The goal of bodybuilding is to fatigue your muscles as much as possible to stimulate the greatest gains in muscle size. Lifting heavy weights causes tiny tears in the muscle fibers, which then grow back stronger with enough time to recover and rebuild. The more you push your muscles to absolute failure -- the point where they can't lift the weight any more -- the greater size gains you will make.
Full Body
Full-body workouts involve "compound movements" that move more than one joint, engaging a variety of muscles. Examples of compound movements are squats, pull-ups, push-ups, deadlifts and lunges. Full-body exercises are time efficient because they work several muscle groups at once. However, because the muscles must work together to lift the weight, smaller muscles fatigue and fail faster, causing greater gains in some muscles than others.
Splits
Split workouts separate the body into parts and train different muscles on separate days, allowing you to train more often. When you train with split sets, train opposing muscle groups on the same day. The online site Intense Workout reminds athletes not to train muscles that work together on consecutive days. For example, don't train your chest and back, and arms and shoulders, on consecutive days, since the arm and shoulder muscles are supporting muscles in many chest and back movements. Many bodybuilders split their routines into chest and back, lower body, and arms and shoulders.
Supersets
Supersets are when you go back and forth from one exercise to another without any rest. While one muscle group is working, the other recovers, making the most efficient use of your time and keeping your heart rate and fat burning high throughout the workout. You can pair exercises for totally different muscle groups such as pushups and squats, for opposing muscle groups such as pushups and pull-ups, or two exercises that work the same muscles in different ways, such as crunches and hanging leg raises.
Circuits
Circuits have you going from one exercise to another like supersets, but include three to eight exercises in sequence. Go right from one exercise to the next and only rest when the circuit is completed. Structure your circuit so that you train opposing muscle groups and don't train the same muscles with two consecutive exercises.
Drop Sets
Drop sets involve doing an exercise until you can't lift the weight anymore, then immediately switching to a lower weight and continuing the set until the muscles fail again. Drop sets are a particularly effective workout because they bring your muscles to a depth of fatigue that you cannot reach with one-weight sets.
Density Training
To increase the load on your muscles, John Romaniello of the bodybuilding site Testosterone Muscle recommends having a time goal or total repetition goal rather than doing a certain number of sets of a certain number of reps. This way, you squeeze in a few more repetitions when aiming for time or shorten your rests when aiming for a total number of repetitions to overload the muscles more than a sets-and-reps workout plan.
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