What are your goals and what are you looking for?

A common question a good personal trainer will ask a person who is enquiring about a body building workout and getting in shape is, “What are your goals and what are you looking for?” This is a wise question, because there exists different workouts for different goals. The common goals are lowing body fat (emphasis on fat, not weight which is a combo of water and muscle and fat), increased strength, muscle mass gain, developing high levels of definition and striation, and injury rehabilitation.

Communicating the Workout

The key to getting the most out of a body building workout is to emphasize what exactly it is that you are looking for and to communicate that to your trainer as clearly as possible. Saying “getting in shape” is usually not a good response because it will be translated as losing body fat and some strength and core training.

That is a fine translation if that is the goal, but if the goal is to put on 30lbs of muscle to get in shape, then the body building workout that you will undergo will not be translated as such. Always be clear when defining goals. An easy trick to communicate a goal is simply to say “I want to look like celebrity so and so.” This will usually provide a trainer with a visual idea of what your physique goals are.

There is a Science to it

To the untrained eye, a body building workout is random. This is simply not accurate, and the level of inaccuracy in the calling the workout “random” practically reaches the stratosphere. A proper body building workout is a series of logical workouts put together to reach specific goals within a specific period of time.

When the body building workout starts to become illogical, then the goals will not be met. For example, if one is looking for mass, a leg mass exercise program will include leg presses and heavy squats. If one is prescribed heavy reps on a leg extension machine, then the mass goal will never be met, since a leg extension machine is more designed for definition or injury rehab or injury prevention.

The number of body building workouts is practically limitless and sometimes a little experimentation may be required to find what is needed. Actually, all body building programs once started as an experiment, so this is hardly a bad thing.