The fastest way to gain muscle made simple
If you want to gain as much lean muscle as you can as quickly as possible, here’s a simple guide that reveals exactly how to make it happen.
1. Train less. If you accept what you read in the muscle magazines, gaining muscle size at a decent rate involves hitting each muscle group five to six days per week using a complicated split routine. Yes, it’s true that a handful of people will get good results with this type of program. But for most, the results will be disappointing. For the vast majority of people, the fastest way to gain muscle involves hitting the weights 3-4 days per week.
2. Do a maximum of twenty work sets in each training session. When they search for information on how to build muscle lose fat, a lot of people look to the muscle magazines for information. However, you can’t take a high volume (20-30 sets for each muscle group) workout used by a heavily drug-assisted champion bodybuilder and assume that someone who trains without the same level of “assistance” will see identical results simply by following the same program. It won’t work. For most people, a total of twenty work sets per workout (not including warm-up sets) is all you need. That’s not twenty work sets each muscle group. That’s twenty work sets in total for the entire workout.
3. Focus on gaining strength. The primary factor that stimulates muscle growth is something called progressive tension overload. Progressive tension overload involves putting more weight on the bar over a given period of time. Let’s say that you start out using one hundred pounds for three sets of six repetitions. Every month, you add five pounds to the bar. In one year’s time, you’ll be lifting 150 pounds. And your muscles will have grown larger to accommodate the extra weight. If you’re not getting stronger, you’re probably not putting on any muscle either.
4. Take a break. Although it’s vital to train hard when you’re in the gym, your body is not a machine and needs to be given a rest every so often. The simple way to do this is to take a week off for every three to six weeks of hard training. An “off” week (sometimes called a deload week) doesn’t mean doing no exercise at all. Instead, reduce the total number of sets by half while keeping the weight and number of repetitions used in the previous week.
5. Get enough protein. If you’ve been searching for information about building muscle, there’s a good chance you’ve come across numerous opinions about the amount of protein you should eat. The optimal protein intake for gaining muscle in guys who aren’t on the juice is around 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight. You don’t need the huge levels I’ve seen some people recommend, such as 2-3 grams of protein for every pound of bodyweight.
6. Set yourself realistic goals. A lot of folks have totally pie in the sky expectations about the rate at which it’s possible to add muscle. People wanting to know the best way to lose belly fat often have similarly unrealistic expectations. So how quickly can you add muscle? This depends a lot on the individual. Some have very favorable genetics for gaining muscle and will see impressive results after just a few months of training with weights. Others will add size more slowly. If you’re a beginner, you’re doing extremely well to be adding about 2 pounds of muscle per month, or twenty four pounds during the course of a year.
