If you’ve decided to prioritize your fitness and build muscle and strength, it helps to follow an effective workout plan for men. Bodybuilding and strength-gaining rules that have withstood the test of time state you must ideally hit a single muscle group twice per week to elicit maximum returns.
For example, if you’re dead lifting, squatting, or benching to gain strength, you will get the best results if you prioritize these exercises twice a week. However, there are exceptions, which primarily depend on how you program your training and what you prioritize.
Let’s explore the most effective workout plans for men looking to build muscle and strength.
Push, Pull, Legs
The push-pull- legs routine is based on the idea that you need to hit your muscle groups twice a week for optimum returns. You can choose between two main variations of this workout plan, which is to incorporate a rest day on the fourth or seventh day. Let’s explore this in more detail.
Variation #1
For beginners and intermediates, it helps to take a day off after every cycle of push, pull, and legs. You will hit a push workout on Monday, a pull workout on Tuesday, and a leg workout on Wednesday before taking Thursday off and repeating the cycle. When following this strategy, your days will start to change, i.e., your next week’s push workout will begin on Tuesday. However, the extra rest day in between each cycle allows men to effectively recover in time for their next cycle so they can avoid over training. Let’s now look at what the workouts look like.
On push day, you can incorporate pushing exercises for your chest, shoulders, and triceps, such as the bench press, military press, dumbbell press, and smith machine press. Additionally, you can add chest flys, tricep extensions, lateral raises, skull crushers, and dips. A good rule of thumb is to do anywhere between 9 and 15 sets per body part each week and choose the best exercises for your goals.
On pull day, you can maintain the same volume and incorporate rowing and pulling exercises like the barbell row, t-bar row, pullups, and lat pulldowns, and experiment with different back machines. When choosing the right machine, it helps to select one that gives you the best contraction.
On leg day, your go-to exercises to build strength and muscle mass are squats, leg presses, and lunges. Although you can add other exercises like the leg extensions, hamstring curls, and barbell glute bridges if you wish to isolate specific muscles, your best bet is to focus on progressive overload on a few exercises. If you add more exercises, you will delay your recovery time.
This completes the first cycle of push, pull, and legs, and you should divide each cycle to focus on intensity and volume. For example, from Monday to Wednesday, you will push heavier weights. You can focus on higher repetition ranges from Friday to Sunday while dropping the weight. This routine also prevents injury since you are not taxing your nervous system by constantly pushing heavy weights.
Variation #2
For advanced lifters looking to gain strength and add muscle mass, it helps to prioritize push, pull, and legs six times each week and take Sunday off. You will hit two back-to-back cycles from Monday to Saturday and recover on Sunday. This amount of workout intensity is not recommended for everyone since you must dial in your nutrition and sleep if you’re training 60 to 90 minutes six days in a row.
The exercises listed will work in this program as well, and you should not exceed more than 15 to 20 sets per body part each week since that will hinder your ability to apply progressive overload in the long run.
For example, advanced lifters may choose to incorporate back exercises for building thickness, i.e., rows, in the first cycle of this program. During the second cycle, they can focus on adding width to their backs by prioritizing pullups and lat pulldowns.
However, it is worth remembering that you can set this program up in various ways, depending on your preference and goals. The bench press may be hard on your shoulders, so you might get better longevity from the smith press or flat dumbbell press. Use your judgment and choose the best exercises that feel good while sticking to a single workout program for at least six to twelve months. Many individuals seem to think that they must constantly shock their muscles and jump from program to program for maximum gains. However, gains come from progressing in repetitions, weights, and volume, which must be prioritized for optimal returns.
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