How To Build Muscle

If you’ve set the goal to pack on more quality lean muscle mass on your body, it’s vital that you understand the complete approach to how to go about doing this. Many people often overlook certain elements regarding how to build muscle and thus only see mediocre results.
If you really want to build muscle mass optimally, you must not only look at what you’re doing inside the gym, but what you’re doing outside of the gym as well. I think this is the most overlooked aspect of building muscle.

Let’s give you the complete run-down of everything that you need to know to ensure that you see muscle building success.

How To Build Muscle – Your Nutrition

Without proper nutrition and an adequate amount for calories you will never gain muscle period!

Basically, if you don’t supply the body with the raw materials that it needs to generate that lean muscle mass, it’s not going to matter what you’re doing in the gym – you still won’t grow.
You must be taking in a calorie surplus of about 250-500 calories per day (over and above your maintenance needs) in order to provide this additional energy that the body will then use to generate the lean muscle mass with.

You can use this daily calorie estimator calculator to estimate your maintenance calories if you are unsure.

Another rough calculation for the amount of calories you need to build muscle is to multiply your bodyweight in pounds by 18-20. So for a 200 pound person, you would aim for 3600-4000 calories.

Your diet should consist of all three major macronutrients, proteins, carbs, and fats, while you aim to take in at least 1.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight. Typically your daily calories should break down to 35-40% protein, 40-45% carbs, and 20% protein to build muscle.

If you’re someone who isn’t seeing the muscle building results that you desire despite doing your hard workouts in the gym, then rest assured this will be a nutrition problem and will likely be due to not consuming enough calories. Increase your intake by 10-20% and that should do the trick to get you right back on track. As you continue to get bigger and your metabolism increases you will need to gradually up your calorie intake.

Eating calorie dense whole foods

Quality carbohydrates include whole grains, oatmeal, wheat bread, whole grain pasta, brown rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and bagels. Do not forget to add fruit and vegetables as much as possible.

Stick with these protein sources: lean beef, chicken, fish, turkey, Greek yogurt, whey protein, jerky, cottage cheese, and eggs.

You should be eating quality fats that include fish oil, flax seed oil, olive oil, avocado, peanut butter, almonds, cashews, and other nuts.

Finally, remember to space your meals throughout the day so you’re eating five to six times so that you’re providing a constant supply of energy and amino acids to the muscle tissues as they go about the recovery process.

Eating frequently will speed up your metabolism and help you consume more calories throughout the day.

Pre and Post workout Nutrition

It is very important to watch your pre and post workout nutrition. I would recommend a small meal with both carbs and protein 30 minutes before workout. Within 30 minutes after your workout be sure to get at least 30 grams of protein and carbs to help recover.

Planning An Effective Workout

After your nutrition is formulated the next thing you should focus on is your time in the gym. While you might be able to build muscle at home without weights, I highly advise a gym with free weights to maximize muscle growth.

So what should you be doing in the gym. Here are the workout tips you should follow.

• Stick to proven workout routines
• Workout 3-5 days per week and limit workouts to an hour or less
• Stick to a 6-8 rep scheme and 3-4 sets per exercise
• Focus on compound exercises
• Focus on correct form rather than the weight you lift
• 3-4 sets per major body part
• Continually progress by adding weight on increase volume (add resp/sets).
• Avoid plateaus by using variety to your routine at least every 2 months. Variety can be provided by changing out a few exercises, altering the hand grip you use, changing the order of exercises, or changing the entire workout routine around.

Continue to progress

Strive to increase volume or weight. Each week you should continue to progress by adding weight or increasing the reps or sets for a given exercise. If you begin to stall you have might be overtraining, not eating enough calories, or it is time to change exercises
The most efficient way to increase muscle mass is to focus on compound exercises. This includes exercises that uses more than one muscle group at a time. The top coupond exercises you should include in your workout routine are squats, deadlift, bench press, lunges, standing press, barbell rows, and pulps to name a few.

Rest and Recover – Where Your muscles Grow!

Finally, last but not least, you must also make absolutely certain to take care of the rest and recovery element to build muscle. Remember, muscle growth occurs outside the gym.
The most important thing to remember here is that you don’t actually build muscle while you’re in the gym. If the truth is told you break down your muscle and grow weaker throughout your gym session.

It’s when you come out of the gym and start to rest and recover as well as supply those vital nutrients to the body that you begin to grow bigger and stronger, so this rest process cannot be overlooked.

It is recommended to rest muscle groups at least 48 hours until you work them again. So if you work chest on Monday, wait until Wednesday to work it again.

Sleep

Be sure to get 7-9 hours of rest each night. This cannot be stressed enough. After an intense workout, your muscles need to repair themselves. Not only will adequate sleep help your muscles, it will also make sure you have proper energy throughout the day.

Other Recovery Tips

• Be sure to stretch and move around those muscles your worked the day before
• Avoid alcohol or drink in moderation as it dehydrates you, negatively effects your testosterone, and hurts your nutrition.
• A cheat day once a week is ok
• Drink at least a gallon of water a day

What about Supplements

Another key element that some people will consider as they go about their quest to build lean muscle mass is which supplements they should be using. There’s definitely no shortage of muscle building supplements on the market but keep in mind that most of these are more hype than they are reality.

For the best muscle building results, keep your supplements focused on the basics.
The ones that will produce good results and that will help you get more from your workouts include whey protein powder, creatine, glutamine, a good multi-vitamin, and fish oil.
While these don’t supply the fancy claims that some other supplements do, these are the tried and true supplements that have stood the test of time.

Remember that supplements are also only meant to supplement a proper diet and workout program, so it’s vital that you get these two elements in place first. Many people make the mistake of putting in mediocre workouts or not really following any structured diet plan and hoping that their supplement does the work for them but then are largely disappointed when this just isn’t the case.

Hopefully these tips in this article will help you on your journey to build muscle more effectively. Remember the three important factors: nutrition, exercise, and recovery.