Let us begin by asking, based on your life experience, what do you think works better for building muscle on your legs:

Walking with an all too heavy backpack that will soon stop you, or with a reasonably heavy one, for three hours?

Which would support long term muscle building, the prolonged sustained exertion, or the quick failure to get anywhere?

It is not an easy question, because the answer is obscured, by some initial gains from the all too heavy failure.

Your body wants o adapt, so as long as it gets a strong signal, and tying to carry something really heavy multiple times.

Will send a small signal, but here is the problem, it will always be the same small signal.

Because you just can’t get very far, with a backpack that is crushing you to the ground.

The backpack is heavy, but the signal is ridiculously short.

It is hardly a call for adaptation, more like a temporary problem.

Now, if you work your way up to carry a light backpack, for an hour a day, with an aim for a three hour daily excursion.

Your body will slowly adapt to have you walk all the way, without much stopping.

The light backpack, which represents thee pound dumbbells, will be a very small challenge, that should not interfere with your walk.

The distance is what sends the clearest message to your body, that one hour workout, with reasonable weights.

And as soon as you are able to walk the full distance, you then increase your weights.

Enough to cause some trouble, but never so much as to stop you, or make you rest.

You see what a terrible thing lifting too heavy is, it almost immediately drops you into a plateau.

Which will in turn, will eat away at your precious motivation.

Now look at the other end, where you are never sopped, and nothing prevents you from finishing.

You are choosing your weights in a way, that helps you finish.

Now, you must monitor your adaptation, testing weekly, if you are able to carry more, or work out longer.

You must always keep to the edge of what you can do, but never cross it where it becomes impossible to finish.

Moreover, there are two phases to your workout.

First you train, to be able to work out for an hour.

And then, your real non-stop workout starts.

This is a way, to amplify the signals you are sending to your body.

Which translates to, challenging workouts for a relatively short period, and then as you get the body you need, you just exercise to keep your gains.

I chose walking as an example of a simplified exercise, because oh how smooth and simple it is.

The walking equivalent for a body builder, is twisting and tuning with dumbbells.

Switching between various dumbbell exercises, as muscles get tired and need to recover.

Use an interval timer, to eliminate rest, in the first phase,

figure out how long you can lift 5lb dumbbells for, and then how long you need to rest to do it again.

And set up to 10 rounds on the interval timer, making sure to continue shortening your rest period as you go on.

Finally, committing multiple hours to your exercise is not boring, when you synchronize with the beats of songs.

You enter a dance trance that makes multiple hours feel like minutes, similar to how you brainlessly drive home from work.

You should workout daily, until you have solid evidence, that you time off, such as overlapping injuries of overwhelming tiredness.

Even though I use walking as an example, it is still the single most powerful way to begin your fitness journey.

Long before you sign up for the gym, you should get to know local parks and forests.

And even aim to walk the Appalachian, Pacific Crest, and the Continental Divide tails.