Nutrition plays a vital role in gaining muscle from your resistance training. Making sure you eat an appropriate amount of macronutrients--protein, carbohydrates, fiber, healthy fats--is mission-critical for muscle growth.
If you've determined that your nutrition is in order and you're still not seeing gains at the gym, you might be making the same mistake I made.
I am a creature of consistency when it comes to my workout schedule. But sometimes consistency isn't the best.
For the record, I'm not a bodybuilder or someone who is trying to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his heyday. I enjoy exercising and lifting weights to increase my strength and stamina and improve my health.
As such, I was always okay with steady, albeit slower, progress. But, recently, I decided I was ready to start amping it up at the gym. I was prepared to see marked improvement, so I experimented with different methods. I found one that worked.
Usually, my workout week looked like this: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday were reserved for upper-body resistance training. Tuesdays and Thursdays were leg days.
There were a few issues with the strategy above. I was spreading out the upper body workouts too much. Doing biceps, triceps, back, shoulders, forearms and chest in one workout session was decidedly inefficient.
I ran out of energy and time before giving each muscle group proper attention.
Imagine a teacher with 30 students. It will be difficult for her to give focused nurturing to each student in the time she has to train them. Classroom size is one of the issues with public schools. The potency of her effort is diluted in proportion to the number of students she has.
Now imagine if the teacher had only three students. She can invest more focus and energy into them, and they would benefit significantly from that high attention level.
The same is true for training your muscles.
I switched my workout schedule to look like this: Mondays and Thursdays for biceps, back and forearms. Tuesdays and Fridays for chest, shoulder and triceps. Wednesday is leg day.
Reducing the number of muscle groups trained during an upper-body workout session allowed me to give proper attention to each exercise.
Interestingly, I found myself doing more reps and sets with heavier weights. Focusing on those targeted areas made all the difference.
With the thinly-spread workout, I would be a little sore the next day, but nothing to write home about. However, by focusing on only three muscle groups, I got some severe DOMS. (That's what you want.)
Over the next few weeks, I noticed a rapid improvement in muscle gain. So my advice to you, if you do not see desired results from your resistance training, is to focus on fewer muscles during each workout and increase your sets, reps or the amount of weight you lift.
Consistency isn't always the best. It can lead you right to a plateau. Change up your workouts. Add more weights for one workout session, and do more reps and sets the next. And most importantly, make sure you're giving proper attention to each muscle group.
Give it a try!
Happy gains!
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