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You are training very hard, you are taking care of your diet, but you are still not gaining muscle. If you’re doing everything you’re supposed to do, why results are not coming?
In reality, gaining muscle is relatively simple, but not as simple as simply training and taking care of your diet. There are other things that must be taken into account. Let’s go through them!
- You are not eating enough
Although, as we explained in this article , you can gain muscle and lose weight at the same time, it is not easy and certainly not optimal . If your main goal is to gain muscle, you should be in a slight caloric surplus (200-300 Cal above maintenance level) so that your body is in some anabolic mode. To make sure this surplus is light and you don’t gain more fat than you would like in the process, we advise you to measure what you eat. If you don’t know how to do it, we will tell you in this article .
If in addition to gaining muscle, you would need to lose weight, our advice is that you first reach your ideal weight and start gaining muscle from there.
- You are not getting enough protein
Most people are not aware of the calories and macros they consume. As we explained in this article , protein is the only macronutrient of which we need a minimum amount. This amount is established at 1.6 grams per kilo of ideal weight per day. If you are in a calorie deficit, it may be a good idea to increase the amount to 2 grams per kilo of ideal weight per day. There is a lot of scientific evidence about it and these quantities are totally safe. This goal can easily be reached with real food if you make a conscious, measured effort to get there, but most fall far short. It is easy to do the test and see where you are (again we refer you to the article we wrote about how and why to measure )
Increasing the amount above 2 grams is not dangerous, but it will not give you additional benefits.
- Your weekly training volume is not enough
As we explained in our article on how to gain muscle , a minimum number of sets is needed for each muscle group per week. This number is between 15 and 20 series. This doesn’t mean you have to do all those sets of every exercise. For example, if in the same workout you do five sets of squats and another five sets of leg extension, you would already have 10 sets with which you are impacting the front of your legs.
In order to reach this number of sets, it is important that you have a well-defined training plan and that you avoid going to the gym without a clear objective, simply training with the machines that are available when you are there.
- You are not training hard enough
While it is not advisable to bring each set to muscle failure, as this would exhaust your central nervous system and cause you to overtrain, if you want to gain muscle, it is important to get close to failure in each set. This means that your set should take you to a point from which you could do just one or two more repetitions; the last few reps have to be very difficult to complete. This will make your body involve the greatest number of muscle fibers and that all of them will receive the necessary stimulus to adapt and grow.
Choose a load that allows you to do between 5 and 25 repetitions; This is what we consider the optimal rep range. If you can’t reach 5, the load is excessive. If you can do more than 25 repetitions, the load is excessively light. Of course you can gain muscle with less than 5 or more than 25 repetitions, but in the first case the stress on your nervous system will be excessive and in the second, your workouts will last hours.
- You are not being consistent with your training plan
We often become obsessed with achieving quick results and change our training plan every two weeks. By constantly changing, the stimuli change and our muscles do not adapt and therefore do not grow.
Gaining muscle is a very slow and laborious process which requires a lot of patience and consistency. A well-designed training plan should last at least 3-4 months (although a good plan can give results for years); If you haven’t spent at least three months training consistently, with enough frequency and enough intensity, you must follow the plan and wait. An acceptable muscle gain under optimal conditions (age, nutrition, training, rest…) is around 1% of your lean mass per month. You need many months of doing things well for the results to be seen in the mirror. Be patient!
- You are not progressively increasing loads
To gain muscle it is imperative that the loads increase progressively. Whether by increasing the weight or increasing the number of total repetitions, your muscles should receive increasing stimulation. Otherwise, they will adapt to the load you are training with and stay as they are.
Again, the only way to ensure this overload is sticking with a good training plan and tracking in each session your loads and repetitions.
- You’re not getting enough rest.
Rest is frequently defined as “invisible training.” Many times we are victims of our desire to see results and we do not let our muscles have enough rest for the workouts to have their effect.
Remember that muscle grows when it is allowed to rest after having been stimulated. As we explained in this article, the ideal would be about three or four strength sessions a week. More is not going to be better.
Another very important variable of rest is the quality and quantity of our night’s rest. In this article we tell you everything you need to know to optimize your night’s rest.
We hope these instructions are useful to you. If, despite applying them, you still see that you are not gaining muscle, call us; Maybe we can help you…😉