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If you are a beginner, this is for you. This is also for you if you’ve been going to the gym for at least a year or two with nothing to show. After all, you go to the gym for a reason. It’s about time you got something in return for your efforts. I hate long preambles, so let’s get started.
What You’re (Probably) Doing Wrong
Muscle building is an adaptation to handle the demands of repeatedly lifting heavy weights. You lift heavy weights, and your body responds by building strength and muscle so the weight is not as heavy. If you do this often and consistently and keep increasing the demands over time, you’ll continue to build muscle.
That’s…pretty much it. But let’s see where you might be screwing this up.
You’re Not Showing Up Consistently
This one is a real head-scratcher. I can’t tell you the number of clients and prospective clients I’ve talked to that get confused by not building the body of their dreams when they miss at least 20% of their workouts. One of the best things about weight training is that the return is more or less directly related to the work you put in.
If you give a half-assed effort, you’ll get half-assed results. Growing muscle is a slow and energy-expensive process. You gotta show up if you want to look like you lift. You don’t fall ass-backward into a great physique; it takes months and years of consistent effort and missing very few workouts.
You’re Not Using Enough Weight or Taking Sets Close Enough To Failure
Muscle growth is ultimately determined by how many hard sets you do, and hard sets are typically determined by how many sets you do that are close to failure. Failure is the point at which you can’t do another rep. For example, if you’re doing a barbell exercise, the bar will start to move slower and slower until you eventually won’t be able to get it up anymore (that’s what she said). That’s failure. You have to get close to that point consistently if you want to build muscle.
Only using light weights and/or stopping the movement when it starts to slow down isn’t going to cut it. I advise all of my new clients or anyone struggling to build muscle to voluntarily do at least a single set to failure so they can see what it’s like. Most people never do it because it’s uncomfortable, but muscle is built in discomfort.
You don't need to (and probably shouldn't) take all your sets to muscular failure1, but if you're not getting close ever, you’re missing out.
You’re Not Increasing The Difficulty of The Exercises Over Time
If you have even a passing interest in lifting weights, you’ve probably heard the term progressive overload. Generally, it means doing “more” over time to continue seeing benefits from your sets and workouts. For example, let’s say you do three sets of 8 reps at 100 pounds on the bench press for weeks. Eventually, that combination of sets, reps, and weight won’t be as hard anymore because your body will have adapted. So if you want to keep seeing progress, you’ll have to increase at least one variable to drive progress.
There are several ways of doing this. Increasing the weight or reps should be the first step. So in the bench example, you could do 9 reps or 105 pounds to drive progress. But those are just two of many options, and I will go over this process in greater detail in a later post.
You’re Using The Wrong Exercises
You need to pick exercises that target the muscles you want to build, but almost everyone that isn’t a professional bodybuilder must also deal with time constraints. Your workouts can’t take forever.
Compound movements are the best way to pack on lots of muscle. They target a lot of muscle and have more room for progress than isolation exercises.
Some compound exercises include squats and squat variations, leg presses, deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts, bench presses, presses, rows, and pull-ups.
Bicep curls, tricep extensions, lateral raises, pec flys, leg extensions, and hamstring curls are all examples of isolation exercises. They should be used judiciously to fill in gaps but should not make up the bulk of your training.
You’re Not Eating Enough or Eating Enough Protein
Muscle is our greatest bodily source of protein, and to increase our supply, we need to obtain it from our diet. The perfect program will not make up for the lack of raw materials. If a lack of effort and intensity is the alpha, low calories/protein is the omega.
Energy and protein intake help preserve and/or build muscle in two ways. First, the calories prevent muscle from being broken down due to low energy availability, and the protein ensures we have enough amino acids to build new muscle or maintain current muscle.
Beginners with a good bit of body fat can get away with lower energy intake. The stimulus for muscle growth is greatest in beginners, so the muscle can be built using energy from body fat. Building muscle and losing body fat simultaneously is called body composition, and it’s more common in beginners than in advanced lifters.
I generally recommend my clients get between 0.7-1.0 grams of protein per pound of body weight.2 Vegans and vegetarians may need a little more to make up for the slight dip in protein quality. If you struggle to get enough protein, you can make up the difference with protein supplements.
You Have Poor Sleep and/or Stress Management
Getting quality sleep and managing stress seem like they’d be pretty low on the priority list, given they aren’t directly related to the process of building muscle, but both are muscle growth facilitators.
Unless you get a handle on both, you’re going to be fighting an uphill battle when trying to improve your body composition.
You Don’t Have Enough Patience
Muscle building is pretty damn slow, much slower than losing body fat. You can gain anywhere from 1-4 pounds of muscle per month, depending on genetics and whether or not you’re doing everything right. The more advanced you get, the slower the process becomes, so as cliché as it sounds, you have to love the process to some degree.
My advice is to focus on performance improvements and dialing in all the big rocks and x-factor stuff (consistency, calories, protein, sleep, stress), and the muscle will come. You just gotta be patient.
Summary
Anybody can do this, but you must focus on the right stuff. Stop worrying about shit that doesn’t matter, like supplements, the perfect training split, workout or nutrient timing, etc.
If you train hard and consistently, eat enough food and protein, and do “more” over time, you’ll get results. If you run into a setback, don’t sweat it. Get back to it and refocus on the process.
I’ll explain more about this in a later post. Reaching complete failure creates a disproportionate amount of fatigue that can lower reps on subsequent sets and lower training volume overall, which is obviously not what we want.
If you carry a lot of body fat, you may be better off using target body weight instead, as using a protein target based on current body weight may be difficult to achieve and unnecessary.