Let’s face it, this sport is called bodybuilding.  Not body sculpting.  Not body toning.  No, the name of this sport is bodybuilding, and the goal is simply to grow the body to its utmost proportions.  However, when a bodybuilder focuses solely on gaining size for size’s shape, he very often loses those other strengths which took him to this level in the first place.  If you’re looking to make a name for yourself on the bodybuilding scene, you should become very aware of these aspects of bodybuilding which are often overlooked, and often the keys to victory on the bodybuilding stage.

Symmetry

Symmetry cannot be neglected in this journey to getting as huge as humanly possible.  There will always be body parts which grow faster than other.  Many professional bodybuilders achieved their pro cards through the virtue of their standout body parts.  However, once they became a pro, they realized that these standout parts make their other parts look bad by comparison.  For this reason, many professional bodybuilders will intentionally not train a body part for months at a time.  This allows them to devote more training time and recovery resources to those body parts which lag behind the star muscle groups.

Lines

Many a professional bodybuilder has joined the professional ranks at a bodyweight of 198 or 208 and taken a year off to grow.  When he became a pro, he was touted as the next big thing due to his insane shape, conditioning, and “lines”.  Lines, of course, refer to the shape of the muscles in relation to one another, and the separations within them as well.  As bodybuilders gain weight, the separation between body parts lessens.  When you see today’s trend of beasts, you may notice that their lines are seldom present as they were when they won their pro card.  Rather, they become a huge beast, a collection of body parts, with no real flow to them.  Next to a smaller man with better lines, they look terrible and often lose shows as a result.

Presentation

Men like Ed Corney and Rusty Jeffers were good bodybuilders, but never great bodybuilders.  However, they regularly dispatched of men with more muscle and better lines because they knew how to move onstage.  They possessed a style and grace and fluid motion that gave the fans and the judges something to cheer for.  They made bodybuilding look good.  The importance of not just posing, but overall movement onstage, cannot be emphasized enough.

Remember…

You can have all the symmetry, lines, and presentation in the world, and you’re still going to get knocked off the stage by a guy with true muscle.  The name of the game is still body ‘building’, and fans and judges alike come out to see muscle.  If you don’t have that, you don’t belong on the bodybuilding stage to begin with.  Be sure to keep this in mind as you work on the other factors- they simply help you to attain and maintain an advantage when every other man onstage carries as much muscle as you.

If you like this article, click here to share: