Strength training is your ticket to more muscle and greater functional strength. Having strong muscles and bones becomes more important with age, and strength training helps preserve both. How you train matters too. Muscles grow when you target them properly, and that starts with knowing the laws of muscle growth. Here are five strength-training laws that determine whether your muscles will grow. Ignore them at your own risk!
Law #1: Muscles Grow Only Through Consistent Training
Don’t underestimate the power of consistent training. Some people focus too much on getting the details of their strength training routine right, like resistance, the number of reps, and exercises, but neglect a major factor that determines success for muscle growth, training consistency. It matters! In fact, the study found that factors like exercise choice, resistance, and repetitions are less important for boosting muscle growth than the “bigger picture,” workout frequency, and consistency. So, don’t get so caught up in the technicalities of how you train and forget how important it is to just do it and be consistent about it. It starts with knowing why you want to build muscle and having a plan to help you get there.
Law #2: Muscle Growth Depends on Progressive Overload
Even if you’re consistent with strength training, your muscle growth will slow or stop if you don’t use progressive overload, an established principle that relates to building muscle and strength. What is progressive overload? It’s gradually increasing the stress you place on your muscles to force them to adapt and grow. You do this by boosting the resistance, the number of repetitions, volume of training, the tempo of the reps, frequency of training, the exercises you do, but not all at once, of course. Unless you give your muscles a reason to keep growing, they won’t, and you’ll reach a frustrating strength-training plateau. Most people need to change some aspect of training every four to six weeks to add progressive overload. This one law can make or break you.
Law #3: Focus on Form
If you want to make muscle gains and do it safely, focus on the form you use before loading up on the weight. Why is training form so critical? Good form and technique ensure you’re targeting the correct muscle groups and doing it efficiently. If you do an exercise incorrectly, you take some focus off the muscles you’re trying to work and muscles you aren’t targeting will have to chip in. Plus, using poor form increases the risk of injury. Also, if you learn how to train with impeccable form, you’ll place less stress on your muscles and joints while getting better results.
Start with light weights or no weights until you’ve perfected the mechanics of the exercise. Make sure you can easily do the movement using your own body weight or a light weight. It’s helpful to have someone critique your form. Only then should you grab heavier resistance. Some exercises are more difficult than others and require more practice, such as deadlifts, deep squats, and pull-ups. Spend extra time mastering these exercises before adding more resistance.
Law #4: Muscles Grow with Good Nutrition
Muscles need enough fuel to grow, and they also need the building blocks of muscle–amino acids from protein. If you’re cutting calories to lose body fat and trying to build muscle at the same time, you may lose body fat, but muscle-building may suffer. It’s difficult to increase muscle size when you’re in a calorie deficit and when you’re not consuming enough protein.
How much protein do you need? Although an inactive person requires only 0.80 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight, if you’re strength training, you need around 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight daily. Likewise, avoid calorie restriction when you’re trying to build muscle tissue. Your body must be in an anabolic state for your muscles to hypertrophy.
Muscle Growth Law #5: Over-Training and Under-Resting Will Stymy Muscle Growth
Muscles need stimulation and progressive overload to adapt and grow larger, but they also need rest. It’s during the resting phase between training sessions that muscle repair and rebuild. So, the time between training sessions is when the real work gets done. If you don’t give the muscles you worked at least 48 hours of rest between training sessions, you’re not giving them enough time to repair the damage they sustained.
Intense training also raises the stress hormone cortisol and that can lead to muscle breakdown. Elevated cortisol works against your effort to build strength and muscle tissue by creating a catabolic state. When you give your body at least 48 hours of rest between sessions, it helps to lower cortisol, so you can create anabolic conditions that build new muscle tissue. Other factors that can elevate cortisol and increase muscle breakdown include:
- Lack of adequate sleep
- Psychological or physical stress
- Excessive calorie restriction
- Overtraining
- Some medications
The Bottom Line
When you strength train, keep these five important laws of building muscle in mind. If you follow these principles when you train, you’ll have an easier time developing a strong, defined physique. Plus, you’ll enjoy the process more when you train in the proper manner. Be patient too! Most people expect results within a few weeks after starting their training. A few months or even longer is more realistic. Building a defined physique takes time and good training, but with time, you’ll get there.
References:
- com.au. “Workout Consistency Is The Most Important Factor For Muscle Growth”
- National Federation of Professional Trainers. “Importance of Proper Form When Strength Training”
- com. “What Is Progressive Overload Training?”
- com. “How to build muscle with exercise”
- Helms ER, Aragon AA, Fitschen PJ. Evidence-based recommendations for natural bodybuilding contest preparation: nutrition and supplementation. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2014;11:20. Published 2014 May 12. doi:10.1186/1550-2783-11-20.
- Harvard Health Publishing. “Strength training, Part I: Building muscles to improve health”
Related Articles:
Strength Training: 5 Rules for Training to Failure
What Does Research Show about Partial Reps vs. Full Reps for Strength Training?
The Repeated Bout Effect: Why You Don’t Always Get Sore When You Lift Weights
How Your Muscles Repair after a Workout and How It’s Linked with Hypertrophy
Related Cathe Friedrich Workout DVDs:
STS Strength 90 Day Workout Program
All of Cathe’s Strength & Toning Workout DVDs
Total Body Workouts
Lower Body Workouts
Upper Body Workouts