Building your body requires that you perform a variety of resistance exercises that slightly damage your muscles. Your body's response to this damage causes your muscles to become larger. In addition to using specific exercises to target specific areas of your body, you'll want to use loads, reps and sets that maximize muscle growth.
Muscle Building
The most efficient way to build muscle is to lift heavy weights or use high resistance, rather than to perform many reps of lighter loads. Determine your max for each exercise before you begin a bodybuilding program. Your max is the amount of weight you can lift one time before failure. Using your max, or close to it, perform three to five reps of an exercise per set. Do three to five sets per workout, doing all sets of one exercise before you change to another. Let your muscles recover 24 to 48 hours before you work them again.
Upper-Body Exercises
Use free weights, weight machines and body weight exercises to build your arms, chest and back. Common exercises for the upper body include biceps curls, chest presses, flyes, pull-ups, chin-ups, push-ups, lat pulldowns, triceps extensions, chair dips, rows and kickbacks. For flyes, hold dumbbells out at arms' length to your side. Move the weights inward, with your hands meeting in front of you. Perform this exercise on a machine by pulling the cables toward each other. You can do this standing, lying on the floor or on a bench. For chair dips, place your hands behind your hips to work the triceps and lats, and in front of you to work biceps and pecs.
Lower-Body Exercises
To build your calves, quads, hamstrings, hip flexors and glutes, use deadlifts, squats, lunges, leg presses, hamstring curls, calf raises and leg raises. Research the proper technique for these exercises to avoid back strain. For example, when you do squats and deadlifts, lower and raise yourself keeping your torso straight, lifting weights upward with your legs, hips and butt only.
Core Exercises
Build core muscles with sit-ups, various crunches, pelvic tilts, leg lifts, Russian twists, kettlebell swings and an ab wheel. Perform crunches forward and backward, as well as side to side to work your obliques. For example, a basic crunch has you move your head toward your knees. A reverse crunch pulls your knees toward your chest. Moving your left elbow toward your right knee, and vice versa, works your obliques as you move across your body. A kettlebell and exercise ball add instability to exercises, requiring you to recruit your core muscles even when you're doing upper- and lower-body exercises. Use an ab wheel from standing and plank positions, and move side to side to add oblique work. Hang from a chin-up bar, raise your legs forward with your core muscles and hold for two seconds. Lower your legs slowly each rep -- don't let them drop.
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