Can i bodybuild at home

Finally, we arrive at the body-part split which is the most advanced of the workout splits. Each day is dedicated to one or two muscle groups so you can put maximum energy and use plenty of variety to hit each one. Alex has a passion for bodybuilding and this has led him to a life in the fitness industry. View all articles by this author.

Beginner Workout: Full-Body Split. Dumbbell squat. What comes with BodyFit? Instructional Videos Don't risk doing a workout improperly! How-to Images View our enormous library of workout photos and see exactly how each exercise should be done before you give it a shot.

Step-by-Step Instructions Quickly read through our step-by-step directions to ensure you're doing each workout correctly the first time, every time. Intermediate Upper-Body Workout. Flat Dumbbell Press. Intermediate Lower-Body Workout.

Dumbbell Deadlift. Monday: Arm Workout. Ready to build some muscle but stuck at home? Just the weight of your body or a pair of dumbbells is enough to get your swole on at home. Strength training can involve some hand weights or just your body weight. As you get stronger and need more of a challenge, weights will be your new best friend. For optimal muscle-building, focus on HIIT cardio workouts a few times a week. So how often should you work out? According to a research review , strength training at least 2 days a week is ideal to grow your muscles.

So start with 2 or 3 days of full-body weight training, 2 days of cardio, and 2 days of rest. As you get stronger, you can add a fourth weight day and try splitting the days between upper- and lower-body workouts.

And be sure to reserve at least 2 days per week to let your body rest and recover. Your plan could look something like this:. All you need is yourself and some creativity to get those muscles moving. The push-up is one of the most efficient bodyweight exercises you can do to build strength in your chest and triceps.

But it also gives your shoulders, core muscles, lower back, and lower body a workout. How-to: Lie facedown and place hands on the floor, slightly wider than shoulders. Push up to lift shoulders, torso, and legs until arms are fully extended. Only your hands and toes should be touching the floor. Slowly lower your body until chest almost touches the floor, then repeat.

Pro tip: Push-up variations are nearly endless. Feeling advanced? Give pike push-ups a try. Need a more explosive exercise?

The burpee may be the ultimate bodyweight exercise mash-up, working your chest, core, arms, back, glutes, and legs for a full-body cardio workout. How-to: From a standing position, lower yourself into a squat and put both hands on the floor, just wider than your feet.

Jump feet back into a plank position. Do a push-up, returning to the plank position. Draw your legs back up into a squat, then jump up explosively with your hands above your head. Start with just a few reps and work your way up as you get stronger. How-to: Grab the pull-up bar with an overhand grip, wrapping your thumbs around the bar. Squeeze the bar with your hands and engage the muscles of your upper body and core. Pull up until chin clears the bar. Slowly lower yourself back into the dead-hang position.

Pro tip: For pull-ups at home, you can buy a portable pull-up bar that fits in a doorframe. Doing any type of plank exercise will make your arms stronger, but doing plank-ups is especially effective for strengthening the triceps and biceps muscles in your arms. How-to: Start in plank position, with elbows and toes on the floor, core engaged, and torso elevated.

Raise yourself into a push-up position by extending one arm at a time, keeping your body straight. Lower onto your elbows one arm at a time. This move will quickly strengthen your triceps and your pecs! How-to: Start seated in a chair or on a step, etc. Grab the edge of the chair with hands on either side of hips. Lift up and out into a hovering position beyond the chair edge. Extend legs until mostly straight. Slowly lower yourself toward the floor until elbows are roughly parallel with shoulders.

Push down into your hands to raise back up until your arms are straight again. This bodyweight move is almost as much fun as it sounds. This is one creepy-crawly exercise that will have you feeling like a little kid again while building your triceps, shoulders, chest, abs, glutes, and quads.

How-to: Stand with knees slightly bent. Bend at your hips and slowly reach down and touch your toes. Take insect-size steps forward until feet meet hands. Some research has compared loaded exercises with bodyweight moves, showing similar results in how much muscle the participants gained.

For example, one small study comparing a loaded bench press to a bodyweight push-up demonstrated similar muscle gains in the pecs and triceps after an eight-week period. Another small study on post-menopausal women at high risk for type 2 diabetes found that 12 weeks of high-intensity bodyweight interval training increased muscle mass to a similar extent as a combination of aerobic and resistance training.

And, in another study , one group did a series of elbow flexion exercises think: bicep curls with a heavy load, and the other did the exercises with bodyweight, making sure to maintain tension throughout the full range of motion.

The bodyweight group had a comparable increase in muscle size to the group with a heavy load. To help you understand exactly how bodyweight exercises can build muscle, though, it's important to know how your muscles get bigger in the first place.

Building muscle mass—known in science as hypertrophy—involves challenging muscle tissue and increasing protein synthesis, which is the process of cells building new proteins, explains Molly Galbraith, C. You can do this via exercise in three ways: creating mechanical tension, metabolic stress, or microtrauma.

While most types of training will incorporate all three ways to induce hypertrophy, which results in the biggest benefit plus, these systems tend to work together , different workout techniques may target one method more than the other, says Galbraith. You don't need to design your workouts to focus on one or another, but it can be helpful to understand precisely how each method builds muscle:.

Mechanical tension: Mechanical tension typically comes into play during weightlifting. You load the muscle with enough resistance to create tension, causing cellular and molecular responses that then lead to gains, says Galbraith.

Upping the number of reps and sets aka the total volume you do of each exercise can increase mechanical tension, too, which provides muscle-building benefits. This is also part of the science behind progressive overload. Slowing down the eccentric action or downward phase of a move, like lowering into a squat, might also provide some extra tension. For some people, certain bodyweight exercises offer enough resistance on their own, as well, like in a push-up or a pull-up.

Metabolic stress: That burning sensation you feel when you're pulsing through squats, holding the bottom of a push-up, or on that final rep of sit-ups?

That's a result of metabolic stress, which occurs when metabolites aka waste products that form as a result of exercise, such as lactate build up in the muscle tissue, explains Galbraith. This causes hormonal, cellular, and growth factor reactions, offering another way to pump up your muscles. It can increase anabolic hormone release , hormones like testosterone or growth hormone that stimulate protein synthesis , lead to cell swelling, and lead to an increase in growth factors , proteins that can stimulate tissue growth by promoting cell reproduction.

Microtrauma: This is when you get small tears in muscle tissue thanks to exercising—but, namely, resistance training. Your body then works to repair that damage and that jumpstarts muscle growth, says Galbraith. While any exercise can do this to your muscles squats, planks, deadlifts, you name it , new moves you haven't done before or haven't performed can also cause this microtrauma.

Dance, running, bodyweight moves, etc. So many options! There are numerous methods for switching up your typical bodyweight workout —even small changes can lead to bigger muscle gains. But Galbraith offers a few concrete tips for challenging your body and encouraging muscle building.

These are in no particular order and the best way to incorporate these strategies is individualized. Try one or all five of these tactics in your next workout and see what tests your muscles the most:.

As with any type of exercise, there's always a risk of hitting a plateau if you keep doing it over and over again without playing around with any variables or continuing to test your muscles in new ways. That's why it's important to progress your program , adding variations to the exercises and increasing the challenge on moves with the methods Galbraith mentions above—that's how muscle building continues to happen.

Keep that in mind as a sign to switch up your routine.