If you want to make your muscles grow, then you should resort to the help of regular training and proper nutrition. In this article, you will learn how to gain muscle mass.
For muscle growth, 3 very important conditions must be observed:
- Get a large number of calories, that is, you need to consume more calories per day than you spend.
- The body should have a need to build up new muscle fibers, then you need increased physical activity.
- The body must fully recover after exertion, that is, you always need to give the body a good rest. Namely, you need to sleep at least 8 hours a day.
Each of these conditions contains a lot of subtleties and nuances. And if you really want to know how to gain muscle mass, then read our 16 tips.
If you are reading this article, then you probably want to build muscle and increase your body size. And it doesn’t matter what exactly you want - sculpted biceps or just additional muscle mass. The tips in this article will add some new tools to your arsenal. These tips are a compilation of information received from the best athletes.
Tips for Gaining Muscle Mass
Add a couple of strategies from the list to your daily arsenal and watch the inevitable growth of your muscles!
Focus on more food
James Pulido
You probably know that nutrition plays a key role in sports. It helps to demonstrate the beauty of our body after hard work on it. Well, if we are talking about muscle growth, then nutrition is, in principle, necessary - in order to grow, you need to eat. And do not be embarrassed by talking about counting calories.
Want to know how many calories to eat? James Pulido, MuscleTech athlete and Superman fan gives his answer: “The best option for an athlete is to multiply his weight in pounds by 20. That is, an athlete weighing 180 pounds (about 82 kg), multiplying his weight by 20, will get a result in 3,600. This is the number of calories that an athlete should consume daily. For example, I weigh 105 kg, convert the weight to pounds (type in Google "105 kilograms in pounds", write your own instead of my weight at 105), get about 231 pounds, multiply by 20 and get - 4620 calories.
(Note that multiplying body weight in pounds by 20 depends on the quality of calories consumed. Multiplying by 20 is the maximum limit you can give your body. The minimum limit is multiplying by 15. You can be conservative and multiply your weight at 16 - 18.)
For starters, Pulido recommends dividing your meals in terms of fats, proteins, carbohydrates. For one pound of your weight (about 500 grams), you should have 1.5 grams of protein and 2 grams of carbohydrates daily. Everything else - and this is about 15-35% of the daily diet - should be dietary fats. "Fats are essential for hormonal balance, including testosterone production, and testosterone is critical for muscle growth," says Pulido.
Plan your workouts carefully
You want to grow, but it's only important to plan your workouts and not attack the gym like a crazy Banshee. The first thing to do is organize your workouts so that you don't train the same muscle group every day. In addition, muscles grow not only in the gym. They grow thanks to properly calculated rest time and proper nutrition.
“Targetedly stretching and injuring the same muscle groups for two days in a row will not provoke further muscle growth in this area,” says Jesse Hobbs. "If your muscles are aching after yesterday's workout, then you won't get the best results from today."
Jesse Hobbs
Except when you follow an advanced training course. But even in this case, the muscles need to be given 36-48 hours of rest before starting training again. So, if you work hard on the chest and biceps on Monday, then on Tuesday and Wednesday, give the muscles a little rest.
Prioritize evenly
A carefully planned program will ensure maximum results without repetitive repetitions of the same exercises or too heavy reinforced workouts. When forming a training program, pay attention to the difference between the main and peripheral muscle groups.
“Major muscle groups are the largest muscles (pectorals and legs, for example) that don’t need to be trained more than once a week,” says Hobbs.
“Peripheral muscles such as biceps, triceps, trapezius, calves and abs can be trained more than twice a week and will fully recover in a short period of time.”
If you want to build muscle in your arms or pump up killer abs, then train these muscle groups twice a week. For example, if you train biceps, then start doing it on Monday. On Tuesday, move on to triceps, and somewhere on Thursday, start training both at the same time.
Add Basic Exercises
If you want to grow muscle, lifting weights is one of the important steps towards this goal. And compound exercises like the squat, bench press, and deadlift allow you to increase your overall muscle mass, get stronger, and lift more weight in isolation exercises. To be frank, if you're not doing barbell squats and bench presses, you're missing out on a lot.
“I strive for natural movement in my exercises,” explains Pulido. “Using basic exercises causes a hormonal surge in the body and allows me to take on even more weight the next workout.”