Most muscle building programs that you find online are simply too rigid in my opinion. For instance what if you workout at home and the program requires that you use very specific gym equipment? What if the program requires dead lifts but you are recovering from a back injury. Let’s discuss a more flexible muscle building approach.
The Type of Resistance Doesn’t Matter as Much as Many Would Suggest
There is a large percentage of trainers who feel that free weights are the only way to build muscle. While it may be true that many large guys use free weights to add muscle, the same holds true for machines and even body weight training. Arthur Jones the inventor of the Nautilus machines trained quite a few successful bodybuilders to get improve their physiques using his machines. Don’t get hung up on machines vs free weights vs body weight. As long as you are challenging you muscles with resistance you will be fine.
The Body Part Splits Don’t Make a Huge Difference Either
You can do a 2 days split, a 3 days split, or train your entire body in one workout if you like. A lot of how you split up muscle groups between workouts depends upon how many days per week you can devote to training and how long each workout session will last. The advantage of a 3 day split over training your entire body in a day is that your workouts will probably shorter. The advantage of training your entire body in one workout is that you can train less days per week and get an effective workout. I prefer the 2 day split and like to train 4 times per week. This is just my preference. Make sure and pick a split routine that makes sense for your schedule.
Low Reps Make Sense, As Do Higher Reps
Many people ask if low reps are best for building muscle or higher reps. Well my answer to that is that higher reps are great if you want to increase sarcoplasmic muscle growth. This is the fastest way to increase the volume of a muscle. Lower reps are better for gaining strength and increasing the density of a muscle. So for large dense muscles it pays to do high reps for a while followed by low reps for a while.
The Time of Day you Perform Your Muscle Building Program Makes Little Difference As Well
The nice thing about training in the morning is that you get it out the way. The downside is that your joints aren’t as warmed up compared to if you train later in the day. Really, either way works well. I am of the belief that getting up before 5:30AM is only acceptable if I am going on vacation or a road trip, but many people swear by early morning workouts.
So hopefully this lets people know they cab be flexible when designing their muscle building programs.
