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 Days/week- Work each body part out no more than once every 5-7 days. I stick to once every 7 days, as it gives more time for rest and growth, and also makes scheduling workouts easier. If possible, work 1-2 body parts per workout, 3 at the utmost. Training schedule might look like this: Monday-Chest, Tuesday-Back, Wednesday-Rest, Thursday-Arms, Friday-Legs, Saturday-Shoulders, Sunday-Rest. Working with weights five days a week is effective and gives you an opportunity to rest after two or three days consecutive days of heavy training. It is also easier than four days per week because in five days, you cover all the major muscle groups on a different day and don't have to combine two muscle groups like shoulders and arms for example, in the same day.
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 Duration- Keep your workout under 1 1/2 hours in length, preferably under 1 hour. Sixty-ninety minutes in the gym is a perfect amount to spend weight training. Any more than that can be counter productive. Fitness activities like running, soccer, and basketball, are ok to do for a longer period. With weight training you are putting a lot of stress on your muscles, joints, and after an hour or so, they become fatigued and can inhibit further progress.
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Sets- Total sets per body part per workout should be kept around 9-12.
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 Order of exercises- Arrange your exercises to go from compound movements, which involve multiple muscles, to isolation movements employing only a few muscles. As such, always start your workout with your major exercise, be it bench press, squat, deadlift, pull-ups, military press, or another powerful, compound movement. Remember, go from large to small when it comes to exercises. Always go to failure on your last set of an exercise. You should reach failure or near failure on your preceding workout sets, but always go to failure on your last set.
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 Intensity- Intensity is the key aspect to achieving results. The greater the intensity, the greater the progressive overload and the greater the results will be, as the decrease in rest between sets forces muscles to work harder whilst in partial recovery. Without intensity you can lift as much as you like and you will still only obtain very minimal results as the progressive overload principal only works when muscles are hot. The basic way of increasing intensity using weights is done by pyramiding training i.e. where the weight goes up as the reps come down. This system of training is the standard as muscles respond much better to this progressive overload training, rather than simply performing all sets and reps going straight into 85% of your 1 rpm.
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 Posture/Good form- Observe good form, always. It is alright to let your form loosen some later in your set, but make sure you can get at least 6 reps with near perfect form before you "cheat" a little. Even then, it should be very slight, and still "good form", no ass-in-the-air on bench, or body swing on curls. If you have to cheat, the weight is too damn heavy for you. There is no shame in acknowledging your level of strength, if the weight is too heavy, lower it some, you're guaranteed a better workout, and better gains.
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 Warm up & Stretching- Always begin with a 10-minute warm-up. Usually use a stair-stepper or jogging , for the first five minutes to begin sweating. Spend the next five minutes on warm-up exercises for the muscle group you will be working. The sets will be light and consist of around 20 repetitions followed by stretching the muscle you will be focusing on. Once you have warmed up, stretched and ready to go you can begin with workout sets.
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 Variation- Change your workout each time. Avoid doing the same chest exercises or same number of reps, or same weight week after week. Sometimes you can use barbells, other times mostly dumbbells, and other times machines and cables. On top of that, there are flat, incline, decline, supersets, drop sets, pyramids, and other variations to target the same muscle group
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 Rest- Your body needs rest and recovery time. Do not workout with weights more than four days in row. Pros can get away with it because they have been bodybuilding for 10-15 years and know how their body will react to their training. They are usually also using drugs that help their muscles recover and grow faster than someone who is not using any anabolic bodybuilding drugs. Training for more than 4-5 days a week might help you achieve some great results, but there is a great chance for injury and fatigue from overtraining. Therefore, weight training five days a week with two rest days works very well , and is the most effective approach to natural bodybuilding.
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