Bodybuilding training for muscle and physique
You do not need to think of yourself as a bodybuilder to benefit from bodybuilding training. Some clients simply want to build more muscle, improve their shape or create better proportion. Others are experienced bodybuilders trying to bring up weak areas or take their physique further.
The principles are the same, but the level of detail changes with experience. A beginner first needs to learn how to train with control and genuine intensity. An experienced bodybuilder may need much finer decisions about exercise selection, workload, recovery and where effort is directed.
My starting point is always the same: how you currently train, how your physique has responded and what you want to change.
Assessing where you are and what needs to change
I look at the programmes you have followed, the exercises you use for each muscle group, how much work you are doing and whether it has actually produced the results you expected.
I am particularly interested in intensity. Many people compensate for not training hard enough by doing more exercises and more sets. Often the answer is not more volume, but learning to get considerably more from the work they are already doing.
I also look at how your physique has developed. Everyone has muscle groups that respond differently. A weak area may be genetic, the result of the way somebody has trained, or a combination of both.
Your own priorities matter. If you have naturally dominant legs but want greater upper-body development, we may reduce the emphasis on your legs. If your arms have developed well but your chest has not, we can direct more work towards your chest. Training cannot remove genetic limitations, but it can make much better use of what you have.
With beginners, I generally develop the whole body rather than immediately trying to specialise. It is too early to know which muscles will respond particularly well or poorly. Intermediate trainees often have gaps created by the programmes they have previously followed. With experienced bodybuilders, I am much more likely to be working deliberately on stubborn or underdeveloped areas.
Choosing exercises and building the programme
Exercise selection starts with the muscle we are trying to develop.
I generally want movements that allow a useful range of movement and load the muscle through a good working length. Individual structure, joint comfort, previous injuries and how well someone can perform the exercise also matter.
Different muscles require different solutions. Some lend themselves naturally to large compound movements, while others may be better targeted with isolation exercises. Shoulders, for example, often benefit from several different movements because different areas need to be trained from different directions.
I therefore do not try to achieve an arbitrary balance between compound and isolation exercises. I use whichever movement is most effective for the muscle and the person.
Once a programme is working, I do not change it simply to create variety. An exercise can remain in place for a long time while it continues to produce progress. Sometimes only a small adjustment is needed: changing the exercise order, altering a grip or moving to a similar variation to provide a different stimulus.
The programme also has to fit what you do outside our sessions. If you reduce the amount of training you do independently, I may need to cover more in the studio. If you start doing more on your own, I can adjust our work accordingly.
How I coach a bodybuilding set
For me, intensity and technique are not opposites. The aim is to train extremely hard without losing control of the movement.
I want each repetition to resemble the one before it: consistent range of movement, tempo and structure. Ideally, the final difficult repetition should be performed with the same control as the first.
As a set approaches failure, people often start expressing the difficulty physically. They jerk the weight, shorten the movement, change position or lose their structure. Apart from increasing unnecessary risk, that can actually reduce their ability to produce force effectively.
I coach people to remain composed as the set becomes harder. The objective is to fatigue the muscle close to, and when appropriate to, failure while preserving the movement we intended to perform.
I also place less emphasis than some coaches on consciously chasing a “mind-muscle connection”. If a muscle is being lengthened and contracted through an appropriate range under control, most people will naturally feel it working. I would rather someone concentrate on tempo, range of movement, stability and breathing than become distracted by trying to manufacture a particular sensation.
There are exceptions. An experienced bodybuilder may occasionally use controlled cheat repetitions as an advanced technique. That is very different from simply losing form because the set has become difficult.
Progression, failure and recovery
With beginners, progression can be rapid. Once somebody can maintain their technique and composure while training hard, I can introduce more demanding exercises and progressively increase the load. Early on, someone might occasionally increase a weight by five or even ten per cent. An experienced bodybuilder may be pleased with one or two per cent.
Training to failure is an important part of my coaching philosophy. With beginners, I will often take the first two sets close to failure and the final set to failure. This teaches them what genuine intensity feels like while requiring them to maintain their structure as the exercise becomes difficult.
With stronger and more experienced bodybuilders, however, repeatedly training everything to absolute failure becomes difficult to sustain. They can create much more fatigue, so workload has to be managed through periodisation, changes in intensity and, when required, planned deloads.
Recovery is affected by much more than training. Work, sleep, family life and psychological stress all affect someone's ability to recuperate. During a hard diet or competition preparation, the reduced calorie intake makes that balance harder still.
When progress stops, adding more work is therefore not automatically the answer. The programme may need a new stimulus, fatigue may be too high, or nutrition may be limiting further progress.
Nutrition and physique goals
Nutrition has to support what the training is trying to achieve.
To gain muscle, you need sufficient protein and energy to train hard and recover. To reduce body fat, you need a calorie deficit, but not one so aggressive that training quality and recovery deteriorate unnecessarily.
For beginners, the difficulty is often not knowing the basic principles but applying them consistently. More advanced bodybuilders have less room for error because progress becomes slower and harder to achieve.
It is also unrealistic for most people to continually gain significant muscle while remaining extremely lean. There are periods when accepting a little more body fat can make it easier to train, recover and grow.
Likewise, the extremely lean physiques seen on a bodybuilding stage represent a brief point in time. Even competitive bodybuilders do not generally maintain that condition throughout the year.
For many clients, the objective is therefore not competitive bodybuilding. It may simply be broader shoulders, more muscle, a stronger-looking chest or better overall proportion. The same bodybuilding principles apply; what changes is how far they need to be taken.
Why one-to-one coaching matters
Bodybuilding responds well to close observation because small changes in execution can alter the effect of an exercise.
In a one-to-one session I can watch each repetition, correct technique as fatigue develops and make immediate changes to setup, exercise selection or loading.
The private studio also means the training can be organised around the programme rather than around what equipment happens to be free. Everything can be prepared for the session, with no other clients or trainers competing for space or creating distractions.
For experienced bodybuilders, that becomes particularly useful when trying to develop stubborn areas. Small changes can be tested and assessed immediately.
The value of one-to-one coaching is therefore not simply having somebody supervise the session. It is having somebody continually making decisions about exercise selection, execution, intensity and progression while you train.
Start with a free consultation
If you want to build more muscle, improve your physique or take your bodybuilding training further, the first step is a free 30-minute consultation.
We can discuss what you want to achieve, how you are currently training and where you feel progress could be improved. If you are experienced, we can look at the areas you particularly want to develop. If you are new to this type of training, you do not need to know what programme you need - working that out is part of my job.
There is no workout and no obligation. It is simply a chance to discuss your goals, see the studio and decide whether my approach is right for you.