Are you thinking about getting a gym membership? If so, you’re not alone. Studies have shown that around 30 million men across the U.S. have health center memberships.
While all of these men have individual health aspirations, one common goal that many men have is to become stronger. This leads many men to try and do muscle-building exercises.
However, many people don’t understand how to gain lean muscle. They might do the wrong exercises, or they might do the right exercises but harm their results once they get home.
So what do you need to know?
Keep reading to learn about seven muscle-building tips.
1. Eat More
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that in order to gain muscle and healthy weight, you’re going to need to eat more—a lot more. In fact, you’re going to need a positive energy balance where your body inputs more than it outputs.
Make sure to eat consistently throughout the day. It’s going to be hard at first consuming excess amounts of food, but with time, your stomach will get used to it.
Instead of eating a few massive meals each day, try to eat smaller but more frequent portions. These should fill you up for the next couple of hours. If you feel yourself getting hungry, it’s not a good sign!
2. Fuel Your Body With Protein
You’re going to need a well-balanced diet to gain weight and see results, but you’re also going to need to consume huge amounts of protein. This will allow protein synthesis to occur, and that means bigger muscles.
Besides protein synthesis, your body uses protein to do a variety of other things as well, like make hormones. Incorporating enough protein into your diet ensures that your body has everything it needs to do what it has to do.
Most experts recommend consuming grams of protein that add up to your body weight. For example, if you weigh 170 pounds, you’ll want to shoot for around 170 grams of protein a day.
3. Target Muscle Groups, Not Individual Areas
It’s tempting to just go to the gym, pick up a dumbbell, and lift it over and over again. While bicep curls and similar exercises do have value, ensure that they don’t form the foundation of your regimen.
Instead, rely on exercises that target large muscle groups and areas of your body. This includes things like dumbbell rows, deadlifts, pullups, bench presses, and squats.
These sorts of exercises help your muscles grow and work with one another as they do in real life. This means more natural muscle growth, as well as faster results.
4. Train Hard and Heavy
As long as you can ensure that you can stay safe while doing it, you’re going to find that training heavy is a much more efficient way to gain muscle than training light. It encourages greater amounts of muscle tear and rebuild.
This means using higher amounts of weight for lower reps. Instead of doing 12-15 reps in a set, pumping out 3-5 at a high intensity can be a very effective training method.
However, you won’t be able to train heavy for every exercise that you do. Many experts recommend using a combination of both a lower and higher number of reps. This will give you the “best of both worlds”, so to speak.
5. Incorporate Protein Shakes
There’s a plethora of evidence that shows that shakes that contain carbs and amino acids can help your body with protein synthesis. Make sure to incorporate these before and after your workout.
While you can get these from solid food sources as well, experts recommend choosing something liquid. This is because your body absorbs liquid faster than it does solids.
Aside from protein shakes, you can also consider something like SARMS. If you’re unsure what those are, check out this link for more information.
6. Get Plenty of Carbs
Aside from getting protein into your body before and after heading to the gym, you’re also going to want to get a lot of carbs. Carbs provide you with insulin which can help slow down the speed at which your body breaks down protein.
When you first get home from the gym, try eating something like a banana, a protein shake, and a peanut butter sandwich. Later on, you can have a bigger, carb-rich meal.
If you’re unsure what healthy carbs look like, look for complex carbs that come with a lot of fiber. This means eating things like whole-wheat bread, quinoa, and potatoes.
7. Give Your Body the Rest It Needs
In their eagerness, many people who start going to the gym make the mistake of going too hard too often. While you want to push yourself, you also need to ensure that you’re always giving your body the rest it needs to rebuild.
Resting at regular intervals minimizes the risk of you injuring yourself. It also encourages faster muscle growth.
Remember that just because you don’t go to the gym doesn’t mean that you have to be sedentary. You can still stretch, take a walk around the neighborhood, and get your blood flowing a bit.
Understand How to Gain Lean Muscle
Many people that hit the gym are unsure how to gain lean muscle. The truth is that with some planning, it’s not as hard to get as you might think.
Make sure to follow the muscle-building tips explained in this guide. When you do, you’ll find yourself getting stronger in no time.
Do you now have a better idea of how to become stronger? If you do, don’t forget to check out the rest of our site to find more helpful guides, tips, and explanations.
