10 Amazing Muscle Gain Strategies
Today I’m hitting things pretty hard, with 10 of my best muscle gain strategies. These tips and tricks are the culmination of over a decade of personal training and fitness coaching.
And they’re not the same old strategies you always hear about. These ones really offer a new approaching to building and toning lean muscle mass, and allow you to change things up in new and exciting ways.
Your Weekend Challenge
This weekend, I challenge you to try at least 2 of these strategies, integrating them into your workout routine for the next couple of weeks. Think you can handle it? Trust me, the results will speak for themselves…
10 Game-Changing Muscle Building Strategies
1. Take a Break from Supplements – Feel like your metabolism needs a wakeup call? One easy way to jumpstart your metabolism is to do a simple detox. Take a 2-week break from all supplements, and focus on eating a strictly whole food diet. You’ll feel refreshed and renewed, and your muscles will thank you for the extra vitamins and nutrients.
2. Switch Up Your Sets & Reps – You heard me right. One key factor in muscle building success is changing things up on a regular basis, and an easy way to do that is to swap your reps and sets. If you typically do 4 sets of 6 reps, try 6 sets of 4 reps at higher weight. You’ll get a good response out of your muscles and prevent boredom.
Click here for more Muscle Confusion techniques.
3. Reverse Your Routine – Another simple way to change things up and jumpstart your lean muscle gains is to change the order of your workouts. If you normally start the week with legs, try starting with abs instead.
4. Try 50-Rep Sets – Not exclusively of course, but adding a couple of these hard hitting sets to every workout is a great way to fully exhaust your muscles and maximize your gains in the process. Reduce the weight considerably, and pump our 50 reps in one set, somewhere near the end of your workout. Any exercise will do.
5. Set Your Food Bar Higher – Although weight lifting strategies are important when it comes to gaining muscle, you take it all the way without a solid, muscle building diet. And generally speaking, that means taking in more calories overall, while ensuring that a good portion of those calories are from protein.
Check out my Best Muscle Building Diet for more tips on eating to gain muscle.
6. Pre-Exhaust Your Muscles – Bringing your muscles to complete failure or exhaustion in every workout is one of the secrets to making serious gains at the gym. And a great way to exhaust your muscles is to tire them out before each set. May sound counter-intuitive, but it’s a simple strategy that can bring some big gains. Try starting each set with a lower than normal weight (about 50% of what you normally lift), and get out 20-30 reps before moving on to your typical sets.
7. Reach Failure in Every Set – You might be used to reaching muscle failure by the end of each workout, but try thinking a little more about it near the beginning. Rather than counting reps, bring each set to failure – until you simply can’t get out another rep. Rest, and go at it again.
8. Add Yoga to Your Routine – Believe it or not, yoga actually complements a traditional muscle building workout quite well. It conditions your muscles in ways that typical weight training exercises don’t, and it’s a great way to add in some variety. Plus, yoga will help keep your muscles lean and toned.
For tips on how to get it right, read my article on Yoga Training Tips here.
9. Run Before Your Workout – Although most weight lifters like to run after hitting the weights, an easy way to change things up and jumpstart your muscle building efforts is to run before. Not only will this pre-exhaust your muscles and bring you to muscle failure more quickly, you’ll also get out a better run, which means more fat burned.
10. Get Strict about Your Sleep – Sleep is one of the most overlooked factors in any health and fitness endeavor, and that’s especially true when it comes to gaining muscle. When you work your muscles hard, you need to give them the opportunity to rest and repair. This is actually where most of your gains in size and strength actually occur. So try setting a stricter bedtime, and get the solid sleep your muscles deserve.
Have any questions or feedback about these 10 Amazing Muscle Gain Strategies? Please leave a comment below…
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Thank you for visiting! Weight Loss and Training is a health blog which features all the best weight loss tips that I have learned over my 20 years of training. My background includes a degree in Kinesiology from the world renown Simon Fraser University, certification in nutritional sciences from UBC, and Personal Trainer Specialist certification from Can Fit Pro.