Weight Gain Workout Plan At Home

February 07, 2024

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When you say you’re looking for workouts to do at home to help you gain weight, we assume by weight you mean muscle, right?

If so, you’ve found yourself in the right place.

People sometimes wonder whether it’s possible to build muscle from the comfort of your own home and let us tell you that it absolutely is! Muscle building isn’t prejudiced to training in a gym, you can build muscle from wherever as long as you stick to the important muscle-building principles that we’ll cover today.

In addition to said principles, we’ll be looking at the best muscle-building exercises to do at home, and we’ll put together a workout for you to follow – let’s get into it! 

 

How to Gain Weight Training From Home

So, how exactly do we gain weight (muscle) from the comfort of our own homes?

Eat Enough Calories to Build Muscle

 

Muscle building is an energy-intensive process, so you need to make sure you’re fuelling the body with the calories (energy) that it needs to grow.

Failure to do so will result in failure to build muscle. You could have the best training program in the world, and train as hard as you possibly can, but if you’re not eating enough calories, then you’re not going to build muscle – simple.

You may or may not have come across the term calorie surplus. Put simply, this means to be eating more calories than you burn on a daily basis, and this is what’s required to build muscle.

As Einstein once said, “Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted from one form to another”. So we need the additional energy we consume through our food to fuel the muscle-building process.

If we end up burning 2000 calories on a normal day as a result of our daily activities (exercise, walking, breathing etc.) then we need to be eating roughly 10% on top of this to support muscle growth.

To work out exactly how much you should be eating, along with a macronutrient breakdown (protein, carbohydrates and fats) check out our article “How many calories do I need when bulking”. Don’t be put of why the word “Bulking” it’s just a term fitness enthusiasts use to describe a muscle-building phase.

 

Hit Your Daily Protein Goal

Protein is by far the most important macronutrient for building muscle. Again, if we don’t eat enough protein, then we’re going to fail to maximize our muscle-building potential.

Our bodies are in a constant state of protein turnover. Old proteins are recycled out (protein breakdown) and new proteins are built (protein synthesis).

When muscle protein synthesis exceeds muscle protein breakdown, then we’re going to be in a positive net protein balance resulting in muscle growth. Likewise, if breakdown exceeds synthesis, then we’re going to be losing muscle mass.

There are 2 ways to increase muscle protein synthesis. Firstly you can perform resistance training (which we’ll cover in the next section) and secondly, you can increase synthesis by simply eating protein.

But how much protein is enough? Good question.

A 2019 research paper found that 0.7 – 1g of protein per lb of bodyweight (1.6 – 2.2g per kg bodyweight) was enough to maximize muscle protein synthesis. So for example a 175lb person should eat between 122-175 grams of protein daily.

 

 

We understand this is still a fairly large range, so the general consensus is this: if you’ve got higher levels of body fat you can stay towards the lower end of the range. Conversely, as you get leaner you should aim towards the high end of the scale to aid on the side of caution to prevent any muscle loss.

The article we recommended in the previous section is great as it features a calorie calculator so you can work out your daily calorie and protein requirements to build muscle – check it out.

And if you're someone who often struggles to consume enough protein, we recommend considering a protein supplement - they're a tasty treat, their cheap and super convenient! 

 

Apply Progressive Overload

Now that we’ve covered the most important nutrition principles, let’s move on to the most important training principle which is Progressive Overload.

As the name suggests, it means to overload our muscles, progressively.

You see, our bodies are adaptive in nature. When we first introduce them to a new stimulus I.e. Hitting the iron for the first time, our bodies will adapt to become bigger and stronger so that the stimulus that was once difficult now seems a stroll in the park.

If we were to stop here, or continually train with the same weights we did when we first started working out, then our body would see no reason to adapt as it’s already capable of handling such stimulus, and progress would plateau.

Instead, we need to constantly introduce tougher stimuli to force the body to continually adapt and continue to grow – that’s how we’re going to build noticeable results.

This is known as Progressive Overload.

Here are some ways we can apply progressive overload to our training:

• Increase resistance
• Increase the number of reps
• Increase the number of sets
• Increase workout frequency
• Decrease rest times
• Increase time under tension

We’ve got to admit that increasing the resistance has to be our favourite method to apply progressive overload. It’s not necessarily better than the alternatives, in fact, research has shown that increasing the number of reps produces just as much hypertrophy as increasing resistance does – but we just feel that achieving a new weight PR hits differently.

Having said that, the topic of the article is training at home, so increasing resistance may not always be an option depending on your home gym setup. So just know that increasing reps is just as good when it comes to building muscle.

The moral of the story – keep making your workouts harder and you’ll be rewarded with packing on the muscle.

 

Muscle Building Exercises To Do at Home

Everyone’s home gym setup is different. Some may have no equipment, some may own a set of dumbbells, others may have a barbell and some plates, and the lucky ones will have the best multi-gym money can buy.

We have therefore divided our favourite exercises you can do at home into 3 categories. The first category will cover bodyweight exercises that require no equipment. The second category covers exercises with just a set of dumbbells and our third category covers barbell exercises.

 

Bodyweight Exercises

Chest

• Push-ups
• Decline push-up
• Incline push-up
• Bench dip

Back

• Pull-ups (bar required)
• W Superman
• Lying towel pull-down
• Lying superman
• Towel Lat pull-down
• Rows with towel
• Plank

Legs

• Squats (Back, front, Bulgarian, Split, Jump, Pistol, Sissy, Sumo)
• Lunges (Reverse, Forward, Lateral, Deficit, Jumping)
• Step-ups
• Calf raises
• Wall sit
• Nordic Hamstring Curl
• Glute Bridge (Banded, Marching)
• Side lying hip abduction
• Supine Walk Outs
• Glute Kickback

Arms

• Push-ups (Normal, close grip)
• Bench dips
• Chin Ups (Bar needed)
• Pull Ups (Bar needed)
• Towel curl (with a partner)
• Towel push down (with a partner)

Shoulders

• Push-ups
• Pike push-ups
• Hand-stand push-ups
• Shoulder taps
• Wall walks
• Handstand Hold

 

Dumbbell Exercises

Chest

• Test
• Chest press (Flat, incline, decline)
• Chest fly (Flat, incline, decline)
• Dumbbell pullover
• Dumbbell push-up
• Hex press
• Dumbbell cross-body raise
• Reverse grip dumbbell press
• Lying hammer press

Back

• Bent over row (Overhand, underhand, neutral)
• One arm row
• Dumbbell pullover
• Alternating renegade row
• Dumbbell shrug
• Seal row
• Rear delt flys
• Chest-supported row

Legs

• Squats (Dumbbell, goblet, split, front, elevated split, jump, Bulgarian)
• Lunges (walking, reverse, lateral, curtsy)
• Step-Ups
• Deadlifts (Romanian, straight leg, single leg RDL)
• Calf raises (standing, seated)

Arms

• Curls (side, hammer, zottman, rotating, drag, spider, incline)
• Dumbbell press (flat, incline, decline)
• Overhead extension
• Skull crushers
• Tate press

Shoulders

• Dumbbell press (traditional, Arnold, neutral grip, push press)
• Lateral raise
• Front raise
• Rear delt fly
• Rear delt row
• Shrugs
• Upright row
• Face pull

 

Barbell Exercises

Chest

• Bench press (flat, incline, decline)
• Close grip press
• Pullover

Back

• Rows (overhand, underhand)
• Seal Row
• Chest-supported row
• Pullovers

Legs

• Squats (back, front, split, Bulgarian)
• Lunges (walking, forward, reverse, deficit reverse)
• Hip thrusts
• Deadlifts (traditional, straight leg, Romanian, Sumo)
• Good mornings
• Calf raises

Arms

• Curls (traditional, reverse, drag)
• Skull crushers
• Close grip bench press
• Seated extension
• Wrist curls

Shoulders

• Military Press
• Push Press
• Z Press
• Clean and press
• Incline bench press
• Landmine press
• Front raise
• Upright row
• Rear delt row
• Shrugs

 

Muscle Building Home Workouts

Onto the good stuff, the workouts. We have designed 3 full-body workouts for you to follow each week.

Rep Ranges

The workouts have been designed with rep ranges. The way the rep ranges work is that you should start the first set of any exercise with a weight that allows you to perform any number of reps that fall in the rep range.

For example, if the rep range is 8-10, the first set should see you hit either 8,9 or 10 reps. The subsequent sets will likely see you perform fewer reps as the body starts to fatigue – and this is to be expected.

So your 3 sets may look something like this:

• Set 1 – 10 reps
• Set 2 – 9 reps
• Set 3 – 8 reps

The idea is that each week you try to increase the number of reps until you can hit the upper limit of the rep range for all 3 sets (i.e.... 10 reps, 10 reps, 10 reps). Only then should you increase the weight.

Once you increase the weight, you’ll be back down to the 8 rep mark and the process starts over again.

 

The Workouts

The 3 workouts we have designed utilise dumbbells and a workout bench. The reason for this is that dumbbells allow us to perform hundreds of different resistance exercises, they do not require large amounts of space like a barbell does, and both bits of equipment are available for the majority of people.

While you can most certainly build muscle utilising only bodyweight exercises, we feel that by using dumbbells we get to level up our training and have plenty more exercises in our locker to choose from.

If you don’t have either a workout bench or a set of dumbbells, we recommend picking up the following:

 

 

Check Price on Amazon

 

 

 

Check Price on Amazon

 

These adjustable dumbbells are awesome! Gone are the days when you need to purchase an entire dumbbell rack, these dumbbells allow you to target the whole body with just 1 piece of equipment!

 

Full Body Workout 1

Exercise	Sets/Reps
Dumbbell Flat Chest Press	4 sets of 8-10 reps
Romanian Deadlift	3 sets of 8-10 reps
Chest Supported Row	3 sets of 10-12 reps
Goblet Squats	3 sets of 10-12 reps
Standing Bicep Curls	3 sets of 10-12 reps
Skullcrushers	3 sets of 10-12 reps

 

 

Full Body Workout 2

Exercise	Sets/Reps
Dumbbell Row	4 sets of 8-10 reps on each arm
Bulgarian Split Squat	3 sets of 8-10 reps on each leg
Incline Chest Press	3 sets of 8-10 reps
Seated Dumbbell shoulder press	3 sets of 10-12 reps
Bicep Hammer Curls	3 sets of 10-12 reps on each arm
Seated Calf raises	3 sets of 12-15 reps

 

 

Full Body Workout 3

Exercise	Sets/Reps
Dumbbell Squats	4 sets of 8-10 reps
Close grip Triceps press (neutral grip)	3 sets of 8-10 reps
Bent Over Row	3 sets of 10-12 reps
Overhead triceps extension	3 sets of 10-12 reps
Dumbbell Lateral Raise	3 sets of 10-12 reps
Standing calf raises	3 sets of 12-15 reps

 

 

Final Thoughts

And there we have it, your very own weight gain workout plan at home. We’ve covered nutrition, training principles, best exercises to perform at home, and we have designed 3 workouts for you to follow!

Woah, that’s a lot of information, but hopefully we’ve been able to split it up in a way that is easily dissectible.

Remember, eat enough – push yourself harder than you did the week before, and you’re onto a winner. If you have any further questions regarding your weight gain workout plan at home – feel free to drop them down in the comments and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can, happy building!

 

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