There are three key components to building big muscles:
1. The nature of your workout
2. The correct balance of nutrition, and the times you eat at
3. Resting properly between workouts
We would like to point out that what constitutes ‘big muscles’ is relative to each of us as individuals. The people we see with huge muscle mass were able to achieve their size either because of their genes, or because of steroid abuse. Most people can put on an average of about 15lbs of muscle through training. Depending on your DNA, you might be able to put on a whole lot more without trouble. It’s very important that we don’t set unrealistic goals for ourselves, as that will only result in disappointment, and/or injury. With that in mind, let’s take a look at what we need to do to put on as much muscle as we can as quickly as possible.
Weight training will have you putting on more muscle on average than callisthenics or other forms of muscular development, and in a shorter amount of time, so that’s what we’ll look at here.
While it’s not strictly necessary to warm up prior to lifting weights, doing a simple warm up like a 10 min run and basic stretches is preferable.
Technique is crucial when lifting weights, you absolutely must make sure that you’re not using gathered momentum to move the weights, as that prevents you from getting the full benefit from the movement, as well as increasing the risk of injury. Instead, you should take about two to three seconds to complete each part of a rep. Varying this, and spending slightly longer on some reps some of the time can help stimulate even faster building of big muscle. Doing sets of 8-12 reps yields the largest muscle growth, with 1-2 sets per exercise per session; this range creates optimal hypertrophy, and is really the fundamental big muscle building secret.
Some find it helpful to stand in front of a mirror to improve their technique. This allows you to better scrutinize each movement, and adjust it if necessary so that you’re fully targeting the desired muscle group.
With regard to nutrition, you need to make sure you’re getting enough protein, otherwise you won’t build muscle no matter how hard you train. You should also consider the types of protein sources you are consuming, you can see our top picks by clicking here. We don’t recommend you go overboard on your protein intake as that can have serious detrimental effects before long, rather you should eat more food in general as you’ll need to increase your overall caloric intake if you plan to maximize your muscle potential, so just eat more protein relative to your other macro nutrients in the same proportion you would normally. It’s very important to eat after you train without delay, a whey protein isolate supplement should be included with this meal, as well as some simple carbohydrate like a glucose drink.
Finally, when you’re resting between workouts, you really do need to make sure that you’re giving your muscles a full chance to rest and recover. For most individuals, a minimum of 3 days rest is necessary between full body workouts, and if you had to be relatively active in that time for whatever reason then you should take a little more time off to ensure you get the most out of your next workout.
And that’s all there is to know about how to build big muscles relative to your frame. We must stress again that it’s simply not natural for everyone to weigh over 200lbs (or even 150lbs to be frank!).
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