9 Quick-To-Follow Tips for Building Muscle Effectively: To build muscles effectively, there are only certain types of workouts that give the maximum benefit. In general, these are the workouts that are aimed at hypertrophy. The rule of thumb is that the closer the weight you are using to your one-max rep weight (the maximum weight you can complete one repetition of motion for that exercise), the more it is aimed at building your strength. And the more reps you are doing, the more it shows that you are training for toned muscles and muscle endurance.
Quick-To-Follow Tips for Building Muscle Effectively
Training for hypertrophy, which translates to increasing muscle strength, mass, and endurance, is the midpoint between endurance and strength training.
To effectively build muscles, the weight must be gradually increased per set, with 8-12 reps per set.Let’s say you are working on a pull down machine to develop your back muscles. You will need to perform 8–12 reps starting at about 50–60% of your body weight, and increase by 1 increment every set for 3 sets.
Not all workout programs can work for you. There is no such thing as the best workout program because each of us is different from one another.
Get a training partner
Getting a training partner is one of the best ways to effectively increase the gains you get when building muscle. For one, you and your training partner can spot each other while lifting heavier weights, as well as correct each other’s form when you see something wrong.
Not only that, it’s highly inevitable that you will not compete, and a little competition can push you further. Just don’t overdo it.
Monitor your progress.
In order to persevere, we need to get some feedback on whether we’re doing well or not. What better way to motivate yourself than to monitor your progress.
There are 3 ways to monitor your progress. One is via the body composition meter and weighing scale. Another would be to measure your muscle size using a tape measure. And lastly, you can monitor the weight you are lifting to monitor your strength gains. Or, you could even do all three of them just to keep track of your progress and improvement.
Eat 100 calories above your daily threshold every day.
You cannot cheat your body. Your body needs fuel to burn and food to rebuild and grow your muscles. Most skinny guys never build much muscle mass because of a lack of food and poor nutrition.
Fortunately, there are a lot of convenient and reliable calorie calculators and counters for you to be able to plan and organize your meals just to get that 100 calorie excess every day.
Why only 100 calories? It’s because, more than 100 calories is already asking to get fat. Unless your body has a very high metabolism like most skinny guys, consuming 100 calories in excess of what you need is guaranteed to make you gain fat instead of just muscle.
Sufficient Protein
Protein is the key nutrient in muscle rebuilding. So it’s important that you get just enough protein to build muscle and maintain bodily functions.
An easy estimation that you can do is to take the same amount of protein in grams as your weight in pounds. Let’s say I weigh around 160 lbs, I will need to consume roughly 160 grams of protein or more to build some muscle.
You can get quality protein easily from whole foods. You can use this protein guide as a reference if you want the purest form of protein.
Nourish your body right after working out.
The window for muscle nutrition and protein synthesis is right after the workout. It’s best to refill your energy sources and eat some protein right after working out to have protein synthesis and effective muscle recovery and development.
Get adequate amounts of sleep.
Rest and sleep are vital to muscle development. During deep sleep, your body repairs itself and thus also rebuilds muscle tissue that has been worked out along the way.
Drink plenty of water.
Hydration not only increases strength but also improves digestion and increases muscle mass. Drinking water actually helps you build muscles in more ways than one.
Train safely.
The last but most important tip is to train safely. Shoulders are the number one part of the body that gets injured among body builders due to bad form. Whenever there is an injury to be had, downtime is required to heal the injury. During your downtime, you can’t work out that part of your body, so you’re not building muscle as well as you could be.
So, you should always train safely and never go further than what the machine or your trainer tells you to.
