The basics on how to build muscle fast and the best exercises for it
If you’re looking for to pack on the muscle to transform your physique and health, the endless amounts of training programmes, marketing campaigns and dietary supplements out there it can be hard to work out how best to reach your fitness goal. So what’s the secret to building muscle, and building it fast?
According to Jacob Holme,a personal trainer at Kobox, a bubble needs to be burst a little as “nothing beats consistency over time; there is no secret sauce to real results.” If you are looking to build up your strength and muscle, he suggests adding resistance, either by free weights or an exercise band.
Building muscle is not all about aesthetics either: more evidence is coming to light about the importance of resistance training as we age. It can help with mobility later in life, improve cardiovascular health, and increase your lifespan – and that’s just naming a few.
Boom Cycle personal trainer L J Holmes recommends compound movements if you’re looking to build strength fast. “A compound exercise is one that uses multiple joints (and therefore multiple muscles) so you can maximise the benefits from one movement.” Exercises such as squat thrusts, lunges, overhead presses and dead lifts with a bent row will work so many muscles at once.
Holmes stresses the importance of good technique and making sure you’re working out correctly: “Ensuring you have great form is also key. For example, you could do hundreds of bicep curls a day, but if your technique isn’t good and you’re using your shoulders more then it will be hard to see any progress in your bicep strength.”
Below is an expert guide on gaining strength and building muscle in a short period of time.
The basics of building muscle
These are the absolute, undeniable basics, which no informed personal trainer or fitness blogger could argue with:
1. Pay attention to your warm-up
You should not go into maximal exertion sets cold. Instead, go through a thorough warm-up and gradually get acclimatised to heavier and heavier weights.
On the other side of the coin, you should not waste too much energy on practice sets. The best idea is to perform one or two reps with two or three slowly increasing loads as you move toward your working set.
2. Lift heavy weights
Heavy weights stimulate damage in your muscle fibres, thus forcing your body into responding with muscle growth. Essentially you need to teach your body that you are going to be lifting heavier and heavier weights on a regular basis, so it’ll have to respond with more muscle to handle the load. Simple.
Remember: new exercise should always be undertaken with professional help, and you should consult a doctor before starting if you have any pre-existing medical issues.
3. Stick to lower rep ranges
Strength is best gained through lifting in the lower rep ranges, ideally one to five reps. This is because the body is forced to adapt to the kind of stimulus you give it through training. At a low rep range, your body finds ways to recruit muscle fibres more efficiently, which makes you stronger in the long-run.
At the extreme end of this, some experienced lifters use “one rep” training. However, for most of us, such an approach is fraught with risk of injury. Far better to aim for five reps on each set.
The exercise selection for strength training is best kept very simple, utilising classic compound exercises for maximal muscle recruitment. This regimen focusses exclusively on the:
Squat
Deadlift
Military press
Bench press
Barbell row
4. Get rest
Your ability to rest is going to determine the extent to which you are able to make progress.
During the workouts you will need to rest three to four minutes between sets to allow your body to recover enough to move onto the next set and perform. Remember that the goal of the workouts in this training phase is to successfully meet your desired rep range.
You will also need to rest well between training sessions so your body can recover and grow. This means getting adequate sleep and taking steps to minimise stress.
5. Keep track of where you’re at
Strength training relies heavily on utilising a progressive load, meaning that every time you successfully meet your desired rep range, you should move up in weight to continue to make progress.
Make sure you keep track of every lift you make so that you can stay on top of your progress. This is extremely important.
6. Keep your form
You must be very honest with yourself during the strength training phase: slow, controlled reps with proper form are the name of the game.
You will notice when you reach certain loads this becomes extremely important. For example, as you reach your maximum resistance on the squat, you will be surprised how much you need to harness the strength of your abdominals.
Considerations before starting a muscle gain routine
It’s important to remember that a muscle building routine will take a considerable toll on your central nervous system because you’ll be deliberately damaging your muscle fibre to promote growth. You’ll also be using some heavy weights, which will put a lot of pressure on your muscles and joints.
With this in mind, here are some things to do before starting any muscle building training programme:
Familiarise yourself with the basics.
Make sure you’re in good nick – any aches, niggles, and muscles rendered vulnerable by previous injury should be checked out by a medical professional before you begin.
Learn the correct techniques for lifting – learning on the fly while pushing your body to new limits is a recipe for pain and failure.
How to get the most out of your muscle building training
You’ll need to implement each of these in order to get the most out of your training:
Progressive overload
Human bodies need a reason to gain muscle. At core, we’re survival machines, so your training efforts must convince your body that getting bigger and stronger is going to present a survival advantage. This is achieved by way of progressive overload – using heavier and heavier stimuli as time goes on.
It’s really simple to do – and rewarding because you can track your improvement. Here’s how it works:
If your training plan calls for 10 repetitions (the amount of times you perform a given movement) and you start off with, say, 60kg on the bench press, then the second time you train you would raise the weight by the smallest available increment – to 62.5kg. And so on. The result is that the body cannot sit still; it has to keep adapting and improving.
There’s a big caveat to progressive overload, which is that, inevitably, it cannot work indefinitely. Step forward the concept of “variance”.
Variance
Our bodies are brilliant at adapting to a training stimulus, so its imperative that you maintain an element of variance in your training programs.
Variance might constitute anything from manipulating your rep ranges, rest time, exercise selection or training goal altogether. The important point is that you keep an element of diversity in your workout. Essentially, it’s about keeping your body second-guessing so it can’t take shortcuts and stagnate.
You’ll also need to call upon variance when you reach (inevitable) training plateaus. At some point, you’ll find you simply cannot bench press heavier weights. Identifying this moment and knowing to move on to a new exercise is a big part of building strong muscle.
Consistency
In the first stages of training for muscle gain you’re likely to see some pretty impressive results in a short period of time. Enjoy it – progressions here are known fondly as ‘beginner gains’ and they won’t last forever. As your body becomes more accustomed to training and you approach your genetic limit of muscle mass, your results will begin to slow down. It’s only natural.
A consistent approach to training is absolutely essential to developing a muscular physique and seeing results beyond that initial honeymoon bloom. Success is about doing the right things over and over again. The perfect meal followed by great workout followed by adequate rest. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
In this manner, a natural lifter will always yield better results than a chemically enhanced trainer who lacks consistency.
Three mistakes to avoid when building muscle
Here are some mistakes to avoid when building strength and muscle:
1. Overtraining
Probably the biggest pitfall of all. Overtraining is an accumulation of fatigue and actually a syndrome with it’s own symptoms, such as a raised heart beat, low mood, muscle aches and poor performance. It feels similar to having the flu, and is the result of essentially giving your body more stimulus than it can recover from.
You see overtraining in pro sports all the time. It’s not a great place to be and if you don’t get rest it’s possible to do yourself some permanent harm.
The best chance you have at avoiding overtraining is to listen to your body and rest when you know you need it, even if your training program says otherwise. You should also factor ‘active recovery’ (weeks where you don’t train as hard) into your yearly planning. One week every two months should do it.
2. Failing to track your workouts
A simple training log must be kept each time you train if you are going to have an idea of how well you are progressing. Going to the gym each week and simply working hard isn’t going to cut it; you need to know you are in that sweet spot of over-reaching we discussed earlier.
3. Trying to train your way out of an unhealthy lifestyle
An important thing to remember when it comes to fitness in general and particularly with muscle building is that you cannot train your way out of an unhealthy lifestyle. You need good nutrition and adequate rest – so if you’re binge drinking alcohol, smoking, and/or eating poorly, you’re going to see very little results (not to mention leave yourself at more risk of the overtraining syndrome mentioned above).
Nutrition basics to build muscle
Getting the right nutrition is at least half the battle when it comes to putting on muscle mass. Ideally you will be on a 10-20pc caloric surplus depending on how lean you are at the start or how fast you want to gain weight.
To work out your required calorie intake, you can follow the below equations:
Men: Multiply your weight in pounds by 18 (those who are least active), 20 (moderately active), or 22 (very active)
Women: Multiply your weight in pounds by 16 (least active), 17 (moderately active) or 18 (very active)
With that overall figure in mind, here is what to eat to build muscle:
1. High protein intake
Protein is the building material your muscles are made from. This means that you’ll absolutely have to have a high protein intake to provide your body with the resources it needs to gain muscle mass.
There is some contention as to the exact amount of protein to take in for muscle building, but most people will see great results with 0.8g per pound of bodyweight. Your sources of protein should be things like:
High quality meats
Mushrooms
High quality protein powders
Beans
2. Maintain high fats
A mistake a lot of people make is to avoid taking in dietary fats for fear of actually getting fat. When you are seeking to gain muscle mass you absolutely need a healthy intake of good fats in your diet. They are essential for good health and, in men, maintaining a high level of testosterone.
To work out how many fats you need to take in, multiply your number of pounds in bodyweight by between 0.3-0.6. Healthy fats are best sourced from foods such as:
Nuts
Seeds
Oils
Avocado
Fish
3. Carbs
At times your workouts are going to be gruelling, so you’ll need to fuel them adequately. This is best achieved with low GI (glycemic index) carbohydrates as a part of your main meals, though there is also a time and place for higher GI carbs, particularly pre- and post-workout.
To work out how many carbs you need, multiply your protein intake by four, multiply your fat intake by nine, and add the two results together. Now subtract the result from your overall caloric need and divide by four.
Here’s an example, which hopefully makes a tricky-sounding equation look reasonably simple:
The best exercises to build muscle
Different workouts will lend themselves to different exercises, but for the most part you will be best served by utilising compound exercises (so named because they work multiple body parts). Isolation exercises (just one body part) also have a role to play, just use them sparingly in comparison.
Broadly, these are some of the best exercises for each body part:
Legs
Compound: Barbell squat, barbell deadlift, barbell lunge, Bulgarian split lunge
Isolation: Hip thrusters, leg extension, hamstring curl, calf raise
Back / Traps
Compound: Pull up, bent over barbell row, upright row, barbell shrug
Isolation: Lat pull down, standing pull down
Shoulders
Compound: Military press, seated dumbbell press, behind the neck press, Arnold press
Isolation: Medial raise, anterior raise, rear deltoid fly
Chest
Compound: Bench press (incline, flat, decline)
Isolation: Cable crossover, dumbbell chest fly
Arms
Barbell bicep curl, seated bicep curl, close grip bench press, dips, chins
Abdominals
Weighted abdominal crunch, hanging leg raises, weighted rope pull down, Russian twist
How to put your muscle-building workouts together
When you first begin training for muscle gain, it’s important to take on a moderate program that will help you condition your muscles and deliver results without being so overwhelming that it forces you into overtraining.
The traditional ‘four-day split’ is a good starting point. This refers to splitting up your body into four different body parts and workouts. In the example training routine below, we’ll incorporate both compound and isolation exercises for each body part and keep the volume relatively low.
Day 1: Legs
Barbell squat 4 x 10
Romanian deadlift 4 x 10
Leg extension 3 x 10
Hamstring curl 3 x 10
Calf raise 3 x 10
Day 2: Shoulders + Abs
Military press 4 x 10
Arnold Press 4 x 10
Seated medial raise 3 x 10
Anterior raise 3 x 10
Rear delt fly 3 x 10
Hanging leg raise 3 x 8
Weighted ab crunch 3 x 12
Day 3: Chest + Triceps
Barbell bench press 4 x 10
Incline dumbbell bench press 4 x 10
Cable crossover 3 x 10
Parallel dips 3 x Failure
Tricep kick backs 3 x 10
Day 4: Back + Biceps
Wide grip pull up 3 x failure
Bent over barbell row 4 x 10
Seated row 3 x 10
Close grip lat pull down 3 x 10
Barbell bicep curl 3 x 10
Hammer curls 3 x 10
As we’ve discussed above, your body will soon get accustomed to any routine.
This guide is kept updated with the latest fitness advice.
