Hello there, let me tell you about how I became a bodybuilder. Like most medical students I had little time or interest in going to a gym on a regular basis. I did want to lose some weight but the thought of exercise left me uninspired. Then I discovered aerobics and how you could burn body fat by raising your heart-rate to a level in the 70-80% range of your maximum cardiac output. I started to do the "StairMaster" machine at a local gym and with headphones on a 20-30 minute session at an aerobic heart-rate was no problem at all; in fact I ended up doing aerobic training almost every day for several months. I did lose 10lbs or so of weight that was mostly body-fat and I was down to 145lbs.One day while on the stairmaster, I noticed all the dumbells, barbells and free-weights that were in another area of the gym and I asked one of the staff what that was all about. He told me that there were two ways to go: either a lean slim compact body or a body with curves and rounded muscles. The second way, he said, was accomplished by weight-training while still keeping body fat down with aerobic exercise after the weight-training session. This, of course required spending more time at the gym but I was very curious about what effect weight-lifting would have on my now flat but lean body. In fact someone in the locker room looked at me and told me that I looked like a teenager.
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