HOW TO BUILD LEAN MUSCLE WITH HOME WORKOUT ROUTINE

Home Workout Routine for Busy People

What is a home workout routine?

Well, from where I stand, you’ll get full marks if you simply describe home workout as ‘the most undervalued lifestyle habit.

Want to burn fat, build lean muscle, and massive toned physique?

Then you may perhaps assume you need a gym membership.

But let me stop you right there. A gym membership is not the answer. In fact, it might make things worse – it takes a lot of time and money to see results. What if I tell you it can all be done from the comfort of your home? Yes, that’s right! In this blog, I’ll guide you on how to build lean muscle and get a lean body at home.

Note: This article is primarily about using a home workout routine for those who want to get in better shape. If you don’t know why you need a better shape in the first place, go here.

Well, let’s take a look at what the problem is, to begin with…

Why You’re Not In Shape Right Now

Why aren’t you in the shape you need and want right now? We can assume you aren’t because you’re reading this article. Even if you’re in good shape, you probably want to be in even better shape!

So you want to be in good shape and chances are that you know the basics of how to make it happen.

Getting into shape is fairly simple after all, it tends just to be a matter of being active, lifting weights, and eating right. To build lean muscle and a strong physique, you don’t need to know all of the science behind it. Everyone knows the basics and everyone can apply this logic with a bit of self-motivation and discipline.

So why haven’t you?

The answer comes down to energy.

Most people think the answer is down to time. You think you don’t have time to work out. But even without knowing you, I can pretty much guarantee that this isn’t true. How? Because if you’re anything like most people, then you will probably have watched at least one TV boxset this week.

And if you’re like most people, then you probably spent at least some time just crashed out on the couch.

And no matter who you are, you could probably get up 20 minutes earlier – if you really wanted to, that is.

So the problem isn’t time. Rather, the problem is energy. You lack the energy to put in the activities that enable fitness.

Just because you have time, doesn’t mean you’re going to have the energy and that’s why you often can’t accomplish things when you really want to.

There are plenty more examples of this too. How about starting that book? Or setting up a home business? How about cleaning in the kitchen..??

The problem is that most of us lead very busy lives. We either spend all day working in the office, or we spend all day tidying and running chores. Come the evening, we’re crashed out, done.

Read: How to get more done without burning out: 5 secrets

So you need to make sure that your training is as simple, as easy and as quick as possible.

And that’s why you need a home workout routine.

 Why Home Workout Routine Is Different

So we know now that energy is the problem. We’re too tired, stressed and we have too much to do to face working out.

And then we decide that we need to get into shape, and we write ourselves training programs that involve going to the gym five times a week. That gym is 2 miles away, of course, meaning there’s a 15-minute drive on either side in traffic.

Plus you need to walk from the car park, you need to get changed and to put your things in the locker. Once in the gym, you need to wait for your turn at your favorite equipment. And you need to take a shower afterward.

Now your 1-hour workout is actually taking you two hours!

And now you don’t just have to muster the energy to work out. Additionally, you need to muster the energy to drive, to talk to the receptionist, other people in the gym, to head out into the cold, etc.

You’re already too tired to be active and now you’re adding not five but near enough 10 hours of extra activity into your routine.

Hmm, I wonder why this doesn’t work!

Energy Begets More Energy

Now let’s take a different approach.

Let’s begin a home workout routine. Now you can train at the time that best suits you and in a convenient place. Additionally, you can train with equipment that you like. There’s no commute, there’s no going outside and there’s no talking to the staff.

Now your 10 hours is back down to five hours!

But that’s not even how you’re going to start. You’re not going to start with five hours a week but rather just 20 minutes each morning before you shower. That’s something that everyone should be able to manage. This small amount is just enough to give you ‘the bug’ and to help you build the energy you need to really start training hard as you progress.

And if you’re already in good shape and you have no problem staying committed to a workout, then great. This just means that you can now train even more to get into the best shape of your life. Imagine

incredibly intense workouts using all your own equipment, without interruptions every day. Imagine if you could conveniently fit in two workouts a day sometimes (only appropriate under very specific circumstances).

Whatever your goal, a home workout routine gives you a massive edge and changes everything.

And now you’re going to learn how to do it effectively…

The Challenge Of Working Out From Home

With all this in mind, why is it that a lot of people still believe they need to go to a gym in order to get into shape?

There are a number of reasons, but one of the biggest is that in our own personal experiences, it may often seem that a home workout routine doesn’t result in as effective a workout. Why is that?

Partly, it’s down to the lack of outside help. You won’t have a personal trainer at home, or a helpful stranger to help spot you and you won’t know anyone who can give you advice.

At the same time though, it’s also due to the difference in weights and equipment. Unless you’re made of cash and you have an entire spare room, you probably won’t have a squat rack with 200kg of weight on it. Likewise, you probably won’t have a bench press, or a treadmill.

What you will probably have is just a set of dumbbells. Perhaps not even that.

But a lot of people don’t know how to use this equipment (or lack thereof) to get into shape. As such, they end up just curling their 10kg for 10 repetitions, putting them down, resting for a minute, and starting again. They’re not creating muscle strain or metabolic stress…and they’re not growing as a result.

It doesn’t have to be that way. If you know what you’re doing, then you can build an incredibly comprehensive gym with everything you need to get into incredible shape on a very slight budget.

What’s more, is that you’ll be able to use the best techniques in order to grow faster and build more muscle/burn more fat even with light weights.

This article will put you on the right track to a home workout routine. But to get the real inside scoop on this, read the whole ebook here.

Creating Your Own Home Workout Routine Gym

You don’t need to spend a fortune in order to create a home gym. And the better news still, is that you can grow your gym as you grow. It’s fine to start out with just a small amount of equipment and then build that up over time. This is a strategic grocery list that will help you to build your home gym as you increase in strength and training know-how. It helps you save a lot of time while keeping everything nice and small and easy to store, even if you have a smaller home!

Equipment

In this list, we’ll assume your budget is $40 a month – and you’re going to be spending a lot less than that most months. Why is that the assumed budget? Simple: because that’s the cost of a (cheap)  gym membership. If you were thinking about joining the gym, then you can buy this equipment for that amount of money and you’ll see a return on that investment in the long term.

Pull Up Bar

You can do pretty much all of the training you need to do with nothing but your own body. This is true because you can do press-ups, sit-ups, jumping squats, handstands, and more and none of it requires any equipment.

But there are two body parts that are very hard to train without weights – the biceps and the lats. That’s because these are ‘pulling muscles’, which means they are utilized in pulling motions like curls or pull-ups. You can’t target these unless you have something to hold onto and something heavy enough to lift using that point of contact.

Fortunately, a pull-up bar is all you need to remedy that situation. Then, you’ll be able to perform pull-ups, chin-ups, and also a whole bunch of very effective ab workouts like leg raises, frog kicks, and more.

The best part is a pull-up bar costs you just $10 and will fit into your doorframe taking up no space. It’s even possible to get pull-up bars that don’t require drilling, these just attach to the frame on their own.

Dumbbells

Another way to train your biceps and lats is with dumbbells. And once you have these, you can start increasing the amount of weight you place on these pulling muscles.

What’s more, is that dumbbells can also be highly useful for a range of other exercises. This includes several pushing motions, now with heavier weights. That is to say that you can use dumbbells for dumbbell presses, for shoulder presses, for triceps kickbacks, and more.

The best dumbbells to get are those that you can load and unload. That means you should be able to alter the weight during and between workouts, which creates a lot more possibilities for how you’re going to train.

Again, these needn’t cost a lot of money. Basic dumbbells like these will often be available for $30 and

will go up to 20KG (44LBS). I recommend getting one set and then another set the next month and possibly even a third set. This way you can go all the way up to 30KG in each hand, which is enough for some very challenging moves.

Weight Bench

These are just like bench presses except – you guessed it – you are using dumbbells rather than a barbell. What you can also do with a bench though, is to adjust the angle (assuming you get the adjustable kind), so that you can perform incline or decline presses.

Better yet, you can even erect the bench to become a chair that supports your back so that you can perform dumbbell shoulder presses. Alternatively, you can perform highly isolated curls that only use your biceps and don’t allow you to swing your body at all.

You can get weight benches relatively cheaply – for about $40. What’s more, you can get ones that will

fold completely flat so that they can be easily stowed away.

Gymnastics Rings

This is yet another example of a cost-efficient way for a great home workout routine – by thinking a little outside the box.

You may have heard of ‘TRX’. These are straps that hang from the ceiling and that you can use to perform a range of new bodyweight exercises. These are all the rage at the moment and have been made very popular by a whole host of marketing and advertising.

The problem? They cost around $100. And actually, they’re fairly limited in terms of what you can do with them.

So instead, consider getting gymnastics rings. These are the same as the rings that real gymnasts use and they consist of round plastic hoops that you can hang from a pull-up bar. Unlike TRX, these allow you to rest your hands on solid materials, which makes them suitable for dips and muscle-ups. They provide great exercises for the chest, the triceps, and the shoulders.

Better yet though, gymnastics rings also cost around 10-30 dollars. So instead of spending 100 dollars, you’re spending a fraction of that. Seems like a no-brainer!

Kettlebell

And now for one more piece of equipment that you can use to train and that will help you to get a complete workout. That is the kettlebell. This is a piece of equipment that you can use in order to replace the need for a barbell and a squat rack.

That’s right, it will work just as well as doing deadlifts and squats and it can additionally help you to burn a LOT of calories. That’s because a kettlebell has a handle that allows it to be picked up with two hands.

Meanwhile, the offset weight makes it suitable to swing, to throw, and to squat with. You can do this all for only $40 without taking up much space in the house!

The Principles Of Muscle Growth

The ebook goes into a lot of detail discussing the precise science of muscle growth and how you can use this from the comfort of your own home – even using very light weights.

We discuss how you can go about damaging your muscles by creating micro-tears and how this leads to the muscles coming back thicker, stronger, and more powerful.

Likewise, we talk about how you can use long sets with light weights in order to flood your muscles with blood, oxygen, nutrients, and metabolites. When you combine all those things together, you can create devastatingly effective workouts.

And we also discuss one other thing: muscle fiber recruitment.

Finally, the book goes into detail with a workout method that will allow you to perform the home workout routine you choose in minimum time.

In this article, we’re going to focus on ONE aspect of this as an example. And this one aspect will likely blow your mind because it’s something you likely haven’t heard all that much about before. It’s the aforementioned muscle fiber recruitment. And it’s going to change the way you think about your training and about your own capabilities.

What is Muscle Fiber Recruitment?

Your muscle is actually made up of lots of microscopic fibers. These muscle fibers can expand or contract as you need them to, thereby generating the power you need to lift weights. You also have two different types of muscle fibers: fast twitch and slow twitch.

Fast-twitch fibers are useful for sudden, explosive strength and are used for heavy weights. Slow-twitches are made for long-term endurance and are for curling light weights for high repetitions.

Your body is very keen to conserve energy. As such, it works by only ever using the minimum number of twitch muscle fibers that it needs to. If you need to pick up a very heavy weight, then it will fire lots of fast-twitch fibers to help you move that weight.

If you need to move a light weight though, then you’ll use just a few slow-twitch fibers.

What’s even more interesting though, is that your body never exhausts all its strength. It always keeps both fast-twitch fiber and slow-twitch fiber in reserve. That’s because it would be a bad move in the wild to exhaust all of your power 100%.

Imagine if you lifted a boulder and then couldn’t move your arms for 24 hours! You’d be at the complete mercy of any predators or attackers.

In fact, when you lift a weight, you are probably only using 30% of your max strength at best.

To demonstrate this, imagine what happens when someone gets an electric shock: they get thrown across the room! When this happens, it’s not the electricity that is moving them but rather their own muscles. They are contracting so hard and suddenly, that it’s throwing their body huge distances. That’s how powerful you really are!

And an athlete can tap into some of this strength, by recruiting up to 50% of their muscle fiber.

How Does This Work With a Home Workout Routine?

Two ways:

1. You focus on the muscle and strengthen your ‘mind-muscle connection’. This will help to

improve the communication between the ‘neuromuscular junction’ between your nervous

system and the muscle itself. You must be deliberate and conscious during all your training.

2. You use as much fast-twitch muscle fiber as you possibly can. In the gym, you do that by lifting very heavy weights. With home workout, you have a few options which are:

a. Attempt to move something that can’t be moved by pushing against a wall or curling a weight that is too heavy.

b. Add acceleration to the movement by jumping. Clapping press-ups, or pull-ups, where you jump up past the bar, will do this.

c. Exhaust as much of the slow-twitch muscle as you can and then keep going.

That last technique is the most powerful option by far and to do this, you use what we call a ‘mechanical drop set’. This same technique will allow you to create the metabolic stress and microtears you need for true muscle growth. It lets you hit the muscles from different angles. 

Additionally, it lets you train even if you only have light weights at home.

Want a Home Workout Routine Where Money is No Issue?

If you just want a convenient way to get in shape at home, there are several options. One of my favorites is the Total Gym.
The Total Gym provides an entire gym full of equipment in ONE machine and best of all, it takes just 10-20 minutes a day to reshape your body into the one you have always wanted.

Total Gym can be used for:

• Resistance Training
• Cardio Training
• Stretching
• Physical Therapy
• Reformer Style Pilates (with pilates attachment)

Benefits of Total Gym

• Folds for easy storage under a bed or in a closet
• Versatile – Build muscle, Slim & Tone, Gain Flexibility, Burn Calories, Lose Weight
• Lasts a lifetime with quality construction
• No assembly required
• Interest free payment plans available
• Free shipping (excluding GTS)
• 30 Day risk-free trial on FIT & XLS
• Money-back guarantee

Visit Total Gym for more details>>>

Further reading:

Asking the right questions for better health and fitness

Home exercise for beginners

10 odd excuses you give to stay out of shape