Oct 19, 2016 | Exercise, Nutrition
During the initial phases of your lifting career, it seems like almost everything works. As long as you train, muscles will grow. Unfortunately, this does not last. As you get more advanced, muscle growth slows down and may even come to a halt.
I learned this the hard way. When I just started off with lifting weights, I used to train 5 times a week. All I did was isolation exercises with a few compound lifts and a drop-set after every single set. I did gain some muscle, but this did not last very long.
In this post, I will be showing you 4 mistakes (which I all made) that could be holding you back as an intermediate or advanced trainee. Preventing these 4 mistakes will help you make better use of your muscular potential. But first, I will be explaining why beginners seem to build muscle faster.
Why ”Newbie-Gains” are real
Muscle growth is not something that just comes along with training hard and eating right. It’s an adaptation to a “stress.” This stress is provided by resistance training. Someone who is new to the gym is not used to the stress resistance training provides. So these muscles will react very well to training stress by adapting to it.
How do muscles adapt, you ask?
Muscles adapt by becoming bigger and stronger than before, so they can handle future stresses more efficiently.
As you get more advanced though, your body has already adapted quite a bit to stresses from resistance training. Therefore it does not see the need to keep increasing muscular strength and size at the same pace.
That’s why multiple studies show that novice lifters (also called ”beginners”) gain muscle quicker than experienced lifters.
For muscles to keep growing, a need for adaptation is critical. This helps explain why overloading your muscle is essential for muscle growth. Constantly challenging your muscles beyond their present capacity causes a need for adaptation.
Without further ado, here are the top 4 reasons why most intermediate and advanced trainees are not gaining muscle.
Reason #1: You are doing too much
Since childhood, we’ve been told that if we want something, we will have to work hard for it. This somewhat does apply to fitness, a certain level of dedication is required to achieve a great physique. But there definitely is a point where “more becomes less.”
Training volume (sets*reps*weight) has a linear relationship with muscle growth. Meaning, the more volume you perform, the more muscle growth occurs.
However, this relationship only exists up to a certain point. If you perform more volume than you can effectively recover from, your fatigue levels increase, which causes your performance to go down and you are in a suboptimal environment to train for progression.
The helps explain why an extensive research review shows that there indeed is such a thing as having too much volume in your training. So, eventually, training too hard results in less muscle growth and strength.
The earlier cited extensive research review shows that performing 30-60 reps per muscle group 2-3x per week is a good starting point for maximizing muscle growth. Based on your progression over time, you can adjust the volume to fit your training needs more.
Reason #2: You are relying on ”fancy training tricks” and isolation exercises
Training for muscle growth is actually quite simple. The new ”revolutionary” ways of training, which supposedly give you pumps like Arnold and abs like Frank Zane, do not magically work better than traditional training methods.
Training tools such as drop-sets and supersets cause great fatigue and a good pump. But if achieving a pump is your main goal when training, you are missing the bigger picture. Achieving overload by progressively challenging your muscles beyond their present capacity should be the main goal of your training plan.
Performing primarily big compound movements and getting stronger will always be the best way to build muscle.
But a stronger muscle isn’t always a bigger one, right?
That’s true, research shows that your body recognizes movement patterns and becomes more efficient if you perform certain movements consistently. This enables you to lift more weight (get stronger) without actually having bigger muscles. In exercise science, this is known as “Neuromuscular Adaptations.”
With that said, once you’ve mastered a movement, any progress you achieve over time is partly also due to you having bigger muscle fibers that can be put to use to produce force. So, eventually, consistent strength progression is a good indicator of positive muscular adaptations occurring.
Reason #3: You are not eating enough
Building muscle and losing fat at the same time, is possible. But to lose fat, you will need to consume fewer calories than your body burns (energy deficit). This energy deficit somewhat inhibits muscle growth, as it decreases protein synthesis rates and increases protein breakdown rates.
The human body constantly synthesizes (protein synthesis) and breaks down (protein breakdown) muscle proteins. If the number of muscle proteins you’ve synthesized exceeds the number of muscle proteins you’ve broken down, you’ve built muscle. So, eating at an energy deficit simply results in less muscle growth.
When you consume slightly more calories than your body needs (like in a bulk), you can optimize muscle growth by facilitating anabolic processes and supporting heavy resistance exercise. Maintaining an energy surplus of 200-300 calories is generally sufficient for optimal growth.
Want to learn more about the proper way of bulking? Read this article.
Reason #4: You are underestimating your potential
Believe it or not, your perception of what is naturally achievable has an effect on your results. Those who think that everyone with a bit of muscle is on steroids are often very skinny.
They have ”accepted” that they will never be able to achieve good muscular development without the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Clearly, this is not the case.
Having an optimistic mindset and truly believing in your body’s abilities goes a long way.
A very interesting (and kinda funny) study by the Manchester Metropolitan University, shows that a different mindset has a great effect on your physical abilities. The volunteers in this study were all powerlifters. The powerlifters received a pill before training, which was presented as a ”fast-acting steroid.” The pill was filled with saccharine, an artificial sweetener.
Basically, they tricked the powerlifters into believing that they were taking steroids. The result? The powerlifters broke their PR’s by an average of 5% in just 1 training session. Considering these were high-level powerlifters, a 5% increase in total weight is quite high. Normally, such an increase in weight would take months of periodized training.
This all just because they truly believed that their body was capable of more. Therefore, don’t underestimate your capabilities, as this directly can influence your actions.
Final words
There you have it, the 4 likely reasons why some of you are not gaining muscle. I hope you enjoyed this article and have gotten plenty of insights. If you have any questions or remarks, don’t hesitate to comment below. I will gladly help you out.
If you are interested in learning more about maximizing your muscular potential, check out my new eBook “The Art & Science of Muscle Growth. This book translates the currently available scientific data regarding muscle growth in “simple English”, so everyone can start implementing an evidence-based approach to training and nutrition.
Sep 27, 2015 | Exercise, Nutrition
Muscle growth is one of the key pillars for building an aesthetic physique. Unfortunately, there is plenty of contradicting information available about muscle growth on the internet. Complicated articles and drugged up bodybuilders make muscle growth seem harder than it really is.
In this article, I will cover the basic principles of building muscle. Hopefully, this will help you get rid of some of the confusion.
Why Muscles Grow
Muscle growth is nothing more than an adaptive response to the stress that resistance training puts on your muscles. Resistance training forces your body to go through an adaptation so it can handle future stresses more efficiently.
Research shows that this adaptation occurs by building bigger and stronger muscle fibers than before.
This helps explain why novice lifters gain muscle faster than experienced lifters. Novice lifters have to adapt to a new stress; resistance training. This also explains why progressive overload is key for continuous muscle growth. The tension you put on your muscles needs to increase over time so that your muscles can adapt to training stimuli.
Nutrition To Support Growth
Nutrition has a great effect on muscular adaptations. For instance, studies show that during periods of caloric restriction, muscle growth significantly decreases.
To put yourself in a position that is optimal for muscular adaptations, you need to consider the following:
Proper Recovery Is Key
Doing “whatever it takes” and going all-out in the gym 7 days per week may sound hardcore, but it is not optimal for muscle growth. When you train, muscle fibers break down. During your rest, these recover and grow back bigger and stronger than before. If you train too much, your body will have to put too much focus on recovery, rather than working on making you gain more muscle.
Up to a certain point, volume (Reps*Sets*Weight) has a linear relationship with hypertrophy. This means that training more only results in more muscle growth up to a certain volume level. An extensive research review shows that a good rule of thumb for total weekly volume per muscle group is 60-180 reps.
This is a good starting volume range for most trainees. Whether you should be on the low- or high-end of this volume range will depend on your training experience and the rep range used during exercise.
For example, experienced trainees generally need more volume than novice trainees to progress, and when high-rep training is used, more volume (total reps performed) is required to achieve similar muscle growth.
A good way to organize this training volume is by dividing it over 2-3 workouts per week. There’s research showing that dividing your weekly volume per muscle group over multiple training sessions is beneficial for muscle growth.
Learn All About Muscle Growth
Since muscle growth can be a confusing topic, I have written an eBook about it. “The Art & Science of Muscle Growth” translates the currently available scientific data in “Simple English”, so that everyone can have a deeper understanding of muscle growth and how to achieve it in the most effective ways possible.
I am confident that this eBook will deliver tremendous value, that’s why I am offering a 30-day money back guarantee. You can purchase this eBook by clicking on the book below.
Jul 2, 2015 | Exercise, Nutrition
In this day and age, many people want to lose weight. On the internet, you can find plenty of information about weight loss. The problem is that much of this information is contradicting and confusing. The confusion starts with the term “weight loss.” When people say they want to lose weight, they actually mean they want to lose fat. But by calling it weight loss, they focus on the wrong thing. This article will outline the fundamentals of burning fat.
Don’t Overvalue “Weight Loss”
Most people want to lose weight because they want to be slimmer and look good. But weight loss won’t make you look much better if you are losing weight in primarily muscle and water weight. If you want to lose enough inches in size and obtain a lean look, burning fat should be your main concern.
Burning fat is actually quite simple. Fat loss occurs if you are in an “energy deficit“. If the number of calories consumed are lower than the number of calories burned, your body has to tap into its body fat stores. If you are familiar with my work, you know that this is dictated by something called the “Energy Balance“, which is supported by the law of thermodynamics.
The scientific law of thermodynamics shows that energy can’t be destroyed or created, only transformed. So a surplus of energy has to be stored (fat gain) and an energy deficit needs to be “compensated” by internal reserves (fat loss).
So, regardless of what you eat during the day, you always need an energy deficit to burn fat.
This means that you need to eat below your “maintenance level” (=Average Total Daily Energy Expenditure) to burn fat. Factors like age, weight, height, genetics and activity levels all play a part in your caloric demands.
Because of this, figuring out your average maintenance level is a bit tricky. Luckily, there are websites that can help you estimate your maintenance level, like this one: http://www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator.html. The maintenance level you calculate on this website is an estimate, but it’s a good starting point. By tracking your fat loss over time, you adjust your caloric intake.
How Large Should The Energy Deficit Be?
You now know that you need an “Energy Deficit” to burn fat. It’s often thought that maintaining a small energy deficit can help you preserve more muscle. The issue with this is that you lose fat very slowly and often need to extend your fat loss phase to achieve your goal body-fat percentage.
This is unfavorable because the longer you are in an energy deficit, the more your metabolism slows down and the less muscle you tend to gain. That’s why you should try to keep your fat loss phase as short as possible.
That said, crash-dieting is also not the answer.
Crash-diets basically make you feel like crap. An experiment by the University of Minnesota shows that starvation-based diets negatively affect mental health. The volunteers of this study could not stop thinking about food. Some were unable to handle the restrictive diet and eventually binged on snacks.
Crash-diets can also cause muscle loss. Since we want to improve our overall body composition (more muscle and less fat), it is not smart to implement a crash-diet.
So instead, opt for an aggressive calorie deficit that allows you to burn 0.5-1% of your total body weight in fat per week. A research review indicates that this rate of fat loss is a good starting point for those who want to preserve and potentially build muscle during a fat loss phase.
Losing 0.5-1% of total body weight in fat per week can be achieved by maintaining a caloric deficit of roughly 20-25%. Later in this post, you will be able to download a free “Fat Loss Checklist” that will show you how to implement this.
How To Support Muscle Preservation
The human body is smart and efficient. When your body is not getting enough calories, it will turn to its stored energy. If your body holds muscle tissue that you are not using often, your body will get rid of it by using it as an energy source. The reason for this is that your body sees these unused muscles as a burden.
However, if you exercise regularly, your body is in need of this muscle and will not get rid of it quickly. Studies have shown this. Another benefit of exercising regularly is that you create an even larger energy deficit. As you probably know, exercise burns plenty of calories.
A high-protein intake is quite important too
The role of protein during a fat loss phase is very simple: it increases muscle preservation. That’s why having a slightly higher protein intake during your fat loss phase is a good idea.
Most people take this the wrong way. Because a higher protein intake is beneficial, they stuff themselves with protein every 2-3 hours. Let me tell you something, you don’t need 300 grams of protein to optimally build muscle!
Having a protein intake of around 1.6-2.2g/kg is generally a good rule of thumb to maintain.
Final words + Free Fat loss Checklist
There you have it, the basics of burning fat. I hope you found this article helpful. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to comment below!
Free fat loss checklist
If you are planning on performing a fat loss phase soon, I highly recommend you check out my free “Fat Loss Checklist.” You will receive it when you join my mailing list by filling in the form below!
