The Home Strength-Training Blueprint: Build Muscle Outside the Gym

While it might be easier, paying for a monthly gym membership doesn’t actually build muscle. Putting in the work to achieve progressive muscle overload does build muscle. You can get that at home, without travel and a monthly subscription, with a well-designed home gym. 

With Labor Day coming up, everyone is shifting into their fall routines, which makes it a great time to commit to your home workout routine. Below, we cover what you actually need to do to build muscle at home without depending on an extra commute, and give you a sample adjustable dumbbell program you can start this weekend. 

Why Home Strength Training Works

There is plenty of equipment that you can use to build muscle, or achieve hypertrophy. Muscle growth occurs when you consistently increase the demand you put on your muscles over time. You can achieve that with a complex and finicky cable machine at a loud and noisy gym, or you can do that with a simple pair of adjustable dumbbells in the comfort of your own home. The key is having the ability to keep adding resistance as you get stronger.

No matter how much space you have at home, adjustable dumbbells are the solution to your equipment needs. A single set lets you go from a quick warmup with five-pound weights to a full 50-pound set for heavy workouts, while taking up just a few square feet of space. That makes it much easier to fit a training session into your home and your life, even as things get busy after Labor Day. 

What You Need to Get Started

Starting your adjustable dumbbell workout routine is easier than you think. You need just three things:

• A set of adjustable dumbbells

• A weight bench, like the UB 200, or another stable surface

• Enough floor space to allow yourself a full range of motion

Assuming you have some clear floorspace, the dumbbells are the only equipment that requires your investment. Core Home Fitness adjustable dumbbells are built to help you kickstart and continue your training, no matter where you’re starting. You don’t have to worry about buying additional equipment down the road or hitting a plateau in your training that you don’t have the equipment to exceed. 

If you’re looking for a true replacement for the gym, you can supplement with an adjustable bench instead of a flat bench, a bed, or the floor. The UB 200 is built to let you move through flat, inclined, and declined positions, giving you the ability to perform movements that you cannot achieve on a flat bench or on the floor. 

Finally, as with any type of exercise, it’s important from a safety perspective to have enough room to move and extend in all directions. This also lets you perform squats, lunges, and floor presses to round out a full-body program. 

Building Muscle: The Core Principles

When you’re building a home workout routine, it’s important to understand the fundamental principles of how muscle building works. Here are our rules of thumb for achieving the best results:

• Weight: If you’re building muscle, you want to choose a weight range that allows you to manage between 8 and 12 reps. That challenges you without leading to immediate fatigue.

• Rest: Take a 60-90 second rest break between each set to give yourself time to recover while keeping overall intensity high.

• Frequency: Aim to hit every muscle group roughly twice a week to make the most of your body’s ability to repair and recover without overwhelm.

• Form: With dumbbells, how you lower the weight matters just as much as how you lift it. Practice good form and lower weights slowly to make the most of your workout. 

Sample Adjustable Dumbbell Program

With Labor Day coming up, here’s a sample program that lets you get your new routine started over the long weekend, before fall really hits. This is a three-day full-body split built on adjustable dumbbells, the UB 200 adjustable bench, and some open floorspace.

• Day 1 (Flat bench): Flat bench press, single-arm row, goblet squat, Romanian deadlift, bicep curl

• Day 2: Rest or light cardio

• Day 3 (Incline bench): Incline shoulder press, chest-supported row, reverse lunge, dumbbell deadlift, tricep extension

• Day 4: Rest or light cardio

• Day 5 (Decline bench): Decline press, bent-over row, split squat, hip hinge variation, hammer curl

• Day 6 and 7: Rest or light cardio

For each movement, aim for 8 to 12 reps and three sets. Using adjustable dumbbells allows you to customize your workout weights to the level that pushes you, without exhausting or causing injury. As a rough guide, if you're completing all sets with a rep or two left in reserve, it's time to size up the dumbbells for that exercise.

Tips for Staying Consistent at Home

Staying consistent is often the hardest part of any workout routine. Here’s what we suggest to help you keep your routine on track at home:

• Give your dumbbells and bench a dedicated spot that is easy to access. The easier it is to start your routine, the fewer excuses you have not to do it.

• Track your weights, sets, and reps. It’s easy to lose track of your progress if you don’t write it down! Keep a record so you can continue to see those numbers go up. It’s great motivation if you’re not seeing a clear difference in the mirror. 

• Eat more protein. Currently, the FDA recommends eating 1.2-1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight, or roughly 0.5 to 0.7 grams per pound. If you weight 180 lbs, that’s 90-126 grams of protein a day. This helps your body recover from your workout and actually build muscle instead of stagnating, making you less tired, giving you more obvious gains, and keeping you motivated.

Get Started on Your Fall Workout Routine

A home setup with adjustable dumbbells and the right bench rivals anything a commercial gym floor offers for building muscle. The UB 200's range of positions covers angles a basic setup can't, and adjustable dumbbells handle the load progression from a first session to a heavy working set months down the line. There's no better time to start than a long weekend built for it. You can check out all of Core Home Fitness’s workout equipment to start building your ideal home gym today.