Regardless of your body composition, gaining muscle in your body requires time, persistence, and a long-term commitment to the process. But with the necessary training and the necessary protein consumption for muscle growth, it is certainly possible.
Building muscle is often a top priority when it comes to bodybuilding.
Added muscle mass will increase the definition of your muscles, improve your lean body mass, and add bulk and size to your frame in all the right places.
These are the things to know when it comes to building muscle, including how to work out, what to eat, and recovery protocols.
Basics of muscle building include:
Physiologically, the skeletal muscle fiducial source is a series of parallel cylindrical fibers that contract to produce force. These muscle contractions allow all external human movement to occur.
Your body is constantly renewing and recycling the amino acid or protein building blocks in your muscles.
You lose muscle mass if your body removes more protein than it adds. No measurable change in muscle size occurs when net protein synthesis is equal. Your muscles will grow if your body stores more protein than it removes.
The key to building muscle is to decrease the rate of muscle protein breakdown while increasing the rate of protein deposition.
This process of increasing your muscle mass is called muscle hypertrophy and is a primary goal of resistance training.
A number of factors drive the muscle building process, including hormones such as testosterone and growth hormone, and the availability of amino acids and other nutrients.
To build new muscle tissue, your primary tools for increasing your body’s rate of protein synthesis are to exercise resistance and get enough protein from trusted sources and overall nutrition.
The right amount of resistance training drives your body’s hormonal response to build muscle, but adequate protein and energy availability are needed to ensure that the process results in muscle gain as opposed to muscle loss, the study says.
Although researchers and experts continue to study the science of optimizing muscle gain, resistance training using moderate to heavy loads combined with relatively high protein intake remains the only tried and true training method for increasing muscle mass.
Summary
In order to build muscle your body needs to store more protein molecules in your muscles than it removes it. Resistance training with weights and ensuring proper nutrition are the primary means of achieving this goal.
Tips on how to gain muscle
While many types of exercise provide health benefits, the only reliable way to drive muscle growth is to exercise your muscles against moderate to heavy resistance. In addition to you, there are some specific tips for muscle growth or muscle use.
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Determine your target number of repetitions
Repetition consistency is an essential factor when designing a training program to build muscle.
Stimulating muscle growth requires performing weight training exercises with amounts of weight that you typically only need to repeat 1-20 times.
In general, repetition consistency Reliable sources say that weights you can lift for only 1-5 reps build more strength, weights you can lift for 8-12 reps build more muscle, and weights you can lift more than 15 reps build more muscle. Tends to increase muscular endurance.
Rep-range continuum
How many repetitions you can do at a given weight determines what benefits you will see.
1-5 repetitions: develops more strength
8-12 repetitions: develops more muscle growth
15+ reps: Develops more muscular endurance
Understand that there will be some crossover in these ranges, meaning that 3-rep sets with corresponding weights will build some muscle, 8-rep sets will build some strength, and 20-rep sets will also build muscle.
Additionally, recent research suggests that different individuals may respond better to lower or higher repetition ranges when it comes to building muscle.
Simply put, depending on your size, your muscles can grow more with lower reps using heavier weights or with higher reps using lighter weights.
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Measure the correct body weight
Generally, the weight should be heavy enough that you don’t do more than 20 repetitions.
The weight you want to use will leave you at or near failure in your specified number of repetitions.
For example, if you are performing a set of 10 repetitions, by the tenth repetition, you should be unable or nearly unable to do another repetition.
You should rarely have more than “two times in the tank” at the end of a set if your goal is to build muscle.
Consistency of rep ranges overall means that you should go through different phases of training using different rep ranges to see what gives your body the most muscle growth.
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Choose your exercises well
As mentioned, muscle building is specific to the muscles being worked.
For example, to build bigger biceps, you need to do exercises that work the biceps. This can be an isolated bicep exercise, such as a bicep curl, or a compound movement that uses the biceps, such as pullups.
Compound and isolation movements can be equally effective as the best exercise patterns for building muscle leading to muscle hypertrophy.
Nevertheless, your training should include compound and isolation movements for optimal long-term fitness results.
Compound movements like the barbell back squat effectively stimulate multiple large muscle groups in a single exercise and provide more functional movements for real-life activities. This leads to both more efficient workouts and more practical muscle strength.
Isolation movements are a great way to target specific muscles and are safer and easier for beginners to learn than compound movements.
Additionally, isolation movements are usually easier to perform when you’re tired, because you’re not stabilizing your entire body. This can allow you to do a few extra targeted sets at the end of a workout when you might otherwise be too tired to do another compound exercise.
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Structure your workouts to avoid training.
A good rule of thumb is to do 3 sets of 3-5 compound movements, followed by 3 sets of 1-2 isolation movements per workout.
Typically, you perform your heaviest sets using compound movements and perform higher repetition ranges on your isolation movements.
Assuming you’re doing 3 working sets per exercise, limit your total compound and isolation movement exercises to 5-7 movements per workout.
This allows you to benefit from each type of exercise while maximizing the overall muscle-building potential of your training program and avoiding any signs of overtraining.
Summary
It is possible to gain muscle using all repetition ranges, and some people may respond better to lower or higher repetitions with heavier or lighter weights, respectively. Include compound and isolation movements in your program.
How to eat to gain muscle
Your diet is the second half of the muscle-building equation. All the weight training in the world won’t produce results if you don’t provide your body with the nutrients it needs to grow new muscle tissue.
Bulking vs. Cutting
Most athletes, bodybuilders and serious muscle-building enthusiasts follow some variation of a bulking and cutting cycle.
Bulking periods refer to training phases where you consume more calories than you burn to support muscle growth. Cutting, on the other hand, refers to a period of calorie restriction to reduce body fat, while eating everything and training enough to avoid losing muscle.
To gain muscle, you need to provide your body with the right amount of calories and nutrients, especially protein. Doing so will help build new muscle protein from the dietary protein you eat, which will be stimulated by your work in the weight room.
The main goal of eating to gain muscle during a bulking phase is to provide your body with enough nutrients to grow but not so many calories that you put on more fat than muscle.
While some minor fat gain tends to occur during bulking, a sweet spot, where your body builds muscle but doesn’t store large amounts of fat, tends to occur when you eat 300-500 calories in excess.
Your body has a maximum muscle-building rate, and beyond that limit, excess calories will be stored as fat. If your goal is to have defined muscles, you want to avoid gaining too much body fat.
Calories needed to gain muscle
You want to eat 300-500 calories per day above your baseline needs for sustained muscle gain without excess fat.
Many factors affect your baseline calorie needs, also known as your total daily energy expenditure, or TDEE. These factors include your:
- Age
- Sex
- Current lean body mass
- Physical activity
- Occupation
Underlying medical conditions
Your best bet is to use an online calculator to estimate your calorie expenditure based on your input data. Once you have this baseline consumption, add 300 calories to establish your daily calorie goal.
Protein is needed for muscle gain
Protein is a priority when it comes to nutrition for muscle building.
Research Trusted Source suggests that those training to gain muscle should consume 1.4-2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day.
A registered dietitian can give you specific advice on choosing which foods to eat. Still, eating a variety of protein sources is probably your best bet.
Good sources of protein for muscle gain include:
- Lean meat cuts
- Low-fat dairy foods
- the fish
- the egg
- nuts
- Plant protein sources, including:
- Pea protein
- Soy protein
- Hemp protein
Carbohydrates and fat are needed to gain muscle
Recommendations for carbohydrate and fat intake are more varied. Dietary fat is needed to ensure optimal hormone function.
Recent bodybuilding research trusted sources recommend consuming 0.22-0.68 grams of fat per pound (0.5-1.5 grams per kilogram) of body weight per day.
If you like fatty foods, start at the higher end of that range and adjust from there. The rest of your daily calories should come from a variety of carbohydrate sources.
How many grams of carbohydrates do I need to not exceed my daily calorie intake?
Multiply your daily protein goal (in grams) by 4 and your daily fat intake goal by 9, because protein has 4 calories per gram and fat has 9 calories per gram.
Subtract this number from your calculated daily energy needs and divide it by 4 (the number of calories in one gram of carbohydrate).
In the long term, getting regular protein intake and making sure you don’t exceed 500 surplus calories per day is the key to gaining muscle without shedding excess fat.
Summary
Muscle growth requires adequate protein and calorie intake to grow. Avoid consuming 300-500 extra calories per day to reduce body fat.
How fast can you gain muscle?
Gaining muscle isn’t always easy—and it certainly doesn’t happen quickly.
Gaining serious muscle mass takes months and years of weight training and proper eating. The rate of muscle gain varies from individual to individual, even when following the same program.
Overall, with good nutrition and consistent training, 2020 research trusted sources found that 0.5-2 pounds (0.25-0.9 kg) of muscle growth per month is a good benchmark for maximum potential muscle growth in adult men.
Although this may seem like a small amount, the results can be dramatic over time. With just a few years of consistent training, you can gain 20-40 pounds (9-18 kg) of muscle, which would be a dramatic physical change for virtually anyone starting a resistance training program.
Summary
Gaining muscle takes time and is limited to 0.5-2 pounds (0.25-0.9 kg) per month for adult men.
Takeaway
Gaining muscle requires a commitment to both resistance training and following a proper diet.
Workout programs for building muscle should primarily rely on compound and isolation movements with weights, but specific exercises, sets, and repetitions should be adjusted to ensure consistent, long-term gains in both muscle size and strength.
Proper nutrition involves consuming enough protein, fat, and carbohydrate calories to meet daily energy expenditure sufficient to build muscle but not cause excess fat gain.
Major increases in muscle mass take months to years of consistent training, but are possible for most individuals.
Overall, to reach your muscle-building goals, you must lift hard, eat right, and stay consistent.
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