The Muscle Building Workout Routine is the completely FREE weight training program that I recommend most often to people looking to build any amount of muscle mass as fast as possible.
This workout routine is designed to work for both men and women, young and old, people looking to build a significant amount of muscle and get “big” or build a small amount of muscle and just get “toned.”
Basically, if you’re past the beginner’s stage and your primary goal is building muscle or improving the way your body looks in virtually any capacity, this program is for you.
The Focus
We are going to focus on all the muscles of the body here like a true bodybuilder. If you’re going to build muscle, it should be all over! Do you want to look out of proportion with huge biceps but little arms? It is important to build muscle all over your body so that you will have a proportionate and symmetrical physique. All the best muscle building workouts contain elements which work these muscle groups. Let’s take a look at the main muscle groups we will be training.
Biceps
Triceps
Deltoids
Pectorals
Legs
Abs
These muscle groups contain smaller muscles within them which make up the group, and the best muscle building workouts we list below on this page will target all of them in accordance with your experience. But first, before getting into the best muscle building workouts, we will go into how to build muscle.
How To Build Muscle
There are four main contributing factors concerning how to build muscle. When following best muscle building workouts, it is important to stick to a strict regime. In order to pack on the pounds of lean muscle mass, you must do the following.
Eat – Train – Drink – Sleep
Eat
Your muscles need fuel to burn for your workouts, and they get this fuel from your diet. Nutrition is everything when you’re trying to pack on pounds of lean muscle. You need to be consuming a certain amount of calories per day depending on your body weight and goals, and your diet should consist of sources of protein such as lean meats, fish, nuts, and legumes. Wholegrain foods for fiber such as wholegrain bread, brown rice, cereals, and muesli. Also green vegetables for vitamins. All of these components make up a good bodybuilding diet.
Train
This is where you will perform your bodybuilding workouts to push your muscles into a state of hypertrophy. Muscle hypertrophy is when there is an increase in the size of skeletal muscle through an increase in the size of its component cells. When you lift heavy weights, you are slightly tearing your muscles so they can make room to expand when they repair themselves.
The ideal number of reps per set for hypertrophy is 6-12 reps. Any less is to train for strength and any more is for muscular endurance and toning. Training should be done in a structure of intensity and frequency. This will depend on your level of weight lifting experience and your health among more factors.
Drink
No, we don’t mean for you to go and chug gallons of beer or a few quarts of your favourite spirit. You need to consume the elixir of life. Water. Water keeps you hydrated and also your muscles. It will fill into your muscles and make them fuller and improve your circulation. It is important to consume enough water every day depending on your thirst and bodyweight. Do not over consume as there are health problems that can arise from this.
Sleep
Your body is like a factory. Constantly in operation with something functioning. When you sleep, your body repairs itself from those little muscle tears you got when you were performing your bodybuilding workouts. It is important to get at least 7 hours of sleep per night in order for your body to recharge and repair itself.
There is a simple principle that is applied if you want to know how to build muscle fast. The heavier the weights you lift, the bigger your muscles can get.
Heavy Weights = Bigger Muscles
You can’t just go and pick up the biggest dumbbell you can find though and start curling it to build some huge peaks. You need to gradually let your body develop the ability to lift heavier weights by mastering the lower weight levels with perfect technique. Once you reach a plateau where you can perform your desired sets without getting fatigue or failure in the muscular hypertrophy range, you will need to increase the weight in order to increase your muscle mass. This is known as progressive overload, which is a component of all the best muscle building workouts and was popular with old school bodybuilding.
Let’s take a look two more important factors that will determine your muscle growth.
Recovery
It is very important to allow an ample amount of recovery time between your muscle building workouts for your muscles to heal. This will allow growth and prevent injury. The time between your bodybuilding workouts, which is known as resting, will depend again on your body and experience in lifting weights.
If you are new to lifting weights, your muscles will be very sore for sometimes up to 5-days. This is because they aren’t used to being stimulated by these functions that you sometimes have never performed before. When you are new to working out, it is important to let your body heal completely from these new functions.
Frequency
If you are a beginner, your training frequency will be low at this point, most likely once or sometimes twice a week. The more often you lift weights, the more your body will adapt to this stimulation and start to recover faster, allowing you to work out more often with greater intensity. Especially if you will be performing some of the best muscle building workouts. As you progress, you will be training three to six times a week depending on your schedule and body.
Best Muscle Building Workouts
Here we will list the best muscle building workouts for you depending on your level of fitness. Remember to take into consideration everything we have mentioned above including proper nutrition and to perform the exercises with proper technique to avoid injury and stimulate growth. This article is focusing on the best bodybuilding workouts for beginners, if you feel as though you are past this level, scroll to the bottom of this page to the intermediate section where you will find a link to the best body building workouts for intermediates.
Beginner
So you are new to working out and you want to build some nice muscles. At this stage, your exercises are going to start off small for the first few weeks so your body can get used to this new form of stimulation. This method is part of the best muscle building workouts that you can follow.
The best way to build muscle for a beginner is by performing compound exercises. This means full body workouts to stimulate symmetrical growth all over and to build mass all at once until your muscles plateau and your workouts need to become more isolated. Full body workouts are one of the best muscle building workouts. These muscle building workouts will be compound exercises with a separate day for legs to ensure that fatigue is lower.
First off, we are going to presume that you want to get into body building or muscle building here and will start the training from a true beginners level and progress into more advanced workouts. Here are some of the best muscle building workouts.
Workout 1 – Week 1
Chest
Bench Press – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Legs
Leg Press – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Back
Wide-Grip Pull-ups – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Abs
Crunches – 3 Sets of 12-15 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
There are no isolated bicep exercises here as the bench press and the pull ups use the biceps to perform these movements. While they are not isolated bicep exercises, they do get worked and may be sore and get fatigued from performing this workout so we will leave it out of this one to be cautious.
Workout 2 – Week 2
Shoulders
Military Press – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Triceps
Rope Pushdowns – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Biceps
Concentration Curls – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Abs
Sit Ups – 3 Sets of 10 – 15 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Rest for one day and then perform workout 3.
Workout 3 – Week 2
Legs
Leg Extensions – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Hamstring Curls – 2 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Calf Raises – 2 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
We are going to perform weeks 1 and 2 on an alternating cycle for a month to get your body used to building muscle. So this will be for 6 weeks in total before moving onto week 7.
Make sure you have fully recovered from you upper and lower body workouts before you perform workout 4.
Workout 4 – Week 7
Chest
Pectoral Flys – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Legs
Leg Press – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Calf Raises – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Back
Seated Rows – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Abs
Crunches – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Rest for two days or until your biceps are not sore after 48hrs are up before you perform workout 5.
Workout 5 – Week 7
Shoulders
Front Raise – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Side Lateral Raise – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Triceps
Overhead Extensions – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Biceps
EZ Bar Curls – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Let your body fully recover and then perform workout 6.
Workout 6 – Week 8
Chest
Bench Press – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Legs
Leg Press – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Calf Raises – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Back
Wide-Grip Pull-ups – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Abs
Crunches – 3 Sets of 12-15 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Workout 6.2 – Week 8
Shoulders
Military Press – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Seated Lateral Raises – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Triceps
Rope Pushdowns – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Overhead Extensions – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Biceps
Concentration Curls – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Standing Cable Curls – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Workout 7 – Week 9
By now, you should have had a little growth and get an idea of how your body responds and heals from your muscle building workouts. You may keep repeating these previous workouts again for another four weeks or more to get your body ready for the next stage. If not, we are going to add more exercises and sets to your muscle building workouts for you to use when your body is more accustomed to lifting weights. The best muscle building workouts allow room for this type of growth.
You may also be ready to start lifting heavier weights for some exercises than you could before. If you can and are ready, this will create progressive overload that we mentioned before, and help tremendously with your muscle building workouts and growth.
Chest
Decline Bench Press – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Pectoral Flys – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Shoulders
Military Press – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Dumbbell Read Deltoid Raise – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Triceps
Rope Pushdowns – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Overhead Extensions – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Back
Deadlift – 3 Sets of 8 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
One Arm Dumbbell Row – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Biceps
Concentration Curls – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
EZ Bar Curls – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Workout 8.2 – Week 10
Legs
Squats – 3 Sets of 10 – 12 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Leg Raise – 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Calf Raise- 3 Sets of 8 – 10 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
Abs
Sit Ups – 3 Sets of 12 – 15 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
V-Snaps – 3 Sets of 12 – 15 reps with 2 minutes rest in between sets.
At this stage, we are going to repeat workouts 7 and 8 on an alternating weekly cycle. You will be doing muscle building workout 7 one week, and then workout 8 the next. By alternating these workouts, you are confusing your muscles by changing the exercises every week. This will force growth because your muscles become accustomed to your exercises and after a following the exact same routine for a while, it can eventually become counter-productive, and you will not gain. The best muscle building workouts contain muscle confusion.
You can repeat workouts 7 and 8 on an alternating weekly cycle until you reach a point where you recover fast enough to be able to perform workouts 7 and 7.2 twice per week and workouts 8 and 8.2 twice per alternating week. It is important that you do not try to do this until you are absolutely sure that your body is ready to handle four training sessions a week, as you can severely injure yourself.
Intermediate Level
After you have been performing workouts 7 and 8 twice per week on an alternating cycle for at least 6 months while increasing the weight wherever you can, your workouts will become easier. This is because you are starting to plateau as a beginner and are ready to progress to the intermediate stage. You should have built some solid muscle mass now and have been bodybuilding for at least a year while following the best muscle building workouts. You are accustomed to these exercises and alternations and will still be gaining but will be needing more exercises per muscle group in order to keep building muscle.