What Kinds Of Workouts Bulk You Up?

Workouts that bulk you up develop the musculature of your body and improve your physical appearance. Bulking up requires high-impact workouts, which force your body to adapt to moving progressively greater loads and more challenging exercise movements. Avoid workouts that target the same muscle groups on back-to-back days. Individual muscles need two or more recovery days in between bulking workouts, says the National Federation of Personal Trainers.

Compound Movements

Workouts that emphasize compound exercise movements bulk you up. Unlike isolated exercises, which involve a single joint articulation, compound exercises require multiple joint movements. Such workouts bulk you up because they stimulate growth in the greatest number of muscles. Your shoulder blade and elbow joints move compound upper body exercises, such as the bench press and bent-over rows. Lower body exercises, such as squats and sprints also, involve joint articulations in your ankles, knees and hips.

Large Muscle Groups

Exercises that target your largest muscle groups are a critical component of bulking workouts. Your largest muscle groups have the greatest potential for growth. Compound exercises that target big muscles recruit strength from smaller muscles, which help move the load or stabilize the movement. Your largest upper body muscle groups are the chest and back muscles. Your thighs and glutes are the largest lower body muscle groups. Variations of the bench press target the pectoral muscles in your chest. Pullups and rowing exercises target your latissimus dorsi, while activating over a dozen muscles in your back. Hip thrusts and variations of the squat target the quadriceps and gluteus maximus.

Heavy Sets

Workouts for bulking up include exercise sets, which quickly exhaust your muscles. The National Federation of Personal Trainers recommends selecting an amount of weight that you can perform only four repetitions with. Increase the weight only after you can complete six unassisted and unforced repetitions. Exhausting your muscles within four to six repetitions produces the greatest damage to contractile proteins in your muscle fibers. Your muscles adapt with tissue repairs that overcompensate for the damage and bulk up the size of your muscle fibers.

Stabilization

Workouts that force you to move against unstable forces bulk you up, says trainer and health fitness specialist, Chris Goulet. Free weight exercises with dumbbells and barbells bulk you up more than machine weights, because they require more support from stabilizer muscles. Suspended pushups are another form of destabilizing workout that involves gripping a ring in each hand, which is suspended a few inches above the ground by straps. While gripping the hanging rings, you must stabilize the multidirectional sway of the straps as you perform each repetition. Suspended pushups require 100 percent more middle and lower pectoral activation than standard pushups, according to a February 2010 report by strength and conditioning specialist, Bret Contreras.