Developing an Exercise Plan to Build Muscle

Whether you're new to exercise or a seasoned fitness buff, it's important to develop an exercise plan to build muscle that specifically targets your goals. There are many different types of exercises, but not all of them will help you add the bulk you want.

First, decide on your fitness goals. Do you need to burn fat? Or are you just looking to pack on some extra muscle? This can determine where you'll begin with your workout program. If you don't have much fat to lose, you can use cardio exercise sparingly.

But if you want to lose weight and put on muscle, you may need to make sure you participate in cardio exercise for about 30 minutes two times each week. That may not seem like much, but strength training will also help you to burn fat.

Developing your strength training routine is the most important part of your exercise plan to build muscle. You'll want to participate in strength training no more than two or three times per week. And you should limit your sessions at the gym to about an hour.

That may not seem like much time, but it's important to get a quality workout over a lot of quantity spent at the gym. You'll want to make sure that you're working out with heavy weights and less repetition rather than light weights and a high number of reps.

Following proper form, you should work your muscles to fatigue at the end of one or two sets. Then you can move on to another set of muscles. You'll also get a much more efficient workout if you choose exercises that work multiple muscle groups at once.

For example, squats, dead lifts, pushups, and pull-ups all work multiple muscle groups and help you to get a more efficient and effective workout. Once you've chosen exercises, you also want to track your progress.

Before you begin your exercise plan record your weight and take measurements of your arms, legs, waist, chest, and any other area you're interested in improving. Once a week record your measurements to see if your plan is causing you to build the muscle you want to achieve.

In addition, you'll need to change up your exercise routine at least once a month. After a few weeks your body begins to get used to the workout and plateaus. You'll need to throw it off balance by changing up one or two of the exercises so you can continue to see growth.

It's actually quite simple to develop an effective routine for adding bulk to your frame. Developing an exercise plan to build muscle is about determining your goals, choosing a routine, and tracking your progress.

Can You Build Muscle with High Reps?

If you're just starting to exercise to build muscle, you may wonder if you can build muscle with high reps. There was a time that this was thought to be the best way to get fit, but we now know that it's better to exercise with fewer reps, but more intensity.

Instead of using a light weight and performing several sets with high reps, you're better off choosing a heavier weight and fewer reps. In fact, you can have great success with performing one set of 8 reps instead of three sets of 10 reps.

The most important part of your routine is getting to muscle failure at the end of your set. It may take you a few sessions to figure out what weight will get you there, but with some practice you'll find the perfect amount of weight.

You need to be able to complete eight reps with a weight using the full range of motion. By the last rep you should feel like you can't do any more Â? at least in a slow and controlled manner. This is called muscle failure. When you get to this point, you don't need to continue working for that day on that group of muscles.

In addition, you should look for exercises that work on more than one muscle at once so that you get even more efficiency form your workout routine. You don't need to continue to perform rep after rep to build muscle. In fact, that can actually have the opposite effect.

The best way to exercise to build muscle is by working at a high intensity for a shorter amount of time. And after a strenuous workout you need to allow your body to rest so that you can get proper recovery.

There are occasions where using lighter weights and performing more reps can be beneficial. For example, if you have an injury, this can help you to slowly build strength until you can lift more weight.

Using lighter weights is also better for people who have joint problems or arthritis that make lifting heavy weights difficult or even impossible. But for the average person really looking to add muscle it's better to use heavier weights and lower reps.

You can build muscle with high reps, but if you're looking to build your body and add a lot of bulk, this isn't as effective as higher weights and higher intensity exercise with lower numbers of reps and sets.