Building Lean Muscle Mass Without Steroids

If you’re seriously interested in building lean muscle mass, but don’t want to risk your health with dangerous or illegal steroids, then listen up! You can reach your goal, but it will take a serious, long term commitment to training and nutrition. Without the right combination of these two elements, you will never achieve your muscle-building goals. Fortunately, with a little planning and dedication, you’ll soon be packing on some serious muscle, just follow these five easy steps:

Step #1

Focus on doing three full body resistance training sessions every week (e.g., Monday, Wednesday and Friday). At the start of each training session, do an anabolic mass trigger exercise like deadlifts or squats, which trains the entire body and forces your central nervous system to ramp up the production of muscle building hormones like growth hormone and testosterone.

Step #2

You should also focus on compound exercises for all muscle groups, because they are the most effective at stimulating muscle growth. Weighted dips, barbell curls, military presses, bench presses, pull-ups, deadlifts and squats are all great examples of compound exercises. Be sure to perform these first in your training routine.

Step #3

When performing your exercises, you’ll want to do between 6 and 12 reps. This range (called the hypertrophy repetition range) is ideal for stimulating muscle growth. You’ll also want to remember to train progressively and always train to failure. Training progressively simply means to increase weight in increments of 5 or 10lbs to maintain the difficulty of exercises as you gain strength. Training to failure means that you stop once you can no longer perform another rep and still maintain proper form.

Step #4

After each workout, make sure you always have a protein shake! Ideally you want one that contains between 30g and 50g of whey protein, 60g to 100g of high glycemic carbohydrates and 30g of healthy fats (usually from medium chain triglycerides or flaxseed oil). You also want to make sure that your nutrition for the rest of the day is really dialed in by eating smaller meals every two to three hours.

Step #5

To supercharge your results, you should add supplements to your training program. For example, take 5g to 10g of L-glutamine twice every day (after workouts and before bed). You can also take 3g to 6g of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) by taking the 1g capsules with your meals throughout the day. You’ll also benefit from taking 5g to 15g of BCAAs (branched chain amino acids) before, during and after your workouts. Finally, add 5g or 10g or creatine to your post workout protein shake.