How to BUILD MUSCLE

 

 

The process can seem tough but the overall journey is very simple. In order to BUILD MUSCLE, you must move your muscles through resistance,  consume enough protein and other necessary nutrients, and have enough rest. Simple. Move your body with resistance, eat and rest. THAT’S IT.

 

 

That’s ultimately what’s going to be the backbone to anything we’re going to discuss here. This concept is absolutely basic but necessary, you just can’t build muscle without EITHER of the three ways.

 

 

 

What is “building muscle”?

 

 

For us to proceed in understanding how to build muscle we must go back quite a bit. What exactly is happening to our bodies when we are building muscle?

 

 

What is happening in our bodies?

 

When we talk about muscle, we are exclusively referring to our skeletal muscle; all the muscle that are connected to our bones, joints etc. that allow movement. Why this is important is because when we workout, we are contracting our muscles by shortening them.

 

 

So, think of your muscles as elastic bands (a LOT of them), in most relaxed positions your “elastic bands” are stretched. In order to move a specific part of the body, that/those “elastic bands” are pulled together causing that part of the body to move along the specific joint.

 

 

Ex. Bicep

Quick example; your bicep. The muscle located on the front of your arm between the elbow and shoulder. When you relax your arm, the bicep is stretched (no resistance). When you want to lift your hand closer to your shoulder you contract your bicep allowing the movement of your forearm up closer to your shoulder.

 

 

 

Why is this important? And why are we still talking about something that’s seemingly so obvious? This is crucial to understanding what’s happening to our muscle fibers (just really tiny pieces of our muscles that are individual pieces that all come together to make our muscle/body). When there is resistance and you contract your muscle, those tiny cells or out of the millions of “elastic bands” some of the muscle fibers tear.

 

 

 

This is it. This is what building muscle is. We break our muscle, in the tiniest fragments with enough resistance, and our body remembers (through muscle memory) and even overcompensates. So, our body repairs itself in order to be “stronger or more durable” in preparation for next time. (1) 

 

 

 

Now that we understand what’s happening in our bodies in the most simplified manner, we can relate it to everything else that we do in the gym.

How to workout to BUILD MUSCLE

 

 

We must constantly keep in our minds that when we workout. We move our bodies through resistance and we are breaking our muscles just a little bit, so our body can grow, therefore BUILD MUSCLE. Remember this enough time’s, so when you exercise you know what to focus on. That’s key.

 

 

What’s a work out then? Again, something we’re going to discuss that is seemingly obvious, but the more we break it down, the better idea of it we have and the we can find the proper way to proceed. Before we even get to the whole workout lets break down what an exercise is.

 

 

What is an exercise?

 

 

Basically, an exercise to build muscle, is a specific movement that targets a muscle or a group of muscles.

 

 

Why exercises work for building muscle?

 

Ex. Squat

 

 

Let’s take a more complicated example of an exercise, the squat. So, this exercise targets a lot of muscles. Let’s focus on the main and important ones. The quads, the glutes and the adductors.

 

 

 

Our squat actually begins at the “bottom” (also known as the eccentric part of the movement essentially just means the “stretched” part). Our main muscles of the quads, glutes and adductors are stretched. In order to get up from the squat, we must contract our (concentric part of the movement essentially just means the “shortened part”). Like we’ve said before, if there is enough resistance, our muscles will break just a bit, enough for them to regrow the next time. That’s the fundamental of an exercise on how to build muscle.

 

The Beginners GUIDE to BUILDING MUSCLE

 

With the knowing what’s happening to our bodies when we exercise and the basic description of an exercise, we are starting to paint the picture of what a workout is. Now, there are too many exercises to break down in detail.

 

 

Though, I have broken down, in even more detail, The Beginners GUIDE to BUILDING MUSCLE: The only 25 exercises you need to be doing. By joining our WAY with your email, you can have this FREE guide to break down the most important exercises you need to start off with and the details of how to organize them properly.

 

 

What is a workout?

 

Now that we understand what an exercise is, a workout is just a set of exercises done usually for a specific reason. Ours being to build muscle. There are many many different ways you can organize a workout to build muscle. What’s important is whether it matters how you organize it or not. The answer is simply yes.

 

Key points for working out properly

 

Back to our fundamental concepts, something else that we must understand when it comes to building muscle is, how much should we break our muscles when we workout?

There definitely some important key points to take into consideration when working out or even just starting to work out. Depending on how familiar you are with how your body reacts when you build muscle, this will allow you to properly know if your training is effective. Naturally, when we break those muscle fibers our body needs time to heal, something that you will experience anywhere from 16-48 hours after training is soreness. Don’t worry, its mild and often nothing to worry about. This is DOMS, or “delayed onset muscle soreness”.

 

 

Once you get an idea of what DOMS feels like, it shouldn’t’ surprise you when you experience something like that pretty often when you first start working out to build muscle and also when if you’ve taken a longer break from working out.

It’s important to know the distinction of how DOMS feel because any more “pain” should be paid more attention to.

 

 

How to know if you have PROPER REST

 

• Your muscles can feel sore from DOMS but doesn’t have to be the case after a few sessions
• You DON’T feel any sort of serious pain or ache, consult a physician early on if this is the case
• Not overtraining, this can take some time to feel out, but in general 45 minutes- 90 minutes of effective training is usually adequate for the day
• Proper rest. This can mean rest days in general or even longer rest periods when your body is feeling especially worn out from consistent training (its okay to take time off and have a “deload week”, where your weights and training intensity is reduced to allow recovery while still staying active).

 

 

Now that you know some ways you can to properly workout to build muscle, how do you organize them in ways that are most effective?

 

 

 

How to organize your workouts to BUILD MUSCLE

 

 

 

Probably the most important key point we mentioned earlier was that our body needs to rest. As much as we want to target the same muscles every day to feel like we’re putting in as much work to build muscle, we can’t and shouldn’t.  Without enough rest, not only is it dangerous, it is severely less effective. So, with the rest accounted for, what’s the best way to organize your workouts?

 

 

There are many ways you can do this and still build muscle effectively.  A simple way to organize a workout and a simple way to organize a work out plan.

 

 

THE simple way to organize a workout to build muscle

 

1. Warm up

any sort of movement to get your heart rate up and warm your body and muscles.

 

2. Working out the most amount of muscles at the same time in one exercise

 

(ex. Squat, deadlift, bench press etc.), is the most effective way to build muscle fast. Find that breakdown in more detail with which exercises to focus on here (How to gain muscle and lose fat fast (same time)).
This should usually be in the beginning of your workout (after warming up of course) because you have the most amount of energy and can perform more complicated exercises effectively

 

3. Continue to do compound movements

 

Exercises that use more than one “joint” at a time (similar to the ones mentioned above)

 

4. Isolation exercises and corrective exercises

 

Exercises that only focus on a single “joint”(ex. Bicep curl) and corrective exercises: ones that help you fix and body imbalances you might have (ex. facepulls for fixing posture)

 

5. Cool down and stretch

Lower your heart rate and make sure you stretch the muscles you’ve worked out

 

 

 

THE simple way to organize a workout plan to build muscle

 

1. Full body training or split training

 

Now, this can be broken down to an arrange of different categories in each type but for simplicity we’re just going to go on briefly about the three most common schedules.

 

• Full body training: this consists of working out every single muscle in your body in one workout routine. This style is very efficient because in just one day your all your muscles have been trained, but usually a lot more exhausting. Great for building muscle fast if you’re just starting out

 

• Upper/lower split training: where you alternate days working out the top half of your body and lower half of your body. Great for focusing on evening how much muscle you build on your whole body.

 

• Chest/back/legs split training: where you focus on working out a specific group of muscles that complement each other. Great for really building out the muscle in specific parts of your body.

 

2. How many days of the week to train?

 

Normally, I’d suggest a minimum of at least 3 days a week and honestly any schedule can achieve this as long as you’re prioritizing. What’s important here is to not workout the same muscle two days in row. If you’re doing a chest/back/legs split you should alternate between the three so that you don’t target the muscles twice within two days.

 

3. Progressive overload

 

You must increase the difficulty of your exercises over time. How frequent and by how much intensity can vary quite a bit, as well as the different ways you can increase the intensity (ex: increasing weight/resistance, increasing tempo, increasing repetitions etc.)

4. REST

 

Have a proper rest day. This can be an active rest day (where you workout with very low intensity) or a full out day off from training. This is crucial to let your muscles properly repair itself and also prevent yourself from overuse injuries (injuries that occur, like you’ve guessed it, when you overuse a specific body part)

 

5. Cycling through workout programs

 

Cycling through different workout programs for different goals throughout the year. (bulk phase, lean phase, endurance phase etc.)

 

 

 

 

Summary of organizing your workouts and exercises to build muscle

 

 

 

This may seem like a lot, and in many ways, there is a lot to learn and apply to make your workouts the most fun, safe, and effective. What’s significant here is that the basics and fundamentals never really change. You must perform exercises correctly, safely and effectively by progressive overload, never train the same muscle two days in a row and have a proper rest day at least once a week.

 

 

What to eat to build muscle?

 

 

 

More detail can be found here at Top 10 Foods that BUILD MUSCLE. But again, to put it simply, we must eat enough protein. How much varies from person to person but you want 1 gram of protein per 1 lb of lean muscle mass you have already. (2) 

So, focus on eating high protein foods to meet that requirement, and also being in a caloric surplus of 250-450 calories (eating more calories than you use in a day) can be more effective but not completely necessary. (3) 

It’s important to reduce body fat percentage as much as you can to optimize your metabolism and make your muscles appear larger and more defined.

 

 

 

 

Motive to BUILD MUSCLE

 

Once you have the fundamentals of doing the workouts properly, organizing your workout plan, and eating properly the only thing that matters in you building muscle is consistency.

Arguably the most important factor. Building muscle doesn’t take a day, a month or even a year. It’s is a lifelong journey and that’s where its value actually comes from. Building and maintaining muscle is a constant sign of discipline and dedication. Both unfortunately and fortunately, our muscle mass constantly goes down so it’s in our full control to continue striving for the fitness that we desire.

We all have our own reasons for why we want to build muscle, and all of those reasons are valid. Our body is our temple and we should do all that we can to push it to it’s healthy limits.

Motivation comes and goes but once we get deeper to the rooted question of why? We can start to make the changes in our lives that we find most meaningful.

This is the most important part of our journey; we have to know ourselves and why we do what we do. I’ll help you find your reasoning here. (Workout motivation (coming soon)).

 

 

Timur Yigit