Can You Get Bigger Muscles With The Weider Total Body Works 5000?

The Weider Total Body Works 5000 is a home gym that uses your body weight as a form of resistance for the machine's more than 50 exercises. It is similar in design to the more expensive Total Gym 2000, as you add your weight to each exercise by lying or sitting on the backrest and then pulling your body up inclined rails. While the machine is not suitable for bodybuilding workouts, a majority of people can build muscle on the equipment with a routine workout program.

Types of Exercises

The hand grips and cables of the Total Body Works 5000 allow for a wide range of motion that is impossible on many standard weightlifting machines. According to sports performance specialist Shannon Clark, this is desirable with body weight exercises if muscle building is your goal because you can then engage multiple muscle groups for each movement. Simply put, using many different muscle groups for an exercise helps create muscle confusion that will keep your body from reaching a muscle building plateau. It also helps you train with motions you would use in real life rather than isolating a single muscle.

Effective Workout Program

The best muscle building program on the Total Body Works 5000 is one that includes a variety of upper- and lower-body exercises each workout. Use the squat platform and the hand grips of the machine to build a complete body workout each time you exercise. It is suggested that you spend a limited amount of time resting between each exercise to maximize the intensity of the workout. You can perform each exercise with a low resistance and a high number of repetitions or vice versa and still achieve muscle building results.

Consistency and Plateau Breaking

Peggy Houglum states in her book "Therapeutic Exercise for Musculoskeletal Injuries," that you must consistently perform body weight exercises if you expect to see progress in muscle building. You can work out on the Total Body Works 5000 two to five times a week depending on the intensity of your program, and every major muscle group should be exhausted at least once a week. Houglum adds that as you advance in strength, you should increase the difficulty of the exercise with more complex movements, sets, repetitions or resistance to continue building muscle.

Extra Resistance

One muscle building advantage that the Total Body Works 5000 has over similar body weight gyms is that it includes four weight resistance bands that you can add to the gym for an extra 50 lbs. of resistance per exercise. By simply clipping the bungee cords under the backrest to the base of the machine, you will add this resistance to train your muscles harder. Unfortunately, your body weight plus the additional resistance is the most weight you can lift on the machine, so you will eventually reach a muscle building plateau with the Total Body Works 5000 if your workout is consistent enough.