By Build muscle to stay lean & athletic for life
Muscle is a metabolically active tissue, which becomes damaged when it begins lifting weights beyond its capacity and repairs magically to enhance our strength and endurance. I just think that’s such a wonderful thing — I’ve been on this path for 15 years, and it still fascinates me. The more muscle you build, the more your metabolism will fire up — which can become as high as or higher than 100 extra calories per day. But this task in itself is not for the faint-hearted. The amount of muscle we’d need to put on is roughly about 10–20 pounds. This goal takes many years and constant attention to nutrition, supplementation and training to achieve. But even when you do put on this kind of muscle mass, you won’t become a bottomless pit for all the food you fantasize about eating. Yes, muscle does and will always allow you to some elevation with your metabolism and help you attain your fat loss and body composition goals. Just think about the number of poundage’s and the repetitions needed to build muscle itself. It’s mighty hard work and takes a massive amount of energy and stamina. The energy has got to come from somewhere, and that’s (hopefully if you are insulin sensitive) most likely our fat cells. We want to be as insulin sensitive as possible, so our bodies are constantly tapping into our fat reserves for energy (instead of continually using carbs and never resorting to muscle.) This will always create excellent benefits, not only for your body but bone density, mental and physical health. Although the result isn’t a fire burning metabolism, it can quickly become elevated by following some strategies I’ve outlined below. These should be followed week by week. As you may know, alternating your repetitions, weight, and intensity is essential to change your muscle size and strength. Once the muscle gets a taste of the new heavyweight, it does its best to repair and strengthen in case you put that surprise weight in your hands again. Muscle is a cleaver metabolically pumping entity. It’s ready for any smashing effort you might put it through. As we build muscle, we have to be continually one step ahead of our innovative muscular development and smash it out the next time. Try these methods on for size.
Four muscle-building strategies that you need to try
Method One: Multi-joint exercises
Because these require so much muscle in our bodies to perform the movement, they burn the most calories and help us get full-body strength and hypertrophy. Keep using these movements in all of your strength training programs because they produce so many benefits even though they take the most effort to perform (and probably leave you sore for days!). Unfortunately, this is why many people shy away from deadlifts and squats — dam right; they are hard! But, champion’s want results; they don’t want it to be easy!
Method Two: HIIT
This is highly intensive and has the potential to skyrocket your metabolism for hours after the session ends. The only way to get these results is that when it’s time to sprint — you have to go all out to the point of stopping to catch your breath! This is what proper HIIT is like. It’s tough as nails and will leave you breathless.
Method Three: Protein
Protein is a crucial metabolism booster. It takes calories to digest it and use as fuel for muscle growth & repair. Use it to your advantage by adding it to every meal — but keep in mind that if you eat ten lamb cutlets without expending that energy, you will still store it as fat!
Method Four: Water
Staying hydrated is extremely important for overall health and flushing out toxins from our bodies. Drinking water elevates our metabolisms by increasing it to 30%! That’s a pretty good incentive to keep drinking during the day! Another big plus is that it helps prevent us from overeating. Usually, people mistake hunger for thirst. A good rule of thumb is to drink one glass of water when you think you’re hungry. Wait 30 minutes to see if it was a genuine hunger pang or just one from dehydration. In hot temperatures, or if you go to the gym, drink more!
Hopefully, this has been somewhat helpful to you. Muscle does increase metabolism, but as I’ve always said, many factors can help elevate it. The best strategy is to use different techniques over time to make the job a lot easier. If you would like to read more articles like this or start writing your own, please sign up via my link. I’d love to see you on the other side. Sign up here for your medium subscription