By Muscle building is a science, and a journey of self discovery. With each training session, you will learn more about your bodies capabilities than ever before. Compiling that, with adequate nutrition, you set yourself on a goal that will be achievable long term. Building muscle takes time, consistent effort, proper feeding & rest. It will be challenging to achieve one without the other.
To get ahead in the game, I will compile a list of the best ways to spend your precious time in the gym, that will provide you the most effective results. I use these tips within my own program, and those of my clients. As a female, it’s worked very well, to the point that other females brand me as “masculine!” I’m quite happy to referred to in this sense, as being labeled weak and helpless would be heartbreaking.
5 of the best hacks to gain muscle – faster
- Split your body parts. I do not believe it’s effective to train your whole body daily, and it’s not really effective if you want to build a considerable amount of muscle. If you want to just focus on losing body fat, then go ahead with it. Muscles need to be trained frequently, in order to grow. In other words, you really have to smash those body parts, especially the ones that are lagging behind. Therefore, it’s in your best interest to split your workouts in the following way:-
– Biceps and Triceps
– Quads and calves
– Hamstring and glutes
– Back and shoulders
This split allows you to recover one muscle group, while working another. Say you have quads and calves one day, then the following day could be biceps and triceps. You recover your legs, and smash your arms. Do this, and you will notice a huge different in your results. - Train those compound movements frequently. These are free weight, multi-joined lifts such as squats, deadlifts, presses, step ups, chin ups and pulls. You could even through in sled pushes by loading them up and using your entire body to push the weight. This can be good for sprints with lower weight.
- Focus on volume, and lift heavy. Lifting heavy and with higher volumes, account for these very important factors when building muscles.
– muscle damage and cell swelling occur, due to the lengthening and contracting motion of the muscle. The most important phase of the movement (and the one that induces the most muscular growth) is the eccentric phase. The damage this incurs in the muscle, are tiny micro tears, filling the cells with liquid. This is the beautiful result that we call the ‘muscular pump’ This causes an increase in protein synthesis as a protective mechanism.
– longer time under tension, When the muscle contracts under tension in experiences stress. This stress triggers protein synthesis and muscle tissue growth. Make sure you allow enough time under tension for this to occur.
– metabolic stress, this causes the release of testosterone, growth hormone and IGF-1, which increase protein synthesis, leading to muscle tissue growth as well as helping you to recover after your workout. - Tempo, tempo tempo above time under tension. Lifting speed is essential for muscle growth. There is a particular sweet spot that research suggests. The recommended time is 3–6 seconds for the eccentric and 1–3 seconds for the concentric. This allows for longer time under tension, training slow and fast twitch muscle fibres. Both need to be trained regularly for maximal muscular growth.
Before you favour one instead of the other, ensure you use both explosive and slower tempos. Use both to reduce the instance of a growth plateau. Keep in mind that slow speed brings about more metabolic adaptions, favouring the environment to change your body shape. - Don’t be afraid to fail. You really must spend the time pushing yourself to the absolute limit, bu training to fail. Here are some awesome tips on how to fail right:
– If you are training with heavier weights with higher volume, fail on the very last set only.
– If you are new to strength training, please do get your form and technique correct before attempting any of these steps. You do not want to become injured, and therefore, spend many weeks recovering and lose your momentum
– If you are advanced, opt for clusters or intra sets. This is when you pick a weight to lift for 6–8 reps, then rest for 15–20 seconds, and rep again and again, using that rest period. This is tough, and you will be sore! I love doing this with deadlifts, and even leg presses. If at any time it’s a struggle, and your form becomes poor, stop the set and move on to another movement.
I do hope these help you along your strength training journey. I use all of these methods and am testament that they work very well, and help to build strength, muscle and keep you lean.
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