GN™ Academy
Top 10 Muscle Building Tips
Need some tips on building muscle? GN Academy member Alisdair Marshall shares his top 10 tips below to help ensure you pack on plenty of lean mass;
- Nutrition (diet) – Always a number 1 thing if you are looking to build muscle in the gym, you need to be eating food, and the right types of food. Non processed healthy food. The saying if it goes off its good, as then it isn’t processed. Have good diet and the work in the gym pays off
- Calories – you need to be eating enough calories of food in able to build muscle. Your body uses calories just to live as you calories intake from food is your fuel and gives you energy. You need to consume more than enough calories so that after your body uses the calories for energy, it will then use them to build muscle. If you don’t have enough calories then your body won’t grow. The difficult part is getting the perfect balance of calories from Protein, carbohydrates, fats (healthy).
- Protein- the Key food category to building muscle, you need to consume enough protein to be building muscle, it builds and repairs muscle.
- Carbohydrates- this is the key energy source your body relies on, your body uses them to give you energy for the gym and to generally live. Although having too many carbs your body will process them and store them as fat, as your body only uses so much energy.
- Healthy fats- Yes there are healthy fats out there, and they are essential to our body, they actually help us lose fat as well as building testosterone which is the very important to help us build muscle.
- Consistency – You have to be consistent with dieting as well as going to the gym and working hard. You have to stick to your diet to be able to keep building muscle. You also need to be consistent in the gym, keep going lifting the weights and working hard. It is basically a 24/7 job for yourself
- Time – very important aspect, when training in the gym to build muscle you need to keep up with time. Spend too long in the gym and your body will start to use and burn the muscle as energy, it is recommend spending no more than 1.5 hours in the gym. Also while lifting weights to make sure you don’t rest too long between exercises and sets but also not too little as you will become very tired and fatigued. no more than roughly 2 mins between sets and 5 mins between exercises.
- Form – also very important in the gym. First leave your ego at the door to how heavy you can lift. When lifting its keys to focus on moving the weight properly and performing the exercises properly. If you perform the exercises incorrect then you won’t have enough tension on the muscle in order for it to grow. As well as you can cause yourself injury if you perform the exercise incorrectly, and lift too heavy a weight than you actually can.
- Time under tension – In order for a muscle to grow in must be placed under enough tension for a period of time. The tension on the muscle occurs when lifting the weight. It is recommended to aim for at least 30 seconds of tension on the muscle for it to grow. Best way to create enough tension is a the 3-1-1 sequence, that means lowering the weight for 3 seconds, holding for 1 second then lifting or pressing back to the start in 1 second. So for 10 reps that creates roughly 50 seconds of time under tension, more than enough time to force that muscle to grow.
- Rest- a very key aspect to it all, rest is key, as you need to rest to allow your muscles to recover and grow. You can’t keep breaking a muscle down and expect it to grow if it keeps getting broken.
Tagged: Training