Going to a gym five or more days a week to build up your muscle mass can be time consuming, really expensive, and it’s something that not everyone wants to do or can afford. Even if money is not an issue, the fact of having to “go to the gym” is.

What’s the alternative though?

The answer is that you can start building muscle mass right now and do it without using any weights or exercise equipment at all. Many people believe that you have to “pump some iron” or use heavy resistance equipment to build muscle mass. In reality, there are some really effective exercises you can do right in your home or office that can provide some really great results.

Using Your Own Body Weight to Build Muscles

The easiest and most common exercises you can do without using weights would be squats, pull-ups and push-ups in their most basic form. If you’re severely out of shape, beginners yoga or isometric exercises can be good, but some of these types of exercises can be tricky and it’s important that you perform them correctly.

Some Tips on Building Muscles Without Weights

Push-ups: When doing pushups, you might find that you can’t even manage to do a single push up. If this is you, then try to doing them on your knees as this reduces the difficulty greatly. If this is still too much for you then do your push-ups off the wall standing upright.

Once you can do a set of 10 start increasing the difficulty gradually like moving from standing upright to a set of stairs. Once you can do a set of 10, increase again by doing your pushups on your knees. Next, move to the full body pushup and once you get used to these, and you will in time, go back to the stairs putting your feet on the first step or two with your head facing downward for an even more intense muscle building workout.

Pull-ups: For doing pull ups you need a pull-up bar which can be mounted between a doorway. Pull-up bars are relatively inexpensive and it’s very important that the bar you use can easily sustain the weight of your entire body – plus some. If you can’t afford or do not have access to a pull-up bar, go to your local playground and use the monkey bars as your pull-up bar.

Just as in doing push-ups, if you are unable to do one single pull-up ask your spouse or a workout partner to help you take some of your weight off by assisting you in doing your first pull-ups. If help is unavailable or you’re just too shy to ask, use a stool to help reduce the weight that your arms need to lift. Continue with this help until you can do two pull-ups, and you will, then work on your own. Push yourself in each workout session until you can do 3, 4, 5…

And you will.

Squats: When you do squat exercises you want to put your hands behind your head then squat down while making sure that your knees do not go over your toes. What you want is to push your butt out and try to keep your knees behind your toes.

It’s a good idea to stretch your legs a bit before starting your squats then begin by squatting down as far as you can and then stand back up fully erect. These can be challenging at first but as you begin building up your leg muscles, and you will, they’ll get easier. Soon you’ll be doing complete squats and you’ll develop your ability to do more and more reps as time goes on.

Key Points When Building Muscles Without Weights

A key point to remember when you’re building muscle without using weights is that as you improve, and I’ll say it again… you will improve if you keep after it, is to constantly challenge yourself to do a little more in each session.

Another important point is that adding more reps without adding additional weight will increase your endurance level but not be as helpful at increasing your muscle mass. So, you’ll want to get creative of finding ways to keep up the intensity of your exercises.

A good way to increase your intensity is do things like placing your feet on a step or sofa while doing push-ups. When this gets easy to do move on to doing one arm push-ups… one arm pull-ups and one legged squats.

You get the idea. Just keep adding more resistance if you want to keep building muscle mass. Something as simple as a backpack with some bottles of water inside could do the trick once you get to this point. Each quart of water weighs right at 2 pounds each so you can easily judge what you’re adding each time.

As you can see, you can get pretty far at building muscles without buying weights or gym memberships just by using a little creativity. Visit http://MyFitnessNut.com for more muscle building tips and fitness ideas.