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.

The majority of  individuals that I talk to about health and fitness talk about “getting in shape” or “getting rid of belly fat“.  But, I do not think they realize that their words are actually counterproductive to their aspirations of burning fat. You hear a lot of people complaining about being out of shape and saying things like, I need to get in shape and burn fat or, I want to get in shape and burn fat. What you don’t hear them saying is, I want to get in shape, burn fat, and stay that way.

They may want to stay in shape, but their mindset is focused on getting in shape.  This makes you further susceptible to the fad diets and most recent exercise gimmick on the market.  You’re so focused on getting in shape that you’ll try almost anything regardless of how silly or complex to follow it could seem, because you’re completely focused on the short term goal.

A easy change in the “quick fix” mindset to one of long term success will steer you along the right path. You will be less enticed by the late night TV advertisements, and more pin-pointed on doing the correct things the majority of the time.  Wouldn’t you agree that life long health and fitness is what is most important?

Naturally developing an environment in your body that allows you to burn fat fast is crucial to this goal. A person who is in shape in their 50s and 60s is a lot more impressive to me than someone who is lean and fit in their 20s and 30s. That is because the devotion to maintaining the proper exercise plan and a rational nutrition plan for the rest of your life is rare to find. It’s a rare mindset.

If you truly want to alter your physique and your health for good, you must make it a lifestyle, a habit. And that starts in your mind.  That’s what the people who are lean for life do. In fact, if I think about all of the people I personally know that are in great shape and have been for a while, I began to understand that they have their minds on staying in shape.

They think about it day and night, not compulsively, but with every thing they do…they subconsciously think is this going to positively or negatively effect my long term health and fitness?.  Am I performing everything I consciously can to burn fat and live a healthy lifestyle?.

The good news is that research shows you can build on simple habits like those involved in eating and exercising appropriately in under a month…frequently even sooner. In addition with the form of exercise and diet information I propose to my Fat Burning Furnace students, you don’t have to give up your life’s pursuits so that you are working out every day,  nor do you require to follow a crazy diet you can’t sensibly make a lifestyle out of.

Plus after a few months of practicing these methods, I’ve established that your body will begin telling you it wishes to keep exercising and eating right…you just won’t feel right with out it.  Why?  Because your body naturally desires to be healthy and lean.

Therefore I appeal to you to forgo the “get in shape” mindset, and instead embrace the idea of staying in shape and creating that fat burning furnace that is so critical to life long health and fitness.

Imagine yourself in the body of your dreams, now, tomorrow, and 5, 10, 20 or more years from now.  What will you be doing then, in your lean, strong, and healthy body?  Chances are, you won’t be attempting to “get in shape”.  Instead, you’ll be burning fat 24/7, and enjoying life as you should…full of vitality and excitement.