A Ultimate Guide How To Start Building Muscle (For Beginners)

 In today's article, we're going to talk about the muscle-building workout plan for beginners, and this is for you; if you're starting to be interested in strength training, you want to build some muscle, and you want to make sure you're doing it the right way that gets you results. But it's not necessarily overtaxing your body. The fact that matters is that the way you train at the beginning of your muscle-building and strength-training journey is different than when you train in an intermediate phase and an advanced phase, so in today's article, I'm going to break down five of the most important things that you need to know we're going to talk about the actual training split, how many days per week, you should be working out the kind of exercises we're going to touch on nutrition, sleep and recovery. 

We'll talk about supplements; you'll learn a ton in today's article. So get out your pen and paper, take some notes, and dive in. Fit Father project.com. Let's get straight into today's article on the best muscle-building workout plan for beginners. And I love this topic. It's nostalgic because this article made me the beginning of my muscle build muscle-building, the kind of advice I would have given myself when I started stretching at 10. I started lifting weights when I was 10 after my dad passed away, and I wanted to start lifting to be able to be strong and take care of my mom my little brother, and I had no idea what I was doing at the time. But if I did, this is the advice: go back in time and the time capsule and give myself. I'm so excited to impart this advice to you. 

Now, there are so many different ways that you could start your muscle-building journey. This is my philosophy on what is best after my 20-plus years of experience in strength training. And I used to be a former national champion bodybuilder, so I know a thing about muscle building. And this is where I'd recommend you start. So, let's dive in right now and talk about training. When you're building muscle and in the beginner phase, you do not need to work out daily; you don't need to work out that often. It's optimal because your body needs to recover from workouts well. Do strength training three times per week?

 Remember, muscles grow outside the gym; they don't grow when you work out. Working out is the stimulus to get your body to increase protein synthesis. So you build muscle. So I recommend this training split when you're a beginner, like a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, where you have at least one day off between sessions. And I recommend you train your full body every single time. These old-school full-body training routines three times a week are amazing for beginners for a couple of reasons.

 One, yes, we want to build muscle. But two, you must also get a lot of practice at the main lifts because you're just starting your journey. And it's just as important for you to get good at squats, pull-ups, bench presses, and shoulder presses as it is to build muscle exercise motions. These big compound motions require some neural learning. Your nervous system must learn how to activate the specific muscles; you must get your form now. It would help if you got more repetitions in the beginning.

 That's why it's better to do full body training three times a week when you frequently train these motions. So the learning is happening as opposed to doing a chest day, and then your chest is so sore that you won't train your chest for another seven days. We need to prioritize learning and getting stronger on these main compound lifts. So, three days per week, full body strength training, and here's what I would make even better.

 I would say that two of those days, let's say it's a Monday, Wednesday, Friday, on Monday and Friday, we do classic strength training, and we're going to get into the exercises and the actual, you know, kind of way to create your workout in the middle of those two days on Wednesday. I recommend you do bodyweight callisthenics, things like pull-ups, push-ups, things like handstand hold because I want you to start getting strong in a variety of different strength training exercises; you'd be shocked there are people who strength train for 10 plus years who could do a lot of overhead Military Presses but can't do a handstand push up. 

Why? Because we get good at what we practice. And I want you to have a well-rounded strength-training base that involves free weights, some machines and a lot of callisthenics stuff. How about I set up my training split, full body strength training on Monday, in the gym or at home with actual weights? Wednesday would be callisthenics, and Friday would be another revisit of that full-body strength training session. Let's break down what those workouts look like. The way I want you to think about your workouts when you're in the beginner phase is not about I need to do these specific exercises because I heard that a benchpress is great for a big chest; I want you to think about motions, planes of motions that your body naturally does. 

We're going to break your workout out into different motions. Well, one primary motion that you know is phenomenal for muscle building is squatting, squatting, bending our legs, hinging our hips, whether we're picking something off the floor like a deadlift or we have weight on our back when we're doing a classic barbell back squat. Squatting is essential. So, we're going to kick off our workouts with squatting. I recommend a classic five-by-five scheme set and rep scheme here because this enables you to go fairly heavy, so you can get used to carrying some load on your back, and it gives you lots of different reps. So, for every Monday and Friday workout, we'll get 25 reps of school lats. And this could be a barbell back squat.

 This could be a front squat; it could even be a leg press. However, I recommend you try to do some free-weight squats. But if you feel that leg press is calling you right now, at the beginning of your training session, you might be a little nervous about your form, and that's fine, too. The point being is we're kicking your workout off your strength training workouts with leg motions, five by five, five sets of five reps; you do a set of five reps, you wait rest for about two minutes, then you you next set, rest next set rest two-minute rest in between those sets is important, make sure you're recovered. 

So, that first exercise will take you around 1010 12 minutes, and the primary focus of your workout is getting that good leg strength. As your legs get stronger, the rest of your body will get stronger. You can build muscle by getting strong in the back squat alone. Now, to continue breaking up your workouts based on body motions, the next thing we will do is a horizontal pole, AKA a row. So there's pulling in 10, we're pulling a bar towards our body, we're using our back and our biceps. 

Anytime we're pushing, we're using our chest, shoulders, triceps, so when we're horizontal pole is some row motion, vertical pole, some pull up, so we're going to start with a horizontal pole. So, any row could be a bent-over barbell row, a two-arm dumbbell row, or a rowing machine at your gym. But after the squats, we will do your rows, and I recommend that you do three sets of around six to 12 reps. It doesn't matter too much. And when you're in the beginning, which rep scheme do you pick? I would err on going a higher rep when you're beginning. 

You can use a lighter weight and get more reps to practice. You choose a bent-over barbell row for three sets of 12 reps; that would be your second motion. Your third motion is a horizontal push. This is like a bench press. This is something like an incline bench press, a dumbbell bench press; you're pushing something away from your body; this is different than a vertical push like an overhead, which would be a shoulder press; we'll get to that in just a second. But essentially, we did a squat, a horizontal pull, a horizontal push. So, some pressing motion. And I recommend, if you're starting and your shoulders are nice and healthy, that you learn the barbell, or the incline barbell, benchpress, and amazing motion for your chest. 

In the three sets of six to 12 reps, start light; you will build strength over time; that will be your third exercise of this workout. And then we're going to move on to a vertical pole. So, the vertical pole is some pull-up or a lat pulldown; I recommend you do pull-ups, any kind of grip wide neutral, even chin-ups, one of the best back-building exercises you will be using for the rest of your strength training career. If you still need to be stronger to do pull-ups, that's fine; you can start with some lat pulldown machine until you get strong enough and point one a vertical pull in three sets of six to 12 reps. 

Again, the rep scheme is not super important; what is important is that you're getting the reps in, and you're getting the volume in. And then after that, we're going to go to a horse, I'm sorry, a vertical push. So we're going vertical pole rather than vertical push. So, you can do a seated barbell military press for some overhead shoulder press. You could do a dumbbell shoulder press standing or seated, something where you're pressing overhead to engage the shoulders in that plane of motion. Again, three sets of six to 12 reps. 

So, I hope you see the concept here. We're starting with five by five on the squats, then the rest of these motions, the rows that push the poles, and the presses are all three by six to 12. Then, we round out the workout with some arms and abs as a little finisher. So I would say I would personally do a superset of some arm exercise, some bicep curl with maybe a triceps press down, or a close grip push up, but do one set of biceps six to 12 reps, one set of triceps, you'll do that superset three times. And then you can add throw abs in at the end, some plank hold for one to two minutes, and a hanging leg raise. This accessory stuff at the tail end is when you can play around with different motions; you don't necessarily have to use the same exercises for your arms in your abs at the end of the workouts.

 Remember, this is a key point in your strength training. Your arms are trained in all of these other big motions. There's some EMG research where they study the amount of muscle activity, and it shows that your biceps get worked harder on chin-ups than almost any other bicep exercise. So the point is you'll get big arms by getting strong on your rows and presses, etc. But you can do some arm work at the end; you can superset it if you want to save time, which again means doing a set of biceps straight into a set of triceps and then you rest, so no rest in between. And then you can even make a circuit between a set of biceps, a set of triceps, then a core plank hold, and you repeat that whole circuit. That stuff is up to you. 

You can play around and try some different motions. But here's what I recommend for your two weekly strength training workouts. You do the same motions. So you do this exact workout. Let's see you go squat, barbell row, barbell bench press, pull up, overhead shoulder press, barbell curl, tricep press, down plank hold. You do that workout on Monday. You do that same workout on Friday and those same exercises because that is the perfect segue into the number two concept of progressive resistance as you begin your strength training journey; the most important thing is that you're getting stronger. That's why it's called strength training. So I want to make sure that you're logging your weights, either use it on your phone, take out the Notes application on your phone, or get a physical journal log, which I did throughout the first 10 years of my lifting career, I always kept a little notebook, and I wrote down my weights. 

When I go to my Friday training session, I reflect on what I did on Monday, how I hit my rep targets, and, if so, if I need to increase my weight. Increasing your strength is what helps coax your body to build muscle. And here's the thing: Your body will strengthen much faster when you start your strength training journey. Neurologically, your body will be more efficient and recruit muscle. And I'm going to make up these numbers in the numbers aren't important. But the concept is when you begin strength training, it takes a while and the first couple of months of exercise for your body to even get good at using the muscle you have; you might be at 30% efficiency, maybe 50% efficiency, so you have 100% of muscle. 

But when recruiting your muscles and exercising, you only use 50% of your potential. But your efficiency increases as you get stronger, get more reps in and do more workouts. So you may be recruiting after four or six weeks of strength training 70% of your muscle recruitment. And in time, as you train for lots of years, you can get up to very high muscle recruitment patterns, and then your body is also building a lot of muscles, so you're going to get more efficient, which is why you're going to get stronger quickly, which is why you got to lug your weight. So that's the concept of aggressive resistance. 

When you hit your rep targets, you increase the weight on your next training session; this almost begs the point as well as when you're starting these initial workouts, start light, start light, so you can hit those rep targets and build on a good foundation a big mistake people make is they start way too heavy, and you they build on reps of bad form want to make sure your form is good from day one.

So, the reps you're building on are honest and good progress; you'll be able to build on a solid foundation. So before we get to number three, food and sleep supplements, I want to backtrack because I said you want to do a callisthenics workout one day per week between those two strength training days. And it's a great idea. You should do a lot of squats; you should do bodyweight squats, play around with doing single-leg squats, put your leg up on a chair and do some single-leg squats. Try to work on a pistol squat, which is where you have, you know, one leg out in front of the other, and you're squatting down like this, building strength in your legs from callisthenics. So, you start your workout again with some squatting motions. Play around with it. This can be simple: write down your rep's workout, like your other two strength training sessions. But start with your legs. Do some squats and work both legs for about five minutes or so. Then, you will move on to some pull-ups or vertical pulling. You might do a couple of sets of pull-ups. 

If you can't do pull-ups, get an elastic stretch band and put it around your legs. And it can assist you. We have an article I'll link below with a description of how to do a pull-up. If you can't do a pull-up that shows you these things, get good at working on those pull-ups, especially if you were choosing a lat pulldown or something like that on your strength training days. 

This callisthenics workout is a great time to practice the strength and the pull-ups, do some push-ups, work your chest for about 510 minutes, and set a rep target for yourself; maybe you're saying I want to do 100 Push-ups. This workout, get them done, change the angles and the grips, play around with it, and get strong. And I'd also recommend you do some handstand holds. Learning to kick your feet up on a wall and hold yourself overhead will help keep your shoulder stable. And that shoulder stability and health will be essential as you continue to lift years down the road. You want a stable shoulder scapula, which is your shoulder blade; the stability of that will ultimately equal healthier shoulders. 

And then you talk to lifters who've been lifting for 1015 20 years. Many of my shoulder problems were because they didn't build on a good foundation of scapular stability. Handstand holds are going to be very good for that. And then that's what I'd recommend you do. It's a lighter workout. Play with it. Suppose you can do it outside; even better, you'll get some sunshine. But treat those two classic strength training workouts as your log workouts. And on the calisthenic days, find some different exercises, some core work, some push-ups, some pull-ups, some squats, and try your single legs.

That's what we do here. So now we're going to skip it. We've talked about progressive resistance. Let's skip down to food, sleep and water. Listen, we told you I opened this article with the idea that muscles are built outside the gym. You get stronger because weight training is the stimulus, but then you must fuel your body with sleep and nutrition. So, the first thing is to ensure you're eating enough.

 So many people, when they start the strength training workouts as beginners, need to eat more food, and your body will only progress if you're eating enough food. So my recommendation is you scroll below in the description, you open up our Fit Father muscle-building calorie calculator that's going to enable you to punch in your height, weight, age and general activity level, and it's going to kick out the number of calories that you burn each day. And I want you to eat around 250 to 500 over that. 

So you are a 40-year-old man with a moderately active job. You might burn 2700 calories a day. For muscle-building purposes, go to 3000, and you go to 3000 Yo.u roughly estimate these calories, and we'll see if we can track every calorie, but you have to have a ballpark and weigh yourself regularly. And if you're not gaining weight, increase the food if you're gaining weight too fast, and more than a pound a week, then scale back the food a little bit. And there is a danger when you're starting off to eat so much crappy food, and then you're just putting on fat instead of muscle. So you want to keep it at a reasonable target. 

But that's why weighing yourself is essential. When starting strength training, you want your weight to go up gradually; a pound a week of quality weight is fantastic and achievable. You're putting on fat if you gain two or three pounds a week. So it would help if you scaled it back. And if the scales are not moving, you must increase your food intake. 

One good thing to consider is ensuring you're getting at least three meals daily. And that's not to say that you can't build muscle through intermittent fasting, but when you're a beginner, and you're strength training, prioritizing enough calories is a great deal. So, get at least a breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with ideally a snack in between. And if each of those meals is around 600 to 700 calories, then you're probably going to be around that 2100 to 3000 calorie range, which is a good starting point for most people. But again, we have to figure out your numbers. 

So you have a calorie calculator, and it's 100% free. It's in the description. It's Google Sheets; open that up, and you can start doing that. And, of course, if you want to have a full done-for-you plan that gives you every workout, every set, every rep, the full nutrition plan, the full meal plan, the full supplementation plan, my team and I have that the program is called Old School muscle. We'll also link that below in the description. 

It's just 97 bucks for lifetime access, and it gives you all this: all the printouts, everything, all the recipes; you don't have to do any thinking; that's a resource for you in the description. So we talked about food and needing to eat enough sleep, which is essential. And I'm going to be blunt: if you're not getting at least six hours but at least seven and a half hours of quality sleep, you are shortchanging your muscle-building results. Sleep is essential. Your growth hormone rises when your body recovers in heels from all the hard training you're doing.

 If you're under-sleeping, your cortisol levels will be high, and your muscle-building results will be lower than they could be. So get the quality sleep in, turn off the, get rid of the TV at night, and make sure you have a set bedtime and wake-up time. If you have sleeping problems, the more you start strength training will help your body get a better circadian rhythm, and you'll be more tired at night. So that's a really good thing. Water is drunk more water than you're drinking. Most people who want to strength train should drink around a minimum of half a gallon of water, maybe up to a gallon and a half per day. And again, that depends on how active your job is and how much water you normally have.

 But increasing your water intake will be phenomenal, especially during your workouts; it will help keep your energy levels up. And throw a little pinch of some pink Himalayan sea salt in your water. So, around one-quarter to 1/8 teaspoon per gallon of water because the pink Himalayan CSAT has all these trace minerals that your body needs to stay hydrated. It's not just water; it's also water plus minerals. So that is a great need to get the hydration, and it's why you see a lot of people in the gym carrying around the gallons of water because they know it makes them feel better, perform better, and they're not getting as dehydrated. So, number four, let's talk about supplements to wrap this up.

 This is a long article, but I want to be comprehensive and ensure you have all the resources. And, of course, we have other things in the description, other articles, that old-school muscle-building program, and I have a free article for you as well in the description. I'll tell you about that in a second. But supplements. A lot of guys who are starting make the mistake of thinking they need these fancy muscle-building supplements like a testosterone booster or some fancy pre-workout. All that pretty much is crap. It could be more effective. 

What you do need, though, is a quality multivitamin. Building muscle requires that all these other enzymatic reactions work well, which requires the vitamins and minerals we need every day. So we will eat a lot of food, and ideally, it's quality. But sometimes, we cannot hit all our micronutrient targets, meaning our vitamins and minerals. 

That's why I call it a multi. It is great; it covers your bases. It's an insurance policy ensuring you get your vitamins and minerals in. I would take that daily, and it's not getting you out of eating good foods to want you to high-quality food, but the Maltese-like covers your bases. The next thing is vitamin d3. I use around 1000 to 5000 per day for most guys, depending on where you live and how much sunshine you get. But vitamin d3 is an essential hormone. 

Although it's a vitamin, it also acts as a hormone for increasing your immune system. It can boost your testosterone levels naturally and help you recover from strength training workouts. It is foundational. And I've recommended that you don't need to supplement vitamin D3 if you get out in the sun for around 20 minutes daily. Ideally, in the morning, getting direct sunlight, your body can make all the vitamin D3 it needs from the sun. But many of us don't get out in the sun because we have busy jobs. Or if you have darker-pigmented skin, you need even more time in the sun. 

So vitamin d3 supplementation is still a good idea, but I recommend you get out in the sun. So that's the d3. The next thing is some source of Omega threes. People often call these fish oils, but they are special fats our body uses as anti-inflammatory. And as we're strength training, we're going to create a little more inflammation in our joints because we're using them more. Fish Oils are going to help control the inflammation. 

They can help you recover better from your exercise. They're good for your heart and brain health, they're fantastic, and omega threes are not just found in fish; they certainly are things like wild salmon, and sardines are great sources. But if you're a vegan vegetarian here, you can also get this from flax. Now, the Omega threes in plant-based sources are not as bioavailable. They're about 10% bioavailable, but if you're getting a tablespoon or so of flax seeds, or if you have some hemp seeds, or you're eating walnuts in your diet, you can get plenty omega threes from plant-based sources, or you can also get a plant-based Omega three supplement as well need these in your routine. And the final thing is a probiotic.

 Probiotics have these good gut bacteria that line our entire digestive tract. And here's the thing: when most people think about nutrition, they think about foods and calories. They must think about digestion and how that food is broken down and assimilated into the body. Probiotics help you digest your foods and keep your entire gastrointestinal tract in line; they help keep you leaner. If you have the right kinds of probiotics, your body burns fat better, and there will be new research in the next few years showing that certain strains of probiotics are associated with better muscle building as well. 

So I recommend you take probiotic supplements, but you can also get this from fermented foods like kefir. Kombucha is a fermented yoghurt, things like sauerkraut, kimchi, things like natto; some of these foods are fermented; kombucha could be another example of all these fermented foods get more of those in your diet; they will help your muscle your health results over the long term. And the final thing, which is optional but definitely could be encouraged, would be creatine monohydrate. 

Creatine monohydrate is an incredibly safe supplement; it boosts muscle building and strength. It's a good supplement; it's safe for beginners, intermediates, and advanced trainees alike; you want to take three to five grams after exercise with 20 to 25 grams of protein. So again, you don't need a protein powder; you can get all your protein foods, but it's convenient. 

So if there were a post-workout shake, which is not necessary for muscle building but is convenient, I would probably say 25 grams of some protein you love, whether it's whey or plant-based, and then around three to five grams of creatine and that would be your post-workout shake. Then you'd have a meal shortly after, which is the supplemental side of this thing. It is the least important thing we've discussed today. Because if you're strength training well, eating the right foods, and sleeping, your hydrating supplements are supplemental, yes, they will help. Get the multi, d3, and omega-3 probiotics, but supplements don't make you build muscle. It's all these good principles we've already discussed in today's article.

 Finally, I know this is a lot of info, and I want to help you make this actionable. And I actually would love to hand you the straight-up plan. As we discussed today, we have that old-school muscle-building program that gives you the full supplement stack, meal plans, recipes, exact workout routine, form guides of all the different exercises, and full body strength training. We have that for you. It's linked in the description for 97 bucks; it's an amazing program. If you need more time to jump into the full program and want to experiment in more than one way, please scroll below and get our free article on the five best muscle-building exercises. And I will follow up with you via email and send that article to you. 

I will also give you some advanced training on your nutrition, supplementation, etc., from my email. So we can keep this momentum going. I hope this article starts as an inspiration for you to show you that there's an amazing possibility of you improving your life, your health, your energy, and your strength if you start strength training properly; these are the principles I would have told myself back when I was 10. And now you can use them today. So thanks for being my friend. 

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