Muscle Building Workout
The characteristics that make a good muscle building workout are how often you train, how long you train, how you cycle your training and which exercises you perform.
How Often Should You Train?
Some muscle building programs advocate that you train each body part only once or twice a week. That is fine if your workouts are so intense that your body needs more than 24 hours to recover and rebuild – that is, if you want to have massive muscles. But, if you want big muscles like an olympic swimmer or a male gymnast you ought to work like a swimmer or gymnast – more frequent workouts, more than once or twice a week. Your muscles will have enough time to recover and grow if you do the right exercises at the right intensity three to four times a week.
How Long Should You Train?
Also, less than an hour is all the time you need to take for each workout. Testosterone levels peak about 27 minutes into your workout, and by 45 minutes into your workout cortisone – the stress hormone that promotes body fat storage – levels increase significantly. So 40 – 45 minutes should be the most time you spend in the gym.
Cycling Your Training
Your shorter workout has to be more productive. You should cycle your workout so you are always taxing the muscle – working it in different ways. Muscles will get used to any one routine after a while, so you should alter your routine before the muscles adapt and stop growing. You don’t want to switch before you see major progress, though. Most good programs will have you alter your routine every four weeks. This will also keep you from getting bored.
Cycling the Intensity
You should not only cycle your exercises, but your intensity, too. Push yourself almost to the edge of overtraining, then back off for a little while, then push yourself to the edge again. Working out in this way keeps the muscles taxed all the time. Details of why interval training works to build muscle faster can be found in this article.
Another way to make your workout more productive is to use bodyweight exercises. You work more efficiently with bodyweight exercises because they tax a few body parts at a time. Bodyweight exercises do not isolate one muscle group – it is a more natural movement. Dips, push ups, lunges, chin-ups or squats and all the variations of these exercises are good examples of bodyweight exercises. Changing the movement or adding weights to the bodyweight exercises will increase the intensity of the workout. A declined push up is more difficult than a level push up, a weight added at the waist will increase the intensity of a chin-up or dip.
So, vary the intensity and exercises performed using bodyweight exercises, work out 30 – 45 minutes only, stop spending hours in the gym. You will soon see considerable progress in your muscle shape and size.
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