How to Build Muscle Fast (at Home)

You don't need an expensive gym membership to gain muscle mass. With just a few pieces of equipment or your own body weight, you can learn how to build muscle fast at home with some challenging at-home workouts.

But before you dive into a new training session, brush up on some of the most important parts of muscle gain and learn how you can make them work for you anywhere you choose to train.

There's good news and bad news about building muscle fast when you're just starting a resistance-training program. The bad news is that during the first few weeks of your program, you might not make any gains at all.

A September 2016 study in the ​Journal of Physiology​ found that while muscle damage — necessary for muscle growth — was highest among untrained subjects in the first three weeks of a resistance-training program, it was not associated with hypertrophy (increased muscle size and strength). This is because, when you're brand new to a workout, your body focuses on repairing damage, rather than building mass.

But don't give up! As your body adapts to exercise, you experience less muscle damage after training sessions and greater muscle growth.

The good news is that you only have to wait about three weeks until your body starts building muscle, rather than just repairing damage. After that period, you can put on muscle relatively quickly. Beginners gain muscle at a faster rate than intermediate and advanced lifters, according to Eric Bach, CSCS, a strength and conditioning coach.

Generally, new lifters start to see strength gain within the first 8 to 12 resistance training sessions, according to a December 2019 study published in the ​International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health​. More experienced athletes, though, usually need to consistently vary their training program, as their muscles start to adapt after a period of time.

Whether you're working out in a gym or at home, workout volume and frequency — in addition to your diet — are the biggest factors in building muscle fast. Although you should be conservative in the first few weeks while your body adapts to exercise, after that you build more muscle by working out at a high intensity and with a high volume of sets and reps.

Volume is crucial for hypertrophy. according to a June 2017 systematic review and meta-analysis in the ​Journal of Sports Science​. In the 15 studies analyzed, researchers found that each additional set of an exercise led to an increase in muscle size. This means that the more sets you can get in, the faster you'll see growth.

As for frequency, a November 2016 meta-analysis in ​Sports Medicine​ found that training each major muscle group twice a week proved more effective for hypertrophy than only training once a week.

The researchers could not, however, determine if training muscle groups three times per week causes greater increases. But if more volume leads to more hypertrophy, then it's safe to say getting in three workouts per week per muscle group certainly can't hurt.

There are a lot of opinions on the best number of strength training reps and sets and the best rest period length between sets to build mass. As far as reps go, the usual recommendation is 8 to 12 reps per set for hypertrophy, with higher reps being more effective for muscular endurance and lower reps more effective for strength.

However, it might not actually matter that much. A July 2016 study in the ​Journal of Applied Physiology​ found that there was no difference in muscle growth between participants who lifted lower weight for more reps compared to those who lifted heavier for less reps.

When you're working out at home, it mainly depends on your available equipment (more on that below). If you only have your own body weight to work with, you need to do more reps to exhaust your muscles.

When you're starting out, aim for 10 to 12 sets per muscle group, per week. As you start to see results and your body adapts, you should add more sets for more volume. With this approach, you can build muscle at home and improve your overall fitness.

In a January 2019 study in ​Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise​, people who did 5 sets per exercise per body part achieved significantly more muscle growth than those who performed 1 or 3 sets. In total, the group that saw the most gains did 30 sets for the upper body and 45 sets for the lower body per week.

Rest periods between sets for hypertrophy are generally 60 to 180 seconds. However, you may want to lean toward the end of that range. Resting 3 minutes between sets results in more mass than resting just a minute, according to an a July 2016 study in the ​Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research​.

Do you really need equipment to build muscle and strength? The answer is a resounding no, according to Al Kavadlo, CSCS, a certified strength and conditioning coach. Classic body-weight exercises, like push-ups, pull-ups and squats, are enough for beginners to start building muscle quickly at home.

But some people like using equipment, and that's fine, too. You can outfit your workout space with the essential at-home workout equipment — or more, depending on your budget — that will allow you to do a variety of fun and challenging exercises in your home workout. For the essentials, consider buying:

• Yoga or gym mat
• Resistance bands
• A medicine ball

If you have the budget and the space, you can consider investing in:

• Dumbbells
• A weight bench
• A home gym
• Kettlebells

Now the really confusing part — which exercises should you do to build muscle at home? The exercises you choose can be either compound, or multi-joint, moves like squats and pull-ups, or they can be isolation, or single-joint, exercises like biceps and hamstrings curls. Which is better for hypertrophy?

This is hotly debated in the fitness field, but according to research, both are equally effective. After observing biceps growth between people who used either compound or isolation exercises, in a June 2015 ​Asian Journal of Sports Medicine​ study, researchers saw no big difference.

The researchers concluded that exercise selection should be based on individual preference, time commitment and available equipment.

You're not going to have as much variety at home as at the gym — no machines, maybe not even dumbbells or resistance bands. In that case, compound exercises that use large muscle groups and activate a lot of muscle fibers at once are going to be your best bet.