Muscle Gaining

How do you know when you have reached your muscle gain plateau? You’ve been consistently adding weight to your routine over the past month or two and now you can’t seem to get to the next level. You are still lifting the same amount of weight with the same amount of reps as the previous months and you just can’t add any more. You have definitely reached a plateau.

How do you make sure you don’t get to these frustrating plateaus?

Change it up! If you don’t alter your workouts, the plateaus are most certainly guaranteed. Reaching a plateau means that your body and muscles have adapted. As your muscles get stronger, fewer fibers are needed to lift the same load. If you can’t increase the weight, these fibers get lazy and you must do something to shock and stimulate them. A successful muscle gain routine will have variation.

Change the order in which you do your routines, vary your exercises, lower the weight and do more repetitions, or try to do your lifting more slowly.

Another cause of reaching a plateau may be over training. Too many people work the same muscle groups daily and do not allow for rest. It is imperative for muscle gain that no muscle group be trained on consecutive days.

Did you know that wearing weight belts inhibit the strengthening of your lower back and abdominal muscles?

For anyone starting a muscle gaining routine, it is important to start with light weights. Mastering technique and form should be first priority. Never use more weight than you can handle.

For example, so many beginners doing bicep curls with the barbell, try to lift so much weight that they actually rock forward and swing the bar up. This is the wrong way to work those biceps. I see this every day. It is important for beginners to start with light weights and focus on proper technique in order to see results within a few short weeks. If six hard working weeks later, you are not seeing the muscle gains, you may want a trainer to keep an eye on your form.

How do you know how much weight you can handle?

If you start with a weight and are fatigued quickly, say less than 6 reps, drop the weight. If you choose a weight and can do over 10 reps right away, you should increase the weight. The first step is to get to 10 reps with a weight that will fatigue your muscles. Stay with this weight until you can complete several sets of 10 reps. It is now time to increase the weight. Again, you should only be able to do 10 reps in the beginning, working up to several sets of 10. Once again, increase the weight. When training, I usually increase the weight load by ten percent each time.

I can’t stress this enough: proper form and technique are the key to reaching your muscle gaining  goals.

A healthy diet, rich in protein is just as important as lifting for muscle weight gain. After spending all those hours at the gym, building muscle, your body must replenish good quality proteins quickly to repair and rebuild muscle. Do not let your protein levels become depleted.

You must have adequate protein in your diet for maximum muscle weight gain. Ideally, protein should be consumed within 90 minutes after a high intensity workout in addition to including it in every single meal including snacks.

You need to consume 1.5g of good quality protein per pound of body weight. So if you weigh 200 lbs, for example, you need to eat about 300g of protein a day.

To keep your body in an anabolic state to promote muscle, add various protein sources to each meal such as animal protein (lean red meat, poultry, fish or eggs), nuts, beans and vegetables.

Drink your milk. Milk is often overlooked and is actually a source of complete protein and excellent nutrition for muscle weight gain.

Finally, supplement with a high quality whey protein powder, one that is quickly metabolized by muscle tissue. Look for protein products that have at least 50g of protein per serving, include BCAA’s and are low carb.

Bottom line: in order to gain good quality muscle, you must train right, eat several times a day, and pay close attention to the quality of your calorie intake and mix of proteins, carbs and fats.

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What you see in the mirror does not count.

Focusing only on limited objectives such as getting the biggest chest or the biggest biceps is the worst muscle gaining error and can create anatomical imbalances. Thousands of people spend hours doing endless bench presses and curls to build up the muscles they see in the mirrored walls at the gym. You see these people every single day. What they are refusing to hear is that while they are focusing all of their efforts on these exercises, they are creating an unbalanced tightness in the front of the shoulders which is just asking for rotator cuff issues.

Another example: Everyone in the gym seems concerned about their abdominal muscles but nobody is working the back extensors that work opposite of and support these abs. That’s why you may see guys with six-pack abs and lower back problems.

Loading on the weight doesn’t matter if you are sacrificing form.

Never sacrifice proper form for added weight. When you use too much weight you compensate by throwing the bar, relying on momentum which will not help you. I was recently asked to observe a bodypump class and I couldn’t believe how many people were using so much weight, the bar was all over the place. In many instances, the weights were controlling people to the point that they were losing balance and certainly losing form. This is a huge muscle gaining error.

All movements in weight training must be slow, controlled and steady. Good form and a slow pace ensures that you achieve the full range of motion including slowly returning to the resting position. This is important to exercising the entire muscle.  So while you may think you are impressing people with heavy weights, you are not going to see the muscle gains that you expect.

Lowering the weight and going slower will enable you to sustain the load throughout the entire range of the motion and will exhaust your muscle much faster, which is the ultimate goal. That, along with proper rest between workouts along with good nutrition, allows for optimal muscle gain.

More is not necessarily better

I see many guys at the gym every single day, working the same muscles over and over. When it comes to muscle gain, more is definitely not better. Muscles respond to optimal overload and then rest.  If you have trouble getting though workouts, your muscles are sore prior to starting and you are not making the muscle gains you were expecting, you are most likely over working those muscles and it may be best to scale down the workouts. Too much training can actually cause muscle loss.

You should never do the same workout two days in a row unless doing low intensity workouts such as yoga and not working your muscles to exhaustion.

Many people can somehow fit the gym into their busy schedules several times a week. Some of us must go to the gym to stay motivated. But what about those that just can’t seem to squeeze in the extra time it takes to get there and back?

If you are strength training to gain muscle fast, working out at home can still give you the results you are looking for. Unfortunately, bodybuilding magazines have made weight training so complicated, making you think that it takes 6 different exercises to work just one muscle group. As I mentioned in the past, you can get a total body workout with just six muscle movements using basic dumbbells or barbells in a short period of time.

Thirty minutes, at least three times a week will help you gain muscle fast  naturally.

To gain muscle at home using weights, start off with lower intensity, high volume workouts and gradually push toward heavier weights and lower repetitions. Eventually you will need to shake up your metabolism and change it up. Increase weights, drop reps or decrease weights, add reps or change the exercises slightly.

6 Key Movements For Maximum Muscle Gain