IF YOU BELONG to a certain type of gym, you might notice you're surrounded by massive dudes pushing even more massive weights. Their approach seems to be working in the muscle-building department, and their physiques are impressive to say the least. You want to get jacked like them, but you wonder: does building muscle really require that much time and dedication?
The answer is somewhere between yes and no. Committing to fitness can be tough with all the distractions and conveniences in day-to-day life, especially if your goal is to develop a consistent training plan and dial-in your diet to build real muscle. Developing an Arnold-esque physique takes decades of logged gym hours and a rock-solid nutrition plan. If you’re not looking to become the next Mr. Olympia, though, building muscle doesn’t have to be that complex.
Here are a few tips to mastering the art of muscle-building. Once you put these into practice, you can apply an even more focused plan by following MH’s Definitive Muscle-Building Guide, a comprehensive plan with a four-week training program and dietary directives to help you make gains.
The 10 Principles of Building Muscle
1. Prioritize Protein Intake
The more protein your body stores—in a process called protein synthesis—the larger your muscles grow. But your body is constantly draining its protein reserves for other uses, like making hormones, for instance.
The result is less protein available for muscle building. To counteract that, you need to “build and store new proteins faster than your body breaks down old proteins,” says Michael Houston, Ph.D., a professor of nutrition at Virginia Tech University.
Shoot for about 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight, which is roughly the maximum amount your body can use in a day, according to a landmark study in the Journal of Applied Physiology.
For example, a 160-pound man should consume around 160 grams of protein a day—the amount he’d get from an 8-ounce chicken breast, 1 cup of cottage cheese, a roast-beef sandwich, two eggs, a glass of milk, and 2 ounces of peanuts. Split the rest of your daily calories equally between carbohydrates and fats.
2. Eat More
