I Hear it all the time,
“I just cant put any muscle on”
and we have all heard this one,
“ALL I DO IS EAT AND STILL CANT GAIN MUSCLE “,
not forgetting
“I trained last year and i didn’t gain anything”
There are a key few reasons behind why people don’t gain muscle, let’s get at it,
1. THEY LACK CONSISTENCY – both in the gym and with their food and sleep. To gain muscle you must progress in the gym, feed and fuel the body correctly on a consistent basis and recover well with good planning and sleep.
- If you don’t train enough with the right volume and intensity, you wont gain muscle.
- If you don’t get sufficient protein and calories each day, you wont gain muscle.
- If you aren’t getting at least 6 hours sleep per day ( ideally 8) you wont gain muscle.
2. THEY DON’T GET SUFFICIENT PROTEIN AND CALORIES
- To gain muscle you will need at least 14x your bodyweight in calories as a starting point, some need far more if they are hardgainers.
- To gain muscle you will need a bare minimum of 2g per kg of bodyweight which can be up to 3g for some individuals doing regular heavy resistance training.
3. THEY JUMP FROM TRAINING FAD TO TRAINING FAD
- Long term consistency getting progressively stronger in the big lifts, presses, rows, chins, dips, squats deadlifts as the foundation of your programme is key when trying to gain muscle over time.
- The basics have been proven over decades to work, time under tension, get stronger, measured rest periods, enough recovery, these key factors can be tweaked slightly to keep the results coming.
4. THEY BELIEVE IN MAGIC SUPPLEMENTS
- Although some supplements are proven to work (CREATINE, WHEY PROTEIN, VIT D3, FISH OIL) no supplements are miracle workers or can overcome a bad diet and training. The clue is in the title “SUPPLEMENT”.
- Searching for the holy grail of supplements to cover up your diet or training is like paper over cracks and trans out to be very expensive and simply wastes time rather than addressing the real issue.
5. THEY UNDER RECOVER
- I’m not a believer in over training simply, under recovering. Planning recovery, nutrition and sleep is as important as planning training.
- Planning good sleep, naps, covering nutritional needs and getting soft tissue work done where needed is essential for long term muscle acquisition.
So there you go, NO SECRETS, HACKS OR TRICKS just very unsexy basics that people need to stick to when muscle building is concerned.
So get lifting, get eating, get sleeping and measure everything and stay consistent.