A good lean muscle program should give information on nutrition as well as on simple, high intensity workouts. Nutrition is paramount in keeping fat tissue in control while being in an anabolic state, while high intensity workouts spur lean muscle growth increasing the basic metabolic rate, hence burning fats.

While building muscle, your body must be in anabolic state, which means it must receive at least a little more calories than it spends through quality nutrients provided by a healthy, balanced diet with very few quality supplements, while avoiding stuffing yourself with them. 200/300 calories on top of your basic metabolic rate are all that is needed to keep you muscles growing and avoid depletion.

Such a moderate over consumption may be dealt with later once lean muscle has been added. Most importantly, a good lean muscle program should provide clear workout plans based on brevity and high intensity. Full body workouts performed in 45 minutes to 1 hour at most can shock the body into releasing more testosterone and build muscles all over. This can be achieved by performing only few sets of few key compound exercises like squats, dead lifts, bench presses, military presses, barbell rows and so on.

Unlike time consuming and ineffective split routines with multiple sets for each muscle group, brief, high intensity full body workouts can build impressive lean muscle all over. This is because single muscles, with the exception of legs, are not big enough to spur muscle growth even if trained to failure with multiple sets, in fact more so because of them.

As muscle mass is being added, the basic metabolic rate will increase, helping burning fat like a furnace and keeping fat levels in check. A good program should provide guidelines on how many and what calories to eat, how to periodize the workouts changing repetition range and exercises to avoid stagnation and eventually how to reduce fat levels, if any, once optimal muscle mass has been reached.

For a good lean muscle program to be effective, workouts should not exceed 1 hour because testosterone levels will drop significantly afterward, making marathon split routines ineffective. 2 to 3 hours a week of high intensity compound workouts are all that is needed to spur lean muscle growth, leaving you with plenty of time to enjoy with friends and family.

Body weight workouts are also an effective option to free weight training, though they may require a period of adaptation to get the hang of them. By changing body angle and hand position, you can play around your body weight and increase or decrease leverage, making it possible to perform incredibly effective full body workouts without the hassle of going to a gym, wherever you are.

Therefore, a good lean muscle program should also give body weight workout guidelines for whoever may be interested, as well as weight training plans based on brief, high intensity workouts, nutritional guidelines and periodization tables.