When it comes to building muscle there are a lot of components at play apart from picking up and putting down the weights. If you feel like you are working hard but not seeing desired progress it might be time to have a look at the factors that influence muscle growth. This might help you identify the missing piece of the puzzle that’s stopping you from achieving your goal.
1. Don’t just exercise, train
You might be very active and exercise almost every day. One day it’s circuits, the next day it’s a core workout, then you might do some arms and shoulders workouts. You might be using workouts you find on Instagram or online. You don’t really have any particular structure or progression in mind. While doing all that stuff is brilliant for your overall health and fitness, if you want to build muscle you need to train. You exercise for overall fitness, but you train for a specific goal.
If you want to build muscle, your workouts need to have structure and purpose. You want to make sure you have a training split that works with your lifestyle, you have selected exercises that you can perform safely and with good form, you keep track of your results every session. Most importantly, you are able to implement progressive overload in your training and you make every rep count.
There’s nothing wrong with simply exercising and keeping fit if that’s what you are happy with. However, if you want to build muscle you need to put effort into planning your routine. As you get more experienced it will become much easier.
2. Stay consistent
Another important factor in structuring your routine and building muscle is being consistent with your training. I know I probably write this in every other article, but consistency is what makes the difference between achieving your goal and not. You don’t always have to have the hardest session. You are allowed to take days off when your body is telling you to do.
At the same time, you shouldn’t skip sessions without a serious reason. Try to get into a habit of doing a workout even when you feel like you are not motivated. Sometimes all you need to do is to start a workout and before you know it you might get the energy you need. Most importantly, always remember how great you are going to feel after a workout. While you can’t be in control of a lot of other things in life, you are in control of achieving your fitness goals.
If you keep consistently training towards your goal throughout tough periods of your life you won’t just be building muscle, but also willpower and mental toughness.
3. Consider exercise volume
If building muscle is an important goal for you then it’s important to make sure you do enough exercise volume. Lifting weights only once a week won’t be as effective as doing it 3 times a week. It is also important to make sure you hit all your muscles during workouts. Ideally, you want to be training all your muscles twice a week. This can be easily achieved with full-body training. For example, if you can only train 2-3 times a week you will achieve better muscle growth doing full-body training rather than specific splits.
Focusing on compound (multijoint) exercises can help you target as many muscles as possible at the same time. If you feel like some of your muscles don’t want to grow, make sure to add some isolation exercises to increase the volume for those muscle groups.
While it’s ok to only do resistance training 1-2 times per week for general fitness if you want to build muscle you need to invest more time than that.
4. Optimize your diet
Just like your car needs gas to take you places, your muscles need fuel to recover and rebuild. Focusing on including nutritionally rich foods into your diet rather than creating strict restrictions is very important in order to improve your diet overall.
Aim to have protein with every meal. Focus on getting protein from a natural source, either animal or plant-based. If you feel like you struggle to get enough protein you can add some protein powder. However, no supplement can ever beat good unprocessed food and shouldn’t be the main source of a macronutrient.
Carbs are also very important for muscle building as they will give you the energy you need before a weight lifting session. Finally, healthy fats like salmon and avocado are also necessary for overall health and building muscle. There are a lot of healthy options for all those macronutrients and you can always find something you enjoy.
A healthy diet doesn’t need to be boring or restrictive, you just need to put a bit of effort in researching great recipes that have high nutritional value and a reasonable amount of calories for your body.
To optimize your diet for building muscle and in general, primarily focus on getting good quality balanced meals that will keep you full and satiated. If you are full from eating good food you are less likely to overeat processed foods with less nutritional value.
5. Don’t underestimate recovery & sleep
Sleep and recovery can sometimes be overlooked when thinking of muscle building. However, this is where your muscles actually get a chance to rebuild themselves. It is essential to get sufficient length and quality of sleep for your muscles to restore themselves and grow. Some people feel good after 7 hours, while others need 9. While everybody is different, aiming to get about 8 hours of sleep is a good target to have.
Lack of sleep won’t only affect how your muscles repair themselves but will also determine how well you can actually train during a session. If you are sleep deprived your performance in the gym will be significantly affected. This means you won’t be able to train as hard as you could and will miss out on making progress.
Similarly, taking days off is also important. However, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do anything. Performing some light or moderate-intensity activities (e.g. going for a walk or a swim) can support the recovery process.
6. Take your cardio training into account
Cardiovascular exercise is extremely important not only for your heart but also to help you with weight training. Regularly performing some moderate-intensity cardio exercise will improve your endurance and stamina during your weight session as well as help with recovery.
However, if muscle building is the main goal you need to make sure your cardio routine won’t interfere with your weight training. If the duration, frequency and intensity of your cardio workouts are too high, it may negatively affect your weight training performance and recovery.
For example, if you run long distances or do high-intensity training many times a week, building muscle will be much more challenging. Your body simply won’t be able to recover from both frequent intense cardio sessions and intense weight training sessions.
Furthermore, doing cardio before lifting weights is another habit that is affecting your gains. You can perform a light cardio warm-up but anything more intense than that will tire you out so you won’t be able to work as hard while lifting weights. It’s best to leave your cardio sessions for another day or least later in the day.
A well-planned cardio routine can be a great tool to help you with your performance in a weights room and subsequent muscle growth. Just make sure you don’t overdo it and you consume enough calories to make up for what you burn in your cardio sessions (unless you are trying to lose weight and need to be in a calorie deficit).
7. Remember that genetics matter
When you want to build muscle, it is important to accept that your end result is largely defined by your genetic potential. Depending on your body type it might be easier or harder to put muscle on.
Understanding this can help you have more realistic expectations about how much muscle you can realistically gain if you’re doing everything right. Most people aren’t born to look like a fitness model but this doesn’t mean you should give up. Do the best you can for your body type and be proud of your hard work.
Another thing that is defined by genetics is how your muscles grow. You might find building some muscle groups easier than others. In this case, you can try adding more volume for the muscle group that’s lagging behind. This can help to an extent but overall this shouldn’t be a major concern. At the end of the day, we can’t change our genetics but we can learn to work with what we have and achieve the best results for our bodies.
8. Be patient
When it comes to building muscle there isn’t a magic programme or a supplement that can help you achieve your goal in weeks. It is a very slow process and requires patience and dedication. It will take time to see results but this should not affect your commitment. Focus on improving your performance during each session, learning about your body and new exercises/training approaches.
Work on building a habit and a discipline to keep going even when your goals are way out of reach. Make every session count and if you get the hang of the other aspects mentioned earlier you will see the results even if it takes some time. Most importantly, don’t quit if things don’t seem to be working. Be honest with yourself about your training, diet, recovery, etc and make an effort to learn more and make the changes necessary to achieve your goal.