Everybody has their own way of working out and building muscle. If you ask a hundred different people what’s the secret of building muscle, It’s likely that you’ll get a hundred different answers. Do you want to read 5 simple steps you need to follow in order to build muscle mass ?
There is a good chance you are not paying attention to at least one of these steps. Be sure to read them and pay attention to all of them if you want to build muscle. Not following one or more of them will make the muscle building process hard, if not impossible.
1. Make sure you hit the gym 3-4 times a week and lift heavy weights.
When you lift heavy weights, you actually create micro tears in the muscle you are working. In order for the body to avoid that stress next time, it recovers the damage that was done and increases the muscle in size, so that it can handle the same stress more efficiently.
This is why after a heavy workout you need to let the muscle recover and rest. In a few days (depending on your recovery ability) that muscle will be ready for the same resistance stress again. In order to let a muscle group recover fully, try not to train it more than 2 times a week.
The upper/lower split is ideal for this scenario.
2. Focus on eating at least 5 meals a day
Building muscle mass requires food, and lots of it. However, don’t think you can just eat anything. The calories should come from balanced meals containing quality carbohydrates, proteins and fats.
Your carbohydrates should equate about 45% of your intake, your proteins should equate about 35% of your intake and your fat should be the remaining 20% of your intake.
Also make sure that most of the meals you eat come from real solid food. Supplements such as protein shakes are good, but they will never entirely replace real solid foods.
If, for example, you are eating 6 meals a day, four of those should be in the form of solid foods and two should be protein or meal replacement shakes.
3. Stretch your muscles
Stretching is an important part of any weightlifting program. You should spend about 15-20 minutes a day stretching your muscles. One of the biggest mistakes that trainees are guilty of, is not stretching their muscles. Stretching helps in restoring the normal length of tissues.
Constant weightlifting will shorten your muscle tissue, making it weaker and slower, as well as prone to injuries. So if you are lifting weights 4 hours a week, add at least an additional 2 hours should of stretching. You must counteract the shortening of the muscle tissues that occurs from weightlifting, or else you there is an injury waiting to happen.
4. Drink more water
Water keeps your organs functioning properly, clears toxins, reduces excess sodium from your body, and it hydrates your muscle cells. It also plays a major role in cell volumization. Volumization is the process where nutrients are pulled into the muscle cell causing multiple reactions that leads to muscle growth. You should be drinking about a gallon of water a day.
5. Avoid supplements that have not been on the market for longer than a few years
One thing will make your life much easier when selecting the right supplements. Buy only supplements that have passed the test of time. In other words don’t buy supplements if they haven’t been on the market for at least a couple of years.
If you follow this rule, you will discover that only a small handful of supplements are still holding strong. Here are the ones you should not go with out: a high quality multi-vitamin/multi mineral complex, fish oil, creatine monohydrate and a protein powder.
These products will cover your nutritional basis for health, healthy body composition, strength and muscle mass.
