Losing weight and modifying it into muscles is one of the toughest work to do. And building muscles from scratch, especially if you’ve been lean and skinny is more difficult. Though there are many ways to build muscles, the technique to do so varies from person to person. From beginner, moderate to advanced person. Building muscles requires the right combination of everything. From the right proportion of calories to lifting proper weights and training yourself.
Proteins can accelerate this muscle-building process of yours, but healthy fats are also recommended while doing so. No matter at what stage you are. If you’re trying to gain weight or lose it, the ultimate goal of everyone is to build muscles and tone their body. Losing or gaining a certain amount of weight is easier than building muscles. You don’t have to cut carbs solely and see results or eat in a calorie surplus. You need to push yourself, your muscles. You need to go for that extra rep, train them to be better in the next set, and let them recover at least for 24 hours properly. It’s not just about how you treat your body inside the gym, but how you let it recover and work outside the gym.
Muscle hypertrophy is the process that increases the growth of muscle cells, and it helps you kick start the resistance training. When you lift hard, you release the muscle-growing hormones and other metabolites. It is in a way the adaptation our muscles go through from being pushed to heavier and heavier weights, which eventually increases the muscle fiber size both widely and broadly. Building muscles is not a one-time thing. It’s a constant push or progressive overload each day to make yourself and your muscles habitual of hard work. Progressive overload simply means creating an increased strategic effort towards your style of workout. This doesn’t happen in weeks. It takes months to build your strength to gain more. When you go to the gym initially, you tend to lose or gain weight rapidly. But the longer time you spend in the gym, the harder it is for you to either gain or lose weight. It’s more like creating a form for yourself, to make yourself more habitual. Below are some simple yet effective tips to grow bigger muscle:
1. Work big not minor:
Focusing on a single muscle while building muscle, isn’t the way you outgrow yourself and cross your limits. “Multi joints” movement is one theory that helps you focus on more than one muscle. Isolation training provides different values, different from any other one because you focus on one joint, one muscle.
Whereas, multi-joint movement can be the one sole backbone of your whole mass building training. It cannot do the work of isolation training. But when you challenge your body, mind to focus on multiple joints, it pushes you, your muscles quite literally.
If we take a dumbbell row, it doesn’t only focus your biceps, but also your abs, lats. Every row, the rep challenges you to push more. This will train and develop your mind to lift more and within no time, and you would access each of them.
2. Drink before workout:
Lifters often go for shakes and any other drink after their workout. But it is far better when you opt for a pre-workout shake. A study of 2001 at the university of texas showed that lifters who drank shakes containing amino acids, carbohydrates before a workout performed way better than the ones who drank after a heavy workout. An ideal shake should contain 6 grams of amino acids, the essential ones, also known as the muscle building block of protein, and 35 grams of carbohydrates.
Kevin Tipton, Ph.D. in exercise and nutrition research at the university of texas in Galveston says that “Since exercise increases blood flow to your working tissues, drinking a carbohydrate-protein mixture before your workout may lead to greater uptake of the amino acids in your muscles,”.
You can make a healthy shake with 10-20 grams of protein. One scoop of whey protein and you are good to go for a heavy workout. Have a drink 30- 60 minutes before a workout, as liquid meals are absorbed faster.
3. Eat more:
Not only protein but to grow big, you need bigger, heavier diets as well. You have to be in a calorie surplus. You need to have a balanced diet of each nutrient. A proper time gap between each meal is required. Try to calculate your required calories according to your body weight to gain weight.
Follow it for a week or so, and if that doesn’t suit your body type, then keep adding calories to it. Starting from 250 to gradually increase to 500 or so.
4. Cut your carbs after a workout:
It’s not just about the day you work hardest on or lift the heaviest weights. It’s more about the rest of the days when you focus on long-term progress. Research has shown that your body will grow faster and bigger on rest days, only if you have been feeding yourself on carbohydrates.
Having a banana, peanut butter sandwich or even a sports drink can be better. As said by experts, “post-workout meals with carbs increase your insulin levels, which eventually slows the rate of protein breakdown”.
5. Don’t burn out yourself and rest:
Sleep and rest are often or even most of the time neglected by almost everyone. People solely focus on lifting, eating, and lastly burning out themselves. But they don’t realize how they can build themselves for better the other day because of resting. It’s all in this very time, that your muscles growing hormones are secreted.
It is not necessary to have 8-10 hours of sleep, especially in this rushing world. But the least you can do is have at least 6 hours of sleep. Just have more qualitative sleep than quantitative. Go early to bed, have a dark place to sleep. Play some lofi songs, or whatever songs that calm you down.
Though Sleep is indeed a very underrated point to be noticed while building muscles, it is the most affecting one.
