You’d think that with so much muscle-building information available online and in periodicals, no one would have trouble gaining muscle. That’s not the case. People frustrated with slow development are common in gyms and online forums, pounding their heads against the wall in disgust at little muscular gains that aren’t worth the time and effort of coming to the gym and doing the exercises.
Not only can the results be proportional to the effort, but natural muscle growth can be steady and not hit a pause point at any point. This should be of interest to everyone who dislikes failing to achieve goals but also squandering time.
Let’s go through five natural “muscle-gaining facts” that you won’t hear from many other sources. These are natural bodybuilding principles that I’ve found through years of trial and error.
Some of them were found by simply abandoning conventional wisdom and going where most trainers wouldn’t. Others are classic muscle development myths that merely require a disclaimer. So let’s start now.
To Gain Muscle, You Must Eat Enough.
Excessive food consumption really slows development. Your body has a daily energy limit. That energy goes towards digestion. It requires energy to repair muscles. This is in addition to the energy consumed in everyday activities. Taking in 3,000-5,000 more calories each day is NOT anabolic, but rather depleting. And it doesn’t help injured muscle tissue heal quicker.
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Slender people will often hear self-proclaimed experts encourage them to “consume more; you’re not eating enough.” If you are eating enough and your muscle building is sluggish, then there is something else going on. People sometimes mistake the body’s inability to store fat for trouble developing muscles. Then why is it that an obese person with a sluggish metabolism has it so much easier?
Every three to three-and-a-half hours, eat a high-protein meal with some healthy and energy-sustaining carbs. Consume mega-calories only if you want to gain weight.
Workout Intensity is Vital
Too much vigor hinders improvement. A plateau could happen if you do force repetitions or drop sets, or if you do pre-exhaustion or super-sets.
I got into bodybuilding after years of military training. I liked to push my body and muscles to their limits. It took years of disappointing defeats for me to realize that muscle growth isn’t as easy as “the more you work, the greater the results.”
The fact about muscular development is that it requires a certain degree of calibrated effort. Anything more may add personality, but it will not add much muscle.
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However, recovery time in between workouts is critical…
Recovery depends on several things. It is illogical to believe that your muscle growth efforts would be effective because some experts said you just need six days of recuperation following “exercise X” on Monday. Your tissue may require seven or eight days to recover. And if you’re fifty-five instead of twenty-five, the same exercise can take nine or ten days to recover from.
Where does the idea that muscle tissue takes 72–144 hours to recover come from? Have you ever wondered that? Did you ever see the proof? I’ve never seen anything. But I’ve seen for over twenty-five years that folks who believe this is getting nowhere with their natural “muscle increases.”
Moreover, I’ve long ignored this “bodybuilding advice” and reaped the benefits. How long do I rest between each body part? To avoid surprising you, let’s pretend it may be weeks instead of days. Got it yet?
The reality of muscle gain is that individuals’ recovery times between exercises vary. Individual reactions to a particular exercise intensity vary substantially. It varies with age, gender, hereditary hormone levels, everyday stress, and many other variables. It fluctuates with muscular growth; the more muscle you have, the more tissue has to be recovered to build new muscle. Only by testing and getting feedback can you figure out how many days of rest are best for a specific training plan.
Yet you want to “Gain Weight”
You don’t want to gain weight. Bulking up, or accumulating body fat, does not help you grow muscles. Then I’d be first in line at the Cheesecake Factory for a week’s supply of “bulk-up food.”
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You must distinguish between “gaining weight” and “gaining muscle.” Muscle carries weight. In other words, acquiring fat weight isn’t the same as gaining muscle weight. To gain weight, just consume more calories than you burn. To grow muscles, you need more protein for tissue repair and carbohydrates for exercise and tissue recovery. Taking in mega-doses of calories isn’t necessary.
Also, don’t continuously check your muscular growth on the bathroom scale. The scale doesn’t gain muscle rapidly enough to be a useful short-term success indicator. Weight gain in days or weeks is usually water and fat from additional salt, water, and calories.
Instead, utilize your gym strength to track your development. In the long run, if you keep up with your strength gains, even when the volume is low, you will build a lot of lean muscle mass.
Gaining Weight
“Gaining weight” is too vague to express the specific understanding required to grow natural muscle. It implies that consuming more calories and lifting heavy weights is the only way to gain muscle. It’s absurd. If you’re eating enough protein and carbs to keep you going but not enough to build muscle, think about increasing your rest days.
Taking in too many calories when the body just needs extra time to heal is a recipe for weight gain. But it will be “dead weight,” meaning it will be worthless.
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Dietary Habits and Exercise
Supplementing strong dietary habits and exercise techniques with supplements may speed up improvement. Selectivity is crucial, as is optimizing everything else before spending money on “supplemental” aid.
It’s become trendy now among online bodybuilding gurus to attack supplement manufacturers and call them swindlers. “There are good companies and bad ones, with useful supplements mixed in with the bottled crap,” I say, “but I’m very careful.”
For example, creatine is a fantastic exercise supplement. There is a chance that its ability to improve exercise performance might make it more important to take more rest days between sessions in order to gain muscle.
The truth about building muscle is that supplements should only be taken in small amounts and only as an “add-on” to a good training and recovery plan.
Get the inside scoop on how to build muscles naturally. They can help you get a physique that will make your relatives jealous.