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Building muscle is one of the hardest things to do. It requires a unique blend of exercise, nutrition, and recuperation. Muscles grow through stressing them more and more, but then nourishing them and giving them the rest they need to grow.

Muscles grow only when resting. They won't grow at all without enough rest, the right nutrition, and the right amount of exercise.

The best form of exercise for building muscle is progressive resistance weight training; in other words, weight lifting or bodybuilding.

To make a muscle grow, you have to stimulate its growth. You do this by stressing the muscle more each successive workout. The optimum bodybuilding routine has a lot of variation, too, as muscles grow through different mechanisms. If you watch experienced professional bodybuilders, you may be surprised to find that one day, they work out with sets of 6 reps, the next sets of 15! This workout, 8 sets, next workout 12.

Variety is indeed the spice of life, and it's one of the most important things you can do to stimulate the maximum muscle development.

One of the things an aspiring bodybuilder must do is lift with maximum intensity nearly every workout. Whether you do 8 sets of 8 or 2 sets of 20, the last rep or two of every set you do should be very difficult. This is what is meant by high, or maximum, intensity.

Nutrition plays a critical role in building muscle. You have to eat high quality protein like that from eggs, milk, lean beef, chicken, and fish. Carbs have to come from raw vegetables, whole grains, and to a lesser extent fruit. Finally, fat has to be consumed, too. You'll find that no fat diets just don't work. They don't work for losing bodyfat, nor do they work for building muscle. There's a reason that the best protein sources contain fat -- protein isn't synthesized and assimilated properly without fat.

To start, a diet of 50-40-10 (carbs, protein, fat) should be followed, and you should get 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. Adjust as necessary.

Finally, you have to get adequate rest. Get the diet right, and workout right, and get little sleep and you'll get zero results. If you're trying to gain weight, you'll need 7-9 hours of sleep. Again, adjust accordingly.

As you can see, building muscle requires a three-pronged approach: Exercise, diet, and rest.

If you want to build muscle fast, stick to the basics. And by basics, I mean complex movements like Squats, Bench Presses, Bent Rows and Pull-ups, and Military Presses.

Perform 6-10 reps for the upper body movements and 10-15 reps for the lower body and ab movements.

A typical muscle-building routine is as follows:

Day 1

• Squats
• Calf presses
• Barbell curls
• Tricep extensions

Day 2

• Bent Rows
• Bench Presses
• Parallel Bar Dips
• Military Presses

Do a little ab work, like crunches and planks. Don't over do it. Some will tell you that if you want to bulk up quickly, don't bother doing any ab work at all. I belong to that camp, believing that it can stunt your muscle growth.

At first, do one set of each exercise. Then build up, one set at a time, to 3 sets for the complex exercises, and two sets for the isolation movements.

You'll find that if you work to failure in these movements that you'll be very sore after each work out. In that light, keeping in mind that muscles depend not only on exercise and nutrition but also on adequate rest, work out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, alternating Day 1 and Day 2. Rest the weekend.

Make sure you're getting at least one gram of protein for each pound of body weight. Cut out the soda and simple sugars like fruit juice, white bread, and processed food. Eat a protein and vegetable each meal and your nutrition should be up to snuff.

In order to get in one gram per pound of body weight, you'll need to eat after-meal snacks (between breakfast and lunch, lunch and dinner, and after dinner right before bed). MetRx or some other protein powder will suffice.

If you want to accelerate your growth, take in some branch-chain amino acids (BCAAs) along with glutamine and creatine. I've got a "creatine report" on my Muscle-Build.com blog that shows how to best start a creatine supplementation program.

I wrote a post over at Muscle-Build.com about 2 ways to use Leg Extensions in your workouts. Read it here.