YOU MIGHT BE STEPPING back into the gym for the first time in a while. Life has been getting in the way, and over and over again, your fitness routine was the first thing nixed. You’re ready to get back into the swing of things, build some muscle, and feel good in your body again.
You’re not quite sure where to start, so you hop on a treadmill to go for a quick warmup walk as you scope out the scene. Left and right, there’s nothing but massive dudes pushing even more massive weights. Their approach seems to be working in the muscle-building department. Their physiques are impressive to say the least. You want to build muscle like them, but you wonder: does building muscle really require that much time and dedication?
The answer is somewhere between yes and no. Developing an Arnold-esque physique takes decades of logged gym hours and a rock-solid nutrition plan. However, if you’re not looking to become the next Mr. Olympia, building muscle doesn’t have to be that complex. Here are a few tips to mastering the art of muscle-building.
Why Is Building Muscle Beneficial?
Building muscle can do more for your body than just making you look different or adding strength. Yes, there’s a high that comes with hitting your squat max, but the benefit runs so much deeper than those feelings of accomplishment.
Muscle Offers Joint Support
Our muscles offer a huge support system to our joints. They can absorb a bit of the impact that radiates through our knees and hips when running, jumping, and even walking. The more muscle we have, the more force gets absorbed, saving our joints from long-term damage. Our muscles also ensure our joints move the directions they’re supposed to. When our muscles are too weak to push against an opposing force, our joints may not be able to handle the impact, causing breaks and tears. This kind of support allows us better balance, preventing those kinds of accidents before they happen.
More Muscle Helps to Burn More Calories
Though the difference is not as significant as many assume it to be, increasing your muscle mass also increases your metabolism, meaning you burn more calories at rest in a day. A pound of muscle burns around 13 calories a day, whereas a pound of fat tissue only burns about 4. If you’re bulking, though, you may be needing food more than this discrepancy accounts for.
That being said if you’re putting on muscle, you’re definitely working out more often, and inherently burning more calories throughout your day.
Muscle Helps Blood Levels
Gaining strength can even help our blood composition. Our muscles use both glucose and fatty acids for fuel. This keeps our blood sugar levels down. Elevated blood sugar can cause long term effects, such as blood vessels damage and a higher risk of heart disease, stroke, and nerve problems.
Muscle Makes Everything Else Easier
Whether you enjoy hitting the basketball court for a game of pick up, tending to your garden, or backpacking through the wilderness, building muscle can “set [you] up for success in the things you enjoy doing outside the gym,” says Jahkeen Washington, C.P.T., owner of JTW Fit and the Harlem Kettlebell Club
Increasing muscle mass can improve your everyday functionality. Many aspects of life become easier as you get stronger—no more losing your breath going up a single flight of stairs, or dropping your heavy grocery bags.
Yes, Muscle Makes You Look Good
Yes, there are the obvious aesthetic benefits to adding muscle mass to your frame. Your clothes will fit better, some people might consider you more attractive, and you’ll feel more confident. Those are all big reasons that drive guys to spend hours in the gym pumping iron in the pursuit of gains. There’s no shame in making your aesthetic a reason to get in the gym – it still leads to all the other health benefits.
While there’s so many reasons to focus on muscle building, there’s more to it than just showing up to the gym, hefting some weights, and calling it a day. You’ll need to be a bit more intentional for effective muscle growth. To build muscle, you must push your muscles to the limit, then let them recover and grow stronger as they do. And to do this, you must create the proper recovery environment for them when you’re not in the gym.
This means your quest to build muscle involves a host of variables over a 24-hour period. The things you do in the gym to push your muscles to the limit count. So does the “work” you put in during the other 20 or so hours when you’re away from the gym, everything from rest to nutrition to active recovery. All of this can affect how you build muscle.
What Is Muscle Hypertrophy?
One of the best ways to get started is to understand and define what muscle-building actually is. Muscle hypertrophy is the increase in growth of muscle cells, and it’s a process that’s often kickstarted by resistance training. It’s the adaptation our muscles experience from continual exposure to progressively overloaded forms of resistance training, which then results in an increase in our muscle fiber size, both in diameter and length. Essentially, you need to push your muscles hard, often by lifting heavy loads for reps, stimulating the release of muscle-growing hormones and other metabolites. Our muscles get physically larger through the act of strategically consistent and harder workouts.
Remember, effort is one of the most definitive drivers of muscle gain over time. However, it’s just one of the drivers. That effort needs to be coupled with a desire to push your body farther than you might think it’s capable of. This is something called “progressive overload.” If you’re not familiar, progressive overload involves creating some form of increased, strategic effort based on the style of training you’re doing. This doesn’t mean going heavier and heavier with the weights in every set and every single workout, because sometimes, that’s not possible. Over-focus on going heavy in every single workout, and you set yourself up for injury and disappointment.
No, progressive overload takes place over months and months of working out. Sure, if you’re new to the gym, you may add major pounds to the bench press, partly because you’re just learning the exercise. But the longer you’re in the gym, the harder it is to make gains. This is why it’s incredibly important to have a plan in place and build a framework for your training and nutritional habits that coincide with your goals. “Workouts without a plan just won’t get you to the goals you want,” says MH fitness director Ebenezer Samuel, C.S.C.S. “You need a strategy.”
Note, your muscle building strategy doesn’t need to be so rigid that it leaves no room for fun. In fact, you can still eat meals you enjoy, and you don’t need to spend hours in the gym, as long as when you’re training and fueling yourself strategically a majority of the time. The goal is to create a muscle building plan that is realistic for your goals and needs.
The tips below will help you—whether you’re a beginner or somebody who’s hit a frustrating training plateau—build muscle with a strategic and realistic means.
The 10 Principles of Building Muscle
1. Maximize Muscle Building
The more protein your body stores—in a process called protein synthesis—the larger your muscles grow. But your body is constantly draining its protein reserves for other uses—making hormones, for instance.
Best Meals for Muscle: A No-BS 3-Week Plan for Big Gains
The result is less protein available for muscle building. To counteract that, you need to “build and store new proteins faster than your body breaks down old proteins,” says Michael Houston, Ph.D., a professor of nutrition at Virginia Tech University.
Shoot for about 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight, which is roughly the maximum amount your body can use in a day, according to a landmark study in the Journal of Applied Physiology.
For example, a 160-pound man should consume around 160 grams of protein a day—the amount he’d get from an 8-ounce chicken breast, 1 cup of cottage cheese, a roast-beef sandwich, two eggs, a glass of milk, and 2 ounces of peanuts. Split the rest of your daily calories equally between carbohydrates and fats.
2. Eat More
In addition to adequate protein, you need more calories. Your body uses this extra energy to rebuild and grow muscle after your workouts. You’ll need to be strategic about how you increase your intake, says Leslie Bonci, M.P.H., R.D.N., sports dietitian to the Kansas City Chiefs.
Use the following formula to calculate the number you need to take in daily to gain 1 pound a week. (Give yourself two weeks for results to show up on the bathroom scale. If you haven’t gained weight by then, increase your calories by 500 a day.)
- A. Your weight in pounds: _____
- B. Multiply A by 12 to get your basic calorie needs: _____
- C. Divide B by 1.6 to estimate your resting metabolic rate (calorie burn without factoring in exercise): _____
- D. Strength training: Multiply the number of minutes you lift weights per week by 5: _____
- E. Aerobic training: Multiply the number of minutes per week that you run, cycle, and play sports by 8: _____
- F. Add D and E, and divide by 7: _____
- G. Add C and F to get your daily calorie needs: _____
- H. Add 500 to G: _____. This is your estimated daily calorie needs to gain 1 pound a week.
Upping your intake might not always be easy. “Gainers may find it difficult to eat more food as they may not always have a great appetite,” Bonci says. But there are options—one easy way to add in those calories is to increase the amount of nutrient dense foods you eat. Think higher calorie foods like full-fat cheeses and yogurts, nuts and nut butters, beans, and low-sugar granola and cereals. These types of foods will help you achieve your calorie count without having to eat a higher volume.
Another calorie-loading tip: make sure there are calories in your glass, not just on your plate, Bonci says. Perfect a smoothie recipe or find a protein powder that you can’t get enough of—those added calories (and protein!) will make all the difference in your weight gain.
3. Work Big, Not Small
Biceps curls are fun, but if you want to put on muscle, you have to do more to challenge your body. And one key to doing that, says Samuel, is working through so-called “multi-joint” movements. “Yes, isolation training has value,” says Samuel, “but it can’t be the backbone of your training.”
Instead, you want to do exercises that challenge multiple joints and muscles at once. Take, for example, a dumbbell row. Every row rep challenges biceps, lats, and core (if your form is strict). Using multiple muscle groups allows you to lift more weight, says Samuel, a key stimulator of growth (more on that later). And it pushes you to use muscles together, just as you do in real life. “Multi-joint moves are key in your workouts,” he says.
Make sure moves like squats, deadlifts, pullups, and bench presses are in your workout to take advantage of that. All will stimulate multiple muscle groups at the same time, and in order to grow, you want to do that.
4. Train Heavy
If you want to build muscle and strength, you have to train heavy, says Curtis Shannon, C.S.C.S. “Training heavy, safely and efficiently, has many benefits,” says Shannon. “Heavy training challenges the muscles not only concentrically but eccentrically. If done right, the stimulus of heavy weight going down with control and going back up will cause greater muscle tear and rebuild.”
That means not every set you do should have you pumping out 10 to 15 reps. Yes, high-rep sets can have value, but for multi-joint moves like squats and bench presses, and deadlifts, don’t be afraid to do sets of, say, five reps. That’ll allow you to use more weight, building more pure strength, says Samuel. And as you progress, that new strength will allow you to lift heavier weights for more reps.
One way you can approach this in your training: Lead off every workout with an exercise that lets you train low-rep. Do four sets of three to five reps on your first exercise, then do three sets of 10 to 12 reps for every move after that. “It’s the best of both worlds,” says Samuel, “letting you build pure strength early, then pile up reps later.”
5. Have a Drink First
A 2001 study at the University of Texas found that lifters who drank a shake containing amino acids and carbohydrates before working out increased their protein synthesis more than lifters who drank the same shake after exercising.
The shake contained 6 grams of essential amino acids—the muscle-building blocks of protein—and 35 grams of carbohydrates.
“Since exercise increases blood flow to your working tissues, drinking a carbohydrate-protein mixture before your workout may lead to greater uptake of the amino acids in your muscles,” says Kevin Tipton, Ph.D., an exercise and nutrition researcher at the University of Texas in Galveston.
For your shake, you’ll need about 10 to 20 grams of protein—usually about one scoop of a whey-protein powder. Can’t stomach protein drinks? You can get the same nutrients from a sandwich made with 4 ounces of deli turkey and a slice of American cheese on whole wheat bread. But a drink is better.
“Liquid meals are absorbed faster,” says Kalman. So tough it out. Drink one 30 to 60 minutes before your workout.
6. Don’t Always Go Hard
Your body should move every day, but that doesn’t mean your workouts should take you to fatigue and exhaustion. “If you train your hardest every day, your body doesn’t get a chance to grow,” says Samuel. “Pick your spots to attack.” Aim to finish every workout feeling good, not dead. Limit your weight room workouts to 12 to 16 total sets of work, and never go beyond that.
This doesn’t mean you can’t take on a brutal workout every so often. But limit workouts that take your body to its breaking point to three times a week, never on back-to-back days. “You need recovery to grow,” says Samuel. “Constantly training to the point of exhaustion will be counterproductive to the recovery you need for muscle growth.”
If you want to be sure you’re alternating optimally between hard and light days, follow a workout plan from a trainer. We’ve got a whole library of plans built by top trainers to get you started. Find the best fit for your training needs and goals with our Workout Finder below.
7. Down the Carbs After Your Workout
Research shows that you’ll rebuild muscle faster on your rest days if you feed your body carbohydrates.
“Post-workout meals with carbs increase your insulin levels,” which, in turn, slows the rate of protein breakdown, says Kalman. Have a banana, a sports drink, a peanut-butter sandwich.
8. Challenge Yourself with Progressive Overload
As we mentioned earlier, one major key to muscle-building is pushing your muscles to handle progressively greater challenges. In general, most gym-goers think that means you must lift heavier in every single workout. That’s simply not feasible, says Samuel. “There comes a point where it becomes harder to just put more weight on the bar,” he says. “If that wasn’t the case, everyone would be benching 300 pounds.”
Don’t simply aim to add weight on every set of every exercise, says Samuel. But do work to improve in some way on every set of an exercise. “Even if you’re not going up in weight, you can push yourself in different ways,” he says. “You might do 10 reps of deadlifts this set. On the next set, instead of adding weight, do the same 10 reps, but do them with even sharper form.”
Sometimes, staying with the same weight for all four sets on a day can provide plenty of challenge, says Samuel, especially when you’re improving your execution every set. There are other forms of progressive overload too. You can decrease the rest time between sets, going from, say, 120 seconds to 90 seconds, or you can up the reps, or you can even do more sets.
“Aim to improve every workout,” says Samuel, “but know that that improvement won’t always look the same. I may deadlift 315 pounds today four times and not be able to add weight. But if I can squeeze out a fifth rep, or even do my four reps with more control than I did last week, I’m on the right track.”
9. Maximize Time Under Tension
One sometimes-forgotten way to progressively overload your muscles is to leave them under more of something called “time under tension”. When your muscles are working, whether they’re under a bench press bar, or whether your biceps is working to curl a dumbbell upwards, they’re under “tension” from the weight. You can feel this too: If you stand holding dumbbells at your sides, your biceps aren’t under tension. The moment you begin to curl them upwards, you’ll feel them flex against the “tension” of the dumbbells.
Experienced lifters often use this tension to their advantage. Instead of just lifting and lowering a weight (on say, that biceps curl), they lift with a specific tempo. They might curl up as fast as they can, for example, and then lower the weight for three focused seconds with good form on every rep.
Doing this leaves your muscles under tension for longer than a typical set, in which you might lift and lower the weight without any specific timing. And that extra time under tension during a set can help spark muscle growth.
Note that you can do this on almost any strength exercise. It doesn’t work for explosive exercises, like kettlebell swings, snatches, and cleans. But squats, deadlifts, curls, pullups and pushups (and many other moves) can be tweaked to add more time-under-tension, pushing your muscles farther on every rep.
10. Sleep At Least 6 Hours
Sleep is often the forgotten variable in the journey to muscle. You spend plenty of time training, but what you often don’t realize is this: When you’re asleep, your muscles are recovering and your body is growing. It’s also during this period that muscle-growing hormones are secreted.
You know by now that, ideally, you want to get eight to 10 hours of sleep. That, of course, doesn’t always happen, but you want to do what you can to maximize the quality of the hours you do get, if you can’t hit 8 hours.
So think about your sleep setup if you’re serious about muscle. Try to go to bed at the same time every day and try to rise at the same time every day. And sleep in a fully dark, fully quiet cool room. All these little things optimize sleep quality and that can have an underrated effect on your ability to build muscle.
How Long Does It Take to Build Muscle?
The answer depends largely on how much muscle you already have.
“On average, untrained individuals gain one to two pounds of mass per month for several months in the initial phases of training. Probably half that, if you’re moderately trained,” says Brad Schoenfeld, P.h.D., C.S.C.S.
Once you’re experienced, you’ll see those muscle gains slow down. “If you’re very well trained, as you continues to get closer to a genetic ceiling, the amount of muscle that you can build is progressively diminished. Some high level natural bodybuilders can hope to gain one or two pounds a year.”
The key is to continue working to improve to build the strength and muscle to the best of your ability, and appreciating strength training for its other benefits as you enjoy the journey.
Protein Is Essential for Muscle Growth
Weight-gain powders seem like an easy solution to a skinny guy’s problems. After all, they pack as many as 2,200 calories into one serving. But you’re not getting what you pay for.
“High-calorie weight-gain drinks usually get more than 80 percent of their calories from sugar,” says Doug Kalman, R.D. And downing that much sugar can give you an upset stomach and diarrhea.
So, in a sense, you’re flushing good money down the toilet. “You’ll get much better results by spreading your calories throughout the day,” says Kalman.
And by using protein shakes. Look for whey protein powders at nutrition stores. Combine one scoop of the powder with the following ingredients and blend for a homemade muscle-building pre-workout shake:
- 1 tsp olive or flaxseed oil
- 1/2 c fat-free yogurt
- 1 c grape or apple juice
Stats per shake: 335 calories, 27 gram protein, 45 grams carbohydrates, 6 grams fat
Want more protein-packed muscle-building goodness? Check out these healthy shake recipes.
Beginner Full-Body Muscle Building Workout
Need a place to start? Washington’s full body beginner workout is a great first step into lifting. This strength workout hits all your major muscle groups.
3 rounds of each super set / 2 to 3 minute rest between each round
Superset A
Dumbbell Goblet Squats
8 reps
How to Do It:
- Stand with your feet just wider than shoulder-width apart. Turn your toes out slightly to start; as you progress, find the most comfortable stance for your own mobility.
- Hold a kettlebell or dumbbell with both at chest-height, elbows high. Pull your shoulder blades down and back. Brace your core.
- Push your butt back, then bend your knees to descend down into the squat. Lower down to a depth just below parallel (i.e., your thighs are parallel to the floor) or to the most comfortable position given your personal mobility.
- Press your knees apart to prevent them from caving in. Maintain tension in your core and shoulders; don’t rest your elbows on your knees.
- Push off the floor and squeeze your glutes to stand back up.
Dumbbell Single-Arm Rows
10 reps
How to Do It:
- Stand with your feet at shoulder width apart in front of the bench. Push your butt back and lower your torso down, extending your off arm to rest your palm on the bench. Make sure your shoulders stay above your hips.
- Grab the dumbbell with your working hand. Squeeze your glutes and abs to create full-body tension. Your back should be flat, with your head in a neutral position.
- Squeeze your mid-back muscles to drive your elbow up, rowing the weight. Keep your shoulders level and avoid rotating your lower back.
- Pause for a beat, then lower the weight back down.
Superset B
Dumbbell Romanian Deadlifts
10 reps
How to Do It:
- Standing with your feet about shoulder-width apart, grab a pair of dumbbells from a bench or box.
- Keep the dumbbells close to your sides, with your shoulders back, your core tight, and glutes squeezed.
- Begin “pushing” your butt back as far as possible as you begin lowering your torso—as if you’re trying to close a car door. Think about taking two seconds with the lowering phase. The goal is to get to about a 45-degree angle, depending on your personal mobility limits. Don’t forget to keep the dumbbells close to your shins—don’t let them hang too far forward.
- Pause at the bottom, then stand back up, slightly quicker than the lowering phase.
Dumbbell Half-Kneeling Press
8 reps
How to Do It:
- Kneel on one knee. Grab the dumbbell, and hold it in the hand opposite to the knee that is up.
- Squeeze your core, and pack your shoulder blades down and back, creating full body tension. Ensure your shoulders are stacked right overtop of your hips.
- Start with the dumbbell lined up with your collarbone. Slightly shift your elbow forward in relation to your torso.
- Make sure your forearm is perpendicular to the floor. Press the weight straight up, keeping the core tight so the ribs don’t flare outward.
Superset C
Single-Dumbbell Pause Hip Thrust
10 reps
How to Do It:
- You’ll need a bench to set up here. Place your shoulder blades against the bench. Lay the dumbbell across your lap.
- Lift your hips up to find the proper position for your feet. Your shins should be parallel with the floor, with your feet about hip-width apart.
- Drive the weight up, squeezing your glutes as much as possible. Open your knees up as you drive to help protect your knees. Pause at the top for 2 to 3 seconds before relaxing back to the start.
Dumbbell Seated Biceps Curls
12 reps
How to Do It:
- You’ll need a bench for this movement. If it’s an adjustable bench, move the back so that it is upright at 90 degrees.
- Sit up straight on the bench. Hold your dumbbells by your sides, keeping the elbows close into the ribcage.
- Turn the wrists so your palms face the ceiling, and curl the weights up towards your chest. Keep the core tight to prevent any sway of the body to muscle up the weight.
Core
Dead Bugs
20 reps
How to Do It:
- Start by laying down, with your arms and legs at 90 degrees. Contract your abs so that you can drive your lower back into the ground—the goal is to eliminate any space between your back and any ground surface.
- Now, focusing on holding this position, extend one leg and the opposite arm. Extend only so far as you’re able to without losing that back-to-the-ground position.
- Don’t worry if you can’t go very far; the move will get easier the more you perform it.
Cable Wood Chops
10 reps per side
How to Do It:
- Set up your cable machine so the handle is on the highest setting. Make yourself parallel with the machine, and place two hands on the handle.
- Plant your feet about hip-width apart, and squeeze your abs and glutes to create a sturdy base.
- Keep your arms mostly straight, with only a slight bend through the elbow. Squeeze your core to pull the cable down across your body to your opposite hip, trying to keep your torso as still as possible.
- Continue squeezing your core while you slowly release the handle back up to the starting position.
Brad Schoenfeld is a fitness expert who focuses on body composition training and bodybuilding
