As summer approaches, you want to make sure you get into the best shape of your life. Part of getting into great shape is building muscle, yet this is often the toughest aspect for most of us.
So how do you do it? What are the best exercises and other activities needed to build your muscles?
This quick guide will show you some essential muscle building tips. Regardless of your age, weight, etc., these are bound to help you in your journey with building muscle.
Here’s what you must know:
1. Nutrition
Strength and conditioning is only one part of building muscle. Without the right diet, even the best exercises will be rendered useless. You want to ensure that you eat in a caloric surplus to build muscle.
As a general rule, you should also consume 1 gram of protein for every pound of your current weight. Make sure you consider nutritional supplements along with your meals to expedite muscle building.
You also must drink lots of water along with your meals. As a general rule, drinking 1 gallon of water per day is advised for building muscle. You must also cut down or avoid poor nutrition. This includes candy, alcohol, drugs, etc. Even an occasional glass of beer can wipe out a day’s effort of healthy eating.
2. Weighted Exercises
While you can start with bodyweight exercises, you should eventually graduate to using weights to build muscle. For example, when you want to build your lower body then you should squat with a weighted barbell on your shoulders.
Likewise, use a barbell to bench press to build your chest muscles. You can use a barbell and dumbbells to curl and build your biceps and triceps.
These weighted exercises can be challenging and if you’re not careful, you’ll face serious injury. As a result, it’s best to hire a personal trainer to help with strength and conditioning.
3. Improve Your Lifestyle
The final step is to ensure that you live a healthy lifestyle to ensure continuous muscle growth. At a bare minimum, make sure you get 6 to 8 hours of sleep each night. You want to avoid staying up late for no reason.
You also need to improve your mental health if you want to improve your physical health. While stress is a normal part of life, if you feel overstressed then you won’t see results with muscle building.
Make sure you strike a balance between your work life and recreation. This ensures that you’ll build muscle in the long run.
Follow These Muscle Building Tips
Now you can follow these muscle building tips and get into the best shape of your life!
You want to start by improving your nutrition. You want to have whole foods and consider supplements to help you build muscle. Drink 1 gallon of water per day and increase your protein intake.
Make sure that you graduate to using weights for your exercises with the assistance of a personal trainer. You also want to live a balanced lifestyle so that you can ensure continuous muscle building in the long run.
You can find more great fitness tips on our blog.
