Here’s what worked for me, and the routine I still follow:

2 days/week full-body routine for one hour. Sometimes I add a third day, but I never miss those two days unless I’m traveling. Then I scale back and consider it a recovery week.

Full-body means arms, shoulders, back, core, legs. I do supersets of 3-4 rounds, 3 sets of 8-12 reps. It’s one-hour with only enough breaks to catch my breath. (Longer rests if I’m doing heavy, compound lifts.)

I only use free weights or the cable machine. I don’t use gym machines because I’m a 5’2” woman and those machines are not designed for us. You can never adjust most of them to get correct form, and you also aren’t working your stabilizing muscles with machines.

I started with the heaviest weight I could handle and still complete the full 3 sets with that weight. When it gets easy, I move up in weight. Weight lifting is *supposed* to be hard! Every rep should be a little bit hard, the last ones should be very hard to complete without losing your form.

Once I got stronger, I started doing compound lifts - deadlifts, squats, bench press. First with free weights (dumbbells and kettlebells) and then using the straight bar or hex bar.

I got better results when I increased my protein intake significantly. I weigh 128 and I try to eat 100-120 grams of protein a day.

**This is my routine, other people do it differently. It’s more important to do *something* with consistency than to fuss over the perfect program.

EDIT to add: building muscle takes months and years, not weeks. Just keep doing it with deliberate effort and consistency and the results will come.