Tips for Building Muscle
1. Excessive warming up
- I was guilty of this myself. I warm up the whole body before my push day; although it is not bad, we can usually save time with our workout by warming up the desired muscle groups. For example, you would want to do dynamic stretches for your chest and shoulders, followed by one to two light sets on your first exercise on chest day. Not warming up muscles outside the target muscles for that workout session ensures we save energy for the desired muscle group that day. Try to keep your warm-up under 10 minutes at the most unless you are dealing with a specific setback that requires more attention. Even then, it would be best to shoot to make your warm-up routine for each muscle group as short and efficient as possible.
Example: 1-2 x 10 of banded shoulder dislocates followed by 1-2 light sets of bench pressing.
2. Combining exercises (not super setting)
- Combining exercises like lunge/squat into a bicep curl is what I am referencing. These exercises are a waste of time due to the lack of tension the larger muscle group receives, and even the smaller muscle group in most cases. Combining movements turns into a cardio circuit, the opposite of muscle building. Instead, these moves should be done separately, allowing more focus on the movement and yielding better results. Assuming you choose a challenging weight for 8-12 reps. And do your cardio after so you don’t inhibit your performance with the weights!
3. Stop picking movements with no stretch (limiting your range of motion)!
- For example, the plate press is when you lie on a flat or inclined bench, get 1 or 2 plates (usually 25s), squeeze them together, and press the weight up and down. Although it burns quite a bit, we still need to create sufficient muscle tears for it to grow. This movement has little to no stretch (important for hypertrophy) because you can only bring your elbows so low before a plate hits your sternum. The solution is to do a Dumbbell press instead; you can add way more weight with stability to milk out the stretch at the bottom, which is crucial for building muscle. You should be doing this for all your exercises if you want to build muscle!
4. Never increase the weight, reps, or sets (progressive overloading)
- People do the same thing repeatedly without challenging themselves, repeatedly showing up to the gym, and never increasing their workload. This is a surefire way never to make progress. If you have been curling the 25s for 12 reps for six weeks straight, it’s time to change it up. Either go up in weight reps or sets, or even change the exercise, choose a different variation of curls, and start progressing the weight every week!
5. Not being in a slight calorie surplus
- Besides, people are new to lifting, so anyone working out for over six months to a year must be in a calorie surge and have practical training to build muscle. I kept myself in a calorie deficit for far too long, and my gains ended up paying for it; I just thought it was healthy, but once I started to eat more, my recovery was a lot better, which allowed me to train harder, getting better results in the gym!
Bonus: getting well-rounded sleep!
Good sleep is that magic pill that can help take you to the next level. Not only is it essential for building muscle, but also for burning fat! If you are like me and like to play on your phone at the end of the night, I recommend blue light-blocking glasses to help minimize the blue light that impacts sleep—or just setting it down an hour before bed. Try to make your room cool and dark as possible.
If you can achieve this, it will triumph over everything I have stated in this article!
