If you are serious into weight lifting, then you would not want to waste your time, doing workouts that are not beneficial for your body. Often times people waste a lot of time in the gym, doing some unnecessary exercises and routines that have little or no effect to their body. That is why it is important to find weight lifting workouts that work.

In this article I will not be giving you an exact template of what exercises to do, but rather some tips and advice I usually give my other clients. These would involve some techniques and a little science.

The first advice I would give is to not stick to one particular workout. Just like farmers who do crop rotation to avoid their crops and their soil to get used to each other, the same principle applies to our body as well. Our body might get used to a certain routine and therefore adjust to it fully. When your body has adjusted then you will see minimal gains to your muscles. It is important to shock your muscles from time to time, giving it that extra boost that will surely increase its mass and power.

Secondly, for beginners up to some more advance lifters, choosing a weight lifting workouts that work for them often involves a number of exercises with compound movements. These include some bench press, squats and dead lifts. Since these exercises target several part of your body, you are being more efficient. Some isolation exercises like the bicep curl only target your biceps and your forearms while doing the bench press targets your chest, arms, triceps, and even your biceps.

For more advanced lifters, this might not apply as some of them develop highly advanced workouts.

Finally, the most important concept for any weight lifting workout is to increase the resistance every time. You must not lift the same weight or the same number of reps on each workout. Even if you just increase by 2.5 pounds or increase the number of reps by one, is beneficial for you. This is also related to what I said above about shocking your muscles. You must not make your muscles get used to the weight you are lifting.

There you go, if you adhere to the three tips I mentioned above then you will be able to design any weight lifting workout that you want and it will surely work for you one way or another.

A three day split weight training routine is one of the most effective workout styles. Each day is designed to focus on a specific muscle group which highly stresses that muscle resulting in more muscle growth. Each muscle group is targeted once a week and has more than enough time to regenerate. I have designed below one of the most basic yet effective three day split weight training routine that will help anyone to gain some muscle mass.

For all workouts mentioned below, start with at least three sets of 10 for all workouts with any weight that you can lift comfortably for the duration of the cycle. It is important to either increase the weight every week or increase the number of reps you do to fool your muscle of the variation of your weight training.

The first day is designed to focus on your chest and biceps.   Start with the Flat Bench Barbell Press and follow that with some Dips. These will target mostly your chest, forearms, biceps and your triceps. A compound exercise like the Bench Press is sometimes more than enough for your upper body as it targets a lot of muscle groups. However doing some dips give your muscles some extra surface area as it targets the outer chest and triceps. Follow this with some EZ Bar Curls and Concentration Curls.

Doing your Bench Press first below the isolation exercises allows you to do more with it. If you start with some Bicep Curls first, upon doing your Bench Press, your biceps would fatigued and you wouldn’t do as much repetitions and sets with the Bench Press. Our first day is centered on the Bench Press and make sure to make it your priority.

Day two will be your rest day.

For day three, we will be focusing no your legs and shoulders. Since these two target very different muscle groups, order of the exercises is not as important as day one. For your legs you can do some Squats and then some Stiff Leg Deadlifts. These two exercises are also compound exercises targeting several muscle groups just like the Bench Press. For the shoulders, some simple Shoulder Shrugs and Barbell Military Press will do.

Day four will be another rest day.

Your final day will focus on your back and triceps. I highly recommend doing pull ups for your back as this greatly shapes your back muscles, targeting other muscle groups as well like your chest and biceps. You can do some dumbbell rows for extra stress but it is not entirely necessary. For your triceps, Close Grip Bench Press and some Lying Tricep Extension will workout your triceps pretty well.

There you go, try this weight training routine for about 4 months you will surely see some gains. Remember to switch after 4 months so your muscles will not get used to your workout and risk reaching a plateau.

If you are just starting with weight training, it is essential that you learn the basics. Not only that, you must know what works and learn to know what are fallacies. That is why I have listed some of the most important tips when designing your own muscle building program.

The first among the list is the use of compound exercises. These exercises are those that involve more than one body joint at the same time. Some examples are bench presses, squats, pull-ups and dead lifts. These exercise are very effective because with just one exercise, several of your muscle groups are targeted and thus is more efficient.

The second thing I like to mention is nutrition specifically protein. This is the building block of your muscle and without the adequate supply of protein, your efforts will be put to waste. Try to consume a good source of protein every meal like lean meat, chicken, turkey etc.

To get the most of your muscle building program, you must constantly put more resistance to your training. You can’t just lift 50 pounds for 3 months straight and expect to see some gains. Try to aim for some constant progression like putting in five extra pounds every week or two. This way your muscles will adjust to the added weight and the effect is that they will get bigger and stronger. There are numerous ways out there to provide some extra resistance for your training rather than just increasing weight and that the other tip I will mention next.

Variation is a must for your muscle building program. It’s similar to why farmers rotate crops one in a while. There will come a time when the soil will get used to the plant and will not get any extra benefit from it. Just like your muscles, if you have been doing a certain exercise for so long, they will get used to it and might not show as great a difference. Try to have a new workout every three to four months to let your muscles adapt constantly.

Finally I believe the most important thing among all that I have mentioned is getting enough sleep. Getting 7-9 hours of sleep everyday is key if you want to develop your muscles. They do not get bigger while your are lifting weights. They get bigger while your asleep, while your body is recuperating from your strenuous workout. Never overwork your self and always remember to cap off your day with a good, quality sleep.

There you go, I hope the things I mentioned above can get you started with your weight lifting and make sure you find one that works for you and stick to it for about 3-4 months before finding a new workout for an effective muscle building program.

There are numerous weight lifting workouts available and before you settle in on a specific workout, you must exhaust all your resources and make sure that you have everything considered.

One factor to consider is the difficulty of the workout. If you are just a beginner, you can’t expect to simply jump into an advanced workout as you will surely have a hard time. Not to mention that there might be minimal benefits to your body. However if you have been lifting weight for years now, sticking with beginner workouts will just waste your time. Be very honest about what your level is as this is the first step into building muscles.

For beginners, I would recommend doing around four to five exercises that target your whole body, this is probably the simplest to learn and could provide newcomers with some visible benefits. For advanced workouts, weight lifting workouts that involve that target different body parts per day might come in useful. These people have probably about 6 months of experience and their body can take isolation exercises.

Ideally you can divide your workout into three days, first day focusing on chest and triceps, second will be on shoulders and legs and on the third you could probably go abs and ankles.

There is also the kind of workout called pyramids in which you start with a heavy weight and do about 5 reps then slowly make the weight lighter but at the same time increasing your number of reps. It is up to you to decide when you want to stop. Some hardcore weight lifters go to the extent of slowly removing 10 pounds per set until they are left with just the bar.

What I’ve mentioned above are the just some of the basic weight lifting workouts one can follow. It is important to stick to a certain workout and do it for about 3-4 months before changing. You wouldn’t want your body to get used to your workouts that’s why you want to rotate it form time to time.