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On weekdays i am doing Kickboxing for an hour under the guidance of a recognized trainer in our area. Kickboxing is helping me a lot to tone the body and specially in weight loss. My height is 5'10 and currently weight is about 75. Before joining kickboxing around 3 months back my weight was 81.

The thing which i noticed in doing kickboxing is that it is not helping me making good muscles but it is making them stronger which is a good point. But i want to build good muscles as well. So i am thinking to do weight lifting sessions in a gym on weekends.

So please can anybody suggest me should i go ahead with this idea or you have any better option instead of this?

Any suggestion will be highly appreciated.

P.S. I am a desk-jockey as a software engineer, and having around 9 working hours on weekdays.

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  • Are you doing kickboxing every day? How much physical training (i.e. non-combat training) is included? How much is technical training?
    – Mårten
    Feb 4, 2015 at 7:12
  • Hi Marten.. I am doing kickboxing on weekdays (5 days a week for an hour). The training includes mostly first work-outs like streaking, running, set-ups, sit-ups, planks, and more. Then lots punching and kicking on punching bag. After this calm down exercises like frog jump, butterfly and like these. Sometimes we have mock fights among our-self.
    – Himanshu
    Feb 4, 2015 at 7:16
  • Okay do you have access to a gym, i.e. barbells, racks, dumbbells?
    – Mårten
    Feb 4, 2015 at 7:23
  • In in my locality there are lots of gyms which have all these weight bars but not in my Kickboxing club.
    – Himanshu
    Feb 4, 2015 at 7:26

3 Answers 3

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Go with a program like Starting Strength or Strong Lifts 5x5. They are hybrids of Bill Starr's 5x5 which is a training program for football players and promotes overall strength and athleticism.

In fact, you would be a good candidate for switching to the Bill Starr version later on (after maybe a year of the Starting Strength or Strong Lifts program), because Olympic lifts are terrific for explosive/accelerating speed.

Regarding building muscle vs strength, these barbell programs will put you on a path to squatting twice your body weight. Show me anyone who can do that, or pull 500 pounds off the floor, or bench 250: they will be a strong, they will have muscles, and they will hit like train.

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  • These are all heavy compound exercises. If your objective is to build muscle, then these are not for you, since you want some isolation exercises. If strength is what you aim for, perfect.
    – s3v3ns
    Feb 4, 2015 at 13:58
  • @s3v3ns I completely disagree with your opinion. The barbell strength trainers I know are always bigger than the kids on the machines or who stand in front of the dumbbell mirror all day.
    – Eric
    Feb 4, 2015 at 14:11
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    We are not talking about some inexperienced kids, but about bodybuilders that know what they are doing. I passed my friend in size in no time and i follow bodybuilding routine, he follows strength. Pretty much like the one you showed me. I have much better muscle definition than him, but at some areas, he is stronger than me. I think you have a biased opinion in here. Strength training of course increases size, but not the way bodybuilding does. I have tried both. But since my goal is to get a good physice i decided to go with bodybuilding.
    – s3v3ns
    Feb 4, 2015 at 14:15
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    Also, what about the power lifting kids, who pull their backs with horrible form, just to pull heavy weights? Why do you bash one side, that ironically, isn't yours.
    – s3v3ns
    Feb 4, 2015 at 14:23
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    @s3v3ns Have you ever seen a tiny tree with huge limbs? You don't, because it's not natural. Doing isolation exercises to get huge arms and such encounters the same problem. Compound, full-body lifts is the best way to get real muscle growth as a beginner. Once you have develop the base and move to intermediate stage, that is when isolation routines start holding actual value.
    – Moses
    Feb 5, 2015 at 18:27
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Given the amount of work you do already, adding weight training may put you over the limit of what your body can recover from to build itself stronger, so I would be cautious, but give it a try and see what results you get.

Twice a week, go for heavy, muscle building exercises, 4 sets of 7 reps to aim for strength and volume. Aim for ~6 different exercises that cover the whole body.

Either do some easier exercises or go for the classics:

Bench press Press Squat Deadlift Row Chinups/Lat pulldowns

These are some of the most effective strength training exercises known, but they also require you to learn to do them properly, or it will not be as effective and very likely unsafe, especially deadlifts and squats.

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  • He said he wants to build muscle, not strength...
    – s3v3ns
    Feb 4, 2015 at 8:36
  • @s3v3ns 7+ reps is more geared towards muscle, whereas 3-5 reps would be more appropriate for strength training. @ Marten I agree that adding a workout routine on top of 5 days of intense cardio can potentially be too much. Listen to your body, start with light weights, and be sure to eat and sleep well.
    – Moses
    Feb 5, 2015 at 18:23
  • Anything under 8 is strength in my opinion. But i might be very wrong. This is just from what i have seen work on me and we all are different.
    – s3v3ns
    Feb 5, 2015 at 18:28
  • The studies I have seen say that 8-12 is optimal for volume, 1-5 for explosiveness and strength. I picked 7 because I personally believe that pure volume training is wrong, but that's subjective I guess :)
    – Mårten
    Feb 6, 2015 at 6:59
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Maybe calisthenics is something for you. When i was younger i trained 1-1.30 hours every day in the gym and then had a hour of handball afterwards. It can be exhausting at start, but your body will get used to the high intensity.

To build muscle, as a beginner, just try to find a good program that has a routine for each body part. As you advance, you can start training each body part twice a week. Best routines to build muscle are bodybuilding routines. You can find some from sites like bodybuilding.com, you can find some plans in here

Nothing bad will happen if you try it. I do not know how you will fit it into your schedule tho if you have such time frames.

Once you go on that road, nutrition will be very, very, very important. You need your body to recover as fast as possible. Meaning you will need good nutrition and lots of rest(8-9 hours of sleep)

If you start feeling tired and moody all the times, your might be over doing it, and you do not want that.

At the end of the day, every one are different. Something like this has worked for me for years, because i was eating right and had lots of sleep.

I hope this answers your question.

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  • Hi @S3v3ns thanks for you reply. I just checked out the calisthenics exercises on wiki and i think maximum of these exercise i am doing in my kickboxing training sessions without any weight. That's why i am worry that might be due to not lifting any weight my muscles are not growing hence looking for weight lifting options on weekends. I am also following a rigorous diet with lots of veggie juice, sprouts and dairy products(done a lots of research on this topics and i am a vegetarian) and take generally 7 hours sleep.
    – Himanshu
    Feb 4, 2015 at 7:31
  • I would not say guys who do calisthenics are not muscular. Of course they can not compete with bodybuilders, check the links i gave. I pretty much built my routine following "Arnolds blueprint" But that might be a bit too advanced. Maybe something like "shorcut to size". That was my 2nd routine and it was fun
    – s3v3ns
    Feb 4, 2015 at 7:34
  • bodybuilding.com is not loading for me at the moment for some reason. But if you go to bodybuilding.com/fun/shortcut-to-size.html and scroll down, you can see the calendar with workouts. Check them out and see how you like it. Do not follow his nutrition advice tho.
    – s3v3ns
    Feb 4, 2015 at 7:37
  • Okay thanks @s3v3ns i will look into that link try to follow that program which you suggested and try to follow this routine.
    – Himanshu
    Feb 4, 2015 at 7:42
  • If you feel like it's too much, take something softer to begin with. The idea of picking this routine is to have an idea, what a routine should look like and maybe, you can build your own, to match your specific needs.
    – s3v3ns
    Feb 4, 2015 at 7:43

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