There are a lot of ways to build muscle, but only a few tried-and-true methods that work every time. It’s best to lean on science and avoid marketing ploys when you’re trying to make big changes to your body.
We’re going to talk about some of the best ways that you can gain muscle in this article, giving you insight into how they work, exercises that you can do, and what to expect.
Hopefully, the information below can get you inspired to start making healthy changes to your life. Let’s take a look.
1. Adjust Your Diet
The food we eat makes a big difference in the way our bodies produce and manage muscle. When our diets consist of a lot of processed, sugary foods, the exercises we do won’t be as impactful to the state of our bodies.
It’s important to have a diet that consists mostly of natural foods. It’s also key to include a variety of different foods of various categories. Vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, seeds, and protein are the key ones.
If you can get a variety of those categories into your diet on a regular basis, odds are that you’ll cover all of your nutritional bases. That said, trying to put on muscle requires that you feed yourself a little bit more.
Try to incorporate high amounts of carbohydrates and protein into your diet. Chicken breasts are a favorite among weightlifters. When you eat a lot of clean protein, you’re giving your body more of the building blocks it needs to synthesize the proteins that your muscles consist of.
2. Do More Repetitions
It might feel as though your muscle mass will increase the most if you’re pushing the most weight. The reality is that your muscles will put on more mass if you do more repetitions of smaller weight.
That allows you to lift more total mass over the course of your workout. Try to lift around half or a little more than half of your maximum weight. Lift that weight ten to twenty times for three to five sets.
That moderate weight with a high volume of repetitions will put you in a good position to start packing on muscle. That’s also a manageable amount of weight to deal with. Your body won’t be incredibly sore or break down after a day or two of workouts.
It would break down quickly, however, if your gym sessions were constituted by single, max-weight reps.
3. Focus on Both Phases of The Workout
An exercise is comprised of two phases. One phase is called the concentric phase. This is the part of the exercise where energy is being exerted to achieve the rep.
For example, the “pushing up” part of a push-up is the concentric phase. The lowering down, on the other hand, is what’s called the eccentric phase. This is the part of any exercise that allows the body to return or arrive in the space that comes before the concentric phase.
Many people neglect the eccentric phase of the workout. They think of it as an unnecessary part of the process, with the concentric aspect being the only part that matters for muscle gain.
Try to either go very slow during the eccentric phase or make your workout so that you’re only doing eccentric exercises in some cases. Naturally, you should do the full workout most of the time, but try doing just the eccentric phase of something and see how it makes you feel.
That aspect of exercise works an essential function of your muscle’s range of motion, and it does produce a lot of extra mass if you focus on it.
4. Try Supplements
There are a number of supplements that can help you create more muscle mass. Even if you’re not trying to use muscle-building supplements, you can incorporate supplements that even out your diet and give your body a better chance of producing muscle.
One supplement that is safe and used for muscle-building is creatine. Creatine is one of the safest muscle-building supplements available, and it’s used all over the athletic and fitness community.
It helps a person workout more in a particular session, allowing you to get further into the process of developing single muscles. A few deep exercises on a particular muscle group might be more effective than a couple more sessions that are less in-depth.
Creatine is also effective at improving the body’s ability to repair muscles after exercise.
5. Do Exercises That Work Multiple Groups
Exercises like curls target just one muscle group on the body. These are good if you’d like to improve that specific area, but you might not get all the bang for your buck as far as muscle growth is concerned.
Exercises like squats work multiple muscle groups. The motion required for success in some of these exercises targets a combination of the legs, core, back, and arms.
When you’re engaging all of those areas of the body, you get a lot more benefit than you do when you’re just focusing on one part. For one, the connection and communication of your body improve. Repeating a process that requires signaling between different areas of your body will make that signaling more effective.
Also, those exercises access muscles groups that are practical to grow. Growing your bicep might look good in a T-shirt, but it doesn’t really help all that much in your normal life.
Being able to lift a great deal of weight with a squat, on the other hand, can come in handy. The same goes for a deadlift or a lunge and twist.
Want to Learn More Ways to Gain Muscle?
Finding the most effective ways to gain muscle is an important step in your fitness journey. Not all of the methods will work for your personal situation, so you have to discover the approach that works best for you.
We’re here to help you find your way. Explore our site for more ideas into health, wellness, fitness, exercise, and more.
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