How to make a home workout plan with no equipment, a pair of dumbbells, or a home gym: pick your days, cover 5 movement patterns, progress without heavy weights, and copy an example week.
To make a home workout plan, build it around the equipment you own, train 3 full-body days a week to start, and cover a squat, a hinge, a push, a pull, and one smaller muscle each session with about 3 hard sets per exercise. You do not need heavy weights: a 2017 meta-analysis found similar muscle growth with light and heavy loads when sets were taken to failure, so progress by adding reps, slowing the tempo, and moving to harder variations.
A home workout plan should not be a gym plan with the barbell crossed out. It needs to fit what you actually own, and it needs a way to get harder when you cannot grab a heavier weight off the rack.
This guide covers three equipment levels: bodyweight only, a pair of dumbbells, and a home gym, with an example week for each. If you would rather skip the planning, the free workout plan generator builds a starting week for any of these setups in about a minute.
You need four decisions: how many days you can train, how long each session is, what equipment you own, and how you will progress. Everything else follows from those.
The World Health Organization's 2020 guidelines recommend muscle-strengthening activities that work all major muscle groups on 2 or more days a week. That is the floor. For building muscle, 3 days usually fits better, and our guide on how many days a week to lift covers the trade-offs.
Start from movement patterns, then fill each one with the best exercise your equipment allows. Every full-body session should include five slots: a squat, a hinge, a push, a pull, and one smaller muscle like shoulders, arms, or calves.
| Movement | Bodyweight only | A pair of dumbbells | Home gym (rack, barbell, bench, pull-up bar) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Squat | Bulgarian split squat, reverse lunge | Goblet squat, dumbbell split squat | Back squat, front squat |
| Hinge | Single-leg hip thrust, Nordic curl | Dumbbell Romanian deadlift | Barbell Romanian deadlift, deadlift |
| Push | Push-up variations, dips | Dumbbell floor or bench press, overhead press | Bench press, overhead press |
| Pull | Pull-up, inverted row under a table | One-arm row, chest-supported row | Pull-up, barbell row |
| Smaller muscle | Pike push-up, single-leg calf raise | Lateral raise, curl, triceps extension | Dumbbell or plate isolation work |
The pull slot is the one most bodyweight plans get wrong, because pulling needs something to hold. A doorway pull-up bar is the most useful purchase for a no-equipment plan, and a sturdy table works for inverted rows until you get one.
If you own dumbbells but no bench, use the floor press instead of the bench press and a hand-on-chair one-arm row instead of a chest-supported row. Our ranking of the best dumbbell exercises for building muscle explains which dumbbell lifts give the most for the effort.
Train 3 days a week as a full-body plan to start, with a rest day between sessions. That trains every muscle about three times a week and keeps each session to 4 or 5 exercises, about 30 to 45 minutes. With 4 days, switch to an upper/lower split. With only 2, do 5 or 6 exercises per session.
Home training has one big advantage: there is no commute, so short sessions are easy to fit in. For a full walkthrough of the most common setup, see our 3-day full body workout plan. If fat loss is the goal, the same structure works with a few changes, covered in how to make a workout plan to lose weight.
Yes. What matters most for muscle growth is how close each set gets to failure, not how heavy the weight is. A 2017 meta-analysis of 21 studies by Schoenfeld, Grgic, Ogborn, and Krieger compared low loads (60% of a one-rep max or less) with heavier loads, with every set taken to failure. Muscle growth was similar between the two, while heavy loads produced bigger gains in one-rep max strength.
A 2021 network meta-analysis by Lopez and colleagues reached the same conclusion: when sets were taken to or near failure, muscle growth did not depend on load, but strength improved more with heavier weights.
There is a lower limit. A 2018 study by Lasevicius and colleagues found that training at 20% of one-rep max built less muscle than 40%, 60%, or 80%, even with volume load matched. In practice, that means a set of 80 easy squats is not the same as a set of 15 hard Bulgarian split squats. If you can do more than about 30 reps of an exercise, it is time for a harder version.
Bodyweight work can match weights directly in some cases. In a 2017 study by Kikuchi and Nakazato, push-ups and a bench press set at about 40% of one-rep max produced similar chest and triceps growth over 8 weeks.
The trade-off: if your goal is a bigger one-rep max on a specific lift, heavier loads do that better.
Make each set harder in small steps, in this order: add reps, slow the tempo, add a pause, then move to a harder variation. Each step keeps the set close to failure as you get stronger.
Here is what variation ladders look like for the main bodyweight movements:
| Movement | Easier | Middle | Harder |
|---|---|---|---|
| Push | Hands-on-bench push-up | Floor push-up | Feet-elevated push-up, then deficit push-up |
| Squat | Bodyweight squat | Reverse lunge | Bulgarian split squat, then pistol squat to a box |
| Pull | Inverted row, knees bent | Inverted row, legs straight | Pull-up, then slow 3 to 5 second negatives |
| Hinge | Glute bridge | Single-leg glute bridge | Single-leg hip thrust from a couch, Nordic curl |
Log every set so you know the number to beat, and give a plan 6 to 8 weeks before changing it. Our guide to progressive overload covers the principle in more detail, and double progression is the simplest rule for when to move up.
A no-equipment plan is 3 full-body sessions a week, each with a squat, hinge, push, pull, and core or calf exercise, using rep ranges of about 6 to 20. This example assumes a sturdy table for rows and a chair or couch for split squats.
| Day | Exercises (3 sets each) |
|---|---|
| Monday | Bulgarian split squat 8 to 15 per leg, push-ups 6 to 15, inverted row under a table 6 to 12, single-leg glute bridge 10 to 20 per leg, plank 30 to 60 seconds |
| Wednesday | Reverse lunge 10 to 15 per leg, pike push-up 6 to 12, inverted row with legs straight 6 to 12, single-leg hip thrust 10 to 20 per leg, single-leg calf raise 10 to 20 |
| Friday | Bulgarian split squat with a 3-second lowering 8 to 12 per leg, feet-elevated push-up 6 to 15, chair dips 8 to 15, Nordic curl negatives 3 to 6, side plank 20 to 45 seconds per side |
Rest 60 to 90 seconds between sets on the smaller exercises and up to 2 minutes on split squats. With a pull-up bar, swap one row for pull-ups. Our ranking of the best bodyweight exercises for building muscle explains the research behind each pick.
With one pair of dumbbells, keep the same five slots, use the dumbbells for presses, rows, and hinges, and lean on single-leg work when they get too light for squats.
| Day | Exercises (3 sets each) |
|---|---|
| Monday | Goblet squat 10 to 20, dumbbell floor press 8 to 12, one-arm row 8 to 12 per arm, Romanian deadlift 10 to 15, lateral raise 12 to 20 |
| Wednesday | Dumbbell split squat 8 to 15 per leg, overhead press 8 to 12, push-ups 6 to 15, single-leg Romanian deadlift 8 to 12 per leg, curl 10 to 15 |
| Friday | Reverse lunge holding dumbbells 8 to 15 per leg, floor press with a 3-second lowering 8 to 12, one-arm row with a pause 8 to 12 per arm, dumbbell hip thrust 10 to 20, overhead triceps extension 10 to 15 |
For what to buy, how to handle the big jumps between dumbbell weights, and what to do when your dumbbells get too light, read our full guide on building muscle at home with dumbbells.
With a rack, barbell, bench, and pull-up bar, a home gym plan looks almost the same as a commercial gym plan. Use barbell lifts for your main squat, hinge, and press, and dumbbells for the smaller work.
| Day | Exercises (3 sets each) |
|---|---|
| Monday | Back squat 6 to 10, bench press 6 to 10, pull-up 6 to 10, Romanian deadlift 8 to 12, lateral raise 12 to 15 |
| Wednesday | Deadlift 5 to 8, overhead press 6 to 10, one-arm dumbbell row 8 to 12 per arm, Bulgarian split squat 8 to 12 per leg, curl 10 to 15 |
| Friday | Front squat or goblet squat 8 to 12, incline dumbbell press 8 to 12, barbell row 8 to 12, hip thrust 10 to 15, overhead triceps extension 10 to 15 |
Training alone, set the safety bars on your rack and stop squats and bench presses a rep or two short of failure. Save all-out sets for exercises you can safely bail out of, like rows and curls. Our guide on how to create a gym workout plan covers more ways to set up a barbell-based week.
Use the free workout plan generator. It asks 7 questions, including your goal, experience, days per week, session length, and equipment, with options for gym, home gym, just dumbbells, or no equipment. You enter your email and the week arrives as a PDF. It is free and needs no account or sign-in.
It picks a full-body split for 1 to 3 days and upper/lower for 4, chooses exercises from the Alexandros app's catalog for your equipment, and gives every exercise 3 sets, with bodyweight rep ranges of 6 to 12 for compound moves and 10 to 20 for isolation work. Our roundup of the best free workout plan generators compares it with other options.
The generator builds one starting week. It does not track your sessions or tell you when to move to the next variation, so progression is up to you or an app. Alexandros is an iPhone app in early access that handles that part: you log a session in plain English, like "split squats 3x12 per leg, push-ups 3x15 feet on the couch, last set hard," it rates the effort on every set, and it sets your next session with double progression.
Yes. Light loads and bodyweight exercises build muscle about as well as heavy weights when sets are taken close to failure. Home workouts can cover strength, muscle, and general fitness if you train 2 to 4 days a week and keep making the exercises harder.
A doorway pull-up bar first if you have nothing, because pulling is the hardest movement to train without equipment. Adjustable dumbbells next, then a bench.
About 6 to 20 reps per set, taken close to failure. If you can do more than about 30 reps, switch to a harder variation instead of adding more reps.
