Depending on where you find yourself in the spectrum of fitness, you may view the steps to bodybuilding muscle as a different and more challenging set of steps than the average person takes in the gym. There is an extremist assumption wrongly associated with bodybuilding. The truth is the majority of people that are hitting the gym are “technically” bodybuilding. The dictionary defines bodybuilding as, “The process of developing the musculature of the body through specific types of diet and physical exercise, such as weightlifting, especially for competitive exhibition.”

So based upon that information, the only real difference between bodybuilding and the new neo-traditional view of working out is whether or not competition is the motivation for the gains. The physical benefits and results that people are getting from weight lifting are catching the eyes and ears of the American Heart Association, health and fitness magazines, and medical organizations across the globe. However, most people don’t realize that their workout, if it is designed to develop muscles or tone in the body, is strictly based upon sound bodybuilding principles.

People tend to think that bodybuilding is an island unto itself and its training techniques are either too monstrous or difficult for the average person to achieve. While bodybuilding muscle to increase mass has a differing end goal, a competition, the program itself is not a drastic departure.

Bodybuilding is actually much more prevalent in today’s mainstream fitness world than has ever been seen before. Sure, you may go into a gym and see the stereotypical lifter grunting and groaning his way to bulk, but what you may not notice is the svelte woman in the corner lifting “heavy”, or the middle aged man in the back with his six-pack squatting it out under the Smith machine.

Bodybuilding has taken on a new identity in the gym, and one that is progressively becoming the workout program of choice for all exercises despite age or gender.