Five Tips To Build Muscle Naturally
In order to see results from your time spent in the gym your training has to be based on a foundation of solid training principles.
Here are 5 of those key principles-
1, YOU MUST GET STRONGER
In order to build muscles naturally (without steroids) you must focus primarily on progressively overloading your muscles. In a nutshell, get very strong on large compound exercises. Any high level natural bodybuilding competitor will be strong as hell relative to their bodyweight. In the hierarchy of what stimulates muscle growth the most, progressive tension overload trumps other forms of training for the natural trainee.
For the average person who is only going to make it to the gym 2-3 per week it makes sense to use your time efficiently and thus focus your training primarily on getting stronger. The aesthetic changes in body shape will follow this, although you’ll also need to create a calorie deficit if your goal is to simultaneously get leaner.
2, USE VOLUME INTELLIGENTLY
Volume in a training context is the number of exercises and sets that you use.
The amount of volume that your body can tolerate is governed by how you are recovering.
Things that will affect the amount of volume to use include-
If you are just lifting weights.
Are you doing other sports?
Work extremely long hours.
Have high levels stress.
Have poor sleep.
Age
Cartain medical conditions.
There is definitely a sweet spot of volume that will generally work for most people and adding more to this will be a game of demising returns.
The role of a great coach is to be able to access how well their trainees are recovering and adjust their training programmes volume accordingly.
One factor that has unfortunately muddied the waters is the widespread use of anabolic steroids by people you see in Hollywood, Elite Sports and on Fitness Magazines. You simply can train harder if you are ‘supercharged’
Ultimately the volume you use harking back to the previous point has to create an environment that you can progressively improve on.
Warming up to do 2-4 sets of a exercise where you can perform a new personal record is far more productive and valuable than doing 10 sets of something with a submaximal weight “chasing a pump”.
Now don’t get me wrong, i’m not a Mike Mentzer Heavy Duty Method person who only recommends 1 set to failure, but volume does need to be used intelligently.
3, TRAIN ACCORDING TO YOUR AGE & ‘TRAINING AGE’
As discussed above your age will dictate how you train, if someone really looks after themselves they can potentially handle a surprising amount of volume. Exercise is a form of 'stress’ and the more ducks in a row that you have with your recovery the more you can probably do. The human body when looked after and fed well can become very resilient.
A beginner can progress in a pretty linear fashion for a long time as there is so much new stimulus.
The longer that you train you more you’ll need to adjust things to ensure continued progress, if it wasn’t like this anyone could build up to a 200kg bench press.
There are many variables that can be adjusted and then are the main ones-
Exercise selection and order
Sets & Reps
Range of motion
Tempo.
This is again where an experienced coach is a valuable investment to help guide you on these adjustments.
4, SLEEP BETTER
Exercise provides the stimulus but when you rest is when the adaptions take place.
Sleep is a crucial part of this recovery process and there’s no side stepping this.
Better sleep will help you build muscle, reduce your body fat, reduce your incidence of many diseases, improve your resilience to everyday stress and reduce cravings & fluctuations in energy levels.
Ideally you want to aim for 7-8 hours of undisturbed sleep per night.
Check out my 15 Tips To Better Sleep article for more advice.
5, CREATE A SMALL CALORIC SURPLUS
In order to build muscle optimally you need to be in a slight calorific surplus. Now this isn’t permission to eat everything in the house, it only really requires a surplus of a few hundred calories per day.
It’s better to aim for a slow gain of muscle. For a natural trainee large, quick increases in body weight mean that you’ll also be adding plenty of body fat a the same time.
With this, it’s important to accept some gain of body fat as it’s very difficult to add purely lean tissue.
If you the gain you make is 60-75% lean tissue you are in a pretty good place. So say for example you add 6 kilo’s in a year and 3.6 to 4 kilo’s of it is muscle thats a really good rate of gain. The 2 to 2.4 kilo’s of body fat added can easily be taken off with a dieting phase.
I’d recommend to track your food intake so you can be more consistent with your daily intake. As your add muscle you will gradually have to add more calories in order to support this new bodyweight. This will also empower you with knowledge to be able to make easy adjustments to your eating when you reach a dieting phase.
All of the above will work much better when your sleep & stress management levels are optimised.
