HOW TO: BUILD MUSCLE MASS, THE KEY TO A BIGGER PHYSIQUE!
When it comes to building any kind of muscle mass, through whichever forms of workout routine you choose, the biggest and most overlooked thing, which needs to be drummed home hard, is this one simple question:
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“Are you eating enough?”
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It’s important to remember that no matter how many repetitions you do, or how many sets you complete of any exercise, if you are NOT eating ENOUGH calories daily then your muscles will not GROW.
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During any routine, your muscles receive microscopic damage to their fibres, which with proper
rest, will recover and repair alittle bit thicker to compensate for the load they were under. That means that next time you perform an exercise on the recovered muscle, the tolerence will be just alittle bit more. This is how you progress.
However if you are NOT eating enough calories, particularly if you’re a skinny person, then the muscles, no matter how much you workout, will not grow any bigger because they do not have adequate energy or nutrients to repair themselves and become any bigger.
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The important factor that makes the body get bigger or smaller is all down to how many calories you burn on a daily basis, Now this is both while you’re in a rest state (sitting around, not really doing much) and then including how many you burn during a workout. Once you have a good assumption of how many calories your body burns you can then go about ensuring that you receive enough calories to compensate for this, however in order to get your muscles to grow bigger and stronger you then need to add additional calories that will be used as energy to spurt muscle growth.
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To get a good idea of the ratio of how many calories you burn daily, plus the correct balance of macronutrients you need, Click Here to view a very useful macronutrient calculator tool. After you have this information, simply aim for 300 - 500 additional calories per day to persuade growth and go from there. If you do not see any gain in weight after a while, then you may need to add even more per day, some body builders go as far as an additional 1000 calories per day!
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Important note: When eating to gain muscle, expect some fat gain aswell. Even with a good clean diet it’s difficult to not gain some fat. Don’t be discouraged, it’s perfectly normal and can be dealt with later by having calorie deficits on rest days.
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Workout Routines
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Alongside ensuring that you are in a calorie surplus (thats eating more calories than you have burned daily) it’s important to have a training routine that focuses on stimulating multiple muscle groups at once. These moves spurt the most muscle building potential and lifting in the range of 8-12 repetitions per exercise with a weight that is roughly 75% of your one rep max (thats the total maximum weight you can do on any particular exercise for just one repetition) does the most to stimulate testosterone production which is a hormone related to increasing strength and ofcourse size.
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Once your compound moves are complete then you can move onto isolating specific muscle groups with exercises, accurately named, “Isolation Moves”. These are like the ‘icing on the cake’ and are only performed just to add extra to the muscle in terms of it’s volumn and endurance. Alot of people like to use these isolation moves with lighter weights and focus on performing repetitions between 12-15.
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This pumps alot more blood into the muscle, causing it to swell, which is known as “hypertrophy”. These make the muscle appear bigger and fuller but it’s important to note that over time the muscle will begin to ‘deflate’ due to the blood no longer remaining in the muscle. This is why its important to use a combination of strength training with compound movements and hypertrophy training to create muscles that remain fuller and stronger for longer periods.
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Overtime your muscles will start adapting to the moves and weight load they are subjected to and thus it’ll be time to increase the weight. This is called progressive overload and it’s crucial to spurt muscle growth on!
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For workout routines that will get you building muscle mass, click on the Workout Routines tab on the main menu. Here you will find a number of my personal favourite routines I have used. Try them out for yourself or use them as a template to create your very own training program!
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To Summarize:
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Building muscle mass requires you to consume more calories than you burn, both at rest and after exercise.
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Calories must come from good food sources with a good balance of proteins, carbohydrates and fats.
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Avoid processed foods and alcohol. These cause long term health problems.
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Expect some fat gain, it’s very difficult to not gain any fat when bulking up in any form.
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Use a workout routine that combines Compound and Isolation moves.
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Keep rep ranges between 8-10 on heavy weights and 12-15 on lighter weights to get the best results for muscle growth.
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Using Heavy weights encourages Testosterone production which is a key hormone for strength and size. Lighter weights and higher rep ranges are used to create Hypertrophy, to give a good pump into the muscle to make it appear fuller.
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Don’t forget that this will take time! Dedication is key to getting the results you want!
Calories in > Calories out
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And ofcourse it’s very important to ensure that the calories come from a well balanced diet of proteins, carbs and fats! Your macronutrients! Things like processed foods contain alot of chemically altered ingredients that cause alot of long term health issues and as such should be avoided.
Alcohol also causes alot of health problems and contains little to no benefitial calories, despite being quite calorie dense, so don’t try to incorporate alcohol into a diet as a means of gaining a calorie surplus. It does nothing but hinder gains and basically just makes you look fatter than normal!
Moves like the Bench Press, Squat and Deadlift are known as “Compound Moves” because these use more than one muscle group to complete the exercise.
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For example: The Bench Press targets the chest muscles primarily but also the front of the shoulders (anterior deltoid) and the back of your arms (your triceps), as a bi-product for having perfect form, your core also receives a small workout from where it has to brace to keep your body from rolling side to side.
These types of workout moves burn alot of calories and this is what we’re aiming for in order to get the best results!