The Complete Guide to Bodybuilding: Everything You Need to Know

Cast aside preconceptions of juiced-up gym bros with veins for days – when you strip it right back, bodybuilding is about just that: building your body.

Just ask IFBB pro champ and USN sports nutrition ambassador, Ryan Terry. Not only did the labourer-turned-lifter win the Arnold Classic in 2017, he was also the highest placed Brit in Mr Olympia, so the competitive bodybuilder knows a thing or two about muscle mass.

“The majority of people think bodybuilders are ‘mass monsters’, and generally not very healthy-looking people,” Terry explains. “But it’s really anyone who is trying to build or sculpt their body.”

If you want to get serious about bodybuilding, you’ll need to navigate your nutrition and training with military precision. Your regime will differ wildly if you’re gunning for gains (bulking) vs shredding fat (cutting) 12 weeks out from a competition. Needless to say, there’s not much room for a Friday night pint in either of these.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, this is going to be tough, but it's achievable. Here’s everything a beginner needs to know about natural bodybuilding, including the good, the bad, and the old-school.

Bodybuilding Training Splits

A question nearly every beginner asks: how many hours of training should you average a week to become bigger and more defined? The answer is this: it really depends on your training splits.

There are a number of ways, however, you can tackle them – for example, splitting them by upper and lower body exercises or focusing on push and pull motions – and then even more ways of scheduling them: every other day, four days on three days off, and so on.