Building a muscular physique does not come easy. Hitting the gym a few times, lifting weights here and there will not make it happen. It’s a process that involves sacrifice, consistency and hard work. For those still willing to do what it takes, here are some rules of muscle-building to live by if swole is the goal.
1 Consume more calories. It’s almost impossible to build muscle if you are not in a caloric surplus. This simply means that you have to consume more than your daily maintenance calories if you want muscle growth to take place. Each of us will have varying calorie requirements depending on age, weight, height and other physical differences. How to calculate for your maintenance calories? There are various online resources/calculators such as calculator.net that help us compute our calorie requirements for whatever our body goals may be. Bottom line is, you cannot scrimp on your food intake and expect to grow muscle.
2 Get enough protein. Dietary protein is your ally in building muscle. Make sure to consume around 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight daily. If for instance you weigh 150 lbs, try to take 150 grams of protein per day to optimize muscle growth. Foods rich in protein, such as beef, chicken, pork, fish, soy, nuts and eggs contain amino acids, which are essential in maintaining and building muscle.
3 Focus on compound lifts. There are a lot of weight lifting exercise that can be performed as part of your workout program. Focus on compound lifts, or exercises that work out several muscle groups at once. Examples would be bench presses, squats, deadlifts, lateral pulldowns, pull-ups and shoulder presses. Compound movements are efficient as they work both large and small muscle groups. On the other hand, there are isolation exercises, such as bicep curls, calf-raises and dumbbell flyes, which hit small, specific muscle groups. These isolation exercises do provide benefits but are best incorporated into a program that will focus on compound exercises.
4 Progressive overload. When starting off with lifting weights using a proper program, initial gains are easily achieved as our bodies respond to the workload, and subsequently grow. However after some time, we hit a plateau when the body gets accustomed to a particular weight and exercise. To realize more progress, we need to increase poundage for these gains to continue. Constantly challenging our muscles will provide the needed growth stimulus. Once we feel that our muscles are used to a certain weight and can perform an exercise with ease, it’s time to add weights in small increments to present our muscles with a new challenge that will stimulate them to keep growing.
5 Rest to grow. Our muscles do not actually grow in the gym when we are working out. It is during periods of rest and recovery when our properly nourished muscles will grow. Allowing our muscles to recuperate is just as important as hitting the gym. Rest also means getting quality sleep of at least seven hours a day to allow muscle regeneration, and prepare us for the next day’s workout feeling recharged and energized.
Follow the simple mantra of train, eat, sleep, grow and repeat. Also, pick a system or program that is proven to work, rather than doing random exercises by feel. Focus, feel the purpose in every repetition and grind through every workout imagining in your mind’s eye the end-product of all the sacrifice and hard work.
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