Struggling to Build Muscle?

So, you want to build muscle? Have you been going to the gym day in and day out, but no matter what, you still can not manage to gain that ‘head-turning’ muscle or brute lifting strength? Who does not want to have a pair of ‘boulder shoulders,’ a ‘treasure chest,’ and an impressive 220-pound (or more) bench press?

There are many of you who ask yourself, ‘Why am I not gaining muscle yet?’ Well, almost always, you do not actually understand the purpose of skeletal muscle and why it grows.

More often than not, ‘new gym goers’ forget to learn about nutrition before entering the weights room. Generally, they do not eat enough protein for muscle growth and recovery from lifting. By no means is this disregarding other dietary requirements, but protein intake is key for those desired gains.

Talking about workouts! Some ‘gym goers’ do not have a proper workout routine. From decades of observing the gym environment, ‘newbies’ often go from machine to machine, not really knowing what they are doing. The worst one is when they just hang around talking to their buddies or scroll on their phones endlessly!

Another struggle is rest and recovery. Not just lifters, but people in general do not give themselves the opportunity to get in those crucial hours of sleep for muscle and hormonal recovery.

Last but not least, ‘consistency’. A lot of gym goers are not consistent with their workout routines. For example, they may work out for a few months, followed by a few weeks or even months off. During this off period, muscle gains are halted or even reversed, leading to noticeable muscle loss.

If one is guilty of not putting in the work, all is not lost, as changes can be made today.

Within the main body of the article, we have covered all of the above in much more detail, giving you an idea of how to reach your muscle and fitness goals.

Understanding Skeletal Muscle

Without getting into the overly technical jargon, there are ~640 muscles in the human body. Within a muscle, you have smaller microfilaments that make up hundreds of thousands of muscle fibers. Muscle fibers contract to promote movement at a joint.

An example could be the actin and myosin microfilaments within the ~100,000 muscle fibers of the bicep. To perform a bicep curl, the actin slides over the myosin to shorten the muscle fibers (elbow flexion). To lengthen the muscle, the microfilaments move back into their original position.

If muscle fibers are overloaded by lifting weights, muscles should become visibly larger and stronger over time as an adaptation to the stress. This is also known as resistance training-induced muscle protein synthesis.

Such adaptations can prepare a lifter to resist larger forces (lift heavier weights) while lowering the chances of muscle strain or rupture. More on this in the next section.

Factors Affecting Muscle Growth & How To ‘Fix’ Them

The growth of a muscle can be hindered by a lack of protein intake, suboptimal workouts, lack of sleep, and lack of consistency.

Importance of Protein Intake

Protein intake is just as important as busting your backside in the gym (not literally) when it comes to muscle growth.

Dietary protein is made up of all nine essential amino acids contained in food sources like whey, milk, egg, chicken, and beef. High daily protein intake promotes muscle protein synthesis, which is the scientific term for muscle growth and recovery.

Time and again, effective amounts of protein intake are missed amongst new lifters. Subsequently, missing out on opportunities to gain muscle and recover properly from workouts.

Total Dietary Protein Intake

According to practitioners, lifters can target 1g of protein per pound of body weight, which should be enough to ‘feed’ the muscles to grow. For an average 160lb male, this would be 160g of protein per day.

Maximizing Muscle Protein Synthesis

According to the literature, by eating a high quality meal, muscle protein synthesis (muscle building) overtakes muscle protein degradation (muscle loss).

This keeps people in the ‘muscle building/recovery mode’ for a good 3 hours before dropping off. At this point, we can eat another meal or snack to boost muscle recovery once again. Give or take, 30-40g of high quality protein per meal or snack should do the trick.

By no means does this mean focusing on meal timing is more important than total protein intake? However, just to go the extra length, a lifter could spread total protein intake across 3-5 meals and/or snacks.

This could look like 3 x 40g protein meals (i.e., chicken breast, fish fillet, beef chunks, etc.) and 2 x 20g protein from a snack (i.e., protein shakes and bars, etc.). This eating pattern could hit the 160g protein target that we mentioned.

Some supplements like BCAA can be taken with meals to boost your overall amino profile if you ever opt for lower-quality protein sources like soy.

BCAA can also be taken a couple of hours after a meal to elongate the anabolic response slightly. Why not check out the high quality BCAA at Biaxol supplements?

The Role of Resistance Training in Muscle Development

‘Newbie’ lifters are guilty of not overloading the muscle enough to promote significant strength and hypertrophy (muscle growth).

Ideally, these lifters could employ a trainer to help figure out their maximal 1RM lift. For example, a maximal bench press could be 133 pounds (100% intensity) for the average male newbie.

Once lifters get an idea of their current strength, they can tweak the weights to put themselves into the hypertrophy lifting ranges.

Decades upon decades of research have shown these muscle-building lifting ranges to be around 65-85% intensity. By default, rep ranges would be limited to 6-12 per set. In the practical setting, this could look like a 100lb bench press (75% intensity) for 10 reps and three sets.

On the other hand, lifters can opt to periodize their training and go through some strength training phases. As the name suggests, strength training emphasizes lifting strength.

In turn, a lifter’s maximal strength may go up. After 10 weeks of proper lifting (including all lifting phases), a 10-20% strength increase is realistic. Keeping it modest, a lifter’s maximal strength could increase from 133 lb to 146 lb (10% strength gains).

At this point, the example lifter can revert back to muscle-building phases and lift more weight at a given intensity, thereby pushing for more overload and muscle gains. Give or take, 75% bench press may go up from 100 lb x 10 reps to 110 lb x 10 reps.

Muscle growth is the goal of many. Typically, many experts put their clients through a week of learning proper exercise cues and movement patterns. This could follow 4 weeks of hypertrophy training and then 4 weeks of strength training just before starting the next training cycle.

The Significance of Sleep

Skipping past all of the technical stuff, certain stages of sleep help recover/repair bodily tissues and maintain hormonal balance. So, without getting enough high quality sleep, you might be losing out on muscle gains.

Sleep requirements vary from person to person, but on average, we should be looking at 7 hours.

Some general tips to get longer and higher quality sleep would be:

Give yourself the opportunity to sleep by getting into bed on time
Only use your bed for sleep to build positive associations
Wake up consistently early to build up sleep drive throughout the day
Avoid napping
Avoid caffeine 12 hours before bedtime to keep the body relaxed
Avoid screens an hour before bed or apply a blue light filter to promote melatonin release
Include high-melatonin foods in the diet, like dark red cherries

Consistency: The need for a regular workout routine.

Many lifters start off working out consistently but then start to fall off. To build visible muscle, a lifter would have to max out resistance training-induced muscle protein synthesis of each muscle group at least once per week. Consistently doing so can help a lifter to keep adding muscle to the frame instead of stopping workouts and losing muscle.

Take Home Message

All in all, the body has many muscle groups composed of muscle cells and microfilaments. These muscles are responsible for movement at joints.

These muscle cells are broken down through resistance training and then built larger and stronger using amino acids via supplements and a protein-rich diet. Dietary protein targets of 1g/lb of body weight, spread out throughout the day, should maximize muscle building.

Do not forget that getting enough sleep is also crucial for body recovery and hormonal balance. This can be improved by applying the tips that we highlighted. Last but not least, just be consistent to keep adding to your muscle gains, makes sense, right?

Always consult with a licensed trainer or healthcare professional before making any significant lifestyle changes.

After reading this article, many will never have to utter the words ‘Why am I not gaining muscle’ again.

If you have any questions regarding product usage or purchasing, feel free to contact us directly.

Remember that this article is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice and treatment provided by your physician or licensed healthcare provider.