- Lift heavy / strength – your body is designed to move , get really good at the exercises that you recruit the most amount of muscle fibres. Squats, deadlifts, Military press, bench press Are great examples. Once you get the hard stuff out of the way, then end the workout with the squeezy movements. Strength is one of the best indicators to monitor how you are progressing too. Progressive overload is the term. Weekly try and make a small increase in either the amount of repetitions you are doing on a weight or the amount of weight you are lifting for the amount of reps. It is a must that you do not lose form, lifting a heavier weight the next week with less technique is not progress.
- Macros – making sure that you stay in a surplus over 7 days while trying to bulk is a must , meaning eating more calories than you burn. A bare minimum of 1g of protein per pound of bw is a must.
- Rest – is one of those things that if often looked past. I’ve heard people saying ” you’re not over training, you’re just under eating” I don’t think that’s the case. Your body needs time to recover from the stress from the weight sessions and to allow the muscles to rebuild. Instead of using those precious days to lift weights, I recommend taking the time to retune my body by foam rolling stretching. That way when you get back into the gym your body feels brand new again.
- You Don’t need to stuff yourself ridiculously to gain muscle. That’s an old school approach which quite often comes with extreme body fat gain – its best to work out the calories your body needs per week to maintain its current weight then I’d start off by upping your calories gradually.
- Patience – building good quality muscle takes a while, so embrace the bulk life! if you are spending most of the year getting shredded then it’s not likely your muscle mass will change much.
