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To me, there are two different stages of bodybuilding. The first stage is where you are trying to build the foundation of your physique. For most people this is at least the first 5 years. During this phase you should be gaining lots of muscle mass and seeing big gains in strength. People should be telling you "Damn, you're getting big" on a regular basis. This is where you go from being 150-170 lbs "regular guy" to 220-250 "Big guy". How do you do this? From a training standpoint, you need to be doing compound movements. Bench press, squats, deadlifts, military press, weighted pull-ups, barbell rows, etc. You should be training 3 days a week max, and constantly trying to put more weight on the bar. NO isolation movements. Not only are things like curls, lateral raises and leg extensions not needed in this phase, I actually think they SLOW your progress in the beginning. Your body can only recover from so much, concentrate on the basics in the beginning. I see SO MANY guys in the gym doing stuff like tricep extensions and lateral raises and they're under 180. They're in the gym everyday doing PUSSY exercises and with the exception of bench presses, they never do any heavy compound movements. They make little if any progress and never make it to stage two.
Stage two: Now you've put on some muscle. Let's say you're 240 or whatever. The basics have gotten you this far, why change things now? Because chances are you have to. When you were making those big gains in size, you were also making big gains in strength right? You started off benching 135, by year two you were benching 225, year three 315, year four 405. Now you're at year 6 and you're only benching 455. What happened? Well, like most people you don't have the genetics to bench 500 lbs. Did you think you were going to keep adding 100 lbs to your bench forever? After 10 years you'd be benching 1000 lbs? Not only have strength and size gains slowed or stopped, your wrists hurt when you bench. Your right knee hurts when you get up to 315 on squats. Your left shoulder kills you when you do military presses. NOW it's time to get creative. You still want to keep some basic, core movements in your routine and you want to go heavy as you can on those; but at this point you're looking to work muscles in different ways to keep them growing without irritating existing injuries. I used to press 125 dumbells over my head for reps, my shoulder won't let me do that anymore so I do things like cable raises to the front with a rope attachment. I still squat, but I can't go as heavy as I used to so I pre-exhaust my quads with leg extensions, stuff like that. I have a partially torn pec that keeps me from doing the heavy-ass weighted dips I used to do, so I do dips with my bodyweight and super-set them with tricep extensions that I do lying on the floor because they don't bother my elbow like they do sometimes if I'm standing up. Personally, I'd like to train with nothing but heavy, free weights all the time; but I've accepted the fact that I have to train a little differently now.
Of course, this all just based on me and what I've seen. I'm sure there are genetics freaks out there who have gotten huge doing cable curls, or guys who have been training balls-to-the-wall with heavy free weights for 20 years and have no injuries, but this is how I see things setting up for most.
Stage two: Now you've put on some muscle. Let's say you're 240 or whatever. The basics have gotten you this far, why change things now? Because chances are you have to. When you were making those big gains in size, you were also making big gains in strength right? You started off benching 135, by year two you were benching 225, year three 315, year four 405. Now you're at year 6 and you're only benching 455. What happened? Well, like most people you don't have the genetics to bench 500 lbs. Did you think you were going to keep adding 100 lbs to your bench forever? After 10 years you'd be benching 1000 lbs? Not only have strength and size gains slowed or stopped, your wrists hurt when you bench. Your right knee hurts when you get up to 315 on squats. Your left shoulder kills you when you do military presses. NOW it's time to get creative. You still want to keep some basic, core movements in your routine and you want to go heavy as you can on those; but at this point you're looking to work muscles in different ways to keep them growing without irritating existing injuries. I used to press 125 dumbells over my head for reps, my shoulder won't let me do that anymore so I do things like cable raises to the front with a rope attachment. I still squat, but I can't go as heavy as I used to so I pre-exhaust my quads with leg extensions, stuff like that. I have a partially torn pec that keeps me from doing the heavy-ass weighted dips I used to do, so I do dips with my bodyweight and super-set them with tricep extensions that I do lying on the floor because they don't bother my elbow like they do sometimes if I'm standing up. Personally, I'd like to train with nothing but heavy, free weights all the time; but I've accepted the fact that I have to train a little differently now.
Of course, this all just based on me and what I've seen. I'm sure there are genetics freaks out there who have gotten huge doing cable curls, or guys who have been training balls-to-the-wall with heavy free weights for 20 years and have no injuries, but this is how I see things setting up for most.
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