The best muscle building workouts are not found in the classic muscle mags that you buy in stores. In fact, those mass training programs might be one of the worst things you could do for bodybuilding. Here’s why…
You see, there’s a simple “gain muscle formula” all good personal trainers and strength coaches follow for building size. This formula is different than what professional bodybuilders use. And that difference is good trainers and strength coaches don’t use steroids – massive amounts of steroids – like professional bodybuilders do every week.
So if you want to gain muscle the safe, simple, and natural way, you need to use the proven muscle gaining secrets formula that is based on volume.
Now before we get to that exact formula, I want to introduce you to a few important training techniques you need to know, as well as the best muscle building exercises to use in your program.
If you’ve been using only bodyweight exercises at home– that’s where I started too – or in bootcamp workouts then you’ll need to be ready to make some big changes in your mass building program. While it’s true you can gain some upper body muscle with chin-ups, dips, pullups, and advanced pushups, it’s difficult to get all of the muscle growth you want from such a limited repertoire of exercises.
In addition, you’re going to change from regular, boring straight set muscle building workout techniques to using more advanced methods, such as supersets, circuits, drop sets, density sets, and even a few negative reps.
Essentially, you’ll be using metabolic resistance training for muscle building. That’s one of the most popular methods for gaining muscle without gaining fat at the same time. In fact, you really can’t achieve build muscle and lose fat at the same time without these methods.
Muscle Building Workout Exercises
Let’s spend a little more time looking at the exact exercises that build muscle. Starting with the lower body, you’re going to love the results you get from squats, deadlifts, and lunges. Those are the best exercises to start with, although you don’t need to do all of those in one workout. That’s where the muscle magazine workouts go wrong, by having you do too many exercises too soon.
In addition, the average personal trainer doesn’t realize this, but squats and deadlifts will help you get big and strong over your entire body.
Loading and unloading all of the plates, getting a tight squat position, and pulling the bar off the ground in the deadlift can help you get a big, muscular upper back. These are two of the best “build muscle exercises”. These are essential exercises for gaining mass, getting strong, and becoming a powerful athlete.
For your lower body, training the glutes (your butt), hamstrings (back of the upper legs), and quadriceps (front thigh) are most important. If you struggle with your calves, don’t worry. Just use the muscle gaining formula included below and you’ll have everything you need for that tough bodypart.
Now for the fun training. Let’s look at building muscle for the upper body. First, we’ll start with some ab exercises. After all, even though you want to gain muscle, you still want 6-pack abs, right? (If not, you can just skip ahead from this section.)
The good news is that you no longer have to use boring, ineffective crunches. Never again do you need to spend 30 minutes on an ab program. That’s a waste of your time that would be better spent showing off your newly gained muscle to the ladies at the club, the beach, or even in the squat rack.
Some of the best ab exercises are the simplest, including ab wheel rollouts, hanging leg raises, and cable-based exercises. Stick to these in your muscle building workouts, done twice per week, and you’ll be set. You don’t need any more time spent on the abdominal muscles.
For your upper body, starting with your chest, you’ll focus on dumbbell exercises and a few barbell pressing exercises. But from a pure muscle building and variety standpoint, you don’t need to do bench presses. In fact, you’ll be able to build just as much muscle without hurting your shoulders and rotator cuff muscles by using dumbbells. And you can just do dumbbell presses at home.
Now for your back muscles. Please don’t make the classic mistake of neglecting this important muscle group. If you don’t train your back, you’ll end up at risk of injury to the shoulder joint, and frankly, you’ll look like a goof. You want a big, intimidating upper back and lats (the muscles you use in pulldowns and pullups).
Dumbbell and barbell rows, seated rows, pulldowns, and the bodyweight exercises of pullups and chin-ups are the best exercises here. Fortunately, you’ll gain muscle with deadlifts too.
The third biggest upper body muscle group to address is your shoulders. Often the traps, the big muscles of the upper back behind the neck, are included in shoulder training programs, but in reality they belong with the upper back exercises.
For your shoulders, you’ll gain size with military presses, 1-arm dumbbell presses (these are easier on your shoulder joint than barbell presses), and lateral raises (front, side, and rear lateral raises). But don’t overwork your shoulder muscles. Always remember these muscles are heavily involved in presses, rows, and deadlifts. Your shoulders even work hard to support the bar when you squat.
Finally, we need to talk about muscle building exercises for your arms. Biceps curls of all kinds (such as incline, preacher, Zottman, reverse, and hammer) should be alternated with a variety of triceps exercises (including lying dumbbell triceps extensions, cable pressdowns, and overhead extensions). This will help you build equally impressive triceps and biceps muscles. Those are the best type of triceps and biceps muscle building workout routines.
But here’s one thing you have to know. Muscle building routines are important, but without one more factory, you won’t gain as much muscle mass as you want. And that forgotten factor is muscle gaining nutrition. You need to eat more calories than you need. This is where a lot of guys mess up the muscle building process.
Muscle Building Workouts Diet
The easiest way to make sure you are using the right muscle building diet is to add calories to breakfast and post-workout. If you aren’t eating, you won’t be growing. Don’t skimp on your calories, and make sure you have a liquid post-workout drink of at least 20 grams of protein and 30 grams of carbohydrate after training.
Protein is important, but you don’t need any more than one gram of protein per pound of bodyweight. That’s it. You don’t need 500 grams of protein to build muscle. Calories are more important than protein, once you’ve hit your minimum protein intake.
So now you know the two most important factors in your muscle building workout routine. They are nutrition and training, and that brings me to the muscle building formula. The secret word is volume.
Muscle training volume plus Muscle nutrition volume equals muscle growth with the right muscle building workouts.
If you don’t have enough of the right muscle building exercises, if you don’t do enough sets and reps with the right weight, you won’t have the required muscle training workout volume to stimulate muscle growth.
And if you don’t have enough calories, enough protein, and enough of a post-workout shake, you won’t have enough volume of food to grow.
If either one of those factors are missing from your muscle building equation, you won’t gain muscle mass as fast as you desire. So remember the formula. 
Train hard, eat big, and that’s the best muscle growth workout and nutrition advice you can get. Good luck with your muscle building workouts.
