5 Things You HAVE To Know To Build Muscle

Building muscle is something more and more people want to do but is also something people struggle to achieve. It is over complicated by some and underestimated by others!

Yes going to the gym and starting lifting weights is a great start BUT it will only get you so far before you plateau and cease to make progress.

So here are our top 5 tips for building muscle that will help focus your efforts so you start to actually see some changes in your body, whether that be bigger biceps, a fuller chest or thicker thighs!

These are all essential ingredients in building muscle, and without any one of them in place, you won’t get the end result you are after.

1.NUTRITION

Your nutrition has to support your goal of building muscle. The key things are;

-Adequate energy intake with a surplus of calories for as long a time as possible ( think months not weeks!)

-Carbohydrates before and after training to maximise performance and recovery

-Protein with every meal to aid recovery after workouts (however not as much as most people think  across a day as we aren’t at risk of losing muscle because we are in a surplus of calories) 2g per KG is a great guide.

-Good hydration to maximise performance in the gym.

2.ADHERENCE

Building muscle takes time. We use a rough guide of increasing weight at a rate of 1% BW per month. So if you weigh 70KG we’d look to increase weight by 0.7KG per month however this won’t all be lean muscle, it will also be body fat. But at this rate we will recruit as little body fat as possible as we build.

You need to see and approach building muscle as a long term commitment and not an overnight job. You also have stick to it ticking all the boxes around training, nutrition, and lifestyle week by week to get results. A lot of people go too hard and then go home!Or give up due to unrealistic expectations of rate of gain or because they don’t see results due to missing ingredients. Staying in a build phase for as long as possible is the aim and will give you the best results.

3.PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD & EFFORT

This is progressively overloading your muscles over time in order to stimulate adaptions (muscle growth!). If you go to the gym and always do the same reps sets and weights for your exercises, your body has no need to adapt as its something it can already do and cope with. Therefore we need to consistently challenge it by increasing weight, reps, sets, or tempo when training.

This therefore requires EFFORT! You have to train hard in your sessions to push yourself beyond what you did the session before. Unfortunately, you can’t just turn up and go through the motions and wonder why your biceps aren’t getting any bigger.!You have to put in the effort to get results and this is something that people are often missing.

4.SLEEP

A lack of sleep is where many people downfall when it comes to building muscle. Firstly, if you are sleep deprived and training tired, you are not going to be able to put in effort and progressively overload your muscles week by week both from a mental and physical stand point.

Secondly, it is when we sleep that our muscles recover, particularly in terms of their stores of glycogen ready to fuel our next session. Poor recovery means reduced performance which again will reduce your ability to push in the gym and therefore reduce your muscle building capacity. It is also when we sleep that we release around 70 % of a hormone called human growth hormone, which stimulates muscle growth and repair.

5.STRESS MANAGMEMENT

If you’re super stressed with cortisol levels through the roof you’re going to struggle to build muscle. And this is due to the catabolic nature of cortisol which basically means it breaks down muscle. It inhibits protein synthesis which is how we build more muscle and can impact energy pathways meaning we use amino acids for energy instead of building muscle!

Therefore if we can keep our stress levels in check we have a much better chance of building muscle.

For most people they are missing one or more of the above essentials for building muscle or at least could be doing better in one or more areas.

If you are struggling to build muscle, think about where you could improve or what you are missing?

Or even better, drop us an email at info@onepercentclub.info and we can have a chat about how we can help you achieve results.

Have a great week,

The One Percent Club Team