Bodybuilding

Advertise your gym in this London directory of bodybuilding gyms for just £40 a year. Guaranteed position in top 3 for paid listings, plus a link to your website to boost your Google ranking.

Maximum Fitness   144 Fortess Road, Tufnell Park NW5 2HP   Tel - 020 7482 3941
(nearest tube: Tufnell Park on northern line)

Advertise your gym here for just £40 a year. Guaranteed position in top 3 for paid listings, plus a link to your website to boost your Google ranking.

Reebok Sports Club   Tel - 020 7970 0900
16-19 Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5ER

Muscleworks Gym   2 Hague Street  Bethnal Green, London E2 6HN
Tel - 020 7256 0916
Hard core bodybuilding gym, Hammer Strength equipment, dumbbells up to 220lbs, personal trainers

 If you want to build your chest , back , shoulders , biceps , triceps , abs , quads  - click on the links. If you want personal training, from a personal trainer who will visit your home anywhere in London within zones 1-4, click the link. And for home gym equipment, click the link.

Can Anyone be a Bodybuilder?

Is it possible for anyone to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger if they train hard enough? The honest answer is no! But anyone can improve their physique with weight training.

To become a true bodybuilder, in the sense of achieving a physique that you see at bodybuilding contests, you need a genetic head-start, in other words the natural propensity to build big muscles. One component of this is a high proportion of type 2 (fast twitch) muscle fibres. But good genetics aren't enough on their own. You also need incredible dedication of time and effort over many years, close attention to nutrition, well-planned workouts, plenty of sleep, and the ability to push yourself beyond what most people would ever contemplate.

For most people, a lean and muscular physique, rather than a muscle-bound bodybuilder physique, is their ideal goal. A body like Brad Pitt in the film Thelma and Louise, or more muscular like in the filmTroy. Celebrity personal trainer Greg Joujon-Roche trained Brad Pitt for the film Troy, and got his body into even better shape than in Fight Club. Pre-production training was a gruelling 6 months, 6 days a week, 2-3 hours a day, focusing on one muscle group each day to achieve maximum soreness.

Money was no object for Brad Pitt, and Los Angeles based personal trainer Greg Joujon-Roche (founder of Holistic Fitness) put together a team of experts who each focused on a particular aspect of fitness: muscle growth, stretching, cardiovascular fitness, martial arts, yoga, massage, nutrition, sleep & relaxation, and so on.

Or you might aspire to a body like Daniel Craig in the James Bond film A Quantum of Solace, you probably remember the scene when he emerges from the sea. Do you need the right genetics to build muscle like this? No, you can overcome bad genetics to achieve this kind of physique, and it helps if you have a celebrity personal trainer like ex-Royal Marine Simon Waterson, who trained Daniel Craig in the run-up to filming.

Again, some people build muscular physiques more easily than others, but to achieve a more natural lean physique is possible even if you're not genetically gifted. It just requires a lot of hard work (and you need to work smart, not just hard, ie- don't overtrain, make sure you train effectively, get plenty of good nutrition at the right times and in the right amounts and balance between the different nutrients, and get plenty of sleep.)

Hopefully it goes without saying that the one thing you must avoid like the plague is anabolic steroids. You can achieve a fantastic physique without steroids, and it's not worth wrecking your health (and ultimately ruining your body) with these drugs. Anabolic steriods have a lot of nasty side-effects, so steer clear.