Building a healthy as well as the muscular physique is not a piece of cake. It is not overnight stuff. It takes years of dedication, hard work, patience, consistency & discipline to achieve a lean & muscular physique. If you’re a beginner, you need the right guidance to walk on this path. There are many seniors, coaches, and trainers who will be providing you with various tips and suggestions about how to gain muscle fast, and honestly speaking, they might confuse you. You would be wondering what advice you should follow, and whose words you should care about. Now, the confusion is over as we’re providing you with the 10 golden tips to gain muscle fast. Let the gains begin!
Consume the Optimum Amount of Protein
A solid amount of protein intake is a must to gain muscle fast. As a beginner, you can target consuming 0.8 grams of protein per pound of your body weight. As you progress, you can gradually increase your protein intake up to 2 grams per pound. Don’t consume too much protein suddenly otherwise your internal organs such as the liver & kidney would not handle it and it will lead to indigestion and bloating. That’s why we are recommending you to consume protein in small amounts and increase the quantity gradually as you progress in your fitness journey so that your organs can handle it. Consuming 2 grams per pound of body weight is sufficient if you want a muscular and healthy physique.
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Always choose the protein-rich whole foods or meat items to fulfill your protein requirements such as eggs, chicken breast, beef, pork, pulses, oats, salmon, tuna, Greek yogurt, milk, cottage cheese, venison, etc. Don’t depend only on supplements such as whey protein, BCAA, or casein protein until you can’t fulfill your protein requirements with the foods. When you really can’t get enough protein from your daily diet, that’s when supplementation comes into the field.
Resistance Training with Progressive Overload
As we all know that resistance training is the best way to increase the muscle mass, you as a beginner should start with a full-body workout routine just like this:
Related: Full Body Workout Routine: How to do, Benefits & More!
- Monday: Full Body
- Tuesday: Rest
- Wednesday: Full Body
- Thursday: Rest
- Friday: Full Body
- Saturday: Rest
- Sunday: Rest
Follow this workout routine for at least 12 weeks then you can change your routine to either bro-split or push-pull-legs. Anyway, what you have to do is to increase your repetition ranges from 8 to 12 or increase the weight you are lifting as you progress in your fitness journey. For example, you are bench pressing 60 lbs for 8 reps this week. In the next week, target 60 lbs for 10 reps, and in the next week, go for the same weight but with 12 reps. After that, increase the weight to 75 lbs in the next week and go for 8 reps and continue like that as we have discussed just before. This is called the progressive overload method. You have to lift heavy enough to put your muscles under enough tension so that it can cause microfiber tears in the muscles.
Proper Sleep & Rest Days are must to Gain Muscle Fast
As we have already mentioned that workout with proper intensity and volume causes microfiber tears in the muscles. After that, the muscles repair themselves with denser and stronger tissues than before. And, in this way, muscles grow. So, it is the rest days when the muscles grow most thus it is highly recommended that you take adequate rest after your workout sessions to gain muscle fast. As a beginner, follow the workout routine that we have provided in the previous point. With that workout routine, you can hit all the muscles and also get proper rest to recover & grow them.
Sleep is another underrated thing that most novice gym-goers ignore. Testosterone & Human Growth Hormone (HGH) — these are the two hormones that are responsible for muscle growth in the human body and frankly speaking, you need a sufficient amount of both of them to gain muscle fast. While exercise alone can greatly increase the testosterone in the human body, proper sleep increases the HGH significantly. 8 to 9 hours of proper sleep is said to boost the HGH 5X whereas 5 to 6 hours of sleep does the opposite. So, along with proper rest, go for at least 8 hours of proper sleep to help your muscles recover and grow with the help of increased Growth Hormone.
Consume Healthy Fats to Reduce Muscle Soreness
If you think that eating fats will make you only obese then you have to think again because there are two types of fats: good & bad fats. Bad fats like Trans fats & Saturated fats are the reason for obesity and other health issues. But good fats such as Mono Unsaturated Fatty Acids (MUFA) & Poly Unsaturated Fatty Acids (PUFA) are very essential in our body if we want to gain muscle fast. Why? Because, consuming these good fats will increase levels of HDL, the good cholesterol which leads to increase in the growth hormone that obviously triggers more amino acids from the protein-rich foods you are consuming. So, ultimately, these good fatty acids are very necessary for building muscle tissues pretty quickly. Whole foods such as cheese, avocado, olives, every type of nuts, Greek yogurt, seeds & fatty fishes are some of the great sources of good fats. Include them in moderate quantities like half of your protein intake to see amazing results.
We are talking about fats, right? Then, how could we forget about Omega-3 fatty acids which is another essential fat that helps our muscles to reduce soreness, more specifically, Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS). If you are a beginner, you will experience DOMS in the first few weeks of your workout sessions as your muscles are not habituated to the gym & workout stuff. In that case, consuming Omega-3 will reduce the soreness & inflammation of the muscles as the magic happens! This will lead to more muscle gain because muscles will gain faster when they are recovered quicker. Including Omega-3 in your diet is not rocket science. Fish oils such as Cod liver oil & any type of fishes such as tuna, salmon, and sardine are packed with sufficient Omega-3 needed for a human body.
Don’t Ignore Warm-up & Cardio If You want to Gain Muscle Fast
If you go to the gym & start working out with heavy weights suddenly, your muscles could be torn badly & it will injure you instead of any positive muscle gains because the muscles are not habituated with that much pressure all of a sudden. So, you have to warm up your muscles so that they can be ready for heavy workout sessions. 10 to 15 minutes of stretching & light bodyweight exercises would be enough to activate your muscles for the sessions. So, the next time, the first thing you should do after going to the gym is to do some stretching & warm-up exercises specifically on the muscles you would work on that day to begin circulating your blood throughout your muscle tissues so that these muscles can be ready & habituated for the workout sessions to help you gain muscle fast.
whether you like it or not, but cardio is too important to ignore. Before your workout sessions, do some moderate to intense cardio exercises from 15 to 30 minutes to strengthen your heart muscles and warm up your overall body. Most importantly, Cardio is one of the best ways to lose extra fat from your body and let you gain lean muscle mass. Here you can get to know some of the best cardio exercises that you should consider performing.
Calorie Maintenance is Essential to Gain Muscle fast
You have to track your daily calories so that you can avoid any type of extra calories in your daily diet. Extra calories lead to extra fat in your body which you obviously don’t need if you want to build lean muscle tissue. Now, come to the actual question, how many calories do you really need? Well, it depends on your current physique. Let’s take two different examples to understand this.
Example number 1: if you are a skinny person then you have to go for caloric surplus which means you have to increase your daily calorie consumption from 10% to 20% depending on how skinny you are. Keep in mind that increasing calories doesn’t mean you can eat anything you want. You have to increase your calorie intake in a healthy way which means including more good fats and protein in your diet. In this way, you can not only gain weight easily but also most of your gained weight would be muscles. This is called healthy weight gain as well as muscle gain.
Example number 2: if you are a person who holds fats in the body then you have to go for a caloric deficit diet which means you have to reduce your calorie consumption from 10% to 20% depending on how much body fat your body has stored. You have to cut calories from unhealthy junk foods which possess lots of unhealthy fats, high carbs, sugar, and sodium like pastries, burgers, etc. And only consume whole foods filled with high protein and healthy fats. In that way, you can lose your body fat within a few months as well as gain muscle fast.
Creatine – the Best Beginner Friendly Supplement!
If you are getting enough protein and healthy fats from your daily diet and whole food items (as we have discussed above) then as a beginner, you don’t actually need any protein shakes or whey protein supplements to fulfill your need. Yet, there is a supplement that is necessary especially for a beginner like you which is proven to provide better exercise performance as well as extra energy while performing high-intensity workouts. The supplement is nothing other than Creatine.
It is a type of amino acid found mainly in seafood and red meat but in very small amounts like 1-3 grams in 100 grams. If you buy a Creatine supplement, you can easily consume 5 to 10 grams of Creatine so that your performance during exercise can be improved and you will not be fatigued easily. Why is it best for beginners? Because beginners are more likely less endurable during intense workout sessions due to the fact that they are less habituated and they have less stamina. So, once you are endurable enough to do your own then you don’t need to take Creatine anymore. As per our experience, more or less 2 to 3 months of taking this supplement would be enough for an average beginner.
Train with the Big 4 (Deadlift, Squat, Bench Press, Overhead Barbell Shoulder Press)!
As a beginner, you are always recommended to focus more on compound exercises which mean exercises that target multiple muscle groups. Moreover, compound movements can be easily performed with heavyweight so that you can easily put your muscles under tension. The 4 pillars of compound exercises are: Bench Press which is for building mainly your chest muscles (Pectoral muscles), Deadlift which is for every back muscles, especially Traps, lower back, Glutes, and Hamstrings, and Squat which is for lower body muscles like Quads, Glutes, Hams, etc. and lastly, Overhead Barbell Shoulder Press which is mainly for shoulder muscles such as Deltoid and Traps. These 4 exercises are considered not only the best group of strength-building exercises but also the best individually to build their respective muscle groups. A beginner needs to build strength in the muscles so that he or she can lift heavier weights while performing other isolation or compound movements.
That’s why you need to include these 4 exercises in your workout routine on their respective days like Bench Press on chest day, Deadlift on back day, and Squat on leg day. Start with lightweight so that you can master the form safely and injury-free. Then after mastering the form, you can go for moderate weight with 10 to 12 reps per set. Progressively overload for a few months until you are capable enough to try heavier weights like 100% to 150% of your body weight. Try to perform with heavyweights until failure in each set but keep in mind that you have to complete a minimum of 8 sets before you fail. In this way, you will be not only very strong but you can gain muscle fast significantly in your overall body from chest to leg & from back to shoulders.
Patience & Consistency are keys
The last golden rule is patience & consistency. If you think, you can build a muscular physique overnight then you are totally wrong. It takes people years and even decades of discipline, hard work, patience & consistency. Read the biographies of the greatest bodybuilders like Arnold, Ronnie Coleman, Lee Haney, Dorian Yates, and Phil Heath, you will realize how decades of training, diet, and discipline help to make their physiques world’s some of the best physiques. So, always try to be consistent in your workout routine and keep patience while you will be working with 3D aka determination, discipline & dedication to build your own dream physique. Just like Rome is not built in a day, your dream will also take time to fulfill but it must be fulfilled if you are determined and consistent enough in your training and nutrition regardless of how good or bad your genetics are.
Therefore, these are the golden rules that you must follow if you want to gain muscle fast and make your dream muscular physique in the shortest amount of time. Hopefully, you have found this article helpful. If it really so then don’t hesitate to express your valuable thoughts in the comment section below. Thanks for visiting and appreciating our work.