If you want to gain muscle mass, realize it isn’t going to happen overnight, and few will ever develop to muscles that are seen in the body building or fitness magazines. Even if you never get huge, there are some simple suggestions on how to gain muscle safely and effectively.
Learn how to gain muscle by understanding muscle stress.
Strength training is one of the most important parts of gaining muscle. Weight training is one of the most effective since you can start at your current ability and add weight each week or workout to push your body into a new level of fitness. Make sure that you are using the correct technique with the lighter weight so the correct muscles are worked and chance of injury is minimized.
Using free weights is another key step in how to gain muscle. Free weight requires that you use natural motion. It also forces you to balance the weight, which causes more muscle strength by engaging more muscle fiber to the work. Using free weights to gain muscle is also one of the most versatile ways to gain muscle, as it only uses a few pieces of equipment and saves money and space.
Make sure that you are doing full body workouts. Trying to isolate one area of your body to muscle up a certain body part doesn’t work. While you can concentrate on one area, working out your whole body with exercises such as squats, bench presses, pull ups, dips and barbell rows allows you to gain muscle overall, and your body will see faster results.
Recovery is one of the most overlooked steps when researching how to gain muscle mass. Since the pros often work out five or six days a week, beginners often try this strategy. This is not good for new muscle development; you need more recovery. In fact, without the use of performance enhancing drugs most professional body builders cannot sustain this regimen without over training their muscles.
Work out only about three to four days a week on a full body circuit, get plenty of sleep, and drink water. The other important thing to keep your body ready to build plenty of muscle is to eat, eat, eat. Protein is one of the most important things you can intake to get your muscles primed.
Muscle stress is one of the best secrets of how to build muscle, but you should be wary when straining your muscles too hard. If you aren’t careful with your exercises, you may end up using improper form or being jerky or too quick with the motions. This could lead to not only torn muscle fiber, but even dislocated joints, torn tendons, and broken bones. For this reason, it is essential that you learn the proper form for these exercises before pushing your muscles to their limits, as that will help you to avoid injury.
Disclaimer: It is of the utmost importance that you give your muscles a rest between intense workouts. If you push your muscles every day, you will actually slow their growth while increasing the risk that you will be injured by your efforts. Make sure to give your muscles no less than 48 hours between workouts, with 72 hours being recommended for very intense exercises that push your muscles to the limits.