So you want to know how to gain muscle? Well, it isn’t easy. It takes some time and disciplined effort. But it certainly is not very complicated or impossible. Just keep in mind the reality that there are no short cuts to speed up the process, and stick to a structured approach that will steadily help you build muscle.
In this report we will discuss 10 important principles that everyone looking to bulk up must know.
1. Eat More Calories
Most food items have labels indicating their calorie count and composition. The first step is to use that to determine how many calories you’re already eating. Start your effort to gain muscle by consciously adding 500 more calories to your daily intake. This should include a gram of protein for every pound you weigh.
2. Eat On A Schedule
Too many bodybuilders fail to gain muscle because of a lax approach towards eating. A bodybuilding diet is important both for the kind of things you eat and the frequency of meals. If your goal is how to gain muscle, you must eat five or six small meals over the course of a day. Your diet should be rich in protein and carbohydrate with the right mix of nutrients, vitamins and minerals. Avoid saturated fat. Drink plenty of water.
3. Take A Supplement
Good nutrition is the basis for gaining muscle. If all you do is exercise hard, you’ll not bulk up unless you also eat right. Even with a healthy diet and frequent meals, it can be hard to meet your body’s requirements of protein and calories. This is where a dietary supplement can help. A protein shake can supplement your dietary intake and provide a rich source of branched chain amino acids needed for muscle growth.
4. Rest
Muscles grow while you are resting. So make sure that you get enough sleep in between workouts. Seven hours of sleep every night is found to help you gain muscle faster. Train 4 or 5 days in a week to allow your muscles enough time to rest and recover. Any mental stress from overworking or nervousness can alter your body’s hormonal balance and adversely affect muscle gain.
5. Reduce Cardio Workouts
Maybe you’ve made cardio routines and aerobics as part of your bodybuilding workout. It’s time to stop them and focus instead of exercises that build muscle. Keep your cardio workouts to under 30 minutes per session and no more than 2 days a week. You might run on a treadmill or do more intense sprints for short bursts mixed with light jogging for a few minutes.
6. Short, Intense Workouts Are Better
Too many bodybuilding programs focus on doing more exercise sets. This helps build endurance but may not help bulk up. If your focus is on how to gain muscle, then you’re better off doing heavier exercises for fewer reps and sets. Each workout should last under an hour. Each set should only run between 45 and 60 seconds. That way you are stressing your muscles and stimulating them to grow.
7. Train Your Entire Body
When you engage most of your muscle groups in a workout, your body releases hormones that stimulate muscle growth. Balancing your training sessions to uniformly exercise all parts of your body provides the best results. You will also be able to avoid injuries caused by too much strain on one muscle group.
8. Try Split Routines
Exercising your whole body is important to gain muscle. Doing lifts or workouts that concentrate on a single muscle or group are not helpful at this point. Instead, plan your bodybuilding workout to train all major muscle groups in a single session. Another option is to do upper and lower body workouts on alternate days. Exercises that stress multiple muscles in a group are better. Squats, presses, pull ups and deadlifts are examples of these routines.
9. Stretch
To gain muscle, you require consistency with your workouts. When you exercise hard, your risk of injury goes up. Ensuring that your muscles remain supple and flexible will minimize this danger. Stretches help you limber up and prevent muscle injury. You can also get a massage or use a roller to loosen up taut muscles before and after workouts.
10. Vary Your Routine
Boredom is another reason why you’re tempted to abandon your plans to gain muscle. That’s why you should keep your bodybuilding workouts interesting and fun. Change your routine every month or two. You may change the exercises you do, or the number of reps and sets, or even just the order in which you carry them out. Recording the details of your workout in a journal helps you monitor this and make changes from time to time.
By following these 10 simple principles, you’ll be able to gain muscle steadily and improve your overall health and fitness as you do it. Once they become habits, you’ll find yourself automatically doing these things over and over, enjoying the results from your healthy lifestyle for many years to come. Following a trusted and proven program that will show you how to gain muscle steadily and reliably is of even more value. Jason Ferruggia’s ‘Muscle Gaining Secrets 2.0‘ is one of the best that we highly recommend – to learn more about it, click here.