6 hard truths about building muscle
Things that even veterans don't know (or have forgotten)
There are some hard and irrefutable rules about building muscle that everyone knows
- You must maintain a calorie surplus
- You must train hard
- You must recover from your workout.
But beyond these three simple rules, there are plenty of other lesser-known truths about building muscle. Here are six of them that you need to know to maximize your muscle growth.
1 - Stop looking for the perfect training split
One of the most frequently asked questions is: What is the best training split for building muscle? The answer? There is no such thing as the best training split.
Muscle growth depends on training frequency and volume. The more often you can train a muscle with a higher volume, the more growth you can theoretically achieve. So training a muscle group twice a week should result in more growth than training the same muscle group only once a week. And training it three times a week should induce more growth than training it twice a week, right? That may sound like a reasonable theory, but the same was true of communism and we all know how that turned out.
When looking at a specific training split, the frequency with which you train a muscle group depends on the volume you use, the weight you move, your training history, your sleep, your recovery and your diet. In other words, it's complicated.
Let's say your training split calls for you to train your legs on Monday and Thursday. That sounds good - until Thursday comes and your legs are still so exhausted from Monday's training session that you can barely get up from the toilet.
The ideal training split depends on how well you can recover from training and regenerate. The better you can recover, the more often you can train one muscle group per week. And the more often you can train a muscle group, the higher the weekly volume can be and the more muscle growth you can induce.
Recovery, in turn, depends on a number of factors. Calorie intake and the quality of food are important factors. The more energy you consume, the better your body can repair its tissue and control inflammation (up to a point, of course).
But calories are only one side of the regeneration equation. Sleep also plays a huge role in the recovery process. You can eat all you want, but if you don't get enough sleep, your body can't efficiently use those calories to aid recovery.
The bottom line? Choose a training split that you can stay consistent with and train hard. To be safe, take notes on the process and observe how you feel. As you learn what is best for your body, you will become better at optimizing your training split in the future.
2 - Get more sleep - Yes, really
When you exercise, muscles are broken down. They are rebuilt when you sleep. Sleep is the reset button for your body. When we sleep, our body increases the production of hormones such as testosterone and growth hormone.
Testosterone is obviously important for growth and repair, but it also helps you get lean. Growth hormones are also extremely important. They stimulate the release of IGF-1 or Insulin-like Growth Factor-1. IGF-1 stimulates systemic growth and has effects on every single cell in the body - including muscle cells.
Sleep also has a major effect on two other important hormones: insulin and cortisol. Insulin gets a lot of hate when it comes to fat storage, but it's actually a very anabolic hormone due to its nutrient-partitioning abilities. And nowhere does this play a more important role than around training.
The more sensitive you are to insulin, the more receptive your muscle cells will be to carbohydrate uptake. This means harder, more intense training sessions and better recovery, which in combination results in greater muscle growth. However, a lack of sleep will reduce your insulin sensitivity, resulting in a poorer response to carbohydrates, poorer training sessions and modest recovery. A lack of sleep also increases the production of cortisol (as a response to stress). Cortisol not only inhibits testosterone production, but also has a catabolic effect - it promotes the burning of muscle tissue.
Sleep is the best stress management tool available to our bodies to combat increased sympathetic nervous system activity (which controls the body's fight or flight response).
The longer the sympathetic nervous system is (over)active (as opposed to a parasympathetic state, which is where you should be most of the time), the more cortisol it produces and the harder it will be to build muscle.
Make sleep a priority and you will notice significant improvements in your body composition.
3 - If you're not growing, you're not eating enough
Are you eating enough? If you're not gaining weight on the scale, then the answer is no. If you are building muscle, then your weight will go up on the scales. This is the case in almost all cases. And if it doesn't, then you're not eating enough - no matter what your nutrient tracker tells you. If you're working out hard in the gym and not seeing the gains you should be seeing, follow this:
- Multiply your body weight by 35, which is your daily calorie goal. Eat this amount of calories every day for two weeks.
- You should see an increase in your body weight of 0.5 to 1% per week. If this is not the case, then increase your calorie intake by 200 kcal per day and repeat the process.
- Stay consistent. The muscle building process takes time. Give yourself six months to achieve useful gains in muscle mass.
4 - Pay attention to your intra-workout nutrition
The goal of your intra-workout diet is to maximize your muscle protein synthesis through the supply of amino acids, while minimizing muscle breakdown by maximizing the release and use of insulin - the body's most anabolic hormone. This means that two different processes are taking place.
As far as amino acids are concerned, most exercisers focus on a supply of BCAAs during training. BCAAs consist of leucine, valine and isoleucine - three of the eight essential amino acids. Many people believe that BCAAs work by preventing muscle protein breakdown, which is primarily due to leucine, and scientific studies confirm this.
However, BCAAs only have a minor effect on muscle protein synthesis, which means that although they prevent muscle protein breakdown, they have no significant effect on muscle growth. This is because the body needs all the essential amino acids to build muscle.
BCAAs can actually increase muscle protein breakdown over time, as the body has to get the essential amino acids from somewhere (2). If no BCAAs are supplied, the body has to gain them by breaking down your beloved biceps or other places where it can get BCAAs.
On the other side of the intra-workout equation is the need to maximize the release of insulin during exercise. Insulin is responsible for the delivery of nutrients to our cells. During our workout, it is desirable that our muscles are supplied with as much energy(carbohydrates) as possible.
The best way to achieve this is to consume extremely fast-digesting carbohydrate sources such as cyclic dextrins. The dextrins pass through the stomach very quickly and also enter the bloodstream very quickly, which means that the muscle cells are quickly supplied with carbohydrates.
Since you don't want to take a break during training to eat an additional meal, the best way to supply essential amino acids and cyclic dextrins is to consume an intra-workout drink that has been specially developed for this purpose.
Start consuming this drink about 10 to 15 minutes before your workout to get the flow of nutrients flowing and drink the drink in portions throughout your training session.
5 - Spend more time training one of your limbs at a time
When it comes to building muscle mass and strength, exercises like deadlifts, bench presses, rowing and pull-ups come to mind. There's no denying that these bilateral exercises are great for building mass and strength.
However, if these are the only exercises you do, your progress and health will suffer in the long run. A better option? Strategically add more unilateral exercises that are performed with only one leg or arm. These exercises will bring out muscle imbalances, improve strength and enhance motor unit recruitment. Let's take a closer look.
Unilateral exercises reveal muscle imbalances and prevent injury
Over time, poor movement quality and muscular compensations can lead to stagnant progress and injury. If you only train one way or only use certain exercises, then your body will make natural adaptations to that way of training.
Varying your training by incorporating unilateral exercises can have many benefits. Exercises performed with only one arm or leg force you to recruit more core muscles to stabilize the spine and distribute the load in ways that are neglected with bilateral exercises.
Unilateral training can also help limit overuse injuries. That nagging elbow pain that keeps coming back or that sore right knee? Problems like these are often the result of compensatory movement patterns caused by bilateral exercises as the body tries to compensate for muscle or joint instabilities or weaknesses.
By training one side at a time, you build more strength and stability through the joints, which will lead to more strength and more muscle over time.
Unilateral training is also great for improving core stability. You will be able to transfer your strength more effectively in the gym or in sports that involve twisting movements.
A lot of your ability to produce force, generate tension and avoid injury comes from the strength and stability of your straight and oblique abdominal muscles and your back extensors. Since a unilateral workout involves unevenly distributed weights, your core muscles will be challenged to maintain a neutral spine position and proper posture.
Not only will this lead to a denser, stronger and harder core - but your ability to generate more tension through your abs will transfer to heavier bilateral exercises.
Improved recruitment of motor units
Strength is a skill that requires continuous improvement, so completely abandoning bilateral exercises in favor of unilateral exercises is not a good strategy for getting stronger at the big multi-joint exercises. However, scientific research has shown that unilateral training can increase the number of muscle fibers recruited (3).
The more muscle fibers you can recruit during an exercise, the better it is for increasing overall strength and muscle mass. Incorporating unilateral exercises into a balanced training program will recruit previously dormant muscle fibers for increased strength, speed and muscle development.
And by improving the recruitment of motor units, you will have a greater number of muscle fibers available for your heavy basic exercises.
6 - Machines work. Use them.
At some point, training with machines has started to attract a lot of hate, primarily related to the fact that machines eliminate the need for your stabilization. I understand this argument: if you develop a powerful machine without the ability to support the force, this can lead to problems.
However, if you are already focusing on basic exercises with free weights, then machines can change everything. Why? For the same reason that "functional" training fetishists loathe machines: they allow you to train a muscle hard without the need for stabilization. This allows you to put a muscle under much higher stress without acutely increasing the risk of injury.
In addition, training on machines allows you to isolate a muscle with constant tension over the entire range of motion. Machines do this by changing the direction in which gravity exerts force on a muscle.
Take side raises as an example. If you perform this exercise with two dumbbells, you will feel virtually no tension in your shoulder muscles at the start of the movement. The further you lift the dumbbells sideways, the greater the tension in your shoulder muscles.
However, if you perform side raises on the cable pulley or on a machine, you will notice that the degree of tension is much more constant over the entire range of motion. This is because the machine changes the degree to which gravity exerts an influence by changing the angle of the direction of pull, keeping the tension more constant throughout the range of motion.
The ability of machines to change tension and generate constant tension can also help activate more muscle fibers. And since tension is the most important factor in muscle growth, the more tension you can generate, the better.
Another disadvantage of barbells and dumbbells? You lose a lot of tension at the highest and lowest points of the movement, forcing your joints to take on more of the load. Machines, on the other hand, keep the tension constant, which keeps the tension on the muscle. This not only helps build more muscle, but also reduces the risk of injury.
None of these aspects make machines superior to barbells or dumbbells, but with proper planning, machines and free weights complement each other very well.
References
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2084401/
- https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12970-017-0184-9
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262465384_Evaluation_of_bilat
Quelle: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/850476710865153718/
From Eric Bach