This is a natural question to ask as you're beginning the journey to size. As there's no blanket answer for everyone. As your strength increases, then your max lifts will also increase. Since bodybuilders have been trying to get huge since the dawn of strength sports, plenty of research has been done to pinpoint the magic numbers of sets and reps to achieve hypertrophy.

Now let's talk about how often you should lift. A major contributor to this training is how often you work various muscle groups. The more often you're able to work with various groups under tension, then the closer you'll get to reaching your goal. An overlooked but equally important ingredient to proper training is rest.

That goes for both rest periods within your workouts and the rest you take between workouts. Even the best athletes have a rest day programmed into their training. This will allow your muscles to regain some, but not all, of their energy stores before the next set. Starting from zero, you'll want to be aware of the phases of building muscular definition before drawing your action plan.

The phases of training are the adaption, hypertrophy specific training hst and maintenance stages. Each training stage has nearly the same ideal quantity of days you should be weight training per week. The slight adjustment in frequency and what you should be doing within each phase is vital to building your muscle tissue.

Now that we've reviewed the science behind muscle growth, the difference between strength-focused training, and the importance of volume, let's get to putting all the pieces in action!

If the plan is to bulk up, your body will need to first adapt to lifting heavy weights for several repetitions.

Your joints and muscles need to be conditioned for hypertrophy training so each movement can be performed safely through its full range of motion.

When you're first starting your training phase, it's important to focus on how your body moves through each motion. As your strength and volume increase, pay close attention to how your body moves under tension.

Are you completing the reps and setting with good form? It's easy to sacrifice form in order to "complete" the set. However, this does not work the muscles appropriately.

You will not only sacrifice gains for that particular muscle or muscle group but you also open yourself to everyone's least favorite word: injury. Monitoring your movements will prepare and enhance your long-term performance while reducing the risk of injury. If you're injured then you won't be able to work out and no one wants that.

During the adaptation phase, you should be participating in weight training roughly times per week. This stage lasts weeks and can be mentally challenging. Be prepared to experience soreness. While adapting to this form of exercise, your body's physiological response can be quite painful.

Your body will likely be feeling sore and achy for days as it gets used to muscle fibers breaking down and repairing. This is a normal feeling during this phase.

The adaptation phase requires the most patience. The goal is to gain strength and recover. Yes, you read that correctly. As we said earlier, before you see growth, you need to adapt to regular training under tension. A lot of people find this hard to accept and we get it.

That's why it's best to know this stage exists. Now you can be prepared to tackle it face-on. Remember, this is what every athlete before you has done.

To successfully perform, recover, and transition through this phase, practice doing reps of every exercise and give yourself plenty of rest time seconds in between sets. This will give your energy stores plenty of time to regenerate before your next set.

Choose easy, single-movement exercises instead of compound movements. Pick different isolated exercises that target specific muscles within each muscle group. For example, you could start by doing a few sets of bicep curls.

After you've completed the reps and set, move to tricep extensions. Your body will need hours to recover. If your body needs that extra day to rest, then give it an additional 24 hours before you work out again. This is the method of transitioning into the hypertrophy phase muscle-building stage.

The secondary objective is to eventually train each muscle group within a hour window as your body starts to handle the recovery process better. Accompanied by a good diet and adequate sleep, the muscle fibers should now be able to train and lift to their full potential.

For the first half of the adaptation phase weeks of training , try the following. To finish out the adaptation phase weeks of training , try the following. Overcoming the adaptation phase, you'll feel minimal pain and aches after working for each muscle group if any.

Say hello to volume! Get ready to lift heavier, reduce your reps and lower your rest times. You'll increase your sets per week during this stage and possibly increase the weight you're using as you lift. Hypertrophy is the process in which we cause microscopic tears in our muscle fibers from repetitive contraction of the muscle group.

This phase is best achieved when performing reps of the maximum weight within your capability from a single-weight training exercise. When the muscle is torn and broken down, it repairs and grows with sleep and proper nutrition. It roughly takes months of lifting heavy weights to develop and grow muscle within this stage.

The length of time really depends on the extent of your muscle-building goals. Making progressions with this training protocol, you'll first notice your muscles developing and your body composition improves.

This is how your body typically responds to hypertrophy within weeks. The key to building muscle is to increase the rate of protein deposition while minimizing the rate of protein breakdown.

The muscle building process is driven by several factors, including hormones like testosterone and growth hormone, as well as the availability of amino acids and other nutrients.

While researchers and experts continue to study the science of optimizing muscle gains, performing resistance training using moderate to heavy loads, combined with relatively high protein intake , remains the only tried-and-true training method for increasing muscle mass 2.

Building muscle requires your body to deposit more protein molecules into your muscles than it removes. Resistance training with weights and ensuring proper nutrition are the primary means for accomplishing this goal.

While many types of exercise offer health benefits , the only way to reliably drive muscle growth is by using your muscles against moderate to heavy resistance. In addition, muscle growth is specific to the muscles being used. The repetition continuum is a useful concept when designing training programs for muscle building.

Stimulating muscle growth requires performing weight training exercises with an amount of weight that only allows you to perform 1—20 repetitions.

In general, the repetition continuum states that weights you can only lift for a few repetitions tend to build more strength, weights you can lift for 6—12 repetitions tend to build more muscle, and weights you can lift for 12—20 repetitions tend to increase muscular endurance.

Understand that these ranges will have some crossover, meaning that 3-repetition sets with the respective weight will cause some muscle growth, 8-repetition sets will build some strength, and repetition sets will build muscle as well.

Additionally, recent research suggests that different individuals may respond better to lower or higher repetition ranges when it comes to building muscle 3.

To put it simply, depending on who you are, your muscles may grow more with lower reps using heavy weights, or with high reps using lighter weights. In all cases, the weight must be heavy enough that performing much more than 20 reps is impossible.

The weight you choose to use should leave you at or near failure on your specified number of repetitions. The overall implication of the repetition range continuum is that you should go through different phases of training using different repetition ranges to see what gives your body the most muscle growth.

For example, to build bigger biceps, you need to perform exercises that work the biceps. This could be an isolated bicep exercise, such as a bicep curl, or a compound movement that uses the biceps, such as a pullup.

In terms of the best exercise type for muscle building, compound and isolation movements can be equally effective at causing muscle hypertrophy 4. Nevertheless, for the best long-term fitness results, you should include both compound and isolation movements in your training.

Compound movements like a barbell back squat effectively stimulate multiple large muscle groups in a single exercise and provide more functional movement for real-life activities. This leads to both more efficient workouts and more practical muscle strength.

Isolation movements are an excellent way to target specific muscles, and beginners may initially find them safer and easier to learn than compound movements.

A good rule of thumb is to perform 3 sets of 3—5 compound movements, followed by 3 sets of 1—2 isolation movements per workout. Generally, you do your heaviest sets using compound movements and perform higher repetition ranges on your isolation movements.

This allows you to benefit from each type of exercise while maximizing the overall muscle building potential of your training program and avoiding any symptoms of overtraining. Gaining muscle is possible using all repetition ranges, and some people may respond better to lower or higher repetitions with heavier or lighter weights, respectively.

Include compound and isolation movements in your program. Your diet is the second half of the muscle building equation. Most athletes, bodybuilders, and serious muscle growing enthusiasts follow some variation of a bulking and cutting cycle. Bulking periods refer to training phases during which you eat more food than you burn to support muscle growth.

On the other hand, cutting refers to a period of restricting calories to reduce body fat, all while eating and training enough to avoid losing muscle. To gain muscle, you need to provide your body with appropriate amounts of calories and nutrients, particularly protein.

Doing so will support the creation of new muscle proteins from the dietary protein you eat, which will be stimulated by the work you do in the weight room. The main goal of eating to gain muscle during a bulking phase is supplying your body with enough nutrients to grow, but not so many calories that you put on more fat than muscle.

While some minor fat gains tend to occur during periods of bulking, a sweet spot, where your body builds muscle but does not store large quantities of fat, tends to occur when you eat — surplus calories.

Your body has a maximum muscle building rate, and beyond that limit, excess calories will be stored as fat. If your goal is to have defined muscles, you want to avoid gaining too much body fat. For sustainable muscle gain without excess fat gain, you want to eat — calories per day above your baseline needs.

Many factors affect your baseline calorie needs, also known as your total daily energy expenditure, or TDEE. These factors include your age, sex, current lean body mass, physical activity, occupation, and underlying medical conditions. Greater strength begets greater mechanical tension across all exercises.

It sounds kind of circular, but the basic gist of it is that you should lift heavy at a relatively slow tempo through a full range of motion to promote muscle growth.

Engorged muscles play an important role in hypertrophy. If you've ever experienced a sleeve-splitting pump after the end of an arms workout, you've experienced metabolic stress.

When you work out hard to achieve a pump, you build up lactate, hydrogen ions, creatinine, and other metabolites, but you also prevent blood from escaping. This metabolic stress in the muscle signals adaptation. It's not uncommon to hobble out of bed the day after demolishing a workout that, in turn, demolishes your muscles.

This soreness might feel like the end of the world, but it's also indicative of muscular damage. Luckily, soreness isn't for naught; that damage to muscle tissue creates a temporary inflammatory response and releases the necessary signals for muscle growth. It's important to note that more damage instigates a great need for repair and nutrient delivery to the source of damage.

This reversal of damage promotes muscle fibers to recover and come back stronger in order to respond to future stimuli. Some soreness is OK, but excessive damage may interfere with training frequency to the detriment of maximal hypertrophy. In order to achieve the most muscular damage, focus on exercises that your body is not accustomed to, intentionally slowing down eccentric phases, and using full range of motion on multi-joint movements.

The interplay between all three of these mechanisms is crucial to helping you fill out your "smedium" T-shirt collection. No mechanism alone provides the necessary stimulus for growth—they must all be trained for maximal gains.

For example, the Romanian deadlift is a high-tension exercise which—when performed with significant load, reps, or both—will elicit all three mechanisms of hypertrophy.

In the immortal words of Ronnie Coleman, "Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but don't nobody want to lift no heavy-ass weights.

Essentially, you need to push your muscles hard, often by lifting heavy loads for reps, stimulating the release of muscle-growing hormones and other metabolites.

Our muscles get physically larger through the act of strategically consistent and harder workouts. Remember, effort is one of the most definitive drivers of muscle gain over time.

However, it's just one of the drivers. That effort needs to be coupled with a desire to push your body farther than you might think it's capable of. This is something called "progressive overload.

This doesn't mean going heavier and heavier with the weights in every set and every single workout, because sometimes, that's not possible. Over-focus on going heavy in every single workout, and you set yourself up for injury and disappointment. No, progressive overload takes place over months and months of working out.

Sure, if you're new to the gym, you may add major pounds to the bench press, partly because you're just learning the exercise. But the longer you're in the gym, the harder it is to make gains. This is why it's incredibly important to have a plan in place and build a framework for your training and nutritional habits that coincide with your goals.

Note, your muscle building strategy doesn't need to be so rigid that it leaves no room for fun. In fact, you can still eat meals you enjoy, and you don't need to spend hours in the gym, as long as when you're training and fueling yourself strategically a majority of the time.

The goal is to create a muscle building plan that is realistic for your goals and needs. The tips below will help you—whether you're a beginner or somebody who's hit a frustrating training plateau—build muscle with a strategic and realistic means.

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—making hormones, for instance.

The result is less protein available for muscle building. 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. Split the rest of your daily calories equally between carbohydrates and fats.

In addition to adequate protein, you need more calories. Use the following formula to calculate the number you need to take in daily to gain 1 pound a week. Give yourself 2 weeks for results to show up on the bathroom scale. Biceps curls are fun, but if you want to put on muscle, you have to do more to challenge your body.

And one key to doing that, says Samuel, is working through so-called "multi-joint" movements. Instead, you want to do exercises that challenge multiple joints and muscles at once.

Take, for example, a dumbbell row. Every row rep challenges biceps, lats, and core if your form is strict. Using multiple muscle groups allows you to lift more weight, says Samuel, a key stimulator of growth more on that later. And it pushes you to use muscles together, just as you do in real life.

Make sure moves like squats, deadlifts, pullups, and bench presses are in your workout to take advantage of that. All will stimulate multiple muscle groups at the same time, and in order to grow, you want to do that.

If you want to build muscle and strength, you have to train heavy, says Curtis Shannon, C. If done right, the stimulus of heavy weight going down with control and going back up will cause greater muscle tear and rebuild.

That means not every set you do should have you pumping out 10 to 15 reps. Yes, high-rep sets can have value, but for multi-joint moves like squats and bench presses, and deadlifts, don't be afraid to do sets of, say, five reps. That'll allow you to use more weight, building more pure strength, says Samuel.

And as you progress, that new strength will allow you to lift heavier weights for more reps. One way you can approach this in your training: Lead off every workout with an exercise that lets you train low-rep.

Do four sets of three to five reps on your first exercise, then do three sets of 10 to 12 reps for every move after that. A study at the University of Texas found that lifters who drank a shake containing amino acids and carbohydrates before working out increased their protein synthesis more than lifters who drank the same shake after exercising.

The shake contained 6 grams of essential amino acids—the muscle-building blocks of protein—and 35 grams of carbohydrates. You can get the same nutrients from a sandwich made with 4 ounces of deli turkey and a slice of American cheese on whole wheat bread.

But a drink is better. So tough it out. Drink one 30 to 60 minutes before your workout. Your body should move every day, but that doesn't mean your workouts should take you to fatigue and exhaustion.

Limit your weight room workouts to 12 to 16 total sets of work, and never go beyond that. This doesn't mean you can't take on a brutal workout every so often. But limit workouts that take your body to its breaking point to three times a week, never on back-to-back days.

Research shows that you'll rebuild muscle faster on your rest days if you feed your body carbohydrates.

Have a banana, a sports drink, a peanut-butter sandwich. As we mentioned earlier, one major key to muscle-building is pushing your muscles to handle progressively greater challenges. In general, most gym-goers think that means you must lift heavier in every single workout. That's simply not feasible, says Samuel.

Don't simply aim to add weight on every set of every exercise, says Samuel. But do work to improve in some way on every set of an exercise. On the next set, instead of adding weight, do the same 10 reps, but do them with even sharper form.

Sometimes, staying with the same weight for all four sets on a day can provide plenty of challenge, says Samuel, especially when you're improving your execution every set. There are other forms of progressive overload too. You can decrease the rest time between sets, going from, say, seconds to 90 seconds, or you can up the reps, or you can even do more sets.

I may deadlift pounds today four times and not be able to add weight. But if I can squeeze out a fifth rep, or even do my four reps with more control than I did last week, I'm on the right track.

One sometimes-forgotten way to progressively overload your muscles is to leave them under more of something called " time under tension ". When your muscles are working, whether they're under a bench press bar, or whether your biceps is working to curl a dumbbell upwards, they're under "tension" from the weight.

You can feel this too: If you stand holding dumbbells at your sides, your biceps aren't under tension. The moment you begin to curl them upwards, you'll feel them flex against the "tension" of the dumbbells.

Experienced lifters often use this tension to their advantage. Instead of just lifting and lowering a weight on say, that biceps curl , they lift with a specific tempo. They might curl up as fast as they can, for example, and then lower the weight for three focused seconds with good form on every rep.

Doing this leaves your muscles under tension for longer than a typical set, in which you might lift and lower the weight without any specific timing.

And that extra time under tension during a set can help spark muscle growth. Note that you can do this on almost any strength exercise.

It doesn't work for explosive exercises, like kettlebell swings, snatches, and cleans. But squats, deadlifts, curls, pullups and pushups and many other moves can be tweaked to add more time-under-tension, pushing your muscles farther on every rep. Sleep is often the forgotten variable in the journey to muscle.

You spend plenty of time training, but what you often don't realize is this: When you're asleep, your muscles are recovering and your body is growing. It's also during this period that muscle-growing hormones are secreted. You know by now that, ideally, you want to get eight to 10 hours of sleep.

That, of course, doesn't always happen, but you want to do what you can to maximize the quality of the hours you do get, if you can't hit 8 hours.

So think about your sleep setup if you're serious about muscle. Try to go to bed at the same time every day and try to rise at the same time every day. The weight you choose to use should leave you at or near failure on your specified number of repetitions.

The overall implication of the repetition range continuum is that you should go through different phases of training using different repetition ranges to see what gives your body the most muscle growth. For example, to build bigger biceps, you need to perform exercises that work the biceps.

This could be an isolated bicep exercise, such as a bicep curl, or a compound movement that uses the biceps, such as a pullup. In terms of the best exercise type for muscle building, compound and isolation movements can be equally effective at causing muscle hypertrophy 4.

Nevertheless, for the best long-term fitness results, you should include both compound and isolation movements in your training. Compound movements like a barbell back squat effectively stimulate multiple large muscle groups in a single exercise and provide more functional movement for real-life activities.

This leads to both more efficient workouts and more practical muscle strength. Isolation movements are an excellent way to target specific muscles, and beginners may initially find them safer and easier to learn than compound movements. A good rule of thumb is to perform 3 sets of 3—5 compound movements, followed by 3 sets of 1—2 isolation movements per workout.

Generally, you do your heaviest sets using compound movements and perform higher repetition ranges on your isolation movements. This allows you to benefit from each type of exercise while maximizing the overall muscle building potential of your training program and avoiding any symptoms of overtraining.

Gaining muscle is possible using all repetition ranges, and some people may respond better to lower or higher repetitions with heavier or lighter weights, respectively. Include compound and isolation movements in your program. Your diet is the second half of the muscle building equation.

Most athletes, bodybuilders, and serious muscle growing enthusiasts follow some variation of a bulking and cutting cycle. Bulking periods refer to training phases during which you eat more food than you burn to support muscle growth.

On the other hand, cutting refers to a period of restricting calories to reduce body fat, all while eating and training enough to avoid losing muscle. To gain muscle, you need to provide your body with appropriate amounts of calories and nutrients, particularly protein.

Doing so will support the creation of new muscle proteins from the dietary protein you eat, which will be stimulated by the work you do in the weight room. The main goal of eating to gain muscle during a bulking phase is supplying your body with enough nutrients to grow, but not so many calories that you put on more fat than muscle.

While some minor fat gains tend to occur during periods of bulking, a sweet spot, where your body builds muscle but does not store large quantities of fat, tends to occur when you eat — surplus calories. Your body has a maximum muscle building rate, and beyond that limit, excess calories will be stored as fat.

If your goal is to have defined muscles, you want to avoid gaining too much body fat. For sustainable muscle gain without excess fat gain, you want to eat — calories per day above your baseline needs.

Many factors affect your baseline calorie needs, also known as your total daily energy expenditure, or TDEE. These factors include your age, sex, current lean body mass, physical activity, occupation, and underlying medical conditions. Your best bet is to use an online calculator to estimate your calorie expenditure based on the data you input.

Once you have this baseline expenditure, add calories to establish your daily calorie goal. When it comes to nutrients for building muscle, protein is the top priority. Recent research suggests that those training to gain muscle should eat around 0.

When it comes to choosing what foods to eat, a registered dietician can advise you specifically. Nevertheless, eating a variety of protein sources is probably your best bet. In terms of your carb and fat intakes, the recommendations are more varied. You need dietary fat to ensure optimal hormone functioning, among other things.

Recent bodybuilding research suggests consuming 0. If you tend to prefer fattier foods, start on the higher end of that range and adjust from there. The rest of your daily calories should come from various carb sources.

To calculate this, multiply your daily protein goal by 4 and your daily fat intake goal by 9, as protein has 4 calories per gram and fat has 9 calories per gram. Next, subtract this number from your calculated daily energy need, and divide it by 4 the number of calories in a gram of carbohydrate to get the grams of carbs you need to eat to hit but not exceed your daily calorie intake.

Eating for muscle gain requires sufficient protein and calorie intakes to drive growth. Avoid eating more than — extra calories per day to minimize gains in body fat. Gaining serious muscle takes many months and years of weight training and proper eating.

Muscle gain rates vary by individual, even when following the same program. Overall, with good nutrition and consistent training, research has found that 0. While this may seem like a small amount, over time, the results can be dramatic.

With just a few years of consistent training, you can gain 20—40 pounds 9—18 kg of muscle, which would be a dramatic physique change for virtually anyone beginning a resistance training program. Gaining muscle requires a commitment to both resistance training and following an appropriate diet.

Workout programs for building muscle should primarily rely on compound and isolation movements with weights, but adjust the specific exercises, sets, and repetitions to ensure consistent, long-term gains in both muscle size and strength.

Proper nutrition involves sufficient protein, fat, and calorie intakes that exceed your daily energy expenditure enough to build muscle, but not so drastically as to cause excess fat gain. Large increases in muscle mass take months to years of consistent training but are possible for most individuals.

Overall, to reach your muscle building goals, you must lift hard, eat right, and stay consistent. Our experts continually monitor the health and wellness space, and we update our articles when new information becomes available.

When it comes to gaining lean muscle, what you eat matters. This article takes a look at the top 26 muscle building foods. There are several dietary supplements that can help increase muscle mass and strength. Here are the 6 best supplements to gain more muscle. Rather than focusing on lower numbers on the scale, body recomposition emphasizes the importance of losing fat while gaining muscle.

This article…. Numerous factors, including your training experience, sex, age, and the type of exercise you do, contribute to the rate of muscle gain. Bulking up is more than just doing the right exercises.

Targeting heart rate zones as you exercise is one way to maximize the benefits you get from your workouts.

According to research from the University of Stirling, for optimal muscle growth, weight lifters need to eat 0.

For a pound person, that works out to 20 to 24 grams of protein at every meal. This can be a hard one to get used to, especially for those who are used to counting calories in the hopes of shredding fat.

But when it comes to how to gain muscle mass fast that means weight gained, not lost , you need to consume more calories than you burn each day. Aim to eat roughly to extra calories per day.

To make sure that any weight gained is from muscle, Fitzgerald recommends that the bulk of those calories come from protein.

Long popular among bodybuilders, casein protein absorbs slowly into the bloodstream, meaning it keeps your muscles fed with amino acids for longer compared to other types of protein, such as whey and plant proteins. To get some pre-bed casein, try cottage cheese, Greek yogurt, and milk.

For smoothie lovers, casein-based protein powder works like a charm. Muscle recovery requires more than the right nutrition. It takes time — roughly eight hours per night — dedicated to recovery, Fitzgerald says. After all, when you sleep, your body releases human growth hormone, which helps grow muscle and keeps levels of the stress hormone cortisol in check.

Here Are 7 Ways to Start Sleeping Like One. The National Sleep Foundation recommends that adults ages 18 to 64 sleep seven to nine hours per night. No excuses. But by boosting your performances at high-intensity lifting workouts, the natural compound helps promote muscle growth, according to the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition.

For the best results, opt for creatine monohydrate , the most thoroughly researched form of the supplement. A natural compound produced in the human body, beta-hydroxy-beta-methylbutyrate helps prevent muscle-protein breakdown, encourages muscle growth, and speeds exercise recovery.

The interplay between all three of these mechanisms is crucial to helping you fill out your "smedium" T-shirt collection. No mechanism alone provides the necessary stimulus for growth—they must all be trained for maximal gains. For example, the Romanian deadlift is a high-tension exercise which—when performed with significant load, reps, or both—will elicit all three mechanisms of hypertrophy.

In the immortal words of Ronnie Coleman, "Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but don't nobody want to lift no heavy-ass weights. Start off each workout with heavy compound exercises for sets of reps. These will build a big strength foundation while stimulating mechanical tension in the muscle fibers.

Afterward, the majority of training volume will be from exercises with moderate loading at reps per set. These aren't some arbitrary numbers; this rep range provides the perfect punch of mechanical tension, metabolic stress, and muscular damage you need. Keep rest periods to roughly 1 minute between sets1.

Finally, end each workout with an exercise performed in the high-rep range—between reps per set—to improve lactate threshold and to increase the metabolic stress of the working muscles. Although loaded sub-maximally, these reps should leave your muscles burning and lungs screaming after only one or two sets.

Eric Bach, CSCS, PN1 is a strength coach at Steadman Hawkins Sports Performance in Denver, Colorado. Training How To Train For Maximum Muscle Growth. Mechanisms of Hypertrophy The confusion of beginner lifters lies in an elementary understanding of the fundamentals.

As mentioned in Brad Schoenfeld's review of "The Mechanisms of Muscular Hypertrophy and Their Application to Resistance Training," the three most important mechanisms for hypertrophy are: Mechanical tension Metabolic stress Muscular damage The three together exert the greatest stimuli for muscle growth.

Mechanical Tension Mechanical tension is achieved by using a substantial load and performing exercises through a full range of motion for a certain amount of time. About The Author. The foods you eat may help you build more muscle, too. Your protein intake, in particular, plays an important role in fueling your muscles.

How much protein should you eat? The current guideline is around 0. For example, a pound woman would need to take in around 54 grams of protein a day. A pound man, on the other hand, would need to take in around 66 grams of protein a day.

Stuck on what to eat? Look for protein-rich foods that are also rich in the amino acid leucine. You can find leucine in animal products like:. Learn more about high-protein foods ». How can you get started?

The first step may be heading to your local gym and having a consultation with a personal trainer. Many gyms offer a free session as part of a membership promotion.

A personal trainer can help you master the correct form with free weights, weight machines, and more. Proper form is key for avoiding injury. Always remember to talk to your doctor before starting a new workout routine, especially if you have a health condition.

They may have recommendations for exercise modifications that can help keep you safe. Our experts continually monitor the health and wellness space, and we update our articles when new information becomes available. VIEW ALL HISTORY.

If you're looking to see gains in strength, you may wonder how to gain muscle without gaining fat. Here's a science-based breakdown of what works. Muscular dystrophy MD is a progressive condition leading to muscle loss and weakness.

Neurologists, often with the help of an extended care team…. More than 30 types of muscular dystrophy have been identified. They all cause problems with movement due to genetic mutations.

Learn why a doctor may suggest genetic testing for muscular dystrophy and what to expect during and after testing. We provide research update on whether gene therapy may be a viable treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Physical therapy for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy DMD can help prevent contracture and help maintain mobility, strength, and muscle function. Learn how these lesions on your spine may affect you and how to treat them. The sternum, or breastbone, is a flat bone at the front center of the chest.

The ribs and sternum make up what is called the 'ribcage. A Quiz for Teens Are You a Workaholic? How Well Do You Sleep? Health Conditions Discover Plan Connect. What You Should Know About Building Muscle Mass and Tone. Medically reviewed by Daniel Bubnis, M.