Gaining muscle size can be a long and difficult goal to achieve. Fortunately, there are some safe and effective ways to speed the process up. If your progress in the weight room has been reduced to a trickle, it’s time to reevaluate your program, as there may be a technique you haven’t tried that can take your progress from a crawl to a sprint.
Prioritize Muscle Gain
Many exercisers never reach their full potential because they try to accomplish everything at once. Gaining muscle and losing fat are both goals worth working towards, just not together. Muscle gain requires lots of calories, while losing fat requires a caloric deficit. Try to accomplish both goals together and they will cancel each other out. If your goal is to gain lots of muscle size in a short amount of time, you must devote yourself to it fully. When you have gained as much muscle as you want, switch gears and work off the fat you may have gained in the process.
Eat More Calories
A simple yet often overlooked solution to gaining fast muscle mass is to just eat more. Muscle gain requires a surplus of calories. If you’re not eating enough, you may be robbing your body of the nutrition it needs to grow quickly. If your muscle gain progress has stalled, eat an extra 1,000 calories per day. Spread the extra calories out over the course of the day, and be sure to consume a large meal or weight-gain shake following training.
Train Heavy
The fastest way to gain muscle is to train for strength. Light weights performed for high repetitions do not signal the body to gain muscle to the extent that heavy weights do. Heavy training has a dramatic effect on the nervous system, causing you to recruit more muscle fibers in subsequent workouts. The more muscle fiber you can recruit, the more muscle growth you’ll experience. Use compound, multi-joint exercises like the squat, overhead press and deadlift. Train with heavy weights and low repetitions (as low as five).
Supplement With Creatine
Creatine is a naturally occurring compound that, when supplemented, can cause noticeable muscle size increases in just a few days. The increased muscle mass is due to the creatine pulling water into the muscle cells as it is stored. While the effects level off after a week or two, The short-term results are a great jump start on the way to your goal. Creatine is recognized as safe by the American Council on Exercise.
About this Author
Based in the Greater New York area, David Kirschen is a 15-year veteran of the fitness industry. He is co-author of “The Business and Practice of Personal Training” and has lectured to countless fitness professionals. Kirschen holds a degree in physical education from SUNY Cortland.
