1. Introduction

I think it’s no secret now that bodybuilding classes are designed to change your physique. Therefore, it is not necessary to dwell in detail on what you can get in return for the time spent on bodybuilding classes.

For the sake of brevity, we can summarize all the existing information and make a conclusion – when practicing bodybuilding, the body is changed under the influence of exercises that develop skeletal muscles. A more accurate definition would be that bodybuilding results in a change in physique due to the effect of the exercises on the thickness of the muscular cross-section. By “thickening” the skeletal musculature in certain places we modify our body according to our desire. By systematically developing selected muscle groups, we get the desired results. This contains the whole essence of bodybuilding. All our successes and failures in this field will depend on how correctly we affect our skeletal muscles and, of course, the body as a whole.

Being well aware of the above, I have very often been surprised by the scarcity of knowledge in the field of skeletal muscle work in people who fill gyms with the purpose of developing these skeletal muscles. Lack of such knowledge leads to misunderstanding, and almost always to misapplication of commonly known techniques.

This work was conceived as a complete guide to the independent development of training programs, and the presence of basic information about the internal structure of muscles and the processes occurring in muscles under various loads is a necessary element in explaining the use of this or that technique, and precedes a lot of questions “why” and “why”, which may arise due to a lack of understanding of the deep processes occurring in the muscles.

On the way of studying the material that follows, you will have to face the “inevitable evil” – specific terminology and description of biochemical processes that ensure muscle contraction. I have tried not to overload the text with an abundance of terminology, but still, there is a certain minimum of terms that will have to be learned for a proper understanding of the material presented.
Each chapter will successively explain certain aspects of both theory and training methods, so it is recommended to study all chapters in sequence, getting into the essence of the information given in each chapter.

To begin, I suggest you briefly familiarize yourself with general information about muscle structure.