Simple rules for building muscles with home gym equipment

Hitting the gym daily may be the best way to build muscles, but when your time or budget is limited, you have to find an effective method to get the same results using only your home gym equipment.

Even if you are ready to pay a personal trainer to teach you some fitness routines, you still can find these simple rules very useful.

First rule: Adapt your diet

Muscles require proteins for getting bigger and stronger and they require carbohydrates for functioning properly during demanding workouts, as glucose used for energy comes from metabolized carbs. Therefore, if your plan is to achieve a nicely defined, muscular physique within weeks, by using only home workouts, you should do yourself a favor and adapt your diet.

Stick to the foods that have a lot of proteins and complex carbohydrates, such as lean meats, poultry and turkey, fruits with low sugar content, vegetables and legumes, whole grains and fortified products. Also, include low fat dairy products, olive oil and fish in your menu to make sure your body receives the needed essential fatty acids.

Exclude sweets, simple carbs and greasy foods from your eating plan if you want your muscles to be well visible and not covered by layers of unattractive fat tissue.

Rule number 2: Invest in home gym equipment

You can build your home gym in different ways. You can buy some multi-station home gym, which can offer you a variety of features, including stations for strength and cardio workouts. With some quality all-in-one home gym machine, you simply can’t go wrong, as they are always offering a wide range of exercises, which can train all your muscle groups .

On the other hand, if you have a limited budget, try to set priorities. Decide what you really want to achieve. If you want to pump muscles, then you need weights. Many weights! Massively pumped muscles are built through intense weight lifting exercises that force the fibers to contract and use their maximum capacity. Of course, almost every home gym can help you to achieve your goal, but it also can be done with some free weights. Just stick to a routine that incorporates heavier weights and fewer repetitions, and you will see improvements very soon.

Before you spent money on some home gym equipment, please read our other article to find out what is very important to consider before buying home gym equipment.

Rule number 3: Work your muscles correctly

Working out with the best home gym equipment can end up failing unless you choose the right routines for your fitness goal. It’s not the machine that guarantees the success, it’s your motivation and knowledge of anatomy and physiology. Simply, you have to know what are you doing. I know, this doesn’t sound fun anymore, but to get bigger muscles, you have to understand how they function.

We already said your diet must contain high amounts of proteins. However, at the same time, your exercising routine must target all muscle groups and not only the major ones. This is one of the greatest mistakes people do when trying to gain mass and develop stronger and bigger muscles: they keep doing limited number of exercises day by day and then they are complaining about the bad results. It is very important to do as many different exercises as possible, because that’s what train your muscles the best. Different exercises train the muscles in different ways.

Then, keep in mind that working the same groups day after day will lead to muscle cramps, tiredness and overtraining so it will be quite difficult for fibers to recover and grow. These problems can be avoided by simply allowing your muscles 2 days of rest between workouts.

This doesn’t mean you have to exercise just twice a week – it means your chest or arms or buttocks should only be targeted by workouts performed on Monday and then on Thursday, for example. Simply, don’t repeat the same training sessions day by day.

Now let’s get familiar with the major groups of muscles in your body and with the best routines and exercises for enlarging them in the shortest time:

• Quadriceps, represented by 4 muscles found in the front part of your thighs. These muscles are best worked by squats, barbell hack squats, lunges and all their variations. Leg extensions are not necessary, unless you want to get rid of some unappealing fats as well.

• Hamstrings, placed in the back of your thighs. Romanian deadlifts, squats, pull-thrus and stiff legged deadlifts are good for this group.

• Calves, often ignored and superficially trained, are best shaped and enlarged through seated calf raises.

• Chest muscles, often overworked by men and neglected by women, can be increased and strengthened through bench presses and dips.

• Back muscles, also overworked by some fitness enthusiasts, benefit from deadlifts, rows, pull-ups and chin-ups.

• Shoulders, composed of front, side and rear deltoids, are sculpted and toned by overhead presses.

• Triceps, found on the posterior part of the upper arm, are nicely shaped and pumped through reverse grip bench presses, dips and close grip bench presses. Pushdowns are also very effective in building stronger triceps.

• The biceps, the anterior muscles in your upper arms, are excellently toned and strengthened through close grip pull-ups and dumbbell curls.

• Forearm muscles benefit from most exercises involving the arms but hammer curls, pinwheel curls and barbell and dumbbell exercises improve their shape and tone most effectively.

• Trapezius, the huge muscle in your upper back, is best worked through deadlifts.

• Abs, often covered with thin layers of fats even in advanced gym goers, can be nicely shaped and ripped through an adequate diet, regular cardio workouts and exercises such as overhead presses, rows, squats, deadlifts, pull-ups and crunches. All these strengthen the entire core area, building more defined abs and highlighting the much-wanted six packs.

So, keep these rules in mind the next time you exercise using your home gym equipment. Just remember – it’s not the best home gym that guarantees maximum effects, but your personal involvement and motivation for achieving stronger and leaner muscles!