How to Build Muscle
Building muscle takes consistent effort and doesn’t happen overnight. This week we will outline some things to consider to put the odds in your favour as much as possible while trying to build muscle mass.
Strength Train Properly and Consistently
When you are trying to build muscle, you must be challenging your muscles and creating enough stress on them to force your body to adapt to that stimulus and build new muscle. That means using enough resistance that you reach what is called “muscle failure” at the end of each set. That is the point where you can not do another repetition with proper form and ideally you would use a resistance that gets you to that point within 8 to 12 repetitions. This will ensure that you are breaking down the muscle tissue and forcing your body to build it back up bigger and stronger.
Doing this consistently, maintaining a regular workout schedule, will give you the best results for muscle growth.
Make Sure You Are Getting Enough Protein
Protein is the building block of muscle. If you are not consuming enough protein, it is going to make recovery from your workouts and muscle growth difficult. Aim for 1 gram of protein per pound of lean mass. Some even suggest 1 gram of protein for every pound of body weight. To calculate lean body mass, you will need to do a body fat test (we have a one at the front desk) and it will tell you how many pounds of body fat you carry, which you would subtract from your body weight to get lean mass. Use that number as the low end of your protein consumption and your total weight as the high end.
Make Sure You Are Getting Enough Overall Calories
To build muscle you not only need to consume enough protein, but enough overall calories to promote growth. You should be in a caloric surplus while focusing on building muscle mass. This puts your body in a catabolic state, optimal for promoting growth. If you are under eating your calories and are in a deficit, it will be difficult for your body to grow new muscle.
Many times, we want to add muscle and stay very lean at the same time. That is telling your body to do 2 different things at the same time and you end up not getting much change at all which can be disappointing. If your goal is muscle growth, consume enough calories to be in a surplus. Building muscle is calorically expensive.
Rest
Muscle doesn’t actually grow while you work out. In fact, it gets broken down during a workout. The growth comes while you are resting and recovering from the workout. Rest is just as important as the workout itself. Avoid working out the same muscle groups on consecutive days and if you are working out hard and going to muscle failure, you may need even a few days of recovery before you work that same muscle group again. You can still workout on consecutive days, you will just have to split up your workouts into 2-, 3- or 4-day splits doing different muscle groups on each workout.
Apply these four steps to get the best muscle growth results possible! And if you want more in depth information on this topic as well as specific exercises and how to’s, check out Gino’s newest book “Start Right” available at the front desk or anywhere online books are sold! It’s everything you need to get the most out of your strength training workouts!
