A good muscle building program will take into consideration how often you train, how long you train, how you cycle your training and what exercises are best for training.
How Often Should You Train?
Training each body part only one or two times a week is recommended by some muscle building programs. If your workouts are so intense that your muscles need more than 24 hours to recover, then your goal is to build huge muscles and two workouts a week is fine. But, if you want big muscles like an olympic swimmer or a male gymnast you must work like a swimmer or gymnast – more frequent workouts, more than one or two a week. Three to four times a week of the right exercises at the right level will give your muscles time to recover and build.
How Long Should You Train?
You should also not be exercising for more than an hour at the gym for each workout. During your workout, testosterone levels are at their highest at about 27 minutes and cortisone – the stress hormone that promotes fat storage – levels rise significantly at 45 minutes. Thus a workout of 40 – 45 minutes is the best.
Cycling Your Training
Since your workout is going to be short, it has to be productive. You should cycle your training so you are always challenging the muscle – working it in different ways. Muscles will get used to any one routine after a while, so you should switch your routine before the muscles adapt and stop growing. You shouldn’t switch before you see significant progress, though. Most good programs will have you change your routine every four weeks. This will also keep your workouts from getting boring.
Cycling the Intensity
You should not only cycle your exercises, but also your intensity. Train as hard as you can without overtraining, then reduce the intensity for a while, then kick it back up again. In this way you will always be taxing the muscle. An explanation about why interval training works to build muscle faster can be found here.
Another way to make your workout more productive is to use bodyweight exercises. Because you tax a few body parts at a time with bodyweight exercises, they are more efficient. Bodyweight exercises do not isolate one muscle group – it is a more natural motion. Exercises such as dips, chin-ups, push ups,squats, lunges and all of the adaptations of these exercises will tax more than one body part at a time. The intensity of a bodyweight exercise can be altered by changing the movement or adding weight. Weights added at the belly will make a dip or a chin-up more difficult, the intensity of a push up is raised when it is done on a decline instead of level.
So, don’t spend hours in the gym. Work out 30-45 minutes doing bodyweight exercises, varying the intensity and exercises performed. You will soon see significant progress in your muscle size and shape.
