Muscle building basics
It's the start of a new year, and whether the first of January was your first day in the gym, or if you've been training for the past ten years, we all need to go back to basics!
The foundations of muscle building make up around 90% of what you should focus on; therefore, if you master the basics, you can expect to see fantastic results!
Lift heavier weight
Let's start with progressive overload, progressively increasing the demand on the body, increasing the load/weight/resistance over time. No bodybuilding basics are complete without touching on progressive overload, if you want to build muscle, you need to focus on lifting more this week than you did last week.
Follow a bodybuilding programme
This is one of those things that we all know we should do but rarely do. Just like setting up some Ikea furniture, we think we can just wing it; sometimes we can, sometimes we can't. Most of the time, we'll get the best and quickest results by following a plan, or following the instructions if it's Ikea furniture. Furthermore, bringing us back to our first point, which is 'progressive overload', it's tough to remember what you lifted last week and focus on increasing it, without tracking and sticking to a plan. If you'd like me to create your Training Programme and Nutrition Plan, then please get in touch to find out more about Online Personal Training.
Consume sufficient food
To build size, we need to fuel the muscle-building process, and we need enough food in order to do that.
To avoid taking you through the boring maths that requires calculating your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure), I'm going to keep things relatively straight forward. Simply eat enough food to allow you to gain 1 to 1.5% of your total body weight per month. So, a 75 kg dude would look to gain between 0.75 to 1.125 kg of muscle per month. If you're currently holding onto quite a lot of body fat, then it's best practice to reduce body fat until you have visible/almost visible abs before commencing operation lean bulk.
Consume adequate protein
Building muscle without enough protein is like building a house without enough bricks; it's just not going to happen. Aim to consume between 1.6 to 2.2 grams of protein per kg of your bodyweight.
And that's it, nothing fancy, no links to scientific literature required on this post, just good old fashioned fundamentals.