Muscle Building

When it comes to your body, knowledge is power. Literally. The better you understand your muscles and what they’re capable of, the more you can do with them, whether you’re acing a serve or turning heads at the pub.

But when there are about 650 muscles, and millions of individual fibers, to get intimate with, it’s more than a little daunting. So we’re going to keep it simple. Here’s the least you need to know to get the most from your muscles.

Resistance Training

If you start getting bigger, it is most likely because you are also eating more. You may put on a little lean mass, but it should not cause you to outgrow your pants. In fact, if you clearly know what foods are acceptable, watching your nutrition, and doing resistance training, you should be getting smaller and leaner.

Resistance training has some proven benefits:

• Improved muscle strength and tone
• Weight management
• Prevention and control of health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and arthritis
• Pain management
• Improved mobility and balance
• Improved posture
• Decreased risk of injury
• Increased bone density and strength
• Reduced body fat
• Boosted metabolism
• Improved sleep patterns
• Increased self-esteem
• Enhanced performance of everyday tasks

A Little Cardio Training

It is well known to those of us in the industry that excessive cardio (meaning more than 45 minutes steady state or 30 minutes of high intensity interval training) is too much for the average person.

After this amount of time, your body will start to become catabolic, which means it starts to eat muscle for fuel instead of food recently eaten and fat stores.

Strength Training Tips

Lift Weights for At Least 30 Minutes 3 Days A Week

You can use machines, free weights, TRX bands, weightlifting classes or a combination of these choices.

Take Breaks between Weightlifting Days

Do your weightlifting sessions every other day to give your muscles time to rebuild and strengthen.

Aim for Muscle Fatigue

The best results will happen when you push your muscles until they can no longer do the lift or exercise on the last step. You will tear and rebuild a leaner physique with this method.

Perform 1 Repetition Every 2 Seconds

This timing seems to be more effective than 1 rep every 4 seconds.

Rest for 1 Minute or Less between Sets

You can rest for longer between different exercises, but studies have shown that short rest times, especially with light weights, are better.

Drink Plenty of Water

You should aim for 16 oz. (0.47l) of water per every half an hour of a hard workout. Muscles that are hydrated perform better and you will get more out of your workout.

5 Nutrition Secrets For Gaining Lean Muscle Fast!

How Many Carbs Should You Eat?

Carbohydrates are the main source of fuel for our bodies… if you don’t consume enough, your body will break down muscle for amino acids it can convert into glucose. Glycogen is the stored form of Carbohydrates in the body, and under normal circumstances, the body can store about 400 grams at a time.

When Should You Eat Carbs?

The primary times to consume carbohydrates to take advantage of its protein sparing/anabolic capabilities is in the morning as soon as you wake up (because you haven’t eaten for at least 6-8 hours and cortisol levels are elevated) as well as post workout (high glycemic carbohydrates after exercise causes insulin to spike which pulls amino acids from the blood and delivers them to muscle tissue).

How Do You Make Use Of The Glycemic Index?

In general, lower GI foods are usually things like whole wheat bread, oatmeal, or anything else fibrous. High GI foods are usually those containing high amounts of sugar (regular soda, fruit juices, and fat-free yogurt, anything high in sugar). There is no evidence that sugar will make you fat (the concern is about total carbohydrates for the day and not necessarily glycemic index), but if you are trying to lose fat, the spike in insulin will prevent weight loss and the rush of sugar could cause you to “crash”.

Why Shouldn’t We Avoid Fats?

Most notable of the effects of healthy fats is reducing inflammation, increasing heart health, and lowering blood cholesterol. The fats you should be looking for are poly and mono-unsaturated fats, they are never solid at room temperature (ex: butter vs. olive oil). An easy way to up your dietary fats is to buy some peanut butter and eat your chicken breasts/ turkey sandwich with oil and vinegar for flavor.

In a study done in the Journal of Applied Physiology they found that serum levels of testosterone were elevated following exercise with subjects who consumed a diet that was relatively high in fat.

It is also well known that moderate amounts of fat while dieting for a contest are all a natural bodybuilder can do (outside of high intensity exercise of course) to make sure cortisol (a catabolic stress hormone) doesn’t completely evaporate testosterone. Just be wary of the fact that high amounts of saturated fats increase the risk of cardiovascular disease.

So How Much Should We Eat?

If you’re a hard gainer, and you’ve tried eating like there’s no tomorrow but to no avail; you can easily increase your calorie intake by adding in more fats into your diet (remember, fat is 9 calories per gram as opposed to the 4 calories per gram of protein or carbs).

Conclusion

If you can follow these guidelines for your bodyweight, sleep 7-8 hours a night, and lift at a high intensity with a different workout every 2-3 weeks you should be able to put on muscle over time.

One of the most frustrating elements of fitness is that it can be very difficult to gain a significant amount of muscle mass. We’re not talking about being a bodybuilder here, but 5-10lbs of new muscle would be a welcome addition to the physiques of most gym goers, at least on an aesthetic level.

5 Factors That Affect How Fast You Build Muscle

Training Age

Your training age is how long you’ve been lifting weights.  If you’re a newbie, you will be able to gain more muscle faster than if you’ve been lifting for many years.

Hormonal Profile

The amount of testosterone and other muscle building hormones in your body can vary because your lifting regimen does not help elicit a testosterone response (i.e. not lifting legs, or not lifting heavy enough), or your body simply doesn’t produce as much testosterone…which brings me to the next variable.

Genetics

There is a concept of a genetic bell curve, which I discussed in the maximum muscle potential article.  To summarize, some men are naturally inclined to build a lot of muscle because of factors such as hormonal balance, or the thickness of their frames whereas others have trouble building much muscle no matter how hard they try.  Most people of course by definition (roughly 68%) are genetically average.

Muscle Memory

If you are 180lb then you decided to train for a marathon, you may lose a solid 20lb of muscle. So how long will it take you to gain back those 20lb of muscle back? Answer: Not long at all. Maybe only a 1-2 months, because your body has a mechanism for restoring the previous homeostasis, which is often referred to as “muscle memory”.

Supplements

Heavy duty supplements like steroids, or other potentially harmful, performance enhancing substances that can help you build muscle much faster, but I’m assuming you are far too smart to do that!  Other less dangerous, but still potentially harmful substances like Creatine can aid in muscle growth as well.

Beginner’s Guide to Build Muscle Fast

• Lift heavy things, progressively lifting heavier things.
• Specifically include squats and deadlifts and compound movements – they target the muscle building triggers in your entire body.
• Read through our whole Strength 101 series.
• Sleep as much as you can.
• Eat more calories, especially on training days (with plenty of protein and carbs, and vegetables).
• Repeat month after month after month.
• When in doubt, eat more than you think.
• If you put on too much fat, cut back on calories/carbs on non-training days.

Top Tips to Gain Muscle

Training

You should be keeping whichever program you are doing to no more than 1 hour of duration. Be sure that you are focusing on keeping the intensity high rather than making the workout drag on.

Eating Habit

Your body is pre-programmed with your genetic disposition. And in your case, you have a very fast metabolism that digests and burns calories quickly. Focus on having 5-6 calorie-dense meals a day spaced 2-3 hours apart so that your body is constantly being provided with something to metabolize and build muscle.

Supplements

You have to understand, a supplement is exactly as the name implies…A SUPPLEMENT. It is not going to make or break your gains in the gym. The only supplements that we recommend are protein powder and perhaps some Gatorade after workouts.

Take It Easy

Learn to relax a bit more and try to limit activity outside of the gym as much as possible when outside of the gym so that your energy is put forth to good use.

Caloric Surplus

Most people think they are eating a lot and you just may be. But no matter what you are eating, if you are not gaining, you are not eating enough. Most times, you should re-evaluate your diet as well and focus on more calorie dense foods. But you need to eat more if you are not gaining.

Also, when changing your body composition, you will need to ‘force’ things a little bit. Your body doesn’t want to change and it doesn’t care to gain weight. You need to ‘coax’ it along and yes at times it may be a little uncomfortable.

Progression

As mentioned above, your workouts should really be under an hour if even that. But the main take home principle is to make sure you are progressing at a workout. It’s so simply yet so many people screw it up. They put in more volume and more until their workouts are at about 2 hours.

Repetition Range

I would suggest changing the rep range every 4-6 weeks to avoid plateaus. Changing the repetition range will make your body adapt to the new stress causing you to gain weight in the form of muscle.

Working Out to Gain Muscle

Start With Basic Strength Training

Most workouts for your major body parts should start with basic, multi-joint strength training exercises that allow you to lift more weight overall, such as the bench presses for chest, overhead presses for deltoids, barbell rows for back and squats for legs.

Go All In

Doing high-intensity workouts is the key to building muscle. Light workouts, even if they’re long, don’t go nearly as far to produce the right conditions for your muscles to break down and rebuild. Plan on doing 30-45 minute session 3-4 times per week (every other day).

Lift Explosively

Lift the weight quickly but lower slowly.

Use Proper Form

To develop precise technique, do every rep with good form. Beginners, strive to keep the rep target inside your strength capabilities. Find the right groove for each exercise. Don’t train to failure when you’re just starting out.

Alternate Muscle Groups

You don’t want to work out the same groups with every workout, or you’ll end up damaging your muscles. Rotate muscle groups so that each time you work out, you’re putting in an intense hour working on a different group.

Avoid Plateaus

If you do the same thing over and over each time you work out, you’re not going to make progress. You need to be adding weight, and when you plateau with the new weight, switching up your exercises.

Rest between Workouts

For someone with a fast metabolism, the rest period is almost as important as the workouts. Your body needs time to build muscle without burning a lot of calories doing other activities.

Develop the Mind-Muscle Connection

Research confirms that tuning in to the mind-muscle connection can optimize your results in the gym. Instead of focusing on your day, or the blonde next to you, strive to get into a muscle-building mindset to help increase gains.