Some people just seem to put on muscle weight easily, don’t they? Maybe you’re out of the gym for a month for vacation or work-related activities. Then, when you pop back in, there are a few guys who just look bigger and larger in such a short amount of time. Today we will give you a good mass building workout… 

Well, for substantial mass building there are a number of factors at play. One of which is genetics. While we can’t help you with the genes your parents past down to you, we can help you with the appropriate mass building workout.

A Good Mass Building Workout

These workouts will help you put on the kind of weight you’re looking for (good, muscle weight, of course). 

Use Free Weight When Possible

Before getting into the workout, it’s so important for you to use free weights whenever possible. We get that’s not always an option, but free weights, especially dumbbells, target your body better than any other kind of weight.

Why?

It forces stabilizer muscles to engage.

It also trains each side separately from the other side.

Your right and left sides are not always of equal strength. If you use a machine, you’re training both together, which means your dominant side will do most of the work.

Avoid this by using free weights whenever you can. 

Hitting Chest And Triceps

If you want to put on bulk, you’re really going to need to hit every muscle group.

And we don’t mean touch on it once or twice during a workout.

We mean to blast it into oblivion.

That’s going to completely tear down the muscle fiber, which makes it perfect for building back up, taking in the protein you’ve consumed and reconstructed the damaged muscle fiber larger and bigger. 

You also want to shoot for between 8 and 10 reps per set (we’ll point out the number of sets in each exercise). 8 to 20 reps is the sweet spot for building muscle size (if you want to only go for strength gains instead of size, you’ll want to shoot for around 4 reps with a heavier weight).

Now, here’s something you need to make sure and do: don’t just stop at 8 or 10 if you can lift out more. If you think you can push another one or two out, do it.

Adjust your weight accordingly the next time through. Never short change yourself as it’s better to do 7 and completely max out than to do 9 when you could have done 13. 

When you hit the chest, set yourself up at the bench press. You’ll do the regular press, incline press, and the decline press. Shifting the bench up and down will impact the are of your chest you hit. Your pecs are broken down into different sections (if you look in the mirror and flex your chest muscles you might be able to see where the upper pectoral muscle separates).

Put up four sets of the regular press, then three sets of the incline and decline bench press.

Shoot to hit 10 reps on the first set. If you hit 10, up the weight the next set. Keep on upping the weight until, on the final set, you’re not able to hit 6 reps. It may take a few weeks before you figure out what works and what doesn’t in terms of weight, but that’s perfectly fine, as long as your maxing out your muscles to failure on each set. 

To finish off the chest exercises, hit your pectoral muscles with dumbbell flys and dumbbell pullovers. You only need to do two sets of this. Keep the same principal with the reps. This will completely blast your chest. 

You’ve just put in a considerable amount of effort into your chest, which will mean you’ll want to avoid doing anything else with your chest. That’s why you pair tricep work with your chest. Very little of what you do with your triceps will touch your pectoral muscles. 

Begin the tricep work with a tricep extension.

As this is your main exercise, do it four times and follow the same rep numbers as with your chest. Once done, perform three sets of the tricep dip and tricep bench dip. This will complete your Monday workout leaving you feeling completely exhausted with your rear arm muscles and chest muscles burning (Mayo Clinic, 2017). 

Back And Biceps

On Tuesday, you’ll want to hit the opposite of what you did on Monday, which means back and bicep.

While you can’t see your back like the chest, you want to hit the back hard. Hitting the back will strengthen a number of muscles, help you bulk up quickly, and a strong back improves what you can do in the front. The same is true with the biceps. 

The main move you’ll perform here is the deadlift. The deadlift may just be the most important lift of any workout. It does hit most of the muscle groups in your body, which means you can realistically add it to nearly any day you want. We like to put it on a back day as most of the other days will have a core lift. 

With the deadline, you’ll want five sets. With this number of lifts, you won’t hit the 8-12 sweet spot by the end. Which is perfectly fine here. Shoot for 10 reps on your first set, then add on weight. If you hit 8 add-on weight. Keeping adding small amounts of weight until you’re no longer able to hit 8 reps. From there just continue it out with the same weight until you hit five sets. 

Next, head on over and perform the chin up. This is a great back building exercise. Focus on doing two sets. Push yourself and do as many of the reps as you can. 

You’ll want to do three reps of the one arm dumbbell row and close grip lat pulldown., then finish it off with two sets of the seated row. 

After that workout, your back will be burning and now you can hit your arms with the curls. Perform three sets of the standing barbell curl and close grip preacher curl, then two sets of the incline dumbbell curl and concentration curl. 

One thing we can’t stress enough with the curl is to focus on posture first.

You probably see all sorts of people at the gym, putting up obscene amounts of weight while curling but they are throwing their back into it. That’s a quick way to pull something in your back so don’t do it. Focus on posture. If it helps, stand flat against the wall. This will prevent you from rounding your shoulders or pulling your back. This also ensures all of the weight goes to your biceps. 

If you really want to target your biceps, one thing we like to do is combine resistance bands with weights.

Why is this so good?

Well with weights your muscles are activated at the bottom of the lift and the impact on your muscles reduces as you complete the curl up.

However, with resistance bands, that happens in reverse.

So, if you combine the two together, your muscles are always engaged and hit throughout the entire curl. You’ll really blast your arms with this move, which is great if you’ve always struggled to put on the size and shape of your arms (Mayo Clinic, 2015). 

Shoulders And Forearms

First, take Wednesday off. You’ll need a rest day. This will allow your muscles to recover.

And second, yet, we’re spending half a day targeting your forearms.

This is one area of the body you likely don’t put much time into. Outside of whatever a curl does, the forearm isn’t hit by many people. However, there are plenty of muscles in the forearm, plus a strong forearm will help you in nearly every other upper body lift. 

The main lift with your shoulders is the military press. Aim for four sets of the military press. From here, perform the shoulder press and the dumbbell reverse fly. Perform these two lifts with three sets. Lastly, perform an upright row, dumbbell shrugs, and dumbbell lateral raise twice. Each of these sets uses the same standard rep counts as we’ve used on the other lifts. Shoot for 10. If you hit 10-12 add more weight. If you can’t hit 8 reps, keep it at the same weight. 

Your forearms don’t need significant lifts to full blast the muscles here. In fact, four sets of the standing wrist curls and barbell wrist curls is all you need. The forearms are like the biceps. There’s not exactly a ton of variety. Most of the movies are similar to one another, you just need to focus on form.

So don’t engage the rest of your arms with these lifts. So don’t load up on weight just to try and show off. Focus on form and targeting your forearms (WebMD, 2015). 

Leg Day

Yup, Friday is leg day.

Leg day you have a bit more freedom to add more lifts if you want.

Personally, we love the sumo squat because of how it hits your butt and upper thighs. You can add the sumo squat in if you want, but we’re not covering it as the must-lifts for putting on mass. Instead, your target lift is the traditional squat.

You’ll want to perform five sets of this. Like the other major lifts, if you hit 10+, add on weight. If on the second set you hit 8+, add on weight. Then if on the third set, you hit more than 6+ reps, add on weight. Continue this through five sets. Trust us, five sets of heavyweights will completely blast your lower body. 

Now, you’ll want three sets of both leg curls and leg extensions. So if you’ve been looking for an excuse to use a machine, you finally have it. Machines are good for some leg workouts and when a dumbbell simply can’t replicate the move. 

Lastly, you want to hit your calves. The calves are a bit like the forearms of the lower body. The muscles don’t receive as much attention as necessary. Perform four sets of the standing calf raise (if a calf raise doesn’t interfere with your ability to put up the weight on the squat, you can perform the standing calf raise at the end of each rep in a superset.

However, if it cuts into the amount of weight you can put up then perform it separately.

To finish off the week of working out, perform the seated calf raise twice and shoot for around 12 reps or so (WebMD, 2015). 

The Weekend

You just put in some serious work during the week.

The weekend is for rest. Don’t do any heavy lifting or workouts that involve weights. Your muscles need time to recover and to build. Not giving your body ample recovery time may be what’s prevented you from putting on muscle size in the past. So hitting each muscle area once during the week and having extended break time is a must. 

By shooting for heavier weights and blasting each muscle group on the given day, you’ll begin to see substantial improvements in not only your strength but your size as well.

Make sure to keep up with your nutrition, eating enough carbs and protein during the day to both build mass and to energize your muscles.

Do this and you’ll start seeing results in no time. 

Conclusion

Whether you’ve struggled to put on weight in the past, we’ve got the exercise moves for you. Now, you do need to remember that bulking up is also in your diet. You can’t go with a low carb, low-calorie diet if you’re expecting to put on size. Your body needs the calories and carbs for energy while it converts protein into muscle.

So stay on top of your diet and follow this muscle building workout.

Everything else will fall into place from there. 

-Terry Asher