Muscle building programs are mostly created by weight lifters who have discovered “their way” to building big muscles.

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

Have you ever trained on weight lifting machine? They only work one muscle. These machines are a major reason why the programs do not work. They don’t give the ability to develop many muscles together, which would be the best way to train. Free weights let you do compound exercises, letting you build many muscles at once. You will be able to perform squats and dead lifts which will be very beneficial to many muscles. Using free weights allows you to develop stability and also strengthen your joints. They are all around better for you.

#2: The Program is Not Efficient for the Every Day Person’s Time Constraints

If your workout came from someone who lived in a gym, you researched and found the wrong program. You want to keep it as short as possible, while still getting a full workout in. Like I said before, compound exercises will do the trick. Make sure to use fewer reps and sets while adding more weight. This will ensure a good amount of resistance to tear the muscle down in a short amount of time.

#3: You are Not Incorporating Enough Intensity

Like mentioned before, you need to be using heavy enough weights to work out with. This is the reason why many of the work outs out there don’t work, because they are using 50% of your “1 Rep Max” (1RM). You should be using about 80-85% of your 1RM. Anything below and you are never going to see improvements as your body will eventually become use to the work out and somewhat immune to it. This also calls for adding weight every work out in order to keep improving when you are performing your muscle building programs.

#4: You Need to Rest and Relax More

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.