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5 Reasons Why You’re Not Building Muscle
5 Reasons Why You're Not Building Muscle
Muscle building is one of the most common reasons why people go to the gym. If you’re putting in the time and not seeing results, have a look at these 5 reasons why you’re not building muscle.
1. You aren't training at the right intensity level
You don’t have to take every set to the point of failure, but you do have to take every set close to the point where you’d find it difficult to complete another 1-3 reps.
How to train to build muscle effectively
Adaptations include; increasing the reps, weight, sets or varying the exercise because over time your muscles adapt to the movements to make them easier to complete.
Effective training to build muscle should be a combination of two things: how much your muscles tense during a workout and how fast you use up metabolic energy.
For those who want to maximise their muscle growth, a good workout foundation utilises both of these elements. Resistance training consisting of multiple sets (3−6) of six to twelve repetitions with short rest intervals (60 seconds) is a great foundation to build muscle.
How to adapt your workout to keep building muscle
If you find the last few reps are easy, you know you need to adapt your plan to put your muscles under enough stress to grow. Without consistent adaptations, you won’t build muscle.
Adaptations include increasing your reps, adding more weight, doing more sets or varying your exercises. Over time, your muscles adapt to the movements which makes them easier to complete. To keep growing, you have to push yourself to perform harder movements.
2. You're simply not eating enough
A calorie surplus is eating more than your body uses for energy each day.
But how do you know how much your body uses for energy each day, and how do you know how many calories you should consume?
The answer? It depends. Everyone is different, and factors such as our genetics, age, gender and training experience influence how our body is composed and our potential to gain muscle or fat.
But as a general rule of thumb, we should aim to eat 200-500 calories in surplus per day in order to gain muscle. Use this calorie calculator to determine your daily calorie intake.
However, the most important factor to consider is the quality of the calories you ingest. Your macronutrient intake must be able to provide your body with the quality nutrients it requires.
PT Marbella’s nutrition plans are tailored to you to ensure you receive the maximum benefit after a comprehensive analysis of your lifestyle and body type.
3. You're isolating your muscles too much
Don’t get me wrong, isolating muscles is a great way to push individual muscles to fatigue, give your muscles definition, and focus on areas of weakness.
However, compound movements produce the most functional benefits. Squats, dead-lifts and bench presses are compound movements.
These movements utilise multiple muscle groups in a rhythmic manner to improve coordination, overall posture and alignment, and balance and strength.
It’s important your workout routine contains a solid combination of both isolation movements and compound movements.
PT Marbella will develop a fully tailored online training plan specific to your goals. Our plans are personalised for home workouts, gym workouts and body-weight workouts. Explore the options here.
4. You're not getting enough sleep
Quality sleep is often overlooked as a factor that affects your muscle gains. Poor sleep can cause a lack of performance in the gym and a lack of muscle growth.
When you don’t get enough sleep, your hormones become imbalanced. Testosterone decreases, cortisol increases, and growth hormones that are essential for muscle repair decrease.
This effect is so pronounced that scientists now hypothesise that sleep deprivation can decrease the activity of the proteins responsible for repairing muscles, which means your muscles may not heal as quickly when you sleep. This can cause you to lose muscle mass and hinder muscle recovery after exercising.
Therefore, it’s important to get a good 7-9 hours of sleep each night. If you struggle to doze off, consider turning off electronics 30 minutes to 1 hour before bedtime and relaxing with a book or a warm bath before bed.
5. You're focusing too much on cardio
When your main goal is to build muscle, you don’t want to be spending too much time on the treadmill.
Cardio can actually be counterproductive to muscle growth as it can cause your body to break down your muscles to use for energy. This is called catabolism, and it stops you from building muscle.
If you’re looking to both build muscle and lose fat, slotting a cardio session or two into your weekly schedule can help you achieve that. But you need to ensure that the majority of your training is focused on weight-training.
Why not combine weight-training and cardio by including HIT (High Intensity Training) in your workout routine? I am a certified personal trainer dedicated to helping you meet your fitness goals. Contact me to learn more.
Still not building muscle?
If you feel you are meeting all of the above and still don’t know why you aren’t building muscle, or if you want more guidance as to exactly what you should be doing inside and outside the gym, fill out our free consultation form so we can offer our expert advice to help you reach your muscle gains goals.
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