Body Building is addictive !

Nothing is as addictive as going to gym and working out as I found out recently. Once that initial barrier is cleared and once you start seeing those muscles bulge, even if ever so slightly, you get high !

I am basically concentrating on the muscle groups in my upper body and back. I have divided the muscle groups into two primary sets. The first set of muscles are usually worked in exercises involving the pushing motion - Chest|Shoulder|Arm (Pectorals|Deltoids|Triceps) and the second set are strained in exercises involving pulling - Lower-Back|Upper-Back|Arm(Lattisimus Dorsi|Trapezius|Biceps). It is very important to balance the pulling and pushing exercises in order to strengthen uniformly and to prevent injury. I must admit that presently my pushing volume is more than my pulling and I must fix that soon.

Set-I (Pushing)

Pectorals --> The large chest muscles are my primary target (pecs in females are boobs so .. :p). I am doing Bench Presses (flat and inclined) and using the peck fly machine in the gym. There is one exercise however which I truly love - the push up/press up. It is a simple, compound exercise (works more than one muscle group) which works on the pectorals, deltoids and triceps all at once and one can do it anywhere for it does not require any weights or special equipment. I can currently do about 60 push ups in reps of 10. Whenever I cannot go to the gym I keep doing push ups and my goal is to be able to do a 100 continuously !

Deltoids --> The Military Press does a good job for developing the shoulder muscle.

Triceps --> The Bench Press and Push ups work on the triceps and so I am not doing any specialized exercise for developing these.

Set-II (Pulling)

Lattisimus Dorsi --> These are the large muscles which span the back and I work on the Lat Pulldown machine to train these.

Biceps --> The best exercise for this is the Standing Barbell curl. I however prefer the Preacher curl because the supporting pad helps in cutting out the movement of the shoulder and elbow and thus isolating the Biceps completely. The pull downs and Barbell Rows that I do for the back also work the biceps.

Another important thing to know is Muscle Hypertrophy. After a strenuous workout, there are tiny micro tears in muscle fibers (damage). The body will then overcompensate by adding more muscle cells, fixing the tears and expanding the size of existing cells so that the body is not shocked or strained the next time by that amount of work. This is precisely when one's muscle grows .. not when one is in the gym, but later when one takes rest. Thus it is important not to over-train and to give proper rest to the body after training.

If you can't hump, then pump :p