How To Build Muscle Without Weights

So you want to know how build muscle without weights or machines and do it at home? You can with this workout plan and if you take care of your nutrition!

How To Build Muscle Without Weights

The basic incentive your muscles need to grow is resistance. They have to work against something difficult enough for them to figure “hey, I better get stronger for next time we’ll be doing this!”

They don’t care where that resistance comes from. At gyms it’s machines or barbells and dumbbells, but your body fulfills that role as well.

After you’ve given them that “do growing” incentive, your muscles need something else: the building blocks they use to make their fibers larger.

Let’s check how to do both with minimum fuss and maximum results.

The Weights-Free Workout Plan

When you’re just starting your body weight and a few exercises that train many muscles at once do the job.

This workout plan has just four exercises but trains your entire body. You’ll notice it mentions pull-ups, but you can do those without a bar. All you need is a place where you can do pull-ups.

 
Doing this plan 2 – 3 times per week should give you some really nice results. A rep, by the way, is doing the movements of an exercise one time. A set is how many reps you do before you take a break.

Nutrition For Building Muscle

Now about the workout nutrition part. Your muscles consist of protein and when you work out, they want to make their muscle fibers larger from the protein in the food you eat. No protein in your nutrition means no muscle growth.

Getting enough protein is simpler than many bodybuilding and workout websites make it sound. The basic rule is to get 1 g of protein per lb of body weight.

It doesn’t have to come from expensive protein powders. There’s no research saying those are superior to getting your protein from the food you eat.

To make getting enough protein easier for you I compiled a list of the cheapest protein sources out there. I sorted it by price and the amount of protein they give you.

Building Muscle After The Newbie Stage

After about six months the above exercises will become too easy for you, because you’ll be able to do 12 or more reps on each set. If you continue as before, you won’t train muscle strength or size, but endurance.

Which means you need to add resistance. That still doesn’t mean you need weights.

Ok, you’ll need weights, but a weight is anything that weighs something. Have a look at how I make pull-ups more difficult by strapping on a backpack:

Push-ups you can make more difficult by changing the width of your grip and / or using the backpack:

In similar fashion you can also make the lunges more difficult, but for those, as I hinted in the table, you can also fill two milk gallons with water, sand or scrap metal bits.