The Best Basic Guide for Building Muscle
Welcome, User. Today, you will learn Bodybuilding; Muscles, Workout, Nutrition, Recovery - All the fundamentals of Building and Maintaining muscle mass.
Hormones & Testosterone
Hormones play a huge role when it comes to having a properly functioning body. For instance, if you're deficient and/or malnourished, that most likely means your hormones & testosterone is affected, therefore, trying to build muscle, lose fat, and maintain muscle overall will be very difficult. If testosterone is affected - your health & performance and hormone quality will be decreased greatly.
It's important to prioritize hormone & testosterone levels. To ensure your body is healthy and that every process will be effective & efficient. It's best to optimize hormones for optimal growth.
To support hormones & testosterone; focus on a healthy lifestyle. Focus on nutritious clean foods (eat clean and healthy), don't become underweight or overweight, stay in a healthy weight range, exercise, control stress, and have proper sleep. If you focus on all of these factors, your hormones & testosterone won't dip [greatly or at all].
But many factors disrupt our hormones & testosterone. Firstly, testosterone & hormone levels rise and dip throughout the day, so you don't really have to worry about that much. Secondly, it's really hard to maintain a healthy diet/nutrition, exercise, sleep, and a good-looking physique. So many people end up neglecting or not prioritizing as much such as sleep or clean eating or exercising as much. So if you're one of these people - your hormones and testosterone will be affected and this is not optimal. Especially if you've been doing this for a long time - for years - then you should start optimizing your health and habits in order to get your hormones & testosterone levels back where they should be - for optimal performance, and gains.
-> Herbs to help regulate & improve hormones and testosterone
If it's really hard for you to have proper sleep or diet, then utilizing supplements in this situation would be beneficial. Using testosterone/vitality boosters will definitely aid in regulating & optimizing hormones and testosterone. Using protein powder to help get in more protein, nutrients, and calories. Using herbs is also beneficial to help optimize and regulate testosterone and hormones such as ashwagandha, and many many other herbal compounds. These nutrients, herbs, essential vital vitamins, and minerals can be bought from CentraPeak if you're interested in supplementing & optimizing your hormones and testosterone.
-> Effective Supplements with Important vitamins and herbs to increase natural testosterone
Workout & Intensity
It's important to stay consistent with your workouts. Don't work out excessively; you should work out for ~3/4 days. And the rest of the following days should be recovery days. Do not train one muscle group more than 2x a week. You should work out hard and intensely. Intensity is what brings the damage. The damage is what causes the muscle/body to create the development of NEW muscle/tissue.
So, with this being said; You need to train harder each and every time when you go work out. Do not stay with the same routines, week by week. You need progressive overload to continuously build muscle.
If you're doing the same repetitive routines - you won't simply grow. Intensity is needed - more reps, heavier weights, more time under tension, more drop sets/super sets, static holds - anything that increases the workout intensity and tension/stress - this will promote progressive overload which is needed to continuously build muscle.
If you're experiencing weakness, loss of progression, or don't see any progression - perhaps you're overtraining or not nourishing the body enough.
So eat more, rest better, or focus on the symptoms overall.
Compounds movements are great to build overall mass and strength. Bodybuilding-type workouts are best in my opinion for overall growth. Focusing on each and every individual muscle group is the best way to grow the body - your frame overall.
If you don't stay consistent with working out, then you'll start losing mass and strength, so working out for 3/4x a week is good enough.
Food Intake (Calories), Nutrition & Diet
When it comes to gaining muscle mass - food is really important. The amount of food plays a role on how much mass you're wanting. If you're in a calorie deficit, for example, it'll be very difficult to build and maintain muscle. So in order to grow more muscle, and to continue building muscle, it's optimal to stay in a slight calorie surplus. If you go excessive with a calorie surplus - you'll become fat/overweight which isn't ideal nor optimal for muscle growth.
It's best to consume all food groups - no restrictions. Restriction diets like keto aren't ideal nor optimal for muscle growth because you're restricting very important nutrients, vitamins, and minerals that properly nourish the body. So with that being said, strive for healthy nutritious clean foods. Eat in a surplus, and have an array of nutrients to retrieve all of those vital nutrients for proper nourishment.
You can go about a dirty or lean bulk. Lean bulk means that you're eating clean and properly but in a slight calorie surplus, whereas dirty bulk, it is the concept of eating whatever just to gain weight [mass]. But with that comes health issues by eating junk food all the time. So I wouldn't recommend it. Because you'll become ill, and fat.
Staying consistent with your food intake, staying to a calorie goal, and eating properly are required to maintain your muscle mass. Especially if you're wanting to GROW - you need food! Food is so important. It is what fuels us, nourishes us, and repairs and replenishes our hormones, energy, testosterone, and overall health.
If you eat poorly all the time, that will affect your hormones, testosterone, energy, mental, and physical state. It's not good nor optimal to stay eating poor toxic foods. Over time, you may develop obesity and diabetes.
Recovery, Sleep, & Rest
Rest, and Recovery is needed. Sleep is part of recovery, and it is Crucial! So vital that many people don't pay attention too. And unaware of its effects on the body. The human body needs proper sleep - every day. If you don't have a proper sleeping schedule, and if you just completely ignore sleep, and the quality of sleep, it'll affect your overall health, hormones, testosterone, performance, mental and physical health & state.
By having a proper sleeping schedule, you're ensuring that your body is getting its [100%] recovery. Repairing the damages replenishes the energy, hormone, and testosterone levels. Restoring its overall health status. Having a proper sleep routine will be the best & option when it comes to Muscle growth, along with nutrition.
Having hindered sleep will impact your hormones & testosterone. This is linked to building muscle, losing fat, and overall well-being. You can improve this by improving lifestyle factors/habits, and focusing on nutrition. And using supplements.
Supplements