With untold amounts of complex equipment to use, millions of vitamins and supplements to choose from, and enough training programs to make your head explode, it can often seem that trying to build muscle mass is one of the most difficult things a person can ever undertake.
But, when you strip it down to its bare essentials there really are only three things you need to do in order to build muscle mass:
- Progressively overload the muscles with heaver weights.
- Eat enough of the right sorts of food to sustain muscle repair and growth.
- Give your muscles and entire system sufficient rest to allow repair and growth.
Progressively overloading the muscles
If you were to lift the same amount of weight each time you were trained, you would never get any bigger or stronger. You may put on a little amount of muscle in the beginning, but after a while this would remain the same.
Simply be sure that each and every training session — or as often as possible — you use heavier and heavier weights. From a physiological perspective this gives the muscles no option but to grow.
Eating enough of the right sorts of foods
If you want to put it mathematically, calories are what it is all about. You have something known as a BMR. This stands for basal metabolic rate. What this measurement represents is the amount of calories that you will burn while doing nothing.
For you to put any amount of weight on — in fat or muscle — you must eat more than what you require at your basal metabolic rate. Many bodybuilders take the scientific approach to this and count calories in and calories out. Others simply estimate what they need using portions.
Not only do you need to be sure that you are reaching the right amount of calories to build muscle mass, but you also need to ensure that these calories are coming from quality foods. That means, that eating ten cookies is not going to have the muscle building affects that eating a chicken breast would.
Bodybuilders (anybody for that matter) need to eat a healthy balanced diet. This includes proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. Normally, bodybuilders will split this up into a ratio such as 35% protein 35% carbohydrates and 30% fats, or something.
As a general rule of thumb, bodybuilders need to eat around one or 2 g of protein per pound of body weight for optimal muscle growth.
Resting
Resting is easy. Resting is good. A well put together bodybuilding program will account for the fact that you need to minimise the amount of times and severity by which the same muscles are worked. A muscle needs at least 72 hours in order to recover.
Most programs also include rest days. It would be foolhardy to think that the body is capable of working out every day with weights at an optimal level without having some time off to recover systematically. If you overdo it, you will over train and the body will shut down and you are in grave danger of not only not putting muscle mass on but losing the muscle mass you have gained.
I hope you learn something from this article. It is very important that you do not neglect any of these three factors as they are of equal importance when trying to build muscle mass.