Now, I believe we need a bit of context here....
YOUR MUSCLE GAINS POTENTIAL
Your ability to increase muscle mass differs on a bunch of different factors: genetics, nutrition, training type, recovery, age & gender, lifestyle, and environment all play a role on your muscle growth potential.
As my training age is already close to 10 years (I started to lift weight at 15 years old), my muscle gain potential is drastically lower than an individual that is in his first few years of training*.
This means that as an advanced athlete, I had to make sure that a few key points was met.
*For your own knowledge, within your first year of training (depending on the previous mentioned factors and optimal conditions), general estimates in muscle gain can go up from approximately 9-11 kg of muscle mass for men, and roughly 4.5-5.5 kg of muscle mass for women.
1. DELIBERATELY FOLLOWING A TRAINING PLAN & APPLYING PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD
As my muscle growth potential is drastically lower than when I first started to train, having a plan and gradually progress overtime on different metrics was absolutely CRUCIAL. This is where choosing the right training program that fits you comes into play.
So what exactly should you look for before hoping on the next fitness trend?
Choose a program that is created by an experienced professional that has the academical background, passion & experience.
The program absolutely needs to have some sort of progressive overload into it. Overtime, you should see evolution on the weights you select, the total volume of work, the complexity of the exercices, the range of motion, etc in order to create adaptation.
The workouts should be fun and attract you to stay curious, motivated and disciplined.
The plan you decided to follow needs to be thought long term. Progress is not measured on a day to day basis but rather from month to month and even years. So if you see too many variations and that you don't repeat certain patterns weekly, it will likely bring you to random results.
The program you decided to follow should be aligned to your own individualities and goals. Meaning it should be adequately presented based on your training experience, skills, lifestyle and overall stress demand.
Remember...
"In training, just about everything work. However, nothings work if you don't stick with it long enough to make it work" - Eric Cressey
2. BRING HIGH EFFORT & HARD WORK
This should be obvious but is missed by so many.
Effort is a skill that needs to be trained and refined overtime. Learning how to bring (consistently) the right dose of effort in the gym is harder than what most people think.
Let's say we are working on a Goblet Cyclist Squat and I ask you to go for 4 sets of 8-10 reps @ 32X1 tempo with 60" rest in between. Knowing which weight to use, contracting the right muscle groups, honoring the tempo perfectly, bracing appropriately and finish that 8-10 reps close to failure is much harder than to go for a 100m at MAX EFFORT for example.
But like for any skills, it's only through repetitions and continuously exposing your body to this type of stimulus that you can become better at it overtime.
Where you put your effort also matter.
The reason why I decided to pull of the running during this time frame was to have an overall training demand reduction. Reducing the physical and mental energy demand of running allowed me to show up in the gym feeling ready and focused to put high intensity into the 75-90' I have to train.
3. CALORIE SURPLUS
Your training goals and nutritional consumption is a dynamic process.
Building muscle mass require you to be in a slight calorie surplus - meaning that everyday, you should eat a little bit more than you expenditure.
Finding that sweet spot between eating enough in order to recover properly from your workouts while not gaining unnecessary bodyfat is tricky and require precision.
First, you need to estimate what is your current maintenance. Based on your height, body weight, fat mass and daily activity expenditure, you will come up with a certain energy expenditure. In order to simplify the process of keeping that maintenance level stable, you should try to have roughly the same expenditure every day and to average that on a weekly bases (an easy way to measure your overall activity level is through your daily steps count).
Secondly, once you have estimated your current maintenance, you need to consume everyday the same amount of calories that fit your maintenance level (in our case of building muscle tissue, a good starting point would be to consume daily 200-300 calories more than your baseline). How to know if you are everyday consuming this amount? Well, it's only through tracking your calorie intake + macronutrients* with precision that you can overtime see if those 200-300 extra calories per day leads to a weight gain (that will inevitably comes with a bit of fat mass). If after a month you haven't put on some weight or see progress, it likely means that you need to bump up your calories.
Third, you need to weight yourself everyday in order to see your weekly/monthly averages.
*Tracking your calorie intake is an inevitable step if you want to gain clarity and measure appropriately your progress. With that said, tracking macros require you to have a solid nutritional understanding and foundation beforehand. Within our 1:1 NUTRITIONAL COACHING tracking macros is only the last step of 12 weeks minimum process.
