How To Build Muscle 101

If you want to build muscle, there are right and wrong ways to go about it.  Wasting your time doing the wrong weights, or wasting your time eating badly will both prevent you from gaining and building muscle at a decent rate. You need to lift correctly, and you need to eat correctly. Follow this simple formula, and you will be building muscle in no time.

Why Is Building Muscle So Important?

People are often reluctant to build muscle, whether it is because they don’t want to put in the work, they don’t want to get too bulky, or they think that cardio is a more efficient means of attaining their goals. There are more than just the obvious benefits of building muscle strength:

Quality of Life: This certainly sounds like something that you only apply to older people, but at the end of the day we can all improve our quality of life. Building muscle means you are stronger, stronger means getting around easier, getting up stairs without problems, ensuring that as you do grow older, you keep a greater portion of your muscle, you are more mobile, more active and simply you lead a better quality life. There is no doubt about this, and although most people don’t look at this as the first reason to build muscle, it certainly is the most important in the long run.

Prevent Injuries: Stronger muscle means healthier joints and healthier bones. You can support yourself better, ensure that most activity won’t put excess stress on your body, and all in all prevent injuries from occurring. You have a healthier body in general and are much less likely to get injured and suffer from various muscle and joint diseases. Take arthritis for example. This is the degeneration of the joint, and it can get very painful to move. When you get stronger muscle surrounding the joints there is less friction, you are able to support them better. Similar thing with osteoporosis, stronger muscles creates more stress and stimulates the bones.

Weight Loss: As much as people like to jump on the treadmill and run for their lives, the fact is that building muscle, and the process of building muscle, is extremely effective for weight loss. Weight lifting is intense work, and you burn a lot of calories doing it. If your goal is to lose weight, and you aren’t a;ready doing weights, then get into. three times a week with full body exercises will ensure that you enhance your weight loss, I guarantee it.

Look Great: No secret that those who have more muscles look better in general. man or woman, get yourself built up and lean and you look fantastic. Great for self confidence.

Ok this is slightly intimidating 😉

How Do You Build Muscle?

Building muscle is easy to do, but most of us are not as efficient as we could be. There are two keys to build muscle fast, get them right and you will be laughing.

Lift Heavy Weight: You want to build muscle mass, you have to lift heavy weights. Compound exercises where you use more than one joint are the best way to lift more weight. more weight means more stress on the muscles, more stress means more adaptation. Don’t be afraid to lift heavy, you will really surprise yourself. Most people go to the gym and do 8 reps easily on a certain weight, if you are not struggling in the last reps, you can lift more. Start to push yourself and see a difference. Check out more in this leg workout.

Eat Enough Food: The other area where people fall down on is nutrition. The fact is you have to eat enough in order to be in surplus to build muscle. Protein is the key that most people miss out on. Ensure that directly after your workout you get some form of protein in your body. Whether it be a protein shake or a can of tuna, it really helps to replenish and start the building process. Make sure you get enough protein in the day, in fact in my opinion you just can’t get enough. Put it in every meal in some form or another. People often talk about the negatives of eating too much protein, but to have any negatives at all you have to eat a lot more than humanely possible. Eat clean all the time, don’t eat processed foods, get a lot of fruit and veggies, and have protein at every meal. you can’t fail in your quest to build muscle. Check out natural protein sources, and more about protein in general. It can even help you to increase metabolism.

Getting Ripped VS Building Muscle

If you want to get ripped, you need to build muscle. However, if you want to get ripped, you also need to drop body fat. Check out healthy fat loss, how to get bigger legs and diets that work for some more information. Realise that it takes a contribution of both to get that final amazing look. You can build muscle without having the definition you want, if you still have too much fat covering the area. For more information on carbohydrates and how they affect you, and why you should probably cut them out to lose the fat, check out, is pasta healthy?

Achieving The ‘Toned’ Look

Don’t want to get to bulky? Heard that a lot. I don’t want to discuss it anymore, and I certainly don’t want to hear this phrase anymore. Check out how to tone legs and thighs to find out why this annoys me so much!

Good luck building muscle.