Today, I will share with you the best tips on how to build muscle mass. I have heard many people saying that they have tried everything but nothing worked to increase their muscle mass.  They might have tried a few things but trust me, they must be simply eating and exercising the wrong way!

Here are the best “gaining muscle mass tips”, which if you follow consistently, will help you to put on lean muscle mass fast.  These are the tips that I have personally followed, and I have added pounds of muscle mass to my lean frame.

How To Increase (Build) Muscle Mass Tips

1. Muscle Mass Diet And Muscle Mass Works-Out: Eating for muscle is just as important as exercising in the mass-building equation.

(i) Rather than having two to three larger meals during a day – the habit we have grown up with – you should be wolfing down five to six smaller meals during the day spaced 2-3 hours apart. This way good- quality fuel will keep coming into your body; especially protein and carbohydrates; so that you will have the calories to build muscle and the metabolism to lose fat.

(ii) By eating regularly every 2-3 hours, your body will have constant supply of fuel to build new proteins and in turn muscles. Take the number of calories you require during a day and divide it by six. That’s roughly the number of calories you should have at each meal. Also make sure that you intake some protein as well every three hours.

(iii) To help keep your protein intake high, one or two meals can be a protein shake. You can search on internet hundreds of delicious protein shakes; however, here is one example:

(a) 8 oz. of skimmed milk

(b) 1 ripe banana

(c) 1 tablespoon of peanut butter

(d) 2 tablespoons of protein powder

2. Understand Caloric Surplus: Rebuilding muscle tissues broken down by exercises / training needs energy – in other words calories.

(i) Make a habit of reading food labels to get an idea how many calories you are already eating. Then add 300-500 more calories to that number. In general, aim for 300-500 additional calories every day than your body burns through exercise and normal activities.

(ii) If you are not gaining muscle mass, it could be that you are lacking in caloric surplus. Re-evaluate your diet and eat some more calorie dense foods to create the right caloric surplus.

(iii) Take care not to overestimate the energy needs to gain muscle mass fast and indulging into extremely high-calorie intakes. Beware this can often result into a gain in body fat, for sure, and leaving you fat.

(iv) Remember caloric surplus is the key, but not everything. Read on for other essential things!

3. Give Attention To Protein Intake: Protein is crucial for building muscle mass fast because it’s the only nutrient that’s capable of fueling muscle growth. The more protein your body stores – in a process called protein synthesis – the more your lean muscle mass will grow. Remember your body is constantly using up its protein reserves for other uses – such as producing hormones, resulting into fewer protein available for lean muscle mass building. To offset that, you need 1 – 2 grams of protein for every pound of your body weight. For example, if you weigh 160 pounds, take in at least 160 grams of protein (up to maximum of 320 grams) every day.

4. Stay Hydrated: Drink lots of water during the day, particularly in the hours leading up to your workout. Your body requires ample amount of water to help build muscles at an optimal rate. Here’s a simple formula to calculate the amount of water you need during a day – Body weight in pounds x 0.6 = water intake in ounces. Even during training / exercising, you should continue to sip water at regular intervals. The reason is that your performance begins to drop off when the body gets de-hydrated – even just 1% – 2%. And if you will wait till you get thirsty, that’s really too long.

Try drinking water stored at cooler temperature – as you will be likely to intake more when water is colder. If you are doing very intensive workouts, consider having a flavored, low calorie sports drink.

5. Warm-up: Before you start any exercise session, whether it’s a simple jog, or a 250 pound dead-lift, begin with a low intensity routine aimed to warm-up all the muscles you are to work on. It will facilitate you to get into the right frame of mind and can help avert injuries.

6. Limit Your Cardio: You can do light jogging for 30 minutes a session for 2-3 days in a week. Whereas doing cardio is good for fat burning, it can limit your muscle gain by burning up glycogen and amino acids. To lose fat at the same time sparing muscles, it would be better if you do sprint intervals for instance, one minute all-out running and then followed by a light jog for two minutes. Do this for not more than half an hour, three times a week.

7. Work Harder, But Shorter: Training with large number of reps is good for boosting endurance, but it won’t lead to building up of either muscle-size or strength. Instead aim for 6-12 reps per set for the optimum muscle growth with a very hard final rep to complete; if it’s not for instance increase the weight you are lifting. Keep 3-8 sets per muscle group.

(i) Your overall muscle workout routine / training should not last more than 45 – 60 minutes.

(ii) A set should last between 30-60 seconds so as to tense your muscles long enough to shock them into growth.

(iii) Instead of more volume, use heavier weights and move through each rep at a controlled speed.

8. Variation Is Necessary: Every four to six weeks you need to change some part of your routine, whether it’s the number of reps you do, the amount of time you rest for or such as by increasing weight, changing exercises you perform, or any other training variable. Otherwise your body will get used to a fixed routine, and you will hit a plateau – meaning the benefits of training / exercising will begin to diminish.

9. Do Your Whole Body Muscle Workout Routine Or A Split Routine: The more muscles you use when exercising, the more hormones you will churn out and that will in turn fire-up muscle growth both while you are exercising and throughout rest of the day. You will get maximum benefits from either by training the whole body in each session, or dividing your sessions focusing only on the upper body in one day, and the lower the next day. Each of these two setups will give you better results than attempting one muscle group in a single session.

(i) Allocate equal attention to all muscle groups, for instance 5 sets of rows after 5 sets of bench presses. This will promote fast balanced growth and flexibility.

(ii) Focus on lifts as that engage lots of muscles at the same time, such as squats, deadlifts, presses, rows, and pull-ups.

(iii) Compound exercises like squats, dead lifts, presses, rows, and pull-ups involve several different muscles.

10. Stretch: Stretching of any kind (getting into a stretched position and holding it, or moving fluidly in and out of position, using a foam roller help keep you flexible, avert any injury, and enhance recovery process between rounds. You should never stretch a cold muscle. Studies have found that pre-workout stretching, contrary to the prevailing public opinion, does not avert injury and can actually cause lesser performance. Stretching gives best results when done following a workout.

11. Role Of Shakes: Surround your workout session with nutrition, beginning with a high protein and carbohydrate meal about an hour before you start working out. Blend a protein shake having about two grams of carbs for every one gram of protein, and sip that during your workout as well. Afterwards, finish the shake or blend a new one and drink it quickly. Believe it or not, a shake containing protein and carbs taken before and during working out increase the protein synthesis more than the same if taken after exercising.

12. Eat After Workout: It’s crucial that you eat a carb and protein rich meal right after workout. Post-workout carbs help supply the amino acids into muscle by increasing insulin levels, which in turn slows down the rate of protein breakdown. So when the carbs and protein come together, they make a powerful muscle feeding combination kick-starting the “building muscle-mass growth process”. You can try a banana, a sports drink, a peanut butter sandwich.

13. Have Some Milk Or Yogurt Before Bed: Have a combo of carbs and protein about 30-40 minutes before you go to bed. The calories will tend to stay on with you during sleep and lessen protein breakdown in your muscles. You have number of options such as a cup of raisin bran with low fat milk or a small bowl of yogurt with fruit. Eat again as soon as you wake up in morning.

14. Get Your Rest To Recover: Your body requires time to recover, and to repair / build muscle mass. For this you should ideally sleep 7-8 hours a night. You can let-go a night or two a week, but if you do, make sure to make up for it soonest possible. Train not more than 4-5 times a week.

(i) If alcohol or caffeine does not suit you, better avoid it for sound sleep.

(ii) Do not overdo your workout regimen. Many people are tempted to do more thinking more is better, but in reality opposite is true. Over-training can even result into muscle wasting – exactly opposite of what you are aiming for.

15. Control Stress Levels: In order to put on muscle mass, you need to reduce or eliminate excess stress and chronic nervousness as they elevate cortisol, a hormone that encourages your body to store fat and burn muscle tissues.

How To Put On Muscle Mass Tidbits

(i) The professional body builders considerably restrain their cardio when they are building muscles, then augment cardio when they are shedding fat.

(ii) Eat clean and frequently, training hard brings down the body defense system as it repairs the worn out muscles, vitamins therefore become necessary to improve immune system.

(iii) Rest is just as important as work-out, so take breathers between sets.

(iv) Whatever routine/program you are doing, limit it up to maximum 1 hour duration. You should go for high intensity rather than dragging on the workout. There are many studies to show that if you train hard for more than 1 hour, it will not be good for your hormonal state. Moreover, when you are trying for gaining lean muscle mass you should workout harder rather than longer.

(v) To continue gaining more muscle, increase the intensity (such as weight you are lifting) over time.

(vi) If you are a beginner, start with low intensity program (like lifting light weights) for the reason that if you try high intensity program (like lifting heavy weight) you can injure your muscles.

(vii) While you build muscle, your metabolism will adjust like a thermostat so as to sustain some kind of equilibrium in your body weight. You may need to increase your calories intake a second time to continue with weight gains.

So, if you want to build muscle mass fast start putting the above tips into action and watch your body as it starts gaining lean muscles in no time at all.

Useful Related Posts:

(i) Muscle Building Diet Tips

(ii) Best Diet To Build Muscle Mass

(ii) How To Gain Weight Healthy Way