This Guide Teaches You:
About the 5 stages of puberty, and how you should train during each.
What equipment is required to build a quality amount of muscle mass.
Which barbell and dumbbell exercises are the best choices.
What proper expectations are, and how much muscle you should be building during your first 5 years of lifting.
How to properly track your progress using a tape measure.
What protein, carbohydrate and healthy fats to eat to assist with growth and recovery.
Which nutritional supplements may be of value to you as a teen.
Table of Contents:
1. Teen Training and Workouts
1.1. The 5 stages of puberty
1.2. What equipment is needed?
1.3. Recommended compound and isolation exercises
1.4. How to ease into training
1.5. The importance of patience and having proper expectations
1.6. How to track your progress
1.7. Training FAQ
2. Teen Muscle Building Workouts
2.1. Pre-stage 4 workout
2.2. Stage 4 prepping workout
2.3. Full Body Muscle Building Workout For Teenagers
3. Muscle Building Nutrition for Teens
3.1. Choosing between bad, good, better and best foods
3.2. Understanding the concept of calorie density
3.3. How often should I eat?
3.4. Aim for a minimum of 150 grams of protein per day
3.5. If you're not gaining weight you are not a hardgainer
3.6. A look at nutritional supplements
4. How to Fail
If you're a teen looking to build muscle odds are you face some unique challenges and circumstances. It is likely that you lack complete control over your daily eating, and you may not always have access to the best gym equipment.

Many of you also find yourselves to be too skinny and weak. Your body has grow in height but not in muscularity. You may feel lanky, awkward, uncoordinated and wish you could perform better at sports.

On the other side of the coin are those of you who are a little overweight. You want to look better but don't know where to start. What should you eat? How should you exercise?

Perhaps you don't fit into either of these groups. Maybe you're athletic, fairly strong, but want to maximize your results. You don't know where to start or what to change. You're already working out and making reasonable food choices.

Tenn Guide Athletic Girl

Regardless of where you are at, this guide to teenage bodybuilding will provide you with detailed information on how to:

Build muscle
Stay lean or improve your body composition
Gain strength
Improve athletic performance
Gain self-confidence
Teen Training And Workouts
Not all teens are created equal. How you approach training should depend on what stage of puberty you are currently in. Puberty is divided into 5 stages:

Stage One - Puberty has not begun
Stage Two - Begins on average around the age of 11. Testicles hang lower and enlarge, and some pubic hair may start to develop. This stage lasts approximately one year.
Stage Three - Stage three begins around the age of 13. A teen's voice will deepen, pubic hair will finish development, and the sexual organ will reach full length and width. This stage typically lasts 10 months, but can occur as rapidly as 2 months. Some growth may occur, but it will not be as major as stage 4 growth.
Stage Four - This final stage of puberty is the major height and weight gain stage. Stage 4 typically begins around the age of 14, and involves a major transition into manhood. Males go through a growth spurt and get acne. Their voice starts to "break", and they begin to see the initial development of facial hair. This stage may continue on for as long as 3 years.
Stage Five - Body hair continues to grow, and some teens may continue to grow taller. This late stage of puberty can continue on until the late teens or early 20s.
Why is any of this important? Before stage 4 it is unlikely that a teen will experience much in the way of muscle growth. A Virginia Tech study revealed that teens can build muscle before stage 4, but not effectively.1 Training before this stage should focus on strengthening the body through basic bodyweight exercises, and working on exercise form using moderately light dumbbell and barbell exercises.

There is no reason to gun it and try to destroy your body in the gym before stage 4. Learn the lifts. Build a strength base, understand what proper exercise form is, and improve your conditioning and workload very gradually.

This guide contains suggested workouts for pre-stage 4 teens, as well as for those of you who are currently in stage 4 or beyond. Before we delve into workouts, let's talk about a few important things teens should understand about training.



What equipment is needed?
You do not need access to every bell and whistle in the gym to build muscle. In fact, it is possible to build a quality amount of muscle mass using only a pair of dumbbells, bodyweight exercises and a bench.

Progressive overload is very important; or the adding of extra resistance over time. The only thing you really need to build muscle is an adequate amount of resistance. Even if you can't squat, bench press or deadlift, there are plenty of suitable exercises that can help you reach your goals.

If you are training at home, the following pieces of equipment will suffice:

A weight bench
2 dumbbell handles
160 to 200 pounds pounds of plates
A pull up bar
If you don't have access to a weight bench, don't worry. Bench press and flye type movements can be performed on the floor. This is actually a very popular method of training for strength athletes.

Pull up bars are very cheap. You can purchase one for $10-20 at nearly any local mega store. Deluxe models run up to $30.

If you simply cant afford this, there are many things that can serve as a pull ups station. Get creative. Worse comes to worse, simply use rows instead of pull ups. There is no need obsessing over one exercise that you can't do, when there are hundreds you can do.

Used plates can typically be found on Craigslist for a very reasonable price. We have also included a muscle building workout for those of you who don't have access to a lot of weight right now. Read on for more details.

Commercial and school gym access
If you can train at a commercial or school gym, place your primary focus on barbell, dumbbell and bodyweight exercises. Cables and machines can be useful, but should not be your staple movements.

Recommended movements
Here are some of the best muscle building exercises. Most quality workout programs will contain some of the exercises listed in this section.

Chest - Bench press, incline bench press, chest dips, dumbbell bench press, incline dumbbell bench press, dumbbell flyes.
Back - Deadlifts, barbell rows, dumbbell rows, pull ups, lat pull down, T-bar rows, seated cable rows.
Shoulders - Military press, seated barbell press, seated dumbbell press, Arnold press, side lateral raise, bent over reverse dumbbell flyes, upright rows.
Quads - Squats, leg press, lunges, hack squats, goblet squats, front squats.
Hamstrings - Still leg deadlift, good mornings, leg curls.
Triceps - Close grip bench Press, dips, bench dips, cable tricep extensions, skullcrushers, overhead dumbbell extensions.
Biceps - Chin ups, barbell curls, dumbbell curls, hammer curls, preacher curls.
Traps - Power shrugs, barbell shrugs, dumbbell shrugs, upright rows.


Easing into training
Neuromuscular adaptation. One of the common training mistakes is rushing into training. Many teens are under the impression that more is better, and the harder they train out of the gate, the faster they will build muscle. This is not the case.

When you begin a resistance training program, the body undergoes a period of neuromuscular adaptation. This simply means that the strength gains you are experiencing come from your central nervous system adapting to the act of weight training. Your brain is getting much better at communicating with your muscles how to respond to this specific demand.

You can't rush this process. Motor units are the communicators between the brain and muscle tissue. They have a limited endurance. This means that when you start to train, they will fatigue easily. As the motor units fatigue, muscle fiber recruitment diminishes and you will feel weaker.

Over time motor units build up more endurance. This allows you to recruit more muscle fibers for a longer period of time. Greater fiber recruitment leads to more prolonged levels of strength and more effective training sessions.

Neuromuscular adaptation can take about 2 months.

Exercise form. Another reason to ease into training has to do with safety. You need to take time and practice form using moderately light loads. Rushing into heavy training before you have a working understanding of exercise form increases your risk of injury.

When you are injured you can't train. When you can't train, you can't gain.

Muscle soreness. Diving headfirst into heavy training and normal volume can create excessive amounts of muscle soreness, or DOMS. While muscle soreness is not dangerous, it can be debilitating and cause trainees to lose motivation.

As you begin your journey into lifting, understand that the point isn't to beat your body up. The point is to progress each day, challenging muscles to respond and grow.

Ease into training by following the workout structure listed below. This will help keep your motivation high, and allow you time to slowly adapt to the demands that can come from the muscle building process.

__________________
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]