Many muscle building programs are experiments or self discovered by weight lifters, which worked for that specific person who discovered it.

However, in some cases these muscle building programs don’t work. Why?

These are 4 major reasons why some muscle building programs aren’t working:

#1: Not Using Free Weights

To build muscle, it is true you need to work on building the muscle you want to grow. This will only get you so far in your training and won’t get you the results you want. You need to be working every muscle around the major muscle, which will in turn give you the most build up. Only working the muscle you want to build is like using a machine to train with. It limits your stability and all around strength. This will turn into having “fake” muscles, the ones with all show and no go. Using free weights will give you stability and the all around muscle building you need. Exercises including squats and deadlifts are the best for any muscle building.

#2: The Workout Time is Not Spent Effectively

You may have received your program from someone who was using the program daily, for hours on end, that may have lived in the gym daily. If you are looking for the short program, an hour or less for a few times a week, this program will take you that much longer in order to develop the goods. You need to find something that will be beneficial no matter how much time you have. This could be solved by using more weight with less reps and sets. This is much faster and more beneficial than those long, muscle straining programs out there that work your muscles to death and leave you in pain the for the next two days.

#3: You are Not Incorporating Enough Intensity

A good muscle building program should have a high amount of weight, while using less reps and sets. Programs using 50% of your one rep max are a waste of time. Your target should be to life around 80-85% of your 1 rep max. If you use less weight, you will see slight improvement until the improvements will stop. Its like your body will have become immune to lifting such a small amount of weight.

#4: Get Enough Rest

When you workout, remember to leave time between exercises to let your body settle and start to rebuild. Rushing to your next exercise will not benefit you, and ultimately might hurt you as it will strain the muscles.

When you are done with your workout, make some time to rest and take a nap. You just put your body through hard work and now it needs time to cool down and rebuild. At night, make sure you are achieving 8+ hours of sleep, if possible. Relax anytime during the day and make sure to keep a low stress environment, which is best for fast muscle growth.

You can check out more information on a good workout program by looking at my article: DoubleYourGains’ 3-5 Beginners Strength Program.