4 Muscle Building Guidelines

Building muscle has many benefits which include:

– Increased strength

– Decreased body fat

– Reduced injury risk

– Improved functional and sporting performance

Achieving consistent muscle growth does require a well balanced lifestyle. Here’s 4 guidelines that you need to consider:

Weight Training

When performing a weight training session microscopic tears occurs on the muscles involved. These tears aren’t permanent and the muscle repairs and grows back. To encourage the muscles to grow further you will need to increase the weight lifted or repetitions performed when you attempt the same training session. Without ‘progressive overload’ the muscles will be unable to grow.

Nutrition

In order to support muscle growth it’s important to achieve the following with your daily nutrition.

– Consume more calories than you burn. A calorie deficit based diet will struggle to support muscle growth however it is important to ensure these calories come from the right sources (to continued in a future blog).

– Include sufficient amounts protein intake to assist repair of muscles

– Do not neglect carbohydrates. These are essential for fueling your workouts as well as replacing your muscle glycogen stores post workout

Rest

Rest plays a vital role when it comes to muscle building. It allows our body to repair and recover from all of stress placed on it during training. It also allows our glycogen levels to replenish, assuming we’re consuming appropriate nutrition, which aids our future training performances.

Structured training regime

As we know weight training is an essential part of our muscle building goals. It is also important to include structure to aid progression and targets. Monitoring how much you lift each session helps boost motivation and also allow you to adapt training if necessary.

Every 4-6 weeks it is also essential to change your set, rep and rest range to avoid any training plateaus. This will force your body to have to adapt further to the new levels of stress you place on it, which aids growth stimulation.

Sources:

https://www.stedavies.com/the-basic-principles-of-lifting-weights/

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