Training Principals
Before you can get into any kind of physical training, there are a few concepts that you have to understand.
Don't worry, I will keep this very brief so we can get right to the training!
The first and most important concept for physical training is that of homeostasis. Basically, homeostasis means that any living organism (including you!) will remain as it is unless it is subjected to stress it is unaccustomed to. For our purposes, it means that you will not make gains in muscular strength and size, cardiovascular conditioning, or muscular endurance unless you force your body to endure strength, conditioning, or endurance challenges it is not used to.
This is why exercise cannot ever be EASY. If its easy, that means your body is used to doing it, and by the principle of homeostasis it will not cause growth.
That having been said, there are ways to exercise that are better than others and I will detail them in this site.
Also, there are just a few fitness terms that you should be familiar with:
Sets and Reps: A rep is one full motion of an exercise from top to bottom. For example, if you are doing the Bench Press, one rep would mean taking the bar off the rack, lowering it to your chest, then pushing it back up to the rack. You have completed one full bench press motion, and in fitness lingo that means you have done one rep. A set is a collection of reps done back to back. If you did 5 reps of that bench press then stopped to rest, you just did a set of bench press.
If the program asks you to do 3 sets of 10 reps each, that means you would do 10 reps of the exercise, then rest for a moment, then do 10 more, then rest for a moment, then do 10 more. Then you are done!
Recovery Time: Contrary to popular belief, your muscles do not grow while you are in the gym. Your muscles grow at rest, particularly during sleep. If you try to train a muscle without allowing it to fully recover from a previous workout, it will not grow because you did not give it sufficient rest time. A natural weightlifter needs a great deal of recovery time between muscles, whereas a weightlifter using steroids needs very little recovery time. This is why the exercise programs developed by so many athletes have so little recovery time! EVERYTHING on this site is designed for natural weightlifters.
Isolation Movement: An isolation movement is an exercise that uses only one muscle. A bicep curl is an example of an isolation movement, because it only involves the biceps.
Compound Movement: A compound weightlifting movement is one that uses more than one muscle group to execute the lift. A bench press is a good example of a compound movement, because you use the chest, shoulders, and triceps to execute the lift. It has been shown that compound movements cause greater increases in muscular size than isolation movements because the additional stress that a compound movement puts on the body causes a release of natural human growth hormone.
OK, now that we have covered the basics, we are ready to get into the exercise programs! Please click on the Training Splits or Illustrated Exercises links for more info!