Muscle Building Tips

Check out our top muscle building tips below to help you successfully build muscle and gain weight.

Muscle Building Tips For Weight Training

Which do you use, free weights or machines?

It's always been a bit of a long standing argument and in our opinion free weights will always have the last say.

Although some machines are very good at isolating and building a particular muscle group, free weights utilize a larger range of your body's muscles during an exercise and also bring your stabilizer muscles into play which are required for supporting your body and the weight throughout the movement.

In order to start building muscle and to keep on building, you need to be lifting heavy within the rep range of 6 – 12 and your workout routines must be created incorporating progressive overload, this is one of the most important muscle building tips!

By steadily increasing the amount of weight you're lifting each workout, you are continuously stressing your muscles. Your muscles in turn respond by growing a little bigger and stronger each time as a coping mechanism allowing them to adapt to this weight increase.

When it comes to triggering quick muscle growth, compound exercises are considered to be a lot more effective than isolation exercises, especially if you are a hard gainer.

Compound exercises such as the deadlift, barbell squat and clean and press require the movement of multiple joints and involve a large range of muscle groups. Unlike isolation exercises, they also spur a greater release of growth hormone and testosterone, stimulating other non working muscles to also grow and develop.

Maintaining strict form and correct technique with any exercise in weight training is one of the best muscle building tips and is critical for preventing injury’s which are all too common when incorrectly lifting weights.

If you have poor technique then you're not effectively targeting and focusing the weight your lifting onto those muscles. This can seriously impact your progress when trying to build muscle.

Remember – Never sacrifice correct form for lifting heavier weights. This will only inhibit your gains in the long run.

Ever heard the myth, 'the more you train, the more you'll gain'?

It's a common misconception amongst some inexperienced bodybuilders and of course it's completely untrue.

To prevent overtraining, allow your muscles the time to fully recover by structuring your routine so that you have a few rest days during the week.

For a full body program, it's best to train 2-3 times per week with at least a full days rest in between workouts. For a split body program, a 3, 4 or 5 day split gives a greater recovery time for each muscle group whilst giving you at least 2 full rest days.

Capping your workouts at 60 minutes, even when you feel like you can go on makes perfect sense for maintaining high energy, focus and motivation levels throughout the length of your workout.

The thought of fitting all of your exercises into one hour might not sound easy at first but by increasing your intensity through reducing your rest times, you'll be surprised at the difference in how you feel at the end and how much time you'll save.

One of the top muscle building tips is setting the correct amount of repetitions in your workout.

If your goal is to gain weight and you're doing 20 reps on the bench press, you're not going to get anywhere. The rep range for building muscle mass is between 6 and 12 reps per set. This range ensures that you're lifting heavy enough to sufficiently stress the muscles in order for hypertrophy to occur.

Keeping track of your weight training by using a training journal is essential for progressing in bodybuilding.

Buy a small training journal and record all of your workout sessions in it, including exercises, reps, sets and weights. This will give you key information on how you are progressing with each exercise, what needs to be improved and will ensure that you are pushing yourself each time you train.

It would be great being able to stick to your favourite workout routine year after year whilst always seeing excellent results in muscle gain.

Unfortunately this isn't possible and over time your body will recognise and adapt to a single workout routine, deeming it less effective and slowing your gains as the weeks go by. Revising and mixing up your routine every 6 weeks prevents your body from adapting and allows you to see quicker results in your weight gain.

A good training partner with similar goals and abilities can do wonders for your gains.

This training partner is there to offer support, encouragement, motivation and can act as a spotter on certain exercises, helping you to squeeze out those last few reps where as ordinarily you would have just given up.

It is important to note however, that your partner must be of similar ability and strength and should not be vastly stronger or weaker as this can impact on your performance.

For more muscle building tips and info on how to build muscle, check out our Fastest Way To Build Muscle page.