What No One Tells You About Muscle Growth

There’s more to Muscle Growth than just anabolic hormones.

Compound Movements

Workouts involving more than one muscle group is the single-most important factor to better muscle growth. This not only helps build strength, but enhances intramuscular coordination. Compound movements also burn calories, leading to overall improved aesthetics.  

Squads, for instance, work simultaneously on calves, quadriceps and glutes. Try out squat variations such as plie, single leg and sumo to spice things up!   

Intensity

One-rep max (1-RM) is the maximum weight you can lift for a single repetition exercise. Science says that for optimum results, you should workout at about 70% of your 1-RM. For instance, if your 1-RM on the bench is 275 lbs, then 192.5 lbs is what you would want to do on the rep for maximum muscle gains.

Volume and Hypertrophy

If building muscle and gaining size is your goal, ‘progressive overload’ is a must! This means increasing training volume every successive week, month and year! That means if you’re managing 10 reps of 250 lb dead-lifts today, you might want to up the rep number to 12 the next time or increase the weights to 275 lbs keeping the reps constant. This ensures greater hypertrophy and more muscle gain with every passing day.     

Stretching Right

Warm ups are important, and if they aren't part of your regimen, you're not getting the most out of your workouts. 10 minutes of stretching ensures that your joints are well lubricated and your muscles more elastic to assist in ‘safer’ weight-training on gym day by reducing chances of injury. 

Snacking

Protein-rich food is what you want to consume within 30 minutes of a grueling workout.  Weight-training tears muscles and protein is what rebuilds them. By ensuring your body receives adequate amount of protein after a workout, the post-workout rebuilding and recovery phase is well optimized keeping your body in a positive state of anabolism and leading to better muscle growth over time.