If you want to build muscle effectively, you have to understand how muscle building works . Otherwise, you waste a lot of time with ineffective strategies that do not work.
Effectively build muscle: The 4 most important rules
- If you want to build muscles effectively, you have to do strength training regularly.
- The technically correct execution always has the highest priority.
- Muscles need a regeneration time of approx. 3 days.
- High-protein diet is essential for effective muscle growth.
Only if you understand why these rules apply, you will be able to build muscle effectively.
In order for you to really understand the golden rules, we must first deal with how a muscle is constructed.
How is a muscle built?
Muscle is a tissue composed mainly of proteins, which can contract under energy consumption and is essential for our locomotion and body stability.
Muscles consist mainly of proteins (protein).
Deepening: types of muscle fibers
Millions of muscle cells assemble into long muscle fibers that unite to form a large muscle.
It is important to note that there are two different forms of muscle fibers that have different characteristics.
Slow twitch muscle fibers (type 1)
These muscle fibers take much of their energy from burning sugars and fatty acids from the blood.
Because we have large fat reserves and breathe oxygen continuously, this type of muscle fiber is very enduring, but not very strong and has little growth potential .
Fast-twitch muscle fibers (type 2)
The main source of energy for these muscle fibers is creatinine phosphate, which is extremely rich in energy . As a result, fast-twitch muscle fibers are able to generate large forces.
However, since the energy storage is limited, fibers of this type are very quickly fatigued and can only maintain their activity for approx. Maintain 45 seconds.
In order to exert more force, these muscle fibers increase their energy store.
Fast twitch muscle fibers have a very high growth potential .
Now we understand why endurance athletes tend to be lean and explosive athletes tend to be very muscular.
If we want to build muscle, we need to train our fast-twitch muscle fibers by performing short and powerful sets of movements.
What leads to muscle growth?
The human body is a master of adaptation. As part of evolution, it has been critical to utilize scarce resources effectively in order to maintain all needed bodily functions.
Everything else is stopped in order not to waste energy.
We can apply this knowledge 1 to 1 to muscle building:
We need to challenge our muscles to unusual levels if we want to build muscle.
And it also means that we need to keep training continuously so that we don’t lose our progress again.
If we put high demands on our muscles, they will adapt by growing.
As soon as we stop using our muscles, our body breaks them down to save energy.
High muscular loads lead to very small, benign, muscle fiber tears. This phenomenon is known to everyone as "muscle soreness" and it is usually only associated with unpleasant pain.
But there’s more to it than that:
But if your muscles can rest in the next few days, these small muscle fiber tears will be repaired more, so that the muscles can better withstand the high load next time.
In other words, our muscles grow and get stronger!
Moderate muscle soreness is a sign of effective muscle training.
Muscles need a regeneration time of approx. 3 days in which they can grow.
So next time you have moderate muscle soreness, rejoice! Because this shows you that you are on the right path to getting stronger.
On the other hand, not at all good for the muscle are too high loads, which lead to large muscle fiber tears.
These are really painful and can take up to several weeks to heal.
Weeks in which you can not continue to train!
So don’t go to your limits completely at the beginning, but take it a little slower.
After a few training sessions, you will notice from the strength of the muscle soreness whether a higher load is good for your muscles or not.
On and on!
As clarified above, the emphasis is on" unaccustomed high load". This means that you should not train with the same weights all the time.
By adapting to the loads, your muscles eventually get used to the weight. Then your training is no longer an unusually high load, but nothing but routine.
You have to increase the training load continuously so that your muscles keep growing.
This principle is called progressive overload and it is the key to optimal growth stimulation .
Effective muscle training
If you have never done any regular strength training before or have not done it for a long time, it is quite sufficient to do pure physical exercises at first in order to get used to the loads.
Especially in the beginning, the body is not used to regular muscle training and responds very well to it.
However, if you have been training muscles for a few months, it is advisable to expand your exercise options.
Effective muscle training can be done both in a gym and at home, if you buy helpful training equipment.
Build basic strength and learn technique
Your first goal is to get used to the loads and learn to do all the important exercises correctly .
You can do this best with a full body workout , with the most important exercises for an athletic body.
Make sure that you don’t waste your valuable training time with isolation exercises for single muscles, but complete large functional exercises for all major muscle groups.
repetition number and tension time
The weight on each exercise should be such that you can do 8 – 12 controlled repetitions with proper exercise execution.
But even more important than the number of repetitions, is w hich repetitions you perform.
Instead of concentrating on somehow managing 12 repetitions, you should rather concentrate on challenging your muscles properly.
An optimal tense time, targeting the fast-twitch muscle fibers, is approx. 45 seconds per set .
If you want to build muscle, a long period of tension is the most important criterion of effective muscle training .