Muscle gain

A big question I always get from mostly males is how can they put on muscle to their frame. This can be a harder question than you think because there are so many variables when you’re dealing with the individual concerned.

There’s always the lifetime skinny guy who can never put muscle on, no matter what they do or what they eat.

Then there’s the guy who carries lots of body fat, but carries no muscle and the overall shape is less than flattering shall we say.

Then you have the sickening type of guy who picks up a weight and a few short weeks later, starts showing some major progress (it must be said that these genetically gifted people are few and far between).

Before you pigeon-hole yourself into one of those categories, I have some great new for you.

The principles of muscle-gain remain the same no matter where you fit in.

For example, any one of these groups will have to leave 48-72 hours in between working the same muscle group again. Most people don’t realise that when you work a muscle, you are actually breaking it down and it needs to recover, you need to feed it well and let it rest or it won’t grow, simple as that.

Training every day may seem the way to go but more is definitely NOT better in this case.

So if you’re prepared to put all the work into your training, and then not be totally committed to eating every 3-4 hours afterwards, then you’re not going to make gains.

If you can train hard but are not committed enough to hit the sack every or most nights for 8 hours, then you’re not going to make many gains. Your muscles need to rest and if you don’t get it, you will end up being frustrated because you won’t be getting bigger.

This strategy of training smart, eating smart and resting well is also needed for you to get stronger, if you don’t get stronger, your muscles won’t grow so you need to be fresh and full of enthusiasm to push yourself further and further.

If you’re employing all of these strategies, then it should be possible for you to be adding small amounts of weight to your exercises every 2 weeks, and I’m even talking about 1-2 pounds here and there, it DOES add up.

When you first start training, you tend to add weight relatively quickly anyway, but then plateau’s start coming. To smash through these frustrating sticking points, you need to consistent and do the right thing nearly all the time, nobody’s perfect of course but you’d better be ready to give this some massive commitment, or your body’s not going to grow in the way you’d like!

If you start missing meals and snacks, you’re progress will disappear. If you start missing workouts, you will go backwards, if you don’t get enough sleep, you will not feel motivated or have enough energy to get through the kind of workouts you need to do to slap on enough muscle tissue, and that will make a clear difference to the way you may look right now.

We will go into more detail over coming posts, but you need to realise that you have to show a lot of commitment to build a significant amount of muscle, and it doesn’t happen overnight.

If you are willing to do all of this, I look forward to sharing my thoughts with you over the next few days!