How to Build Muscle the Correct Way: Maximize Your Muscle Gains by Avoiding 3 Common Mistakes

This question often comes up with beginning bodybuilders and those new to lifting wanting to gain muscle...

What is the fastest way to build muscle?  Well, the common answer to that is to tell you the rules to build muscle efficiently and how you can implement those rules with a well-rounded weightlifting program for long term progress.  You want a program that builds a decent amount of muscle as fast as possible.

But the easiest way to understand the solution to the problem, thus solving the problem and providing a solution is to tell you what NOT to do when trying to build muscle.

Once you understand how to build muscle, you'll need to understand some common mistakes that many people make...you'll then be able to get the "big picture concept of bodybuilding success."  So how do you build muscle in the first place?  Easy.

photo credit: rich115

You build muscle by doing things that are not detrimental to the muscle growth process.  In other words, you have to stay away from unproductive habits that manages to hurt your bodybuilding goals.  When trying to build muscle, there are 3 top things to avoid.  Once you know what do avoid, you’ll get a clearer picture of how to maximize your muscle building results.

Gaining muscle is not hard to do once you know what and what not to do.

1) Avoid skipping workouts.  This is self-explanatory.  If you’re aiming for a goal, reaching to accomplish something, would you skip doing and taking the steps necessary? If you were studying to become a pharmacist, would you skip classes every day? every other day? once a week? twice a week?  No you wouldn’t.

It's the same with workouts.  Every single repetition, set, and exercise builds upon the previous successes.  Baby steps to progress.

You would show up to class every single day and pay attention to the lectures.  You’d study the text, concept, and notes.  You’d make sure you do all your biochemistry labs and papers.  You’d do group studys and show up for them too. Bodybuilding and gaining muscle is no different.  You have to show up each and every workout and actually perform the workout.  Do all of the exercises and don’t skip on any compound lift.

Compound Exercises

Compound exercises are tough, real tough.  Squats, deadlifts, bench presses involve the major muscles(triceps, shoulders, back, legs, core/abs/lower back) and are energy intensive.  They sap a lot of energy out of our system which requires a lot of work.

We feel heavily fatigue after performing the compound exercises and lifts so often, we may shy away from them.  Don’t!  Stick with compound movements and use isolation exercises as complements to your routine.

Here’s a list of compound movements and its many variations for building muscle:

• Squats, Front squats

• Deadlifts, rack deads, stiff legged deadlifts, trap bar deadlifts

• bench press, dumbbell press (flat, incline, decline)

• dumbbell military press, barbell military press, shoulder press, arnold press

• weighted dips, ring dips

• weighted chinups, pullups, ring pullups

• clean and press

• barbell bent press

• rack pulls

• barbell row, dumbbell row, bench row, t-bar row

Compound lifts are movements that often require you to move through space, though there are those like the bench press that involves a plane of your body set against a surface.  They’re the best exercises for building lean muscle mass. Don’t skip them.  Work them.  Stay with them. Arm your workouts with an arsenal of compound lifts using a full body approach.  Use the many methods of progression and get stronger on these core lifts.

photo credit: RightIndex

Pair compound lifts with isolation exercises that work the smaller muscle groups like biceps, triceps, forearms, calves, neck, grip.

Isolation Exercises

Here’s a list of the most common and effective isolation exercises:

• barbell and dumbbell curls

• lateral raises, front raises

• hise shrugs, dumbbell shrugs

• crunches, situps, chinnies, plank holds

• dumbbell or barbell wrist curls

• donkey or standing calf raises, sitting calf raises

• dumbbell tricep extension, barbell overhead tricep extension

• machine tricep extensions

• leg extensions

• hamstring curls

• hammer curls

Keep in mind these are not exhaustive lists.  Check out bodybuilding.com’s exercise database or pick up Stuart McRobert’s “Weightlifting Encyclopedia” for exercise instructions and how to properly execute each lift.

Good exercise form is essential to avoiding injury and actually targeting/working the muscles desired.  Always use good to excellent form on all exercises.  Otherwise, what’s the point?

2) Avoid skipping sleep. There’s not much to talk about for this one.  Sleep is when your muscles repair itself the most.  It’s when your muscles are allowed a full uninterrupted break to overcompensate and grow.  Muscles grow during sleep.  Muscle gains are prominent with plenty of sleep.  Get at least 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep every night.  Sleep a lot.

Take short naps throughout the day if you can’t get the required amount. Don’t party every weekend into the night and day consuming liters of alcohol.  Staying up late is fine once in a while(or once in a month) but over a long term training cycle, you want to get adequate sleep.

If you need to stay up late for studying (for those in college and high school) finals, prioritize your schedule so that you study the majority of the school work earlier than the schedule test date.  Don’t cram all at once in one night.  If gaining muscle is important to you, make it a priority.  Practice self-control.

Sleep is essential.  End of story.

3) Avoid under-eating. Eat a surplus of calories, at least 500 calories over your current calorie maintenance.  You build muscle by eating more because the muscles need “fuel” to supercharge its growth.  Muscle is, after all, very energy intensive and “expensive” to maintain.  This is energy balance at work.  You must be at a positive nutrient balance by eating more than you expend at the end of the day.

Here’s the bodybuilding nutrition formula to build muscle quickly and fast:

Total Calories = Calories consumed/Eaten + Calories Expended

Calories consumed is the number of calories you eat per day and calories expended is how much you use per day.  If you have a high activity level or work out a lot you have to eat more to ensure total calories remain positive ( + ).  If you work at a desk ( white collar office guy) all day, then calories could be lower but it also has to be positive for you to build muscle.

Eat more and grow muscle.  It’s that simple.  Eat plenty of protein, fats, and carbs.  Stay with high quality whey and casein sources of whole proteins ( lean meats, eggs with yolk, chicken breast, fish, tuna), plenty of whole grain carbohydrates( whole grain oats, wheat bread and cereals), and essential fats in the form of EFAs and fatty acids like flax oil and flax seed.

Drink plenty of water.  Give your body ammunition and reason to grow.  If you don’t eat, you won’t build muscle.  Guys just starting out often ask questions like:

• How to build muscle?

• How to build muscle fast?

• What to eat to build muscle?

• What is the best way to build muscle fast?

• What are the quickest ways to build muscle?

Just eat more!  There, question answered ( ok maybe not so simple but eating more goes a long way to your muscle building progress, proper nutrition and exercise programming is still essential in the long term).

To sum it up, get plenty of sleep(at least 6-8 hours) per night, eat plenty of calories, and stay consistent with your workouts( don’t skip workouts) and you’ll build muscle.  You’ll build muscle fast, quickly, and easily if you adhere to these rules(rules to avoid).

Also, check out the muscle building 101 guide (5-parts series) for a more detailed overview of the steps necessary for building muscle and strength.

Train Hard. Train Safely. Train Smart.

If you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to leave a comment below or email me at ZQH245@gmail.com or ZQH250@gmail.com

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