is one of the most effective ways to boost a scrawny guy's self-confidence and self-image. Not to mention lots of attention and appreciation from the ladies and respect from the guys. Teen bodybuilding doesn't just aid with vanity but encourages a nutritious diet, disciplined lifestyle, and strong work ethic.

So the question is, *how is teen bodybuilding done correctly*?

Should teen bodybuilders read the latest bodybuilding magazines? Learn from their friends or a pro? Train daily or every other day? Rely on supplements? Start when they're done maturing or sooner? Concentrate on endurance training or heavy lifting?

Teen bodybuilding has dozens of questions and many different opinions on each. Here are my Top 10 tips to successful teen bodybuilding in no particular order:

*1. Avoid Steroids*

This might sound obvious and if you haven't been offered steroids yet, decide now and be prepared to say 'no'. Your body is streaming with more natural hormones than any steroid could ever give! Don't mess up your natural hormonal levels at such a early age. Although all your friends might make fun of you for not giving in to the pressure of using illegal drugs, be a real man and train drug free. In the long run your mates will respect you more for staying away from steroids.

*2. Focus On Clean Eating*

Old habits die hard. Believe it or not, the eating habits you're creating now will influence you all the way into your adulthood. As a teen bodybuilder, you have a chance to establish good practices a young age. Concentrate on eating clean carbohyrdates like whole wheat breads, oatmeal, brown rice, potatoes, fruits and veggies. Focus on eating an assortment of clean proteins like tuna, chicken, fish, cottage cheese and protein shakes. Balance out your meals with clean fats like olive oil, fish oil, natural peanut butter and nuts. Take pride in the fact that you even know what clean eating is. Look at this as an opportunity to be an example to your friends to be walking statue of health! I promise you that you'll have some friends who'll look up to you, admire your physique and ask for your advice!

*3. Avoid Isolated Exercises And Focus On A Full Body Workout*

"A full body workout? But all my friends are training chest tonight. And tomorrow they are training back. And on Wednesday they are training arms&#8230;"

If you have the courage, you're not going to follow the crowd and instead believe what I'm saying. Here's the lowdown: you're far too young to be breaking up your muscles groups into only one body part per day. Unless you're going after a career in competitive bodybuilding, one-body part splits are an excellent way to over train at a young age. View it this way: Do you only eat once a week? Do you only take supplements once a week? Do you only rest once a week? Do you only study once a week? Then why would you develop your muscle groups only once per week? It doesn't make sense. *Full body workouts* will permit you to hit all your major muscle groups three times in the week, without overtraining, rather than only once.

*4. Emphasize Your Conditioning*

Teen bodybuilding can actually turn to something that seems to be a lazy man's sport. Next time you walk into the weight room, count how many people are actually exercising. Seriously, I guarantee you'll see more people standing around and chatting, adjusting weights and gazing in the mirror. Not many people are actually hustling from one exercise to the next or even breaking a sweat. That's another reason to avoid one body-part bodybuilding style workouts. They don't contribute to your fitness or cardiovascular system. Your weight training program should be integrating more than just weights. Include in your sessions some skipping, stair climbing, hard running, supersets, and really short rest periods. If you don't feel like you're going to be sick at the final stage of your weight training workouts, I have to doubt your bodybuilding workout intensity level.

*5. Stick to Basic Supplements*

You're a teenager and should be saving your money for college and your first car. Don't get scammed by over hyped supplement ads that promise the world. Follow the saying, 'If it looks too good to be true, then it most likely is!" All you need to budget for now is a high quality multi-vitamin which you should take for life as well as a high quality protein powder in your ****nal and a regular omega-3 fish oil cap. Between these three supplements you're more than covered. Don't worry about creatine, glutamine, fat burners, testosterone boosters or even NO2 products. The first three to four years of your lifting should be done with just the basic supplements.


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## Wiggy (Nov 29, 2009)

*Top 10 Tips To Successful Teen Bodybuilding [Part2] *

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As we talked about in "Top 10 Tips To Successful Teen Bodybuilding Part 1", *teen bodybuilding* may begin at a really early age permitting young fitness fans a whole new world to pursue. Teen bodybuilding is an great way to encourage a healthy lifestyle because it demands frequent muscle training, cardiovascular exercises, balanced nutrition and even development of the intellect since the subject of teen bodybuilding requires constant education. Teen bodybuilding can also help you erase nicknames like "Skinny Mini," "Scrawny," "Tooth Pick," "Twiggy," and in my own personal case, "Skinny Vinny!"

Sadly teen bodybuilding is not as easygoing as it looks and can result in injury, bad habits and frustration if done without structure and progression. Here are the next five tips to successful teen bodybuilding:

*6. Learn Proper Technique First*

How well do you think you would golf without education? How well do you think you'll skate without training? How well do you think you'll play piano without lessons? How much muscle do you think you'll build without knowing proper lifting technique? Not much!

I hope you're modest enough to accept the fact that your first move should be to get coaching from a reputable fitness trainer. I know many of your friends will not even consider this and you'll be told, 'just learn it yourself,' or 'observe others.' Can you imagine a medical surgeon or pilot who learned this way? Yikes!

Think about it. You're gonna be lifting weights the rest of your life. Is spending a few hundred or even a few thousand dollars, on high quality education, not gonna pay you back time and time again (for the rest of your life) if you do things properly right from the beginning? Definitely! If you don't get injured now, most probably it will be in the next few years due to ignorance.

*7. Stretch Just As Much As You Lift*

Stretching is the most neglected element which is unfortunate since shortened muscles are weaker, slower and are more prone to injury. Stretching is the only exercise where the "more is better" rule applies. Stretching is one habit that can't be overdone.

If you're serious about teen bodybuilding, I encourage you to start this habit early. Most text books advocate stretching routines that involve 20-30 seconds per stretch. From real world experience, I'd advise stretching for a minimum of the amount of time that you lift. That means, for every 1 hour of weight training you perform, you must balance the effect of weight training with one hour of stretching. Therefore, if you weight train 4 hours in the week, you better be stretching for at least 4 hours in the week. If you're very lazy, start stretching for at least half the amount of time that you lift. After you experience the benefits of increased strength, faster recovery and less injuries I'm sure you'll have no trouble increasing your stretching workouts to the recommended 1:1 ratio.

Fail to stretch for a minimum of the amount of time that you lift is a guaranteed way of shortening a teen bodybuilding career or lifestyle. Remember, weight training shortens and tightens the connective tissue you train. Stretching counters the effect and ensures your muscles have room to grow!

*8. Focus On Bodyweight Strength First*

It amazes me at how many teen bodybuilders can barely do a set of 40 push ups, 20 chin ups and 30 dips. In my opinion, these are some standard upper body fitness tests that should be completed with ease before loading is introduced (it might take your 3 or 4 months to achieve this if you can't do them right now). I once heard a famous fitness coach say, "You have no freaking business using a load if you can't stabilize, control, and move efficiently using your own bodyweight." I'd have to fully agree.

What's the point of a sloppy 150 pound lat pull down if you can't do 10 bodyweight pull ups? What's the point of a 185 pound bench press with microscopic range reps, if you can push up your body a couple dozen times? What's the point of a 500 pound leg press if you can do a set of one legged squats down to the floor? Believe me, after a few months of conditioning your body to body weight training, you will be blown away by how quickly your weights climb when you introduce loading.

*9. Keep Your Workouts Under 1 Hour*

Unless you're in a teen bodybuilding contest for the longest bodybuilding workout imaginable, it baffles me what you could possibly be doing for more than 1 hour! Unless you go to the gym for mirror workouts (that's when you spend more time looking in the mirror than actually lifting), you need to get some help with your bodybuilding workout program. If it takes longer than 20-30 minutes of even moderate intensity lifting, I have to doubt your workout intensity. Shorter, more intense workouts will always outflank longer less intense workouts.

Your goal should be to complete your bodybuilding workout quicker and quicker. This will compel your muscles to get conditioned and adapt to a heavier work load.

*10. Perform your Exercises on a Full Range Of Motion*

Initially, teen bodybuilding should call for building solid muscular attachments, tendons, ligaments and bones. See it this way: building your muscles is the finishing touches on a solid, strong house with a firm foundation. You wouldn't wanna start framing the house until the foundation has been built. Strengthening your tendons, ligaments and bones would be considered building a strong foundation to build from.

What's the best way to do this? Build from the inside out. Develop a full range of motion with each weight training exercise to guarantee all the muscle fiber gets stimulated and all the surrounding tissues are fully activated.

Initially, as a teen bodybuilder, you should never sacrifice range for load. Think about it. Partial movements will result to partially-developed muscle. Full movements will develop full muscles.

What would get you better results? Squatting 135 pounds with your butt to the floor or squatting 225 pounds for about ¼ of the way? That's right, moving the entire range of motion with a lighter weight will involve more musculature, improve your mind-muscle connection better and strengthen all the supporting tissues more speedily.

*Conclusion*

If you're serious about doing *teen bodybuilding* safely and effectively then take all of these tips very seriously. Don't just pick and choose the ones you happen to fancy. They'll all result in longer-term benefits and more fruitful bodybuilding lifestyle. To your teen bodybuilding success!


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## Graham Mc (Oct 15, 2009)

Very good post and a bloody interesting read ! definitely answeared quite alot of questions i had.


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## Graham Mc (Oct 15, 2009)

Bumping this thread  , think it has alot of information that can be useful for new beginners


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## Wiggy (Nov 29, 2009)

Graham Mc said:


> Very good post and a bloody interesting read ! definitely answeared quite alot of questions i had.


Same here mate, glad it answered some of your questions..


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## Khaos1436114653 (Aug 28, 2009)

hmmm i was a teen bodybuilder and i did things my way and except for avoiding roids which i didn't do and grew like a fvcking weed, it's pretty good advice, hope people do more than just read it and do it for a few days then leave it.


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## Rosko (Oct 15, 2007)

Very good advice, too bad its 11 years too fcuking late!!!!! :cursing:


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## Guest (Oct 21, 2009)

Oh dear, broke the 1st rule. Wont bother reading the rest :lol:


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## godsgifttoearth (Jul 28, 2009)

Rosko said:


> Very good advice, too bad its 11 years too fcuking late!!!!! :cursing:


+1

im nearly 25 now. and im training now, like i should have been when i was 18, and im making huge gains. 22kg in 18months. i often wonder where i would be if i hadnt learnt about 5 day splits from bodybuilding.com, and found out about 3 day push/pull full body routines with low volume.


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## Wiggy (Nov 29, 2009)

Rosko said:


> Very good advice, too bad its 11 years too fcuking late!!!!! :cursing:


oh well, better late than never heh?



dan05 said:



> Oh dear, broke the 1st rule. Wont bother reading the rest :lol:


haha :tongue:


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## Beano (Aug 14, 2009)

Interesting read. Might do this next week since I'm only twenteen! Been training 4 months, isolating muscles and doing each group once a week as I thought they needed a week t rest.

Might give it a try for a few weeks.


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## Wiggy (Nov 29, 2009)

Good luck mate hope u see some improvements, u should do..


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## Wiggy (Nov 29, 2009)

BUMP 4 some peepz


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## tazzy-lee (Oct 27, 2008)

great thread mate very useful


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## SK-XO (Aug 6, 2009)

Have to disagree with number 3.


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