DESTROYING your Muscle Gains
Weight loss is one thing…packing on muscle is a totally different animal. Yes, losing weight can be insanely difficult but the scientific process behind it is pretty damn simple. Burn more calories than you take in- repeat each and every day until you reach desired result. Packing on a lot of muscle its much more complicated and there are TONS more factors. So, what are you doing that is DESTROYING your ability to gain muscle?
Food/LACK of Food
If you’ve read our other blogs you’re probably thinking “welp, here’s another spiel on diet.” Welp, you’re totally right. It’s THAT important and we need to engrave it in your brain so just suck it up. When it comes to building muscle you need a LOT of food and ideally, clean food.
This issue happens often- ESPECIALLY with younger clients (teenagers to young 20 year olds). “My son eats EVERYTHING….oh he eats the whole house…I eat anything and everything” blah blah blah. The bottom line is if you’re training consistently and not gaining muscle, there’s a 99% chance you’re not eating enough. When I say eat A LOT I mean probably way more than you’ve ever ate in a day and you need to do that EVERY day. Your body needs to stay “anabolic”. All this really means is that your body has something to feed on and therefore…will continue to grow. If you don’t have food in your system your body will go “catabolic”- meaning it’s breaking itself down.
Personally, we have always been what you call “hard gainers”. This essentially means we have fast metabolisms and have a very hard time putting on weight. If you’re in this category get ready to force feed yourself 6-7 times per day. When I first tried to gain muscle I literally was eating 6-7 times per day and then was eating peanut butter sandwiches between each of those meals. Aaaand it worked. It worked very well. Granted I was a teenager and could get away with much more crap food in my diet to hit my calorie goal without gaining a bunch of fat. Now I’m much more conscious about gaining weight with healthier diet choices but you get the point.
Get to bed!!!
If you have your training and diet down but aren’t getting results at the pace you should, start monitoring how much sleep you’re getting. If you’re getting 4-5 hours AND training hard, simply put your muscles aren’t going to recover to their full capacity. In an imaginary world where you could control the environment perfectly, you’d probably get closer to 10 hours for absolute optimal recovery.
You need to understand this is literally when your muscles are growing and repairing themselves. Your growth hormone spikes during deep sleep (specifically during your REM cycle or your deepest sleep state) and this is EXACTLY when recovery is going to be at it’s fastest pace. In the gym, you are legitimately tearing your muscles through the strain of weight lifting, that’s the whole point. During sleep is when they grow- don’t ignore the importance of this.
Bad Form…
Doing form correctly isn’t just to make sure you don’t end up on some “gym fail” Instagram page. There’s a deeper point to it (but in all seriousness not ending up on a gym fail page may be the most important). Targeting the correct muscle groups during an exercise with proper tension is going to cause that muscle group to grow exponentially faster than someone just going through the motions and throwing the weight around.
I’d rather a client do bench press with 60lbs, stretch/contract the chest and triceps all the way through each rep than a client throw on 225 and do half reps smashing the bar off their chest. Forget the ego lifting…forget looking the strongest…the whole point is to put the muscle under as much tension and strain as possible for each and every rep. Learn how to do the exercises correctly and you’re gonna end up being stronger than the ego lifters anyways.
Recovery…
So, we went over sleep and diet; those two things are a HUGE part of the recovery process. But, how much time are you giving yourself between workouts? There’s a million theories about this and what’s correct BUT recovery is JUST AS IMPORTANT AS TRAINING ITSELF. If you’re trying to go out and crush your chest 7 days per week and expecting huge gains quickly, you’re doing it wrong.
Remember, your muscles DO NOT GROW INSIDE THE GYM. They grow when you are resting. If you feel like you’ve plateaued in a program, experiment with your rest periods a little bit. Try taking an extra day or even two between workouts and see how things pan out in your next training cycle. Hey, it can’t hurt.
Consistency, Time.
Okay, so this isn’t exactly a direct factor here but it’s something to think about. How long have you been training? How much time and effort have you really put into your next muscle building goal? A HUGE percentage of people either want or expect results in unrealistic timelines. If you’re seriously trying to gain a ton of muscle…be conscious of the fact that it’s not going to happen overnight. Scientifically, it’s basically impossible to gain more than 2 lbs of muscle in a month (without PED’s), and two pounds in a month would be impressive.
Underestimating your goal’s timeline can be a bit demoralizing. BUT, also realize that if you’ve been training for a few months and you’re not seeing results doesn’t mean they haven’t happened. You see yourself in the mirror every single day. This process is going to be so slow that it is VERY difficult to identify results in yourself. This is where “before and after” pictures can help. This can show you, “holy crap…I’ve actually gained a lot of muscle…” and push you to keep going.