Gaining muscle with a basic workout structure. The structure of a muscle gain routine can take many forms, varying from extremely short and intense to overly lengthy and exhaustive.

One basic way in which a muscle building routine is structured is by utilizing a “split routine”, dividing the muscle groups up and targeting a certain group one day and another group on another day and so forth. A common split routine looks something like this:

Monday: Chest/Shoulders/Triceps
Wednesday: Back/Biceps
Friday: Legs

Looking at Mondays split, three different muscle groups are worked. The pectorals (chest), the deltoids (shoulders), and the triceps. Since there is some overlap in muscles being worked, that is the deltoids and triceps will be assisting in pushing movements involving pectoral work. So it makes sense to also train shoulders and triceps in this workout as they’re already being “activated”. So shoulders are followed after chest, and the workout concludes with tricep training (the two larger muscle groups are worked first, and then the smaller triceps muscles are worked last).

Wednesdays workout consists of back (latissimus dorsi) and biceps. Once again there is muscle overlap. When one trains the back performing pulling movements, the biceps also get activated to a degree. So the biceps will be trained on back day since they’re already getting worked.

The back is sometimes split between upper back for width, and mid back for back thickness. After the biceps are performed, some trainees will also train their forearms, if their goal is overall arm development and especially if their arm development is particularly lacking in the forearm department.

Fridays routine calls for legs, or in gym circles its “leg day”, or in hardcore dungeon gym settings, its “DLD”, “dreaded leg day”. Since dreaded leg day can be so taxing on the entire body, two days rest are given for recuperation before starting up again with chest on Monday. Leg day consists of training the front leg muscles-quadriceps, the back leg muscles-hamstrings, and the calves round out the Friday leg day muscle building workout.

This is just one basic muscle building workout split, which provides the trainee the benefit of working overlapping muscle groups in the same day and allowing rest and recovery in between each muscle building workout.

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