3 STEPS TO BUILDING MUSCLE
We’ll see all the “click bait” headlines this January like “Build Muscle and Lose Fat in 10 Days” and “The 3 Best Moves to Build your Butt”.
As if, it was that easy. If it was, wouldn’t we all be jacked by now? Building muscle is one of the hardest parts of fitness because the perfect formula crosses paths with so many other dimensions of health. It’s not as simple as just lift weights or pick things up and put them down again.
Muscle is so important because it builds and shapes body composition or as the media calls it “toning”. Muscle mass prevents disease, illness and injury. Our healthcare system would be a lot more successful, if it focused more on building muscle rather than simply losing weight.
Building muscle requires discipline in your stress management, nutrition, and lifting. The good news is, once you have built muscle, it’s easier to keep than we think. Maintaining muscle mass is quite simple, the hard part is building it. There are 3 important steps to cover when building muscle.
RESISTANCE TRAINING
The most obvious step is resistance training, we need to lift weights to build muscle. When lifting weights, we need to be pushing close to failure and applying progressive overload. In simple terms, this means we are continuously working hard. At Jolt, we use our Lift class to build muscle. These professionally planned workouts are created by experienced and educated trainers who plan the perfect workout to build muscle. Our resistance training Lift classes include the following elements to ensure muscle growth.
2x2 Rule
The 2x2 rule helps us work close to failure. If “x” is your prescribed reps, we should be struggling 2 reps before “x” and we would fail to 2 reps after “x”.
For example, if we are asked to complete 10 reps of squats (x=10), then we should be struggling by 8 reps, but if we tried to keep going we would fail at 12 reps. Remember, failure means failure of safe form, not absolute failure.
This rule helps to ensure we are lifting and taxing the body without continuously crossing the line of our capacity. This type of lifting places stress on the muscles without causing injury. When this stimulus is followed up with good stress management and nutrition, muscle is built. This is why using the same dumbbells for every movement leads to plateau rather than building muscle.
Progressive Overload Programming
Following a structured program (like 1-1 personal training or Lift class) is important for building muscle. Following a program allows you to control progressive overload. Progressive overload refers to continuously progressing the stress placed on the body through resistance training. Muscles grow by continuously adapting to a new stimulus. When we place stress on a muscle, it is asked to adapt to meet the new demands (as mentioned above). The 2x2 rule is a great way to ensure that the resistance is always progressing. There are also 3 other elements of progressive overload.
We could manipulate the intensity (weight), tempo (speed of lifts), volume (amount of reps sets), or frequency ( how often we workout/hit that muscle). By continuing to implement a challenging stimulus, we continue to ask the body to adapt. At Jolt, our expert trainers build programming in 4 week cycles that ensure progression through the manipulation of resistance/intensity, tempo, volume, and frequency.
Rest periods
The most underrated part of any resistance training program is the rest period. Weight lifting in a class based setting is typically taught with circuit style training, where you rotate from station to station or move with a timer with less than 30 seconds of rest. However, this type of intensity promotes muscle endurance over muscle growth. Studies show that rest periods of 2-3 minutes have shown to be the best for muscle growth [1].
STRESS MANAGEMENT
Stress management is the most underrated element of building muscle. Our body needs to feel safe to build. Imagine this, a builder isn’t going to start building a new sky scraper building if they feel that the location/environment isn’t ideal for this type of building. Muscle requires a lot of resources to build, if the body feels stressed, it would rather store those resources for immediate survival of that stress then spend it on building muscle tissue for later.
Every single day should include some sort of stress management. Whether that’s jamming to our favourite tunes, a walk by ourself with no kids, turning our phone and email off after work, bubble baths, yoga class, being in nature or meditation. We need hobbies that don’t revolve around your boss, kids, friends, or partner. We can’t expect our body to reach our goals when we won’t take care of it. Our body needs to feel comfortable not threatened to achieve GREAT things. Humans are social creatures, we need to be interacting with all types of people and environments to thrive. Hug your family, call a friend, go out for dinner or go to yoga or for a walk with a friend! Our body needs to feel happy and connected to build muscle.
A good nights sleep of 7-9 hours is part of the stress management solution. Consider sleep the towel that soaks up all your stress from the day, so that you can start fresh the next day. If your sleep is disrupted, then your body will continue to drown in stress. Did you know sleeping less than 7 hours a night can age you up to a decade faster? Get our 6 best sleep tips here. When it comes to fitness, our workouts are the signal, but the muscle and progress is made while we sleep. Without high quality sleep, we can not make progress. End of story. Watch this TEDTalk with Sleep Expert Matt Walker.
NUTRITION
If resistance training is the stimulus to build muscle, then nutrition is the building blocks. Lifting weights without proper nutrition, is like trying to build a brick wall without bricks. You can tell yourself all day long to build that wall, but without bricks not much is going to get done. A healthy diet is packed with nutritious calories from whole foods including carbohydrates, proteins and fats. Protein is the most important for weight lifting. Those who resistance train need at least 1.3-1.8g of protein per pound of lean bodyweight [2].
Example:
If you are a healthy weight of 150 pounds and you are 23% bodyfat, your lean weight (all your weight minus body fat) is 116 pounds. You would need about 150-208g of protein per day. However, with 10+ years of experience I can tell you that I have not met one person who meets this goal before starting personal training. I always start clients off with meeting 1g of protein per pound of lean body weight and work up from there. A registered dietician, naturopath doctor, or nutrition certified personal trainer @ Jolt can help you determine your exact protein needs.
There you have it, @ Jolt we can help with everything from structured resistance training programs like personal training or Lift class, to stress management strategies like Yoga and Mobility classes, as well as nutrition planning. Visit us today!
Resources
[1] Schoenfeld BJ, Pope ZK, Benik FM, Hester GM, Sellers J, Nooner JL, Schnaiter JA, Bond-Williams KE, Carter AS, Ross CL, Just BL, Henselmans M, Krieger JW. Longer Interset Rest Periods Enhance Muscle Strength and Hypertrophy in Resistance-Trained Men. J Strength Cond Res. 2016 Jul;30(7):1805-12. doi: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000001272. PMID: 26605807.
[2] Phillips SM, Van Loon LJ. Dietary protein for athletes: from requirements to optimum adaptation. J Sports Sci. 2011;29 Suppl 1:S29-38. doi: 10.1080/02640414.2011.619204. PMID: 22150425.
