Muscle building is actually a pretty complex body process. First, you have to cause some kind of damage to your muscles to get them to rebuild themselves. Then you have to rest them so they have the chance. During rest is when they are rebuilt bigger and stronger. Last, you need the right kinds of nutrients for your body to use. This is a simple explanation and doesn’t cover messenger proteins, hormones, or metabolic processes. It does give you the basics you need to know in order to build your muscles and the following tips will give you a guide.

Don’t Go For Endurance Training

As they go along, many weight lifters will add on time to their workout. Sometimes they add time if they aren’t getting the results that they want. Working out burns calories and some of those could be helping build muscle. If you have a high metabolic rate you need to preserve calories so there are some left for building muscles. Instead of long workouts, do short, high intensity ones for better results.

Increase Your Size By Decreasing Your Frequency

Don’t work the same muscle groups or body parts too often. This is a common mistake. Your muscles are only rebuilt and repaired during rest periods and they need those periods. Your workout makes them need repair, but if you don’t rest them, they can’t.

Go Home Or Go Big

Multi-joint, compound exercises are the best ones if you want to add size. Do squats, bench presses and dead lifts instead of shying away from them. If they are awkward or hard, do them anyway. The heavier weight will do more for your muscle size than doing isolated exercises on machines. Lifts that require all your body (like squats) will help you burn body fat as well.

Complete Your Reps

Do the full range of motion an exercise requires. Both the stretch and the contraction are vital parts of any exercise motion. A lot of lifters sacrifice the movement in favor of weights that are too heavy. This won’t help you. You should go heavy enough to make your muscles grow but not where you can’t keep good form. This is also important in helping you to avoid injuring yourself.

Before doing any exercises, learn how to do them properly. Rather than duration, focus on intensity in your workouts. Remember to let your muscles rest so that they can rebuild and repair. For complete muscle development, do heavy compound exercise in a full range. Add good supplementation in your diet and you’ll see the changes.

Weight lifters also appreciate the importance of proper nutrition. Without the right number of calories coming in (i.e. a surplus), a lifter will never gain muscle mass worth counting. In addition, the calories have to be the right composition – plenty of protein with a healthy portion of carbs and fats. They also need plenty of vitamins, minerals, and water to supplement their training.

All of these components are well appreciated and debated by exercisers and weight lifters everywhere. But one of the keys to any good program to build muscle is often ignored: rest. It is during rest that muscles repair the damage caused by the exercise, and it is during rest that the muscles grow bigger and stronger.

Too many lifters focus on working as hard as possible and then they enter a state of overtraining. Overtraining occurs when individuals don’t give their muscles enough time to recuperate between workouts. Being in this state can cause a massive plateau to your results, and even worse, it can even lead to injuries which can set you back for months.

The proper way to continue to build muscle throughout your program is to make rest a priority. This may seem like you’re going soft, but you’re not. Rest is as crucial, and perhaps more important, than proper exercise and nutrition.

When designing your workout plan, make sure to add in enough bouts of rest between workouts. There are many ways to do this. One way is to do full body workouts through the week, leaving a day of rest in between, such as a Monday, Wednesday, Friday (or Saturday) workout. This will leave plenty of time in between for proper recuperation. Others like to work out everyday, so they separate out each day to focus on a particular muscle group. For example, Monday could be chest, Tuesday is biceps, and so on. This allows each muscle group to have periods of rest and periods of workouts. However, weight lifters following this schedule should be careful that the “off” days for the muscles truly are off days. For instance, certain chest exercises require working the biceps, and vice versa.

Finally, rest days should be filled with just that – rest. Lifters should get at least 8 hours of sleep, and naps won’t hurt either.

You have probably seen “muscle” magazines that tout “the best routine” to build some specific body part. You may have even tried it and your results could be anything from spectacular to barely noticeable. So why do some get great results while others do not if some exercises are supposed to be “the best?” The answer to this is simple, but so rarely understood – we all have different body types and different genetics. Because of this, you need to tailor your own weight training program by trying out different styles and see which ones your body responds to best. You also have to be comfortable with the routine because if it is something you just really don’t want to do, then you are likely going to quit doing it after a short period of time even if the results are what you are looking for.

With this in mind, lets explore a basic routine to get you going for your first 6 weeks of weight training. The idea of this routine is to give your body a foundation to build from and for you to find out which muscle groups will require the most attention. This routine is not just for beginners though, if you are experienced but have plateaued in your workout, going back to the basics for 6 weeks will allow for some change that will be good for your muscles. You have no doubt heard of muscle memory which is basically that your muscles remember what kind of stressors you have given your muscles. Because your muscles have a memory, you need to mix things up once every couple of months to experience new growth.

The program you are going to undertake is known as a 3 day split. The reason for the name is simple, you are going to split up your weight training routine into three separate workout on three different days. The breakdown of your workout will be that you will workout your chest and back on day 1, your legs and abs on day 2, and your shoulders and arms on day 3. The specific exercises are up to you but should include 2 chest, 2 back, 1 quadricep, 1 hamstring, 1 calf, 1 abs, 2 shoulder, 1 bicep, and 1 tricep exercise. This may sound like a relatively sparse routine and it in fact is. The principles are based on the push/pull concept for the upper body whereas the muscles you are exercising exert effort in opposite directions e.g. chest – forward, back – backward. The lower body will be more exhaustion in a declining manner. What this means is the largest group will be worked first descending into the smallest group at the end. This should result in better isolation of the smaller groups.

You should not do this workout three consecutive day in a row, but should have at least one day of rest in between each workout day.

The suggested exercises for the above 3 day split are as follows:

Day1

Chest – Flat bench, dumbell flys

Back – Lat pulldown, seated rows

Day 2

Legs – Squats, stiff-legged deadlifts

Calfs – Seated calf raises

Abs – Crunches

Day 3

Shoulders – Seated dumbell press, side-lateral lifts

Biceps – Seated supinated curls

Triceps – V-bar cable pressdown

Again, these are just suggestions. Whatever exercise you decide to do, make sure you use proper form – this is key to quality muscle growth. The other thing you need to do is to concentrate on your lifts and do them slowly, both up and down. There should be no swinging, or fast movements. If you have to struggle and lose form, you need to reduce the weight and keep proper form. Do not let your ego get in the way – this is a sure way to get yourself injured!

In weeks 1 and 2, do each exercise for 6-8 reps. Week 3, take it up to 8-10 reps. Week 4, take it down to 3-4 reps with the most weight you can handle – again, keeping proper form. Weeks 5 and 6, lower the weight and increase the reps to 12-15 – this will give you some muscle endurance and increase tone.

Once you have completed the above 6 week routine, you will have noticed what muscle groups respond to weight training the best and those that don’t respond well. You should be able to tailor your workout routine from there. It is important that you change up the exercises and do something completely different so that you can expose yourself to other routines…but at least you will have a strong sold base to work from.