Weight Training Programs That Build Mass

Designing solid weight training programs is critical if you want to gain significant size. Weight training is a great tool for building muscle mass because it allows you to concentrate and isolate work in targeted and specific areas of the body. Weight training can also be used to work multiple muscle groups simultaneously to improve functional strength. You need to get stronger to get bigger, and there is no better way then with lifting weights.

As important as weight training programs are to success, it needs to be incorporated with a good weight gain diet and sufficient recovery time. All of these factors are critical to success. If you fail to account for one of these factors, it will definitely have an impact on your muscle building capabilities, and if you are a hard gainer which struggles to gain muscle to begin with, then you want to make sure you do everything right.

On this page, we will work through the many components that go into the design and implementation of a good weight training program.

Set Your Goals And Plan To Achieve Them

A typical way for planning weight training programs is to set long term goals for 6-months or one year and goals to achieve approximately every 4 weeks. It isn’t enough to just throw around some weights at the gym, not if you want to see desirable results for the long term. You need a plan tailored to your specific goals, which is to build muscle mass.

Create Your Own Plan

Taking the time to create a personalized plan is probably the most important yet, most neglected, part of achieving success in your weight training program. The saying “If you fail to plan you plan to fail” is definitely true for weight lifting. There are a lot of people selling these “one-size-fits-all” weight lifting plans, and while they aren’t all bad, you can never replace the need to have a program that is constructed with your personal workout goals at the center of it.

Everything from what you eat, to what exercises you perform, how many reps you complete, and how often you train must be tailored to suit your individual needs. The goal of this guide is to lead you step by step through the basics of developing a workout plan that will help you be successful in reaching your specific weight gain goals and gaining quality muscle.

Weight Training Philosophy

There is a lot of controversy over what weight training philosophy is best for building mass. You wouldn’t have to venture far in your gym to find a trainer who is willing to argue that the philosophy his or her weight training program is based on is the best hands down. When you meet a person like this, take what they say with a grain of salt. What you need to know is that there are important guidelines with any weight training philosophy if you want to see good results. I have previously outlined the basic training philosophy which has worked for me.

Here are some more advanced training techniques which will put your training workout sessions into overdrive:

• Train Heavy. I believe great physiques should have awesome proportions with powerful size and mass. I believe weight training with heavy weights is vital in developing awesome mass. I always train for strength all year round in all exercises, especially in the basic power movements such as the squat, bench press, and deadlift.
• Vary Your Exercises. Vary your exercises within the routine. Experiment with ‘new’ movements that you haven’t tried, or variations of old movements. Always try different machines, equipment, etc., to see which one ‘feels right.’ Alternate heavy movements with moderate poundage and higher reps weekly. Finish with your starting movement for a muscle group and vice versa for a change.
• Focus on the Burn. Learn to focus on ‘the burn’ to pump the muscles fully using various techniques: moderate poundage/high reps (15-30), peak contraction, full range of motion, half-reps and partials (burns), forced reps, negatives, posing between sets, stretching, etc. Always strive for the biggest, fullest pump possible on every workout. This is one of our main goals.

Build a Solid Foundation

At the beginning of a weight training program you are not trying to build muscle. You want to concentrate on developing your coordination skills. This is known as a muscle groove. For example, muscles learn how to work through a range of motions and stresses. This is the time start learning the proper form for each exercise. Learn what your muscle tolerance is. We recommend that hard gainers start with a very light weight and wait to see how your body responds. You want to be aware of the duration of muscle soreness. You don’t have to be sore, but if you are, it should not last for more than 24 hours. If you are, you are using too much weight, doing too many sets or reps, or not taking enough rests between sets.

Building a solid foundation is critical if you want to see positive results with a weight training program. Learning proper form is essential because as the weight increases it is more difficult to keep good form. Training your muscle groups, not your ego. You should never sacrifice form for more weight or more reps.

Weight Training Exercises To Build Muscle

When training each muscle group there are dozens of weight training exercises one can chose. These exercises can be broken down into to two categories. These are compound exercises and isolation exercises.

A compound exercise is one that utilizes more than one muscle group to perform an exercise and which incorporates two joints to perform the lift. Weight training programs which are designed to build mass must focus on the basic compound exercises. This is because compound weight lifting exercises allow you to stimulate the most muscle fibers in the least amount of time. In other words, they are the most efficient exercises if you want to gain more muscle mass.

The most important multi-joint compound exercises include:

• Bench/dumbbell presses
• Chinning
• Bent-over rows
• Military presses
• Barbell/dumbbell curls
• Skullcrushes
• Dips
• Squat’s
• Deadlifts
• Calf raises

Conversely, an isolation exercise focuses on one muscle group and revolves around one joint. An example of this would be the dumbbell chest fly. In general it is better to start off performing the compound exercises before the isolation exercises because it takes more energy and one can lift more weight with these exercises. If the isolation exercise is performed first one will have less strength and energy for the compound exercise and won’t be able to lift as much weight.

Additionally because isolation exercises utilize only one joint and are often performed with less bio-mechanical advantage, it is much safer to perform heavy exercises with compound movements.

Training Intensity

Each set should be a maximum work set. This means that you never save anything for the next set. Unless, of course, if it’s a warm-up set. Sometimes intense training gets confused with more sets of training, more isn’t necessary, it’s how hard the sets are performed. Train in the best form possible, force the extra reps out instead of giving up.

Rest Will Encourage Fast Muscle Gains

Many trainers overlook this part of weight training. It’s important that you are getting adequate rest and recovery time between workouts. When you lift weights you are not actually building muscle, you are breaking muscle tissue down. You must give the body the opportunity to do the building that your weight training programs encourage. Allowing 48 hrs rest time for each body part will give your muscles time to repair and grow. So if you did 3 workouts each week, it would be a good idea to focus 2 days doing upper body exercises and the other day dedicated to lower body.

Obviously you can make adjustments to this routine, but it’s a good starting point for beginners. Monday I would usually do upper body exercises, rest 2 days and do lower body exercises on the Wednesday, the on one of the remaining days of the week complete the upper body workout. Because you have two days of upper body exercises, you should train a different upper body part on the second day of the week. Most importantly you want to make sure you are not training a specific muscle group too often to prevent overtraining.

Progressive Overload

Weight training programs is by it’s nature and design a progressive activity. The way for a person to make improvements in strength and muscle gaining capabilities is to increase the intensity of the workout. The most obvious form of progression is for the individual to increase the amount of weight lifted. This will improve one’s strength and muscle mass. Upon starting a weight training program, these increases may occur rather quickly. However as one progresses there are reasons other forms of intensity increase become desirable. For starters one may start to plateau with the weight increases. Also, large increases in lifting weight can produce an undesirable stress on the joints.

Therefore one will want to use other techniques to increase intensity without increasing the weight. The first is to simply increase the repetitions on each set performed. The second is to increase number of sets of each exercise performed. The next technique is to increase the number of exercises performed per muscle group. Then, one can decrease the rest period between the sets. Finally one can drop weight on the exercise and immediately perform a subsequent set with less weight or perform another exercise for the same muscle group with no rest in between.

Warming Up And Stretching

If you want to maximize the potential of your weight training programs, it’s important not to neglect warming up and stretching. Vince Delmonte, the author of the No-Nonsense Muscle Building Program, views stretching and flexibility as essential for the intense “progressive overload” training required to build muscle, and devotes a whole chapter in his book to this subject.

What does warming-up and stretching do for you?

1. Warming up gets your muscles and mind ready for working out.
2. Warming up increases heart rate and blood flow to all of your muscles.
3. It prepares you body for exercise. You will receive the best benefits of working out if you muscles are ready.
4. Most importantly, you can prevent sore muscles and decrease your chances of injury.

Before a workout you should do the following:

1. 5 minutes of light aerobic exercise (stationary bike, jumping rope, etc). Any aerobic exercise which will raise your body temperature a bit. Conserve your energy you don’t want this to be a workout in itself.
2. Stretches. Do your stretching after warming up – the muscles will stretch better when warm.

I would also recommend doing adequate warm-up sets before hitting your muscles with heavy weights. Including this step in your weight training programs will ensure that you remain injury free and the increased performance capacity will allow you to build more muscle in less time. Additionally, remaining injury free will mean you don’t have to take time off lifting weights.

How To Maximize Your Weight Training Program

The important question is whether there’s an optimal way to create and order a program to obtain optimal results for building muscle mass? To say that there is may sound presumptuous and will draw argument and disagreement, but there are some basic physiological principles which one can draw upon to create a weight training program which can optimize one’s time and effort.

One basic principle is to work the larger muscle groups first when one is strongest and has the most energy and then the smaller groups later. An exception to this can be when there is a particular group one wants to emphasize. For example among upper body groups, the chest and back are the two largest, and one would want to work those before working shoulders and work shoulders before biceps and triceps.

In addition to better energy utilization, many chest and back exercises utilize the smaller muscle groups and if these muscles are exhausted first, it will be much harder to exhaust the larger muscle groups. The reason is that the smaller group will tire and force one to stop before the larger group is fully exhausted. With respect to lower body exercises, it’s best to perform quadriceps exercises before hamstrings and calves.

Does It All Seem So Complicated?

The fundamentals of weight training programs to build mass is second nature for experienced weight trainers. However, for beginners and even trainees with a few month’s lifting experience, understanding and correctly applying all this information can be a difficult task because of information overload.

There are a number of factors which can end up preventing muscle gains. That’s why I recommend that beginners who are frustrated with seeing no progress with their workouts, get help from the top rated muscle building program on the web, which is a proven weight gain system designed especially for hardgainers.

More then anything else, the most important component of effective weight training programs other than intensity is consistency. If one takes the philosophy that working out is part of a lifestyle rather than a means to achieve short term goals, adherence may be greater and the individual will get the desired results.

by David on April 7, 2009 · 2 comments

Filed under Exercises & Workouts

If you enjoyed this article, please like it on Facebook.

Related Posts

1. The Three Best Muscle Building Exercises
2. The Three Major Weight Training Styles
3. How To Gain Mass Without Losing Speed

Do you struggle to gain weight? Click here to get the complete guide for gaining weight and building muscle fast.