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10 Muscle-Building Fundamentals You Need to Learn
These 10 tips can help you pack on muscle and strength.
BY ADAM CAMPBELL AND JAKE BOLY, C.S.C.S.
PUBLISHED: DEC 15, 2022
EVERYWHERE YOU LOOK these days, it seems, you'll see maxed-out muscle.
If you're even somewhat interested in fitness, every time you open up your phone's
social media apps you'll be inundated with gigantic dudes deadlifting cars, ads for
protein powders, and professional athletes talking about their lifting routines.
There are so many tips available for building your biceps, bulking your back, or
torching your triceps you could put even a third of them into practice and be set
on workouts for months. Not everyone is in the gym trying to get like Arnold—but
there's more to building muscle than just looking swole.
There is no one size fits all guide to healthy living, and the same goes with staying
active. After all, the best workout routine is the one you’re able to stay consistent
with. Maybe you’re a yogi, a cyclist, or a jiu jitsu fanatic. Regardless of what you’re
into, you can always benefit from muscle building. Strength training makes all
your other athletic endeavors, and your activities of daily living, more efficient.
Why is Building Muscle Bene몭icial?
Building muscle can do more for your body than just increasing 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 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 Build Strong Bones
Believe it or not, putting extra pressure on our bones is actually what helps them
grow. So, loading the bones with some heavy barbell squats or a kettlebell
overhead press are actually helping them become more sturdy. Bone density
becomes increasingly important when it comes to aging. Bone mass gradually
decreases as we get older, making them more fragile and thus more susceptible to
breaks, in a process known as osteoporosis. This is why you so commonly hear
about Grandma’s hip breaking after a small fall from the stoop. Building muscle
can help prevent these accidents from happening to you in the future.
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.
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 musclebuilding 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. Overfocus 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
RIMAGINE GROUP LIMITED // GETTY IMAGES
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
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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
OATMEALSTORIES // GETTY IMAGES
In addition to adequate protein, you need more calories. Use the following
formula to calculate the number you need to take in daily to gain 1 pound a week.
(Give yourself 2 weeks for results to show up on the bathroom scale. If you haven’t
gained 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. Multiply 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.
3. Work Big, Not Small
Yes, 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 abs. 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 dont 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 10-15 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, 5 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 4 sets of 3-5 reps on your first exercise,
then do 3 sets of 10-12 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 bloodflow 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
ROBERT DALY // GETTY IMAGES
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
12-16 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."
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
the case, 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 4 times and not be
able to add weight. But if I can squeeze out a 5th rep, or even do my 4 reps with
more control than I did last week, I'm on the right track."
9. Maximize Time Under Tension
MIHAILOMILOVANOVIC // GETTY IMAGES
One sometimes-forgotten way to progressively overload your muscles is to leave
them under more of something called "time under tension". When you're 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
3 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 8 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.
The Whey To Go for Muscle Growth
ALEKSANDARNAKIC // GETTY IMAGES
Drink this protein power shake before every workout.
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.
JAKE BOLY, C.S.C.S.
Jake Boly, MS CSCS, is the Co-Founder of Pheasyque Lab, That Fit Friend, and works as a
consultant for other fitness professionals trying to build websites and brands.
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