Program for building muscle

Well, most traditional workouts follow a system that allows you to train each muscle once per week the notorious bro split. Or others, that do not give your muscles enough time to rest between workouts thus leading to over-training. Secondly, by exercising your muscles once per week you are not benefiting from protein synthesis.

Protein synthesis is the reason why your body builds muscle study , source. It lasts for about hours after exercising. What that means is that after your workout you have a 2 day window in which you can build muscle. This workout plan will allow you to activate protein synthesis twice in the week and reduces the risk of over-training.

This makes it ideal for muscle building. The workout plan is a day split you can follow for the next 6 weeks to build muscle. Its focus is to help increase muscle gain and strength development. The muscle building program is suitable for beginners and intermediates. Your rep tempo should be slow and controlled. Focus on the eccentric contraction of the muscle. Aim for a resting tempo of 60 seconds.

Give your body enough time to rest and regain its lost minerals to ensure you have enough energy during sets. Remember, the reps indicated is what you should be aiming to do with weights that allow you to do just 8 repetitions correct form.

If you notice that you can do 8 reps with 20lbs, but the last 2 sets are cheated, then lower the weight. The last thing that you want to happen is for you to injure yourself during a workout. The workout program is designed so you can exercise 3 or 6 times a week.

With that being said, if you want to maximize muscle gain, then you should aim for the 6 day split. If you are a beginner, you will find it hard going to the gym 6 times. This is simply because your muscles will not have fully rested.

Start of with 3 days a week and progress towards the full 6 days to maximize your results. Also, it does not have to be either 3 or 6. You can go times. Use the extra 1 or 2 visits to focus on lagging muscle groups. For example, if you notice that your chest is not as developed as you want it to, then just do one extra push day after you finish the 3 day split. While on the topic of beginners, another benefit of this workout program is that it will provide you with a lot of tools and information that will benefit your long-term development with your fitness journey.

After the workout program you will find quick nutrition and supplementation notes. As well as a list of exercises that you can substitute existing ones in the workout so you can add variability promote more muscle growth. And quite often can completely transform a workout for the better. If you are not aware what those terms mean, here is a quick explanation:. Finally, all the exercises have a link to a video where the exercise is performed.

This is until I build a library of my own with visual demos of exercises. For now, though, this will do. As I previously mentioned it is wise to alternate between exercises and not have the same routine. Adding variability to your workouts prevents your body from getting accustomed to them. Thus, preventing you from hitting a plateau and boosting muscle gain.

See this as a springboard program. All good journey have a beginning. And that can lead to poor choices about what types of exercise plans are used. But that takes time. Not sure what that means? Compound exercises — these work multiple muscles at the same time. Examples are bench press, deadlift, seated row and squat.

Isolation — these typically target one individual muscle. Bicep curls, triceps extensions and leg extensions for example. Focusing on compound exercises is a great way to boost weekly volume in less actual exercises. The result — less time in the gym; more time for you. Rule 5: Forget the stopwatch Another traditional approach to muscle growth is to time your rest period between sets to trigger biochemical changes that led to higher levels of muscle mass.

Short rest times were said to equal more mass. This essentially means that you rest as long as YOU want to between sets. If anything, longer rest times are better for you. References Show more. Schoenfeld, BJ et al. J Strength Cond Res. Low-load high volume resistance exercise stimulates muscle protein synthesis more than high-load low volume resistance exercise in young men. In the long term this is the process that actually builds muscle mass.

The 12 Week Free Bodybuilding Program utilizes all three techniques, in the correct proportion, to send a strong muscle building signal to your body. No matter how strong this signal is.

You need to support your daily requirements, and provide surplus of protein so your body can physically make new cells. It can be complicated to gain muscle mass without gaining a ton of unwanted fat. You need to prioritize protein, and carbohydrate, while eating as much fat as you need to hit your caloric goals. Give the article a read, and download the spreadsheet. Remember, this is only a starting point for your nutrition.

I will do follow up articles which will be linked at the bottom for the second and third parts, once I finish them. Each block is written with five sessions. I expect most athletes will be able to do these five sessions in a week. Each daily session is one vertical column. Most athletes will choose to do it from top to bottom, but you can pick and choose which moves you want to do in which order.

The accessory work is in blue, and the daily accessory is in dark gray. Note that none of these blocks are super sets. I will specify when I want you to do a superset or drop set. I generally expect you to keep your rest intervals around 2 minutes. You can see my 20 WOD addendum to this bodybuilding program here. This week is your introduction to this style of training. The programming becomes very hard towards the end so you should expect that it will only increase in difficulty from here.

This program is designed so that you can do it in any commercial gym, and most well equipped home gyms. You might have to sub a few movements, if you lack cable machines, but you can still build a lot of muscle mass either way. In this program I most often specify the intensity of effort using the acronym RIR. This stands for reps in reserve. If you see a set of 10 that says 2 RIR, that means you could do 12 reps if you truly had to.

None of these sets are max effort. Most of last weeks sets were 2RIR. This week many of them are 1RIR. This is a key part of the program. It allows your body to recover from each session with enough reserves to attack the next session.

In this program, most body parts are trained twice per week, for large muscle groups. Smaller muscle groups, that recovery quickly, are hit 3 or more times per week.

If you like this program, but want something with more conditioning check out my functional bodybuilding program! This week is where I put the hammer down. Remember, if you have a set of 8 at 1RIR, then you should be lifting heavier for a set of 6. On each of these movements, you need to focus on the muscles that are contracting. I expect you to use good, safe form, and put max effort into each rep. Most compound movements should be done focusing a bit more on the weight being moved, where as the accessory work is more technique focused.

This week is a deload week. This week is very important to your overall success. If you want to build strength and functional fitness then check out this program!

Recovery is definitely a misunderstood topic.