How to build muscle
You will learn
How to build muscle
- Exercises to do
- How hard you have to "try"
- Reps per set
- How long of break in between sets
- How many times you have to work out per week
- What to eat
Research and science of how muscles actually grow
- Results of scientific studies testing exercises, rep ranges, volume
- Biology of how muscles actually grow
Most important thing for building muscle
- The most important thing is...
I want to build muscle
Yea I look like a meat head on camera 😂😂😂
Summary
How to build muscle
- Exercises to do: Compound exercises are the best overall and provide the greatest "bang for your buck," but any resistance training exercise can build muscle.
- How hard you have to "try": You need to push your muscles. You do not have to go to failure on every set, but you should go until you are quite tired. This means doing sets until you cannot do another 1-2 reps with perfect technique and/or feel a good "burn."
- Reps per set: Any number between 6-30 reps will grow muscle. I recommend 8-12 reps per set.
- How long of break in between sets: It's up to you. The shorter the break, the more metabolic stress you will put on your muscles. Metabolic stress is just one method to build muscle. You can take long breaks and still build muscle if you lift heavy weights, or perform a high volume of reps/sets.
- How many times you have to work out per week: You should work every muscle group you care about with at least 10 sets per week (ideally 20). This can be done in one workout per week, two workouts, or seven. It doesn't matter how many workouts as long as you hit 10 sets per week.
- What to eat: Eat one gram of protein per lb of body weight. This is a safe amount to build muscle. If you want to also lose fat, I recommend eating a moderate amount of carbs and fat. Have as much veggies as you want.
Research and science of how muscles actually grow
- Results of scientific studies testing exercises, rep ranges, volume: Read the article!
- Biology of how muscles actually grow: Very complicated but very cool for those that care. Read the article!
Most important thing for building muscle
- The most important thing is progressive overload. This means you have to make progress on your workouts every single week, to keep stressing your muscles, which causes them to grow. This means you have to track your workouts, and beat what you did last time, every workout. This can be from either more reps, more sets, less break in between sets, or higher weight. Just pick one!
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Ray's Take
Who doesn't want bigger muscles?
Keep in mind, that how "big" your muscles look are usually more related to how much body fat you have than how big your muscles actually are. Thus, for normal people (non body builders, powerlifters, pro athletes), its usually more important to lose fat while preserving muscle vs building muscle to look good.
That said, even if your goal is to lose fat and look better, building muscle while doing so is still essential. This is bc without building muscle, you'd be losing muscle from your body using the amino acids from existing muscle as energy.
This means everyone should be doing muscle building exercises whether they want to get lean, or actually get bigger.
Exercises that build muscle
What are the best exercises?
The best type of exercise to build muscle is resistance training aka lifting weights.
The best type of resistance training exercises is compound exercises (those that work multiple muscle groups).
Think bench, squat, and deadlift. These are the best because they require the most muscle groups to perform. Other great exercises include pull-ups, shoulder presses, lat pull-downs, rows, thrusters, hip thrust, and lunges. A simple way to think of this is the more muscles a particular exercise utilizes, the better of an exercise it is.
Isolation exercises (exercises that work just one muscle) build muscle as well. They are just more time consuming as you only get one muscle per exercise. However, if you really want to work e.g. your biceps, go for bicep curls - it will work.
Should I use free weights or a machine?
Free weights are more effective. It's bc they require and utilize more muscles, which leads to more stress and anabolic (muscle growing) hormone release.
Machines work if you are injured or when you are a beginner and don't know how to do a free weight exercise properly.
How should you do the exercises?
Do what you enjoy the most, and can push yourself the most easily. I personally like going heavy, with fewer reps per set, and longer in between sets, but there is plenty of evidence that you can do the rep range you enjoy the most and build muscle (anywhere from 6-30 reps). The main key is you do at least 10 sets per week per muscle group.
Reps per set: Moderate reps per set (6-12). This means that you would use around 70-80% of your one rep maximum weight. Training heavier weight with less reps (2-5) works just as well, as long as you do more sets to compensate for the lower reps - Proof. Doing less than 65% one rep max has been shown to work, but you need to train close to failure which seems mentally draining at 20+ reps per set. Not sure why you would ever want to do this, but feel free to try! Meta-analysis on <60% 1RM vs >60% 1RM training.
Total sets: This [meta-analysis] showed the more sets you do, the more hypertrophy you get (up to 10 sets)(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27433992). A further meta-analysis found that there was no benefit after doing 20 sets. Thus, aim for 10-20 sets per week for maximal hypertrophy (focusing on the same muscle).
Times per exercise per week: This meta-analysisshowed it does not matter how many days a week you perform an exercise. The only thing that matters is total volume as defined by sets per week.
Rest in between sets: The shorter the break, the more the metabolic stress on your muscles. Metabolic stress is just one way for your muscles to grow (and not required). The others are muscle tension (heavy weight) and muscle damage (weight x volume). You only need one type of stress to grow. Thus, if you are using medium weight, I recommend 1-2 minutes rest to maintain metabolic stress. On heavy weight or high volume, take as long of a break as you want.
Training to failure: Going to failure works. Just keep in mind failure means not being able to do another rep with PERFECT form. On moderate weight, going to failure will increase metabolic stress (buildup of lactate, hydrogen ions, etc), which helps grow muscle. On heavy weight, you're basically going to failure or nearly failure every set naturally.On light weight, you really need to go to failure or else its an endurance workout with no hypertrophy. Note you do not need to go to failure on every set to build muscle.
Speed: The traditional thought is 1-3 seconds on the way up (concentric), and 2-4 seconds on the way down (eccentric) is best, and that going slowly on the way down is more powerful for muscle growth. However, a meta-analysis found no proof of this. The conclusion is that you should do faster on the way up, and slower on the way down. Again, choose your own adventure.
Notes:
- If you want to increase strength (which has been shown to be a more important metric for longevity than muscle size), doing lower reps at higher weight is more effective. In this trial, in which they compared HEAVY (2-4 reps) vs MODERATE (8-12 reps), they HEAVY group increased squat by 30% vs 16.8% for MODERATE. The HEAVY group interestingly saw less quad muscle increase (4.1% HEAVY vs 10.4% MODERATE). Note they did the same number of sets so the MODERATE group did ~3x the total reps.
- If you want to optimize strength and size, you just have to do more sets with heavy weights (since you are doing less reps per set). This study showed that if you lift an equalized volume load (weight x reps), the muscle gain is the same whether you do 7 sets of 3 reps or 3 sets of 10 reps. Note the heavy group had 3 min rest in between sets vs 90 seconds for moderate group.
- On speed,I like lifting heavy, and if you get close to your max, speed doesn't matter. You can't control it anyways. You just push as hard as you can and the weight moves as fast (or slow) as it does.
- Review paper on muscle hypertrophy.
Nutrition
Protein is by far the most macro for building muscle. You have to have enough protein. Not getting enough is an unforced error.
If you want to grow, I recommend at least 1g of protein per pound of bodyweight. So if you are 150 lbs, aim for at least 150g of protein per day. To get there, you'll probably need some whey protein powder.
Besides the protein, you can eat carbs and fat depending on your goals
- if you want to lose fat, then eat less of the other stuff. You still need to get the protein.
- if you want to gain the most muscle, have more of it all (but not too much. You will build more muscle if you eat ~20% more cals than you burn, but after that a lot of the extra cals will go to fat).
I would also recommend creatine as a supplement - it works for increasing strength and many other benefits (link).
- Helps you increase performance and lift more (by regenerating ATP in cells)
- Brings water into muscle (osmolite). This might be anabolic in itself (see below section)
- It also may help inhibit protein breakdown and activate satellite cells (see below section)
On when to eat as relates to your workout...it doesn't matter. You don't need to load protein before or right after workout. Just don't make this mistake.
Stupid Ideas
Stupid: I need a perfect workout routine
RW response: There is no perfect workout routine. The only thing you need to do is find one that you can start, and stick with for the long term. The actual exercises (as long as compound, and done with good technique), rep ranges (as long as reasonable), and total sets doesn't really matter nearly as much as sustainability. A big factor to this is what you enjoy doing so you can keep doing it.
Stupid: I can just do whatever weight and reps feel good on that day
RW response: Smh. This is my pet peeve. You really must track what you do every single workout. WRITE IT DOWN. Then, the next time you work out the same exercise, beat it. This is how you progress strength. This is how you build muscle. This is essential.
Stupid: I have to workout every day to build muscle
RW response: No. You actually don't need to work out that many days per week to grow muscle. Muscle grows in the recovery phase. How often you actually workout depends on how you structure your workouts (whole body vs split days which means doing one body part per day), how much you actually want to work out, and how hard you go in your workouts.
Stupid: If I do the same workout as you, I'll look the same as you
RW response: No man, genetics, nutrition, and starting level matter. Your results will be unique to you, and mine to me.
Stupid: I'm bulking
RW response: This isn't stupid for everyone. But it's stupid for literally every single person that has told me this. If you are Asian (like me), 90% of your friends have probably said that they are bulking at some point, meaning they are allowed to eat as much ice cream and pizza as they want. The plan is then to lose the fat and be left with more muscle and lower fat.......yea......I've this successful like never. If you've done this successfully or confident on how you are going to execute successfully, you probably don't need to read this article. If you are dreaming of doing this so you can eat ice cream, let me save you some time and effort. Forget about this.
Stupid: I need to work abs
RW response: Just do squat, bench, and dead. They already work your core, with way more weight. If you want to see your abs, you have to lose fat. You do this in the kitchen, not the gym.
Cool knowledge for normal people
So how does muscle growth actually work? (simplified version)
- You lift weights with med/high intensity
While doing the exercise, you produce metabolic stress (lack of oxygen/nutrients which leads to lactate, hydrogen ion, phosphate, creatine accumulation), mechanical tension (weight on muscle), and micro damage (from lifting mod/heavy weight many times). You only need one of these stressors to build muscle.
The above results in direct changes at the muscle cell level including inflammatory-like responses (as a result of muscle damage), myogenic pathways which include activation of Akt/mTOR pathway and MAPK signaling modules (both of which increase muscle synthesis and repair, and inhibit muscle degradation). In addition, there is a an increase post-exercise in testosterone, IGF-1 (MGF is most important isoform), and growth hormone (link to review paper on hormones)
The inflammatory response, myogenic pathways, and hormones activate satellite cells, which are dormant stem cells in muscle. The satellite cells turn into myoblasts, which multiply and divide, and turn into new fiber AKA muscle growth!
Of note, this process takes days to weeks. However, when you lift and your muscles feel big while doing it AKA "the pump" that is from cell swelling. Interestingly cell swelling, in itself, also has an anabolic effect on muscle.
Optional info for nerding out
I think its really cool how Satellite cells work.
Satellite cells are a type of stem cell in muscle tissue. They usually just sit around, dormant, but can be activated through many different ways, as a result of resistance exercise. You could say the main point of lifting is to activate satellite cells.
It's pretty cool that there are so many pathways that activate them:
- akt/mTOR pathway
- MAPK pathway
- IGF-1 (MGF is the most important isoform)
- Testosterone (more on T in the future)
Details for how each happens is too detailed for this article, so I'll save it for another. There are also many other factors (calcium-dependent pathways, myostatin signaling, NF-kB pathway, PI3K-Akt pathway, PGC-1α) involved in muscle synthesis (super complex process).
After the satellite cell is activated, they turn into myoblasts. Myoblasts can divide and proliferate.
These myoblasts then fuse with existing damaged muscle fibers or with each other to form new fibers, thus contributing to muscle hypertrophy and recovery from damage (from working out).
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