Building muscle is a process that can be learned and achieved fairly easily. To assist you in navigating through that process, in this blog, I’m going to explain how to do it in five levels of incr…

Building muscle is a process that can be learned and achieved fairly easily. To assist you in navigating through that process, in this blog, I’m going to explain how to do it in five levels of increasing complexity, starting with the most basic explanation and getting more detailed as we go along.

While preparing for this blog, I consulted with a number of different experts, including a professor in Muscle Metabolism (Dr. Jorn Trommelen), an industry leader in the field of Biomechanics (Andrew Vigotsky), and an active researcher in the field of Strength and Conditioning (Dr. Eric Helms). I’m also a Pro-Natural Bodybuilder myself and I’ve been studying the science behind getting jacked for over a decade, while coaching people from around the globe.

Pulling primarily from these sources, along with some specific research analysis that are referenced at the end of the blog, I’ve outlined these five levels as succinctly as possible so that you’ll have little difficulty pinpointing your current level of understanding on how to build muscle.

Before we dive in, I have a favour to ask. As you read through the various levels, take note of the specific level you got to before you started zoning out or getting lost. Let us know in the comments at the end of the blog.

LEVEL 1: NOOB

Explaining muscle growth to a non-lifter

Building muscle is actually quite simple. All you really need to do is lift weights and eat protein.

Protein, of course, is the macronutrient found in foods like fish, chicken, meat, dairy, beans, lentils, and protein powders. And when you weight train, your muscles start to think, well if we’re going to keep lifting these heavy weights, I’d better start to get some bigger muscles to make this easier.

This is called an Adaptive Response. It’s kind of like when you play guitar. Your fingertips start to get harder and grow calluses as an adaptive response to pressing against the strings. It hurts at first, but then it gets easier as you build the thicker skin layer.

However, lifting weights isn’t quite enough on its own to build muscle. In order to build something, you need building blocks and when it comes to muscle, the building blocks are called Amino Acids, which you get by eating protein. In essence, when you lift weights, you’re telling the muscle it needs to get bigger. Then, when you eat protein, you’re giving the muscle the building blocks it needs to actually grow.

LEVEL 2: NOVICE

Explaining muscle growth to a new lifter

In reality, it’s probably not quite good enough to just lift weights and eat protein to get really solid results.

For example, if for two years you’ve been lifting the exact same weight for the exact same reps, you’re likely struggling at keeping the muscle growing. Sure, you’ll see some decent growth at the beginning because you’ve never lifted any weight before. But soon enough, that weight will no longer be challenging enough to present a sufficient stimulus for your muscle to continue growing.

This is why we need to expand the ‘lift weights part’ to lift weights with an emphasis on progressive overload.

Or, just increasing some training parameter over time.

From workout to workout, you’ll need to add a little bit of weight or add an extra rep using the same weight.

For example, let’s say you’re trying to grow your biceps. Rather than doing three sets of ten reps with the same weight week after week and month after month, it’d be much more effective to do what’s illustrated in the following diagram.

At a certain point, you may not be able to increase the weight or reps each and every time, but that’s okay. There are still other ways to apply progressive overload.

Consider adding an extra set with the same reps and the same weight, doing something as simple as controlling the negative a little better, feeling a stronger mind-muscle connection where you more consciously feel the muscle squeezing and stretching as you lift, or swapping out for a new exercise and starting that overloading process again.

Also, on the nutrition side, you can do quite a bit better than just saying “eat protein.” To be more specific, the latest research shows that landing between 1.6-2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day (about 0.7-1 gram per pound) is a good target for maximizing muscle gain.

For example, if you weigh 165 pounds or 75 kilos, you’d want to be eating somewhere in the range of 120-165 grams of protein per day for general muscle building. Although there may be some advantage in going a bit higher in certain advanced situations, this is a sufficient range for most.

It’s worth noting that if you’re very high in body fat, the grams per unit body weight approach won’t work as well. Let’s say you’re 300 pounds. In this case, you don’t really need 300 grams of protein per day. I simply prefer to use 1 gram of protein per centimeter in height because it works independently of body fat percentage.

Let’s check this example.