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If you're exercising on a regular basis, it's easy to get frustrated when you're not seeing the results you're working so hard to achieve. After all, consistently going to the gym or working with a personal trainer is a big time and financial commitment. Yet before you get down on yourself or, worse, start to think that your exercise efforts are all for naught, take heart: You may just need to make a few simple tweaks to your routine to start building muscle and melting fat. In this article you will find top mistakes people make when trying to build muscle, and what to do instead to see results fast.
1. Undereating
Muscle mass is the hardest thing to build and arguably the hardest to maintain. Getting fat is easy, gaining muscle is just the opposite. Believe it or not, you’re going to have to eat to gain that hard-earned muscle, and probably more than you have been. Does that mean you should go ham on a pizza and a gallon of ice cream? No, it doesn’t. Does that mean increasing your vegetable intake to 2 cups at every single meal and including protein, carbs, and fat to get into a small surplus so that your body has the energy it needs to make muscle? Yep, it does. Gaining muscle without the excess fat is possible, but not with junk food. Add the best vegetables for muscle growth to your diet to optimize your nutrition.
Also, you should make sure you are getting enough protein to build muscle mass. Protein is what your body uses to build muscle, so it's important to ensure you're getting enough of it throughout the day and especially after your workouts to support muscle repair and growth. You want to eat at least one gram of protein for every kilogram (2.2 pounds) of body weight each day. In other words, eat at least half your body weight in grams of protein. That's at a minimum. For example, if you weigh 180 pounds, you should aim to eat 90 grams of protein daily.
In a small June 2020 study in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, female lifters who ate 1.13 grams of protein per pound of their body weight gained an average of 4.6 pounds of muscle over eight weeks. Other lifters who ate 0.4 grams of protein per pound of their body weight over that same period only gained 1.3 pounds of muscle. The higher-protein group also lost more body fat over the same period.
2. You’re not getting enough sleep and rest
Sleeping is you body’s time to recharge. For you, the weight trainer, it’s your body’s time to repair damaged muscle tissue, and grow more muscle. Aim to get around 7-8 hours of good quality sleep every night. Here’s some tips on how to get a good night’s rest:
Only sleep when you’re tired. There’s no point it trying to when you’re not.
Develop sleeping rituals, going to bed and getting up at the same time every day.
Refrain from stressful activities for 1-2 hours before bed
Don’t take stimulates within 4-6 hours before bed time
Have a light snack before bed
Rest is just as important as training. Many people believe that muscle building takes place in the gym, but it’s actually the opposite. Weight training is actually creating millions of tears in the muscle tissue. In effect, you’re actually damaging the muscle. Your muscles get “pumped up” because of the swelling caused and increased blood flow to the area. The actual muscle building (repair and growth of new muscle tissue) takes place out of the gym, when you’re resting and sleeping.
There are 2 ways you may not be getting enough rest. First, you are training too many days without taking as day off. Although you may not feel it, you body needs days of complete rest to recover from hard training sessions. It’s not just the muscles that need to recover, it’s your whole neurological system, tendons, joints, even your brain need rest. Secondly, and this comes back to your workout routine again, you may not be allowing muscle groups to fully recover between training sessions. If you do not allow enough recovery time, your muscles will not grow. It’s that simple. If your muscle group is still sore from the previous workout, don’t train it. For most muscle groups, one training session per week is adequate. Some smaller muscle groups like calves and abs may be trained twice, but still need at least 2 days of rest between sessions.
3. Too much cardio
If you’re a stickler for worrying about cardio first, strength training second, you may want to flip that thinking. Evaluate your fitness goals. If you want to reduce body fat and gain lean muscle, it’s best to incorporate weights and ditch long steady-state cardio sessions because the two are working against each other. To keep up your cardiorespiratory fitness and ensure the top-notch calorie-burn of cardio, two or three days of a high intensity interval training session (HIIT), can get the job done. And if activities, like running longer distances, are meaningful to you, then you may have to readjust your goals, which is totally fine, too.
While cardiovascular exercise that gets your heart rate up is a crucial component of any exercise routine, overdoing it on the running, Spin classes, swimming, or other cardio exercises can actually burn hard-earned muscle tissue.
4. Drinking Alcohol
The cheapest date is a big muscly bro. You know why? Because to build serious, high-quality muscle mass, you’re not going to want to drink alcohol in an effort to protect the precious gains. Alcohol causes dehydration, nervous system sedation, suppressed immune function, and even interferes with the mTOR protein synthesis pathway.
There are lots more scientific reasons to avoid it, but in short, skip the drinks and opt for a night out with the boys that don’t involve drinking. If you're going to have a few cocktails, then make sure you get the proper nutrients such as b-vitamins before you go to sleep, to take the edge off that hangover.
5. You’re not getting enough water
Water is nature’s wonder supplement, it’s essential for a whole host of bodily functions. Many lifters underestimate the importance of being hydrated well before they step into the gym. If you feel dehydrated just before you’re about to train, it’s too late, you won’t be able to rehydrate yourself time. Keeping yourself hydrated should be a priority from the moment you get out of bed. Dehydration is a serious problem, and in extreme cases can lead to death. Here are some signs of dehydration you should look out for:
Feeling thirsty (obviously)
Fatigue. Feeling tired for no apparent reason.
Dry mouth and possible sore throat
Headache
Loss of appetite
Dark urine with strong odor
Drinking an adequate amount of water is easy, and there’s no excuse why you cannot do it. Just take a bottle wherever you go and keep sipping out of it throughout the day.
Some supplements, like creatine, may lead to dehydration. If you’re using creatine monohydrate you should increase the amount of water your consuming.
6. You’re Not Practicing Progressive Overload
We’ve all seen that person in the gym that always does the same thing, day in and day out and hasn’t changed their body composition for years. The reason for this is that they aren’t practicing what is known as progressive overload. Progressive overload is a theory based on the idea that increasing total volume (weight x reps x sets) is a major determinant of increasing muscle size and strength.
With typical evolution, we’re presented with a stressor, which then forces our bodies to adapt to that stressor in order to survive. Based on the research, increasing muscle mass is no different. When you go to the gym and lift weights, you are presenting the body with a stressor, which then causes the body to adapt by getting bigger and stronger. However, eventually you’ve fully adapted, meaning if you continue to do the same thing over and over again, you won’t grow anymore. This is a major mistake that many people make, especially when trying to put on muscle. You’re simply not giving the body a reason to get bigger.
To practice progressive overload, it’s smart to make sure when you are creating your plan of action, that you program specific periods of time when you’ll increase one of the three variables of progressive overload (weight, reps and sets). Doing so will ensure that you consistently provide the body with enough stress to force an adaptation such as increased muscle growth. Further, it is strongly suggested keeping a training journal. Doing so will allow you to view your previous performance and then improve each time you repeat workouts or exercises.
Progressively overloading the body and muscle is essential for growth. If you don’t practice this principle, you can expect to never increase muscle mass.
7. Your workouts lack variety
Doing the same chest presses and kettlebell squats every other day? If you perform the same routine over and over again, there's a good chance you'll hit a plateau in your training. You have to vary the stimulus to trigger muscle growth, and the best way to do that is with different exercises, angles, and loads. Exercise variety is a key factor in building muscle. Remember when you first started working out and felt really sore the next day? Your muscles weren't used to performing the new exercises and were adapting to them. Whether you are an experienced trainer or a beginner, your muscles respond to new movements.
If you put the best men's bodybuilder in the world in a ballet class, it's guaranteed he'll be feeling muscles he's never felt before for at least the next few days. That's because his muscles have become used to performing a certain way and when taken out of their comfort zone, they are challenged to work differently.
Even so, the muscles get bored fast, so if you have been following the same routine with the same exercises, lifting the same weight, at the same intensity and can't remember the last time you've seen results, try adding some new exercises. That doesn't mean doing something completely random every other day, it means sprinkling new exercises throughout your program to challenge your muscles so they don't get bored.
So What Did We Learn?
There’s no denying that increasing muscle mass can often be a difficult task. However, it’s quite likely that there is a sound explanation for why it’s so difficult. Ensuring that you have a clear plan of action while practicing different techniques to ensure progressive overload is essential for continued progress and increased muscle growth. Using the above techniques should allow you to pinpoint why you’re not building muscle and then find a way to address it.
If your goal is to build lean muscle mass, then it’s going to more than just cleaning up your diet and supplementing with the cheapest low-grade pre-workout powder. Building lean muscle mass takes consistency, dedication, optimizing your diet, lifting heavy and most of all, putting in the effort.
1. Undereating
Muscle mass is the hardest thing to build and arguably the hardest to maintain. Getting fat is easy, gaining muscle is just the opposite. Believe it or not, you’re going to have to eat to gain that hard-earned muscle, and probably more than you have been. Does that mean you should go ham on a pizza and a gallon of ice cream? No, it doesn’t. Does that mean increasing your vegetable intake to 2 cups at every single meal and including protein, carbs, and fat to get into a small surplus so that your body has the energy it needs to make muscle? Yep, it does. Gaining muscle without the excess fat is possible, but not with junk food. Add the best vegetables for muscle growth to your diet to optimize your nutrition.
Also, you should make sure you are getting enough protein to build muscle mass. Protein is what your body uses to build muscle, so it's important to ensure you're getting enough of it throughout the day and especially after your workouts to support muscle repair and growth. You want to eat at least one gram of protein for every kilogram (2.2 pounds) of body weight each day. In other words, eat at least half your body weight in grams of protein. That's at a minimum. For example, if you weigh 180 pounds, you should aim to eat 90 grams of protein daily.
In a small June 2020 study in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, female lifters who ate 1.13 grams of protein per pound of their body weight gained an average of 4.6 pounds of muscle over eight weeks. Other lifters who ate 0.4 grams of protein per pound of their body weight over that same period only gained 1.3 pounds of muscle. The higher-protein group also lost more body fat over the same period.
2. You’re not getting enough sleep and rest
Sleeping is you body’s time to recharge. For you, the weight trainer, it’s your body’s time to repair damaged muscle tissue, and grow more muscle. Aim to get around 7-8 hours of good quality sleep every night. Here’s some tips on how to get a good night’s rest:
Only sleep when you’re tired. There’s no point it trying to when you’re not.
Develop sleeping rituals, going to bed and getting up at the same time every day.
Refrain from stressful activities for 1-2 hours before bed
Don’t take stimulates within 4-6 hours before bed time
Have a light snack before bed
Rest is just as important as training. Many people believe that muscle building takes place in the gym, but it’s actually the opposite. Weight training is actually creating millions of tears in the muscle tissue. In effect, you’re actually damaging the muscle. Your muscles get “pumped up” because of the swelling caused and increased blood flow to the area. The actual muscle building (repair and growth of new muscle tissue) takes place out of the gym, when you’re resting and sleeping.
There are 2 ways you may not be getting enough rest. First, you are training too many days without taking as day off. Although you may not feel it, you body needs days of complete rest to recover from hard training sessions. It’s not just the muscles that need to recover, it’s your whole neurological system, tendons, joints, even your brain need rest. Secondly, and this comes back to your workout routine again, you may not be allowing muscle groups to fully recover between training sessions. If you do not allow enough recovery time, your muscles will not grow. It’s that simple. If your muscle group is still sore from the previous workout, don’t train it. For most muscle groups, one training session per week is adequate. Some smaller muscle groups like calves and abs may be trained twice, but still need at least 2 days of rest between sessions.
3. Too much cardio
If you’re a stickler for worrying about cardio first, strength training second, you may want to flip that thinking. Evaluate your fitness goals. If you want to reduce body fat and gain lean muscle, it’s best to incorporate weights and ditch long steady-state cardio sessions because the two are working against each other. To keep up your cardiorespiratory fitness and ensure the top-notch calorie-burn of cardio, two or three days of a high intensity interval training session (HIIT), can get the job done. And if activities, like running longer distances, are meaningful to you, then you may have to readjust your goals, which is totally fine, too.
While cardiovascular exercise that gets your heart rate up is a crucial component of any exercise routine, overdoing it on the running, Spin classes, swimming, or other cardio exercises can actually burn hard-earned muscle tissue.
4. Drinking Alcohol
The cheapest date is a big muscly bro. You know why? Because to build serious, high-quality muscle mass, you’re not going to want to drink alcohol in an effort to protect the precious gains. Alcohol causes dehydration, nervous system sedation, suppressed immune function, and even interferes with the mTOR protein synthesis pathway.
There are lots more scientific reasons to avoid it, but in short, skip the drinks and opt for a night out with the boys that don’t involve drinking. If you're going to have a few cocktails, then make sure you get the proper nutrients such as b-vitamins before you go to sleep, to take the edge off that hangover.
5. You’re not getting enough water
Water is nature’s wonder supplement, it’s essential for a whole host of bodily functions. Many lifters underestimate the importance of being hydrated well before they step into the gym. If you feel dehydrated just before you’re about to train, it’s too late, you won’t be able to rehydrate yourself time. Keeping yourself hydrated should be a priority from the moment you get out of bed. Dehydration is a serious problem, and in extreme cases can lead to death. Here are some signs of dehydration you should look out for:
Feeling thirsty (obviously)
Fatigue. Feeling tired for no apparent reason.
Dry mouth and possible sore throat
Headache
Loss of appetite
Dark urine with strong odor
Drinking an adequate amount of water is easy, and there’s no excuse why you cannot do it. Just take a bottle wherever you go and keep sipping out of it throughout the day.
Some supplements, like creatine, may lead to dehydration. If you’re using creatine monohydrate you should increase the amount of water your consuming.
6. You’re Not Practicing Progressive Overload
We’ve all seen that person in the gym that always does the same thing, day in and day out and hasn’t changed their body composition for years. The reason for this is that they aren’t practicing what is known as progressive overload. Progressive overload is a theory based on the idea that increasing total volume (weight x reps x sets) is a major determinant of increasing muscle size and strength.
With typical evolution, we’re presented with a stressor, which then forces our bodies to adapt to that stressor in order to survive. Based on the research, increasing muscle mass is no different. When you go to the gym and lift weights, you are presenting the body with a stressor, which then causes the body to adapt by getting bigger and stronger. However, eventually you’ve fully adapted, meaning if you continue to do the same thing over and over again, you won’t grow anymore. This is a major mistake that many people make, especially when trying to put on muscle. You’re simply not giving the body a reason to get bigger.
To practice progressive overload, it’s smart to make sure when you are creating your plan of action, that you program specific periods of time when you’ll increase one of the three variables of progressive overload (weight, reps and sets). Doing so will ensure that you consistently provide the body with enough stress to force an adaptation such as increased muscle growth. Further, it is strongly suggested keeping a training journal. Doing so will allow you to view your previous performance and then improve each time you repeat workouts or exercises.
Progressively overloading the body and muscle is essential for growth. If you don’t practice this principle, you can expect to never increase muscle mass.
7. Your workouts lack variety
Doing the same chest presses and kettlebell squats every other day? If you perform the same routine over and over again, there's a good chance you'll hit a plateau in your training. You have to vary the stimulus to trigger muscle growth, and the best way to do that is with different exercises, angles, and loads. Exercise variety is a key factor in building muscle. Remember when you first started working out and felt really sore the next day? Your muscles weren't used to performing the new exercises and were adapting to them. Whether you are an experienced trainer or a beginner, your muscles respond to new movements.
If you put the best men's bodybuilder in the world in a ballet class, it's guaranteed he'll be feeling muscles he's never felt before for at least the next few days. That's because his muscles have become used to performing a certain way and when taken out of their comfort zone, they are challenged to work differently.
Even so, the muscles get bored fast, so if you have been following the same routine with the same exercises, lifting the same weight, at the same intensity and can't remember the last time you've seen results, try adding some new exercises. That doesn't mean doing something completely random every other day, it means sprinkling new exercises throughout your program to challenge your muscles so they don't get bored.
So What Did We Learn?
There’s no denying that increasing muscle mass can often be a difficult task. However, it’s quite likely that there is a sound explanation for why it’s so difficult. Ensuring that you have a clear plan of action while practicing different techniques to ensure progressive overload is essential for continued progress and increased muscle growth. Using the above techniques should allow you to pinpoint why you’re not building muscle and then find a way to address it.
If your goal is to build lean muscle mass, then it’s going to more than just cleaning up your diet and supplementing with the cheapest low-grade pre-workout powder. Building lean muscle mass takes consistency, dedication, optimizing your diet, lifting heavy and most of all, putting in the effort.
