The most effective way to gain mucle mass is to design a well thoughout muscle building workout.

Planning is the key to succeeding in anything including building muscle.

Before you start your exercise you need to warm up and when you are finished your muscle exercises you need to cool down. Warm up and cool down are almost more important than the exercise period itself as they protect the muscles from injury and get them ready for exercise.

The warm-ups should be simple exercises starting with a little bit of cardio followed by a few sets of low intensity weight sets to get the mind and muscles warm and ready for the exercise to come. Taking a willy-nilly approach to your muscle exercises by just wondering in to the gym and starting your exercises will lead to injury. If you injure your muscles you will be unable to continue with your workouts in the gym thus losing out on that muscle gain.

The workout part of your workout is where the real muscle building begins. You need a very good plan here as well.There should be no doubt in your mind as to what you are going to be doing in terms of reps, weights and sets for each muscle group you're exercising that day. Just turning up at your gym and starting to exercise without the plan simply leads to diminished or no result at all.

Knowing exctly what you going to do when you enter the gym makes for a great stress free workout that can be tracked.

By creating small micro-tears in muscles by picking up heavyweights you start the process of muscle growth. When the body heals these tears it it makes the muscles stronger than they were before and thus bigger.Therefore keeping detailed record of our exercises is imperative.

The previous week we were to 2 sets of five reps with 20 kg.But in order to progress and build muscle we need to pick up either a heavier weight or two more repetitions. Going with the 20 kg weight for seven rapes and two sets will increase the intensity and thus the muscle gain.

Without knowing what weight and repetitions you did last week it is impossible to know what you should do this weekNow can you see the importance of planning your muscle building workout.

You should also plan to only exercise one muscle group once per week.Trying to exercise a particular muscle group twice in the same week really doesn't give you any muscle gain in fact it will hinder it.

Do abs and legs on one day. Do triceps, chest and shoulders on the second gym day.Combining forearms, biceps and back is make the week a wrap. Make sure every other day is a rest day.

Selecting the exercises you want to do to each muscle group is the final part of your workout plan.for example for back exercises you could deadlifts, overhand chin-ups, bent over dumbell rows.

As a general guideline plan to no more than 5-7 sets in total for large muscle groups such as the legs and no more than 2-4 sets for smaller muscle groups such as biceps.

Try not to exceed 5 to 7 reps for large and 10 to 12 for small muscle groups. Once you can pick up the weight for 7 reps for 2 sets for example then its time to increase the weight.