If you're interested in fast ways to build muscle and gain weight in record time, naturally you should ask yourself: "What are the best muscle mass building exercises to accomplish this?"

The answer is simple, but because the market is flooded with so much garbage all you hear or read about is either the latest supplement or "advanced" exercises. If real, solid, steel-like muscles are what you want then anytime you are introduced to a "new" or "advanced" way of performing an exercise, you'll do yourself a world of good by throwing it out the window.

Too many times do I see curious skinny gym members look over at the "gym buff" doing some funky exercise upside down on an exercise ball with one leg up flailing a pair of light dumbbells around thinking that if they learned how to perform that exercise they can look like him. Forget about it. Whether it works for him or not is irrelevant, the bottom line is that this type of exercise or anything like it will NOT work for hardgainers.

If an exercise is "new" I can almost guarantee it is far less effective then the simple, basic muscle mass building exercises. Why? Because all of the best exercises for maximum muscle growth have already been accounted for years ago. They have and always will be the number one exercises for the single purpose on how to gain muscle weight fast. Nothing compares and they will never be bested.

Basic or compound exercises allow you to lift more weight, and the heavier weight you can lift, the bigger you will be. With that in mind, what are compound exercises and which are the best for maximum muscle mass? Compound lifts, or multi-joint lifts, are weightlifting exercises that force you to use more then one muscle group, preferably 3 or more.

For example, the bench press is a compound lift because although the primary muscle used is the chest muscle, your shoulders and triceps are also helping to lift the weight. Tricep pushdowns, however, are what's called an isolation or single-joint exercise. Since this exercise just isolates a single muscle, your triceps, it doesn't stimulate nearly as much muscle growth as a compound lift would. Though there are many different compound exercises, you must focus only on those that stimulate the most amount of muscle and allow you to lift the heaviest amount of weight.

Here are the granddaddy of all compound muscle mass building exercises that you MUST include in your workout if you expect to build maximum muscle mass in the least amount of time:

1) Squats (quads, hamstrings, calves, and also has an effect on most of the upper body)

2) Deadlifts (hamstrings, quads, traps, lower back)

3) Bench Press (chest, triceps, and shoulders)

4) Shoulder Press or Military Press (shoulders and triceps)

5) Bent-Over Rows (back, biceps, lats)

6) Pull-Ups (back, biceps, lats)

7) Bar Dips (chest, triceps, shoulders)

If your workout programs to gain muscle don't include any of these exercises, then don't expect to grow very much, and don't expect to grow at all if you are a hardgainer. Try starting your workouts out with one of these exercises first, before you do any other exercises for that same muscle. This will ensure you exert most of your energy into the most important exercises, the ones that will be most responsible for your growth. For example, if you are training your shoulders, start off with the barbell shoulder press before you do any laterals, shrugs, or any other isolation exercise.

A couple of months ago, a friend asked me why he wasn't gaining any weight and getting any bigger. So I asked him to tell me about his workout. You can probably guess what it was. Sure enough, he was doing about five exercises for each muscle group, mostly isolation exercises. He wasn't doing any lower body exercises whatsoever, and the only compound exercise he was doing was everybody's favorite: the bench press.

So here is what I did: I gave him a simple but proven workout program for fast results that consisted of ONLY compound exercises, which in fact doesn't look much different from the list of muscle mass building exercises above. I told him to just do a few sets of each exercise a few times a week and to focus on just adding weight to the bar every week. Did he grow? About five weeks later he e-mailed me back and told me of his improvements. He weighed 18 pounds heavier and added around 20 to 30 pounds to each of the compound exercises I told him to do.

Is this a common result? Those who are willing to work hard on just a few compound exercises can expect results like this, even hardgainers. Was it easy? No. He worked hard, just like everyone else who got results like this. No fancy supplements or advanced exercises, just hard work on the key muscle mass building exercises, lots of clean food and plenty of rest.

Now that you know the key muscle mass building exercises for maximum muscle growth in record time, I want you to use them! If you haven't tried any of them before then you will be in for a treat. They're tough, they're demanding, they take sweat and grit and everything you got. They're not the type of exercises you can do while you hung-over or on 3 hours of sleep. You have to have lots of energy, be properly warmed up, and completely focused if you want to get the most out of them. But they will bring you more results then all of the other exercises put together.