5-day Single-muscle Workouts

Single-muscle workouts most days of the week are quite intense if you simply want to tone your muscles and improve your health. However, like bodybuilders and fitness competitors, if your goal is to build the size and definition of your muscles, a single-muscle routine is one way to get there. Organizing your workouts appropriately optimizes your training, avoiding too much muscle fatigue.

Considerations

Deciding which muscle to train at the beginning of the week depends on the size of the muscle and whether you are doing plenty of cardio. Generally, you start with the bigger muscles like your chest and back compared to the smaller muscles, such as your biceps and triceps, because you don't want to exhaust your arm muscles as they also are engaged when you work your chest and back muscles. If you are doing long-duration or intense cardio sessions to lose weight or beat your personal record, train your legs at the the end of the week.

Volume, Intensity and Rest Periods

To build bigger muscles, complete three to four exercises per muscle using moderate to heavy weights for four to six sets of six to 12 repetitions. You should rest no more than one minute between sets of the same exercise. Instead of sitting down for one minute, consider doing an abdominal exercise.

Monday

The pectoral muscles for your chest muscles flex your shoulder joint, bringing your arm in front of you. Most chest exercises including bench presses and dumbbell flies engage your triceps muscles as well because you must also extend your elbow. Train your chest muscles on Mondays with flat barbell bench presses, incline barbell bench presses, flat dumbbell flies and pushups.

Tuesday

There are two primary back muscles between your head and your waist. The latissimus dorsi occupies the lower half of your back and pulls your arms toward your spine when your arms are raised over your head. The trapezius muscle lies on the upper half of your back and draws your arms toward your spine when your arms are extended in front of you. Do pull-downs using a straight bar and a triangle bar for your lats; do dumbbell rows and seated rows for your traps. Incorporate dumbbell shrugs for the uppermost fibers of your trapezius muscle.

Wednesday

Leg exercises using free weights, or barbells and dumbbells, generally engage your glutes, hamstrings, inner thighs and quadriceps. Leg exercises that use machines isolate your muscles. The leg extension machine focuses on your quadriceps while the leg curl machine focuses on your hamstrings. Perform barbell and dumbbell exercises before machine exercises. Consider doing a shoulder exercise instead of resting for one minute. Do barbell squats with dumbbell shoulder presses, walking lunges with dumbbell lateral raises, dead lifts with bent-over flies and leg extensions with leg curls.

Thursday

By Thursday, your triceps have had time to rest from your chest workout. There are three divisions to your triceps muscles, so be sure to do one variation of dips or pushups, overhead extensions and press-downs in each workout. Your first workout may include triceps pushups, one-arm overhead dumbbell extensions and rope press-downs. Another workout can incorporate triceps dips, two-arm overhead dumbbell extensions and one-arm rope press-downs.

Friday

Using this five-day single-muscle workout, your training week ends with a biceps routine. Although your biceps brachii is the larger biceps muscle, there are two underlying, smaller muscles that assist in flexing your arm. Do curls using a palms-up grip, a palms-sideways grip and a combination of the two, engaging all your bicep muscles. Complete alternating dumbbell curls in which you begin with your palms facing sideways and then rotating to face up. Perform hammer dumbbell curls in which your palms face sideways throughout the entire exercise. And, complete a barbell or cable curl using a straight bar or a crooked bar in which your palms face up at all times.