A good muscle building training plan is an important requirement if you want to build muscle mass effectively . For this it is important that you find the right plan for you that also fits you, your life and your goals.
In this article I want to tell you what is important when choosing a good and suitable plan for you and which factors you should consider. Ultimately, with this information, you should be able to find the right plan for you, choose it or perhaps create it yourself.
Basic rules for a good muscle building training plan
If you really want to build muscle effectively, there are a few basics that make up a useful training plan. These are factors that should always be considered during muscle building training .
I want to briefly introduce you to the rules in a simplified manner before we get to the factors that are decisive for the decision for your personal plan. If necessary, you can find further information on the individual factors in other articles here on the blog or in a structured and condensed form in my book Muscle Building Basics .
These are the most important basic rules for a long-term effective muscle building training plan:
You should always adhere to these factors if you want to build muscle effectively and in the long term.
In addition, the following applies above all:
The plan must suit you and not your life to the plan
Again and again I see people asking others about their training plan or looking for THE PERFECT training plan in a Facebook group. But just because a plan appears to be optimal for someone else, or they get impressive results with it, is far from being the plan for you. There is certainly no such thing as the perfect plan that fits everyone. This is exactly why I decided to write this article.
The perfect muscle building training plan for you is one that fits into your life, that you stick to and that you consistently follow can pull through over a longer period of time. Because building muscles is a project that will lead to success in years, not weeks. The duration of muscle building is often underestimated.
Basically, the ability to stay tuned is much more important than being highly motivated and investing a lot straight away. You can achieve a lot more with two training units a week for half a year than with seven training units a week, which you give up after a month because you do not manage to integrate them into your life.
That doesn’t mean that standardized plans are bad per se. There are good reasons why certain plans are used successfully by many exercisers. The plan you choose, however, has to suit you. We will analyze together how you can best make this selection or what is important.
What is the right training plan for building your muscles?
I think you now understand that you shouldn’t just grab the next best training plan from your role model or a well-built friend and train according to it. But how do you find out how a training plan has to be structured so that it suits you?
Basically, the best plan is the one you make. An effective plan is one that you can stick to. We want to focus on this basic rule when making the selection.
There are a few factors that determine which plan is right for you. Now I want to take a look at these with you and introduce you to the questions that you should ask and answer yourself in order to find the right plan.
How much time do you have for your training?
Time is absolutely in short supply in our society today. For this reason, I have also set up Fitvolution, the fitness blog for busy people, on the subject of saving time and effort. How much time you have available and how much time you can and will ultimately spend on your training is an important question that you should ask yourself.
How many hours a week are you willing to invest in your training long-term ? Be honest with yourself on this.
I know people who spend twelve hours or more per week in the gym. I myself train about six hours a week and currently also run about two hours a week. But even with three or four hours a week you can achieve a lot in a few months.
When do you have time?
This is primarily about the days of the week that you want to distribute your training over and at which times of the day you can find time for your training and motivate yourself to training most easily. Whether you want to train early or late is ultimately not decisive for your success. It can do both, but it may affect your plan.
During training in the morning, e.g. a different exercise selection and sequence may be more sensible to give your body the opportunity to wake up and thereby minimize the risk of injury.
Think carefully beforehand what could fit better into your everyday life. Ideally, you should get in the mood for the same training time as possible. If you don’t, you will have to reckon with difficult to predict performance fluctuations between your units. That’s okay, but you should be prepared for that.
Often and short or rarely and long?
This preference can also be an important decision factor. Some people prefer to train with full-body training longer on fewer days, while others prefer to split the training over several units as split training . Maybe you have to try it out first. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.
It is important that you always achieve your minimum volume overall and that you adhere to your regeneration times (which of course apply to each muscle)
Where do you want or will you train according to your muscle building training plan?
If you want to build muscle, it is a good idea to train in a gym. However, this does not have to be the case. Maybe you also have a home gym or you train at home or on the go with just your own body weight and maybe a singing trainer and a few Thera bands .
I actually did the latter for a long time and I can therefore tell you that it is also possible to build up some muscles with this training. It’s not that simple and effective, but not impossible. It is important to be honest with yourself here. It is important to know what tools are available to you if you want an effective training plan.
I recommend everyone who is interested in building muscle mass as effectively as possible to train in a well-equipped gym. A lot speaks in favor of training in a fitness studio. If that doesn’t work for you, or you just don’t feel like it and know that you will always have to torment yourself, there are also alternatives.
My buddy Pat once presented the basic exercises for bodyweight training in a guest article and wrote a pretty cool book about training only with your own body * . I can only recommend this if you want to deal with the topic in more detail.
How much have you trained so far?
I ask you that because I have seen too often how highly motivated people who have not done strength training before tried to do strength training every day . Apart from the fact that this is nonsensical in the vast majority of cases, none of them managed to hold out for long.
I therefore advise you to start with small steps. If you have trained once a week so far, then first try to establish a second and possibly a third training session a week. The secret of staying power lies in the gradual building of good habits . You shouldn’t overwhelm your weaker self with this.
From a physical point of view, too, small changes are usually the healthier ones. The adaptation time of your musculoskeletal system, for example, should not be underestimated. For this reason, beginners in particular are recommended to train strength endurance before they risk injuries with heavy weights.
If you still have little experience, I can only recommend that you get a good trainer to help you carry out the exercise and that you read up on what to look out for. After all, you want to (among other things) do your squats properly , master a stable deadlift technique and also be able to properly bench press so as not to injure yourself and to progress safely and effectively.
Even I, with my years of training experience, still attend seminars regularly and get coached by real experts in my technique. Otherwise mistakes will creep in over time.
What is a good beginner muscle building training plan?
I am often asked what a good muscle building training plan is for beginners. In principle, my answer is not that different from the one I give to an advanced trainee. A good plan should follow the basic rules of muscle building training, be simply structured, compact and above all set up in such a way that it fits your life as a trainee.
After a phase of three to six months in which the body has been introduced to training with heavy weights, everyone can and should actually train according to the same rules of muscle building training. In my opinion, there is no reason that a beginner’s training plan should differ significantly from that of a somewhat advanced one.
If a muscle building training plan was very suitable for you at the beginning, it can continue to be for several years. However, it might make sense, especially as a beginner, to start with the absolute basics and only then to set additional priorities.
However, this does not mean doing completely different exercises on completely different devices at the beginning. If the execution of the basic exercises is still difficult at the beginning, a good coach can give you exercises that will introduce you to the ability to perform the target exercises cleanly and safely in the future.
My book Muscle Building Basics already includes two training plans in the basic package, which are very suitable for beginners but also for advanced users.
Conclusion – How to find the right muscle building training plan for you
After reading this article, you’ll understand why not every plan is right for every exerciser looking to build muscle. Therefore, you should make sure that your plan fits your personal requirements well. In addition, he should of course follow the basic rules for an effective muscle building training plan.
Be honest with yourself when deciding which plan suits you. If you are unsure or have the feeling that you might be taking on something, it is better to do a little less first. You can always improve and train more often and / or longer later.
Before you start, find out what a realistic muscle building duration is. Building muscle is a marathon, not a sprint. If you have realistic expectations, you reduce the risk of giving up in frustration because you think that you are progressing too slowly.
I also want to mention again that you shouldn’t forget about nutrition either. You can train with the perfect muscle building training plan, if your bulk phase diet does not fit, you will not achieve (good) results.
If you don’t waste time and really want to get started, I can recommend my book Muscle Building Basics to you. In it you will find out everything that is really important if you want to build muscles. It is the first real “no bullshit” guide for effective muscle building. Depending on the package, there are also some tried and tested muscle building training plans from which you can choose the right one.