StrengthLog’s Home Workout Split

True or false: you can reach your fitness goals with a home workout split using inexpensive training equipment that takes up almost no space in the comfort of your home.

If you answered “true,” you’re a winner! If you said “false,” you’re still a winner because this article outlines the ultimate strength training program for building muscle at home using little more than a set of dumbbells and your bodyweight: StrengthLog’s Home Workout Split. 

This premium workout split is available in the StrengthLog app, which you can download for free using the buttons below.

Training at home is an increasingly popular way to keep fit, stay healthy, and build muscle. You can invest a minor fortune into expensive home gym equipment and get close to an equivalent experience as in a commercial gym. However, if you can’t or don’t want to spend that money or don’t have the room for a rack, bench, barbell, and so on, you can still reach your fitness goals in the comfort of your home.

Working out at home offers several benefits compared to going to a gym, but also some disadvantages. Let’s take a look!

Benefits of Training at Home

• You can make your own workout schedule. Training at home, you don’t have to adhere to the gym’s operating hours or find yourself locked out because you had a holiday training session planned and the gym was closed.
• You save time. A home gym has no waiting in line or occupied machines and racks. In addition, you don’t have to drive to and from the gym or pack a training bag. Let’s say you train four times per week, spending an hour in the gym every workout session. You also spend 30 minutes preparing for it and getting to and from the gym. That’s more than 100 additional hours every year that don’t contribute to your gains and a lot of time you could have spent doing more productive things.
• Privacy! Training in your own house or apartment is the way to go if you prefer to work out without an audience.
• You save money. You can spend a fortune on home gym equipment, but you don’t have to. An at-home workout with a set of dumbbells can work all different muscle groups effectively, as long as you pick the best exercises for the job. Even if you were to invest a substantial amount of money into your home gym equipment, it’s yours for life. Quality gym equipment lasts for decades; unless you keep expanding your home gym, you’ll essentially be working out for free.

Disadvantages of Training at Home

• If you’re a beginner, it can be tricky to know if you’re performing an exercise with good form. You probably don’t have a personal trainer to instruct you in your garage. Of course, you have many online resources at your disposal, but it’s not the same as having one-on-one guidance.
• Home gym equipment can take up a lot of space. Building an extensive home gym might be out of the question if you don’t have a garage or a cellar. You might not even be allowed to if you’re renting an apartment. Fortunately, you need very little equipment for an effective workout program, but if you have plans for a fully equipped home gym, you also need space.
• Of course, equipment limitation is the major disadvantage of working out at home. Unless you’re willing to spend a lot of money, you can’t equal the equipment variety of a commercial gym at home. You can get similar results from at-home training and do most exercises with a pair of dumbbells or resistance bands, but a commercial gym has the edge if you’re looking for maximum variety.

At the end of the day, it mostly comes down to personal preference. Your muscles respond to progressive overload with strength gains and muscle growth regardless of where you lift, and you can build your ideal physique with or without fancy gym equipment.

Introducing StrengthLog’s Home Workout Split 

Strength training is the best way to build lean muscle mass, gain strength, and improve your body composition. Lifting weights will help you realize your fitness goals, whatever they may be. However, designing the best workout split for your needs can be challenging if you prefer to train in the comfort of your home and don’t have a ton of equipment.

With StrengthLog’s Home Workout Split, you train your entire body, all the major muscle groups, using only three things: dumbbells, resistance bands, and your body weight. That’s it! Minimal equipment, minimal space, minimal cost, but maximum results.

With this 5-day workout split, you train each body part once per week.

• Day 1: Chest
• Day 2: Back
• Day 3: Quads and hamstrings
• Day 4: Shoulders
• Day 5: Biceps and triceps

If you prefer another workout order, feel free to switch things around, but that is the default program and how it looks in StrengthLog.

Who Is StrengthLog’s Home Workout Split For?

StrengthLog’s Home Workout Split is intended for intermediate to advanced trainees looking to build muscle and strength. Combined with a healthy diet and a caloric deficit, it is also ideal for weight loss while preserving your hard-earned lean muscle mass.

For beginners and intermediates looking for a training program with full-body workouts to get fit and strong at home using dumbbells, check out our StrengthLog’s 4 Week Home Workout Plan.

All training days of this five-day workout plan are also available separately as a single workout if you want to incorporate them into different workout splits of your design. You can find each as a stand-alone premium workout in StrengthLog and read more about it in these articles:

• Arm Workout With Dumbbells at Home
• Home Back Workout for Muscle Mass and Strength
• Home Chest Workout for Strength and Muscle Mass
• Leg Workout With Dumbbells at Home
• Shoulder Workout With Dumbbells at Home

What Equipment Do You Need for StrengthLog’s Home Workout Split?

You need four pieces of training equipment for this five-day split program.

• Your body weight. You probably already have access to this one. Bodyweight exercises remain some of the most effective, even in this age of spaceship-looking training machines. You’ll be doing a few in StrengthLog’s Home Workout Split.
• A resistance band. Inexpensive, versatile, portable, and takes up little to no space—four ways to describe resistance band training. A quality resistance band allows you to perform many of the best exercises for your entire body.
• A pull-up bar and a place to mount it. For a complete back workout, you want to include vertical pulls for optimal lat development, and that’s a daunting task using free weights. With a pull-up bar at your disposal, there is no problem.
• And finally, you need a set of dumbbells. If you want to invest in a set of regular, fixed dumbbells, go ahead. Your dumbbell collection might end up expensive and take up a lot of space, though. Compound movements for large muscle groups require much heavier weights than isolation exercises for smaller muscle groups. You can’t just use a single pair of dumbbells to train your entire body.

The best dumbbell option for most is getting a pair of adjustable ones. Adjustable dumbbells allow you to change the weight on the fly in the middle of the workout by flipping a switch or turning a knob. In addition, you won’t have to continually buy new and heavier dumbbells every time you get stronger.

Progression Model

For your muscles to grow and become stronger, you have to challenge them. You can do that in several ways, the most crucial being training intensity and training volume.

Training intensity means lifting heavy weights. When you can increase them, do so. This practice is called progressive overload and is the fundamental principle to gaining muscle mass and strength. Your muscles are lazy, and they don’t feel the need to improve when they can already handle the weights you’re using.

Once you can do the prescribed number of repetitions for all sets of any exercise, increase the load a little. Work yourself back up to the number of reps you’re going for, and rinse and repeat. You get stronger over time, and your muscles respond by adding lean mass.

Training volume is the weekly number of sets you perform for a muscle group. There are other definitions as well, but that’s the one we’re using here, as it’s easy to track.

Ideally, you want to do precisely the number of sets that produce optimal results without compromising your recovery. Go beyond that, and you won’t get additional muscle growth or strength gains, only longer recovery times. That number isn’t set in stone, but current research suggests that 10–20 weekly sets per muscle group are a suitable interval for most.^{1 2} As you gain training experience, your muscles can handle a higher volume.

StrengthLog’s Home Workout Split adds a couple of sets per muscle group every other week. You acclimatize to a gradually increased training volume and can recover adequately for continuous gains over time. Regardless of your training experience, the program keeps you within the scientifically established set range for muscle growth and strength gains.

Rest Intervals

To perform your best, your need to rest. Taking a few minutes between sets to recover allows you to lift heavier weights and do more reps. That means more significant gains over time. According to research, resting 2–3 minutes between sets is better than shorter rest periods.³

However, if you enjoy fast-paced weight training or don’t have much time to lift, you’ll still benefit from your efforts if you only rest a minute. You should allow your muscles some recovery time between sets for the best results, though.

Warming Up

Before each workout, take a few minutes to warm up. Doing so increases the blood flow to your muscles, improves performance, and might even lower the risk of injury. The risk of injury when lifting weights is already low, but the lower, the better.

Consider spending a few minutes on low to moderate-intensity cardio, like jogging in place, jumping rope, riding an at-home stationary bike, or whatever you enjoy that raises your heart rate. Then, perform a couple of high-rep sets of the first exercise of the workout of the day using light weights.

StrengthLog’s Home Workout Split: The Workouts

Let’s go through the program and look at the workouts and exercises. You can see details like rep ranges and the number of sets in StrengthLog. 

Workout 1: Chest

Starting the week with a chest workout is so popular that you might think the pecs grow better on Mondays. That’s not true, of course, but Mondays are known as International Chest Day in gyms worldwide. Training at home, you’re immune to the crowds and can train your chest effectively without standing in a queue to the bench press area regardless of what day it is.

This chest session, the first workout of the week, combines two compound exercises with an isolation exercise using a resistance band to hit every muscle fiber in your pecs.

Dumbbell Floor Press

A variant of the standard dumbbell chest press on a bench, the dumbbell floor press might not allow for a full range of motion, but you can use heavy weights to overload your pecs, which is a recipe for muscle growth.

If you happen to have a training bench at hand, do take advantage of it and do regular dumbbell chest presses.

Push-Up

The classic push-up has been a staple exercise for any bodybuilder, athlete, or fitness enthusiast for ages, and it’s still as popular as ever, for good reasons. It’s comparable to the barbell bench press for building strength and muscle mass.^{4 5 6} You can do push-ups whenever and wherever you are, as you always have the required equipment with you.

If you find regular push-ups too challenging, perform the kneeling push-up instead. Conversely, if push-ups on your feet are too easy, use a resistance band to make them more difficult.

Resistance Band Chest Fly

Effective dumbbell flyes depend on a full range of motion and getting a good stretch at the bottom of the movement. That isn’t easy without a training bench. Using a resistance band improves upon the traditional dumbbell fly and allows you to perform this isolation exercise for your chest at home.

Workout 2: Back

Building a muscular, wide back takes a lot of time and effort. However, with hard work and a selection of effective exercises, you can get great results even without a fully equipped gym.

Dumbbell Deadlift

Deadlifts strengthen all main muscle groups of the posterior chain, and this dumbbell variant is no exception. Training sessions with deadlifts are almost full body workouts in and of themselves.

Pull-Up

The pull-up is the old-school exercise for building wide lats. It’s challenging, though. If you find yourself struggling to complete more than a pull-up or two, try one of these tricks to help you along:

• Loop a resistance band around your legs and the pull-up bar. The band assists you in lifting your body weight and makes the exercise significantly easier. Use lighter bands as you get stronger, and you’ll eventually be able to do regular, unassisted pull-ups.
• You can ask a partner, friend, or roommate to stand behind you, grab your feet, and provide the assistance you need to complete your pull-ups.
• If you have no one to help you, you can place a sturdy chair or bench behind you, bend your legs, and place your toes on it. Then use a slight leg drive to assist your pull-ups.

On the other hand, if you can do a dozen or more bodyweight pull-ups without too much effort, hold a dumbbell between your legs or put on a backpack with a couple of books or something for added resistance.

Dumbbell Row

Can you build a complete, muscular back without rows? Maybe, but it’s going to be much more difficult. Row to grow, as they say. The dumbbell row is one of the best back mass-builders at your disposal. Being a unilateral movement where you focus on one side of the body at a time, it also reinforces core stability and helps improve your posture.

Dumbbell Shrug

Nothing beats the dumbbell shrug to develop the large trapezius muscle of your upper back. Avoid rotating the dumbbells as you shrug them upwards. Doing so adds nothing except stress to the shoulder joints. Also, don’t use too much weight. Go all the way up and squeeze your traps at the top for the best results.

Workout 3: Quads and Hamstrings

Leg day! Love it or hate it, a pair of strong, muscular legs enhance the look and function of your whole body. StrengthLog’s Home Workout Split features the best lower body exercises to build your quads, glutes, and hamstrings without needing a squat rack or advanced machines.

Dumbbell Squat

The squat can be performed in many ways and is probably the best overall exercise for improving athletic performance. The dumbbell squat works the same muscles as traditional back squats, but you don’t need a squat cage to rack a barbell and don’t have to worry about getting stuck at the bottom, as you can drop the dumbbells if you’re struggling.

Goblet Squat

The goblet squat is a fantastic exercise for your quads and glutes. Holding the weight to your chest makes it easier to maintain an upright torso and get into a deep squat position for optimal lower-body muscular development.

The video below demonstrates good form in the goblet squat using a kettlebell, but a dumbbell works just as well. If you have a suitably heavy kettlebell, go ahead and use it! Kettlebells are great, but you don’t have to buy one for StrengthLog’s Home Workout Split.

Dumbbell Lunge

The dumbbell lunge is not only an excellent exercise for your quadriceps and glutes but also improves your balance, coordination, and muscle control. Including lunges on lower-body days is a good idea for any home workout plan.

If your lower body muscles are fried by now and using added resistance in the form of dumbbells is too challenging, you can do body-weight lunges instead.

Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift

Compared to regular deadlifts, the Romanian deadlift shifts the work entirely to the posterior chain and is one of the most effective ways to train your hamstrings and lower back at home with dumbbells.

Step-Up

You finish off the StrengthLog’s Home Workout Split leg day with dumbbell step-ups. This exercise activates your glutes as much or more than regular squats or hip thrusts.⁷

Use whatever furniture you have available, as long as it’s sturdy and stable: a chair, stool, or a stair step, for example.

Workout 4: Shoulders

A pair of broad shoulders give you an athletic look and enhance the aesthetics of any physique. In addition, strong shoulder muscles are essential for almost any physical task involving your upper body.

Best of all, you can train your delts as effectively at home using only dumbbells as in the most well-equipped gym in the world.

Dumbbell Shoulder Press

The overhead press is the number one at-home mass-builder for your shoulder muscles. It works your front and side delts and allows you to use heavy weights for maximum strength development.

According to research, standing dumbbell shoulder presses activate your deltoid muscles more effectively than performing the exercise seated or using a barbell.⁸ Remember to maintain proper form and avoid using leg drive to push the weights up.

Monkey Row

The monkey row might be the best shoulder exercise you’ve never heard of. It’s a fantastic alternative to upright rows without the potential stress to the shoulder joint, primarily targeting your side and rear delts along with your upper traps.

Dumbbell Lateral Raise

Lateral raises, when performed correctly, effectively isolate your side deltoids. In this case, “correctly” means using a lighter weight to focus on your lateral delts without involving your traps and front delts too much.

Dumbbell Front Raise

Your front delts get plenty of training from presses for your chest and shoulders, but a few sets of isolation work adds muscle mass along with shoulder strength and stability. As with the lateral raise, make sure you keep your dumbbell light enough to allow you to focus entirely on the correct muscles.

Reverse Dumbbell Fly

For complete shoulder development, you can’t ignore the rear deltoid. Doing so is a common mistake, but you avoid it simply by adding the reverse dumbbell fly to your shoulder routine.

Workout  5: Biceps and Triceps

Building muscular arms is high on the to-do list of many fitness enthusiasts. All you need to succeed in that endeavor is a pair of dumbbells and some hard work.

Dumbbell Curl

When it comes to building biceps, it’s all about curls, the dumbbell curl being your primary biceps mass builder. It’s easy to perform, and you’ll quickly be rewarded with a great pump.

Hammer Curl

You can perform the dumbbell curl in different ways, and one variant is the hammer curl. It differs from the regular dumbbell curl in that it works your forearms to a greater degree and adds mass to the brachialis muscle that lies below the biceps.

Concentration Curl

When you do concentration curls one arm at a time, you can focus maximally on the working muscle. Use a lighter weight, strict form, and squeeze your biceps at the top.

Dumbbell Lying Triceps Extension

Lying triceps extensions are fantastic for building your triceps, regardless if you use a barbell or a pair of dumbbells, as it effectively hits all three heads of the muscle.

If you don’t have a raised surface to lie on when you perform the exercise, simply lie on a carpet or exercise mat and lower the dumbbells until they are about to touch the floor.

Close-Grip Push-Up

By moving your hands closer together when doing push-ups, you transfer more of the work to your triceps. As with push-ups for your chest, feel free to perform this exercise on your knees if you find the regular variant too challenging.

Dumbbell Standing Triceps Extension

Research suggests that overhead triceps extensions are superior for triceps muscle growth compared to a neutral arm position.⁹ You can stand upright, as shown in the video below, or sit down on a chair if you prefer. The important thing is that you go for a full range of motion, lowering the dumbbell as far as you can and squeezing your triceps at the top of the movement.

Ab Training

StrengthLog’s Home Workout Split does not have a dedicated ab training day, but you can do some ab work at the end of one or two training sessions if you want. It doesn’t matter which ones.

Here’s a short and sweet workout for your abs. Tack it on at the end of a session and feel the burn in your abdominals. You can rest between sets as usual or do one set of each exercise without rest, taking a break between rounds.

1. Lying Leg Raise
2. Sit-Up
3. Oblique Crunch
4. Plank

Do 15–20 reps per set (hold the plank position as long as your can) and 3–4 rounds of exercises.

Keep in mind that training your abs has nothing to do with fat loss. Visible abs are made in the kitchen, as they say. You lose fat in any area by eating fewer calories than you burn, not by doing endless reps of sit-ups. That being said, core exercises for your abdominals help strengthen and stabilize your body, improving performance and posture. Training your abs can be helpful in other ways, just not for making them more visible.

Workout Days and Rest Days

Your exercise days and rest days are up to you and your schedule. 

You can work out five consecutive days and rest on the weekend, or you can select two different days of the week and insert them whenever it suits you. Regardless of how you structure your training week, StrengthLog’s Home Workout Split offers the ideal weekly training volume and optimal recovery times to maximize muscle mass gains.

Take an extra day of rest if and when you need it. Your muscles grow when you provide them with enough rest and recovery, not during the workouts.

When You Reach the End of StrengthLog’s Home Workout Split

Six weeks after starting StrengthLog’s Home Workout Split, you’ve completed the final workout, hopefully feeling great and ready for more.

StrengthLog’s Home Workout Split might be over, but your fitness journey isn’t. If you enjoyed the past six weeks, feel free to continue following the program for as long as you want. It is designed as a long-term solution for anyone looking to stay fit by training at home. You can start over from the beginning or stay with the final week of workouts. It doesn’t become less effective over time. As long as you are consistent and increase the weights you lift when you can, StrengthLog’s Home Workout Split will provide you with consistent results.

Follow This Program

Want to start StrengthLog’s Home Workout Split?

It’s available exclusively in our workout tracker app.

While this program requires a premium subscription, StrengthLog itself is entirely free. You can download it and use it as a workout tracker and general strength training app – and all basic functionality is free forever.

It even has a bunch of free programs and workouts. However, our more advanced programs (such as this one) are for premium users only.

Want to give premium a shot? We offer all new users a free 14-day trial of premium, which you can activate in the app.

Download StrengthLog for free with the buttons below:

>> Click here to return to our list of training programs.

References

1. J Hum Kinet. 2022 Feb 10;81:199-210. A Systematic Review of The Effects of Different Resistance Training Volumes on Muscle Hypertrophy.
2. International Journal of Strength and Conditioning, Vol 1 No 1 (2021). Resistance Training Recommendations to Maximize Muscle Hypertrophy in an Athletic Population: Position Stand of the IUSCA.
3. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research: July 2016 – Volume 30 – Issue 7 – p 1805-1812. Longer Interset Rest Periods Enhance Muscle Strength and Hypertrophy in Resistance-Trained Men.
4. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research: January 2015 – Volume 29 – Issue 1 – p 246-253. Bench Press and Push-up at Comparable Levels of Muscle Activity Results in Similar Strength Gains.
5. Journal of Exercise Science & Fitness. Volume 15, Issue 1, June 2017, Pages 37-42. Low-load bench press and push-up induce similar muscle hypertrophy and strength gain.
6. J Sports Sci Med. 2020 Jun; 19(2): 289–297. Push-Ups vs. Bench Press Differences in Repetitions and Muscle Activation between Sexes.
7. J Sports Sci Med. 2020 Mar; 19(1): 195–203. Gluteus Maximus Activation during Common Strength and Hypertrophy Exercises: A Systematic Review.
8. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research: July 2013 – Volume 27 – Issue 7 – p 1824-1831. Effects of Body Position and Loading Modality on Muscle Activity and Strength in Shoulder Presses.
9. Eur J Sport Sci. 2022 Aug 11;1-11. Triceps brachii hypertrophy is substantially greater after elbow extension training performed in the overhead versus neutral arm position.