The Best Top 10 Tips to Build Muscle Efficiently
If your goal is to build muscle, you’re in the right place. There are tips and habits you can follow to hack the biology of your body and build muscle quickly. Getting stronger is a goal many of us should have as strength training allows you to move better, increase bone strength, and show off your gains to friends.
Muscle building requires patience, dedication, and determination. The basic necessities boil down to nutrition, workout type, and recovery. Keep reading to learn the top tips and habits you need to build muscle today!
Top 10 Tips to do Daily to Build Muscle
You need to increase muscle cells to increase muscles in the body. These tips will show you how to get there safely, easily, and efficiently.
1. Eat High-Quality Protein
To gain muscle, you should be eating about 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. Protein is a type of macronutrient full of amino acids, minerals, and necessary vitamins to build muscle. Good sources of protein include Eggs, poultry, seafood, meat, and yogurt. If you are vegetarian, there are also great choices in beans, lentils, nuts, and soy products like tofu.
Ensure your protein is high quality, however. If you are choosing animal products make sure they are grass-fed, have no antibiotics, or are pasture-raised if referring to eggs. You are what you eat and high quality of life for animals means more nutrition for humans. Plus, it’s just nicer for the animals involved.
2. Get Enough Sleep
Studies have found that sleep is vital to muscle building, as an important hormone is released while you sleep. Sleeping is also an opportunity for the body to repair itself, flush out toxins, and rebuild.
While the average amount of sleep recommended for adults is 7-8 hours, you might need more if you’re working out and building muscles.
3. Eat Low Fat, High Carb Meals Before a Workout
While fat is an important nutrition source, high in energy, it also digests slowly, something you do not want during a workout. A meal high in healthy fats would be great after a workout, to help the body to have plenty of energy to grow muscles. Before a workout, however, it is important to have easy to use energy during a workout, absorbing nutrients easily and quickly.
This type of mentality can also go hand in hand with carb cycling, eating high-carb meals on days you workout intensely, and following up with a high-fat meal in recovery. Check out the full guide here!
4. Resistance Training
Resistance training is a strength-building type of exercise that makes your muscles work against a force. This includes weighted exercise, body weight exercise, or the use of resistance bands.
The tension and effort you exert during a workout allow the muscle fibers in the body to tear, ever so slightly. In recovery, this causes the muscles to adapt and grow the muscles to better deal with the weight in the future. As you add more weight, recover well, and continue, your muscles grow more and more every time.
No gym access? No problem! Calisthenics uses body weight and everything can be increased or decreased in intensity. For example, you can make a squat harder by using one leg. You can even work up to a push-up, or learn to do a pull-up, and make those harder as well.
5. Aim for Failure
Sounds negative right? In weight training, failure is a place you want to get comfortable with! Reaching the point of failure means you can physically do no more. If you are doing bench presses, you want to reach the point of failure about the end of the 3rd and final set.
Now, you don’t always need to reach failure. Just ensure you do push yourself to that point every so often and at least aim for muscle fatigue. Muscle fatigue is the state of being tired and pushed close to a limit. You might notice your muscles tremble a bit or be sore the next day. Nice job.
6. Eat Enough
Building muscle takes a lot of time and effort from the body, which means you’re going to want to be in a calorie surplus, not a deficit. Eating enough ensures your body has everything it needs in the all important recovery process.
Building muscle requires repairing tears in the body, something that can be taxing without the proper meals to get you through it.
7. Hydrate Well
Water is essential in many ways, as it is involved in many chemical reactions in the body. Make sure you hydrate so your body can do what it needs to do during and after a workout. Plus, if you’re working out and pushing yourself, chances are you’re working up a sweat. This means you need to replace the fluids in the body with good hydration.
Up your water with lemon or even tea!
8. Look into Creatine
Creatine is the only workout supplement currently backed by science. Studies have found that taking creatine daily can help you train longer and harder. It is an amino acid that lets your muscles store energy. More energy means a more intense workout, which can help you increase muscle faster.
9. Mind the Gut
First of all, a balanced gut influences how well you absorb nutrients. Without a balanced gut, you can be eating the healthiest things in the world and your body will not be able to use them. Plus, when you have a balanced gut, which can help reduce inflammation and pain in the skin, joints, and muscles.
Studies are just starting to look at the relationship between gut health and muscles, but the consensus is that gut health affects, well, everything in the body! Check out the relationship between microbiota health and muscle formation here!
10. Recover Properly
You should be allowing the muscles to rest for about 48 hours before working them out again, though it always depends on how hard you worked out the muscles. Plus, it might be beneficial to do some gentle stretching, yoga, or walking on recovery days to make sure you get better quicker.
Check out the ultimate post-workout recovery guide here for free today!
Why Everyone Should Build Muscle
Strength training is incredibly important for anyone, no matter the fitness goals they possess. After the age of 30, you may lose about 5% of your muscle mass every 10 years if you are not active. Strength training protects the bones, making them stronger, increases metabolic rate, and allows you to move more easily throughout life.
For anyone wanting to pack on the muscle, try these tips out to build a strong body that can carry everything important to you. We carry groceries, furniture, our kids and so much more daily. We need to protect the body to ensure it can move the way we want it to, with maximum health. Furthermore, for anyone worried about bulking up, don’t be! It takes a much longer time to bulk up and would only happen if you continue to up the weights, reach fatigue or failure, and push yourself.
The Takeaway
By following these habits and tips, you can build muscle quickly. Nutrition and fitness are vital to building strength and gaining muscle, so ensure you are eating well, hydrating properly, sleeping well, and recovering enough.
Remember that health comes from within. A nutritious diet, good habits, and taking care of yourself emotionally all allow you to thrive. Watch how wellness increases exponentially with small changes and good habits.
Anyone can take their health into their hands. Remember microbiota health as well! A balanced gut microbiome allows you to have healthy skin, a good metabolism, better digestion, nutrient absorption, and even better mental health!
Get all the resources you need about microbiota health for free here!
