How Can I Gain Muscle Fast?

Whenever you try to gather information regarding any project that you have decided to undertake, you are likely to get conflicting opinions. It is the same with muscle building, and if you are a beginner, you can expect a variety of differing advice when you ask "How can I gain muscle fast?" You will even find many people selling magic pills promising overnight results.

One thing that is sure is that you need to train properly for natural and fast muscle gain. As a beginner, you should keep the following points in mind. These are, in fact, basic guidelines that will set you on the right track:

Hard Training

There is no shortcut to a solid physique. Also, it cannot be achieved in a short period. Depending on your commitment and the time you devote to training, muscle building is basically a lot of hard work. No matter how strongly motivated you are, there will be times when you will get discouraged. You have to get over that. You can build a muscular body only if you do not give up till you reach the point of failure in every set you perform.

What is the point of failure? It is the point at which you are unable to perform the next rep properly in its correct form.

The basic mantra of achieving muscle gains is that if you are not performing at the optimal level, you have no right to expect maximal results.

Weight Training

If you want rock solid muscles, you should be prepared to train with weights and focus on compound exercises. You can lose fat by many other means such as creating a calorie deficit, but it is possible to maximize muscle gains by training with free weights and performing exercises that stimulate more than one muscle group.

Some examples of compound exercises are the bench press, dead-lift, squat, dip, lunge and overhead press. Compound exercises stimulate optimal muscle fibers and also allow you to handle heavier weights.

Structured Training, Not Overtraining

Hard training does not imply overtraining. A workout has to be structured in a way such that it does not exceed your tolerance limits. Weights and reps need to be progressively increased. The time you spend in the gym has no relevance to how well you train.

What you need to understand is that your muscles do not grow in the gym but when you are resting. Training is about fat loss and increasing the resting metabolic rate of the body. Fat loss is important for increasing the volume to surface of the body: the bigger you are, the slower the metabolic rate.

Moreover, during training, you are basically damaging your muscles. When you are resting, you are basically giving time to muscles to recover. If muscles do not recover from damage, there is no chance of them growing. A training program that does not take this into account is not even worth looking at.

Nutrition

No training program is complete unless if does not consider nutrition. Training is only one part of muscle building; the second is diet that delivers adequate nutrients, including micronutrients. Nutrition, in the context of weight training, is not only about eating enough, but also about eating the right kind of foods.

• Contrary to popular belief, fats are as necessary as other two major food groups, i.e. carbohydrates and proteins. The focus has to be on healthy fats and in the recommended percentage.

• One of the major aspects of delivering nutrients in the proper manner is to eat frequent meals instead of the traditional three meals a day. Eating 5-7 small meals in a day keeps your body in the anabolic state, which promotes constructive metabolism.

You have also to take care that you eat adequate (recommended percentage) high quality proteins and complex carbohydrates in every meal.

• If you are training to build muscle, you have to increase your protein intake a bit higher than the percentage recommended for an individual who is not training.

Proteins are the building blocks of muscle and are found in every single cell in the body. Unless you consume a significant amount of protein on a daily basis, the body will not be able to synthesize proteins effectively to build lean muscle. Protein plays a major role not only in building, but also repairing muscle tissues.

• Of even bigger importance is where you source your protein from. Bodybuilding requires you to ingest high quality protein sourced from milk, cottage cheese, eggs, fish, and poultry. For a person training hard, the recommended amount of daily protein intake is between 1 and 1.5 grams of protein per one pound of body weight.

• Water is perhaps the most ignored nutrient. Yes, water is a nutrient because it is as crucial to life as other foods. Your muscles are 70% water. Recent research reveals that even a small percentage (3-4%) drop in body fluids can lead to 20-30% drop in muscle contractions.

Drink more water- at least 0.6 ounces per pound of body weight on daily basis. It will not only make your muscles look fuller, but also drastically reduce the risk of dehydration when you are sweating it out in the gym.

Commitment

This should actually appear at the beginning of the article. In plain and simple language, you cannot have fast muscle gains if you are not committed to the cause. Muscle building requires a strong sense of commitment, and you need to be consistent with training.

You need to go to the gym and train according to a prepared schedule. At the same time, you need not be obsessive about it, because you also need rest. Training for 2 or 3 days a week should suffice for beginners. Once you start enjoying it, you will see that nobody will be able to keep you away from it.

Another thing you need to keep in mind that knowing these guidelines is not enough to answer the question "How can I gain muscle fast?" For the success of any project, you obviously need to gather more complete information- but you have also to apply it and act according to what you have learned.