1 Tip for Gaining Muscle Mass That You Probably Won't Follow

It is truly perplexing to me how many people are scared to change, but content and comfortable sticking with something that they have done for years without getting their desired results.

Gaining muscle mass naturally for the average Joe is a wonderful example illustrating this type of behavior. You see it every day in gyms throughout the country. Our mental addiction to the gym tricks us into believing more is better. It feels good, so it must be good for us!

I am not going to get into the reasons why many of us do this, but I will tell you that it needs to change if gaining muscle mass naturally is one of your objectives in pursuing a health conscious lifestyle.

I'm obviously oversimplifying and omitting countless variables that influence muscle growth and how quickly you can gain muscle mass (dietary intake, types of weightlifting exercises, free weights versus machines, and the list goes endlessly on)!

However, none of these things matter if you are constantly in an overtrained state. Your body can't build and gain muscle mass if it hasn't repaired itself from your previous workout.

It's that simple.

In the most simplistic sense, every time you lift weights your muscles fibers are broken down. When you leave the gym, your body starts the recovery process by working to repair the damaged muscle fibers to their original state and then builds new muscle fibers on top of that as a reaction to the physical stimulus you put on your body from the previous workout. This slow adaptation and progression is how you build and gain muscle mass.

For a deeper dive (courtesy of The Science of Muscle Building), here is a technical overview of how your body builds muscle and what that means for you in gaining muscle mass:

The process starts with what is known as the ‘stimulus’ – this is the training itself. We stimulate the muscles, which causes ‘trauma’. This is the term for muscle damage – it is the breakdown of the skeletal muscle tissue. This breakdown forces the muscle to restructure and grow, returning bigger and stronger under the correct nutritional and recovery conditions.

The trauma activates ‘satellite cells’. These cells rush to the areas in the muscle that are damaged by the training, setting in motion the chain of events that start the repair and growth of the tissues.

Once the satellite cells are in place, they fuse together and bind to muscle fibres. This initially increases the cross sectional area of the muscle (hypertrophy). The satellite cells fuse with the muscle tissues forming new muscle protein strands called myofibrils.

The extra nuclei (cell ‘brains’) from satellite cells allow muscle to synthesise more proteins and to create more contractile myofilaments, known as Actin and Myosin (these are the elements of the muscle cells that allow them to contract). The more contractile myofilaments we have, the stronger we are. It is for this reason that bigger muscles are usually stronger than smaller muscles, as they contain more contractile myofilaments.

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Simply put, you can't build muscle and gain muscle mass if your body hasn't fully recuperated from the weightlifting load imposed on your body from the previous bodybuilding workout.

This compensation can only occur when you put down the weights, take the time to rest (including improving your sleep quality - a huge must!), and allow your body to start working on repairing your muscle fibers and making your muscles bigger.

For the average Joe, this muscle building compensation and adaptation process requires a sufficient amount of recovery time. Yes, much more than a day or two. Sometimes 5 - 9 days and beyond depending upon your body's recovery ability and your natural genetic ability.

In fact, this recovery process is so important that you often see people turning to steroids and other dangerous illegal muscle enhancing cocktails because it helps your body speed up the recovery process. Hence, you can workout more often, recover more quickly, and gain muscle mass at a faster clip. Sounds great, but please realize that there are potentially very serious health risks if you opt for any of these illegal muscle enhancing cocktails.

In addition to allowing your body time to repair the muscle fibers that have been broken down from your previous workout, you also have to let your CNS (central nervous system) recover. There is a direct correlation between the CNS, the ability of our body to recover, and our success in gaining muscle mass. If our CNS is overtrained, you simply won't be able to build muscle and gain muscle mass. It is that simple!

When you put your body under such intense loads, you shock your entire CNS. In response to this stress, the body secretes various hormones that create an imbalance within your body. This imbalance ultimately leads to your immune system operating at a greatly decreased level.

To counteract this chemical imbalance, the body goes into overdrive to regulate these functions and, in doing so, ends up generating additional stress on your CNS. The end result, your body simply can't neutralize excess secretion of the catabolic hormone cortisol and these increased levels of cortisol make serious inroads into your ability to naturally gain muscle mass.

Working your muscles to failure (point to where you simply can't lift the weight for another repetition) too often, for too long, is a surefire way of weakening your CNS and severely impairing your body's ability to build muscle.

1. You feel tired even after a good night's sleep. You may experience restless and interrupted periods of sleeping, too.
2. Increased headaches, loss of appetite, fatigue, and even constipation or diarrhea can be obvious indicators especially if you find yourself working out intensely three, four, or even more times during a week. Remember, this isn't a blanket statement because are bodies are different and have the ability to recuperate at different rates of speed.
3. You become more prone to catching colds because your immune system can't handle the excessive stresses.
4. You struggle to lift the same amount of weight that you did during your prior workout and / or you don't feel good after working out. This discomfort is not from lifting intensely, but it goes on for hours, even days, after your workout.
5. You become more prone to muscle tears, nagging injuries that don't go away, and / or develop joint stiffness and bone pains.

1. Start by taking two weeks off from lifting weights. Then, when you get back to the gym, you will probably notice that you have the ability to lift more weight than you did during your previous workout. Yes, your body was finally given a chance to recover and was able to adapt to the weightlifting stress of your previous workout.
2. Keep a log of the exercises you are doing, the weight you are lifting, and the amount of sets and reps in which you are lifting this weight. If you aren't increasing the reps with the same weight or being able to add new weight each workout, give your body a rest. If your body adapted to the previous workout, it would be prepared to handle an increased load.
3. Eliminate excessive sets and repetitions targeting muscles from each specific body part. Instead, try compound exercises such as squats, deadlifts, and bench pressing. These core compound exercises stimulate muscles throughout the entire body in short periods of time.
4. Workout less frequently! As recommended above, try doing some basic compound exercises once a week. That's right, do a full body workout one time, once every 5 - 7 days. No more! Seems extreme? Have you tried it? Give your muscle fibers a break!
5. Minimize the time that you spend during each workout, too! Try working out for only 20 - 30 minutes and then let your body recover. You don't need to spend hours in the gym lifting weights. In fact, lifting for more than 45 minutes during a weightlifting session becomes counterproductive since your body goes from releasing good muscle building hormones (GH, Testosterone, etc.) to a prolonged period of time where your body releases Cortisol and your muscle building efforts become extremely hampered.

Remember, we won't all respond the same using the same workout routine, so you have to experient and fine-tune what you're doing to achieve optimal results results.

However, if you've been weightlifting for years and just can't seem to gain muscle mass, what do you have to lose by trying this approach?

Imagine what you might gain!