How Do You Gain Muscle Fast? (The Right Way)

Gaining muscle isn't a fast process. But there are definitely some things that you can dial in to make sure that you're optimizing your muscle-building potential. So let's talk about it.

How to Gain Muscle Fast

The first thing you want to think about to optimize your muscle building potential is making sure that you're following a proper resistance training program. So with that, just make sure that you're following a structured, smart, well-laid-out program that you can progress in over time.

You also want to make sure that you're following a program that you can actually adhere to. So if the program is not fun for you, if you're not enjoying it, then it's not gonna be something that you can be consistent with.

Progressive Overload Training

The next thing you want to make sure that you're paying attention to is that you're progressively overloading over time. This just means making sure that you're doing a little bit more every time you go into your lifting session, whether that means lifting a little bit heavier weight, doing another rep, or having better form—all of those are forms of progressive overload.

To progress over time, you need to make sure that you're doing a little bit more— your body is going to adapt to what you're doing. If you're not giving it a reason to grow, it's not going to grow. Make sure that you're pushing yourself to have enough intensity in your workouts. Track your progression to ensure you're going in the right direction.

If you're not tracking what you're doing, you won't know if you're progressing. Keep a logbook or store everything in an Excel sheet or something that you can track your weights, track your reps, and make sure you're doing that every single session so that you can look back each week.

Focus on Recovery

The next major thing that you want to make sure that you're focusing on to optimize your muscle building potential is going to be recovery. Make sure that you are recovering properly:

• Sleep enough
• Eat enough
• Rest enough
• De-stress enough

Incorporate enough protein in your day, making sure that you are you know, optimizing your pre and post-workout nutrition—that is something that's going to be important over time and make making sure that you get enough energy for your workout. Make sure that you're recovering, sleeping well, and managing your stress levels.

More is not always better, especially when it comes to lifting weights—you want to make sure that you are recovering getting appropriate fuel and recovery.

Fuel Appropriately

The next thing that you want to think about when optimizing your muscle-building potential is making sure that you're fueling appropriately. The first thing is if your main goal is to build as much muscle as possible, and optimize that, you want to make sure that you're eating enough food, and particularly eating at maintenance intake or above.

When I say that your maintenance caloric intake, that's just the amount of food you can eat to maintain your weight. And then you know a little bit above that is going to be going into potentially a slight surplus. Wwe know that if you go into a slight calorie surplus, you're really putting your body in the optimal position to build as much muscle as possible. Because you're having adequate fuel coming in, which is going to lead to you know enough energy during your workouts or more energy during your workouts, that's also going to lead to better recovery. So just making sure that you're eating enough calories in general is super important, whether that's around your maintenance intake or in a slight surplus

You also want to make sure that you're thinking about protein intake. Protein is super important when it comes to building muscle—make sure you're optimizing that, especially throughout the day. You want to make sure that you're getting a good amount of protein in each of your meals. Typically, you know, 25 to 30 grams can be the bare minimum for that that's going to allow you to optimize your muscle protein synthesis at that meal and all that means is that muscle protein synthesis is the process of your body basically building new muscle and to optimize that you want to make sure you're getting enough protein in each of your meals and also spreading that out throughout the day.

Some people thrive on a lower carb higher fat diet and some people thrive on a higher carb, lower-fat diet—and then a lot of people can thrive in the middle. And that's where metabolic flexibility comes into play. When it comes to building muscle, particularly from my experience, following a lower-carb ketogenic diet can be very beneficial for a lot of reasons.

If your goal is to optimize your muscle building potential, you need to understand that carbs can be your friend. You don't necessarily want to restrict carbs to a very low degree if your goal is to optimize your muscle building potential, because like I said, carbs are super important for recovery.

Make sure that you are testing and assessing for yourself. Some people do really, really well with lower carbs. Some people do great with carbs just around their workout. Some people do great with higher carbs throughout the day. And you know, it really just depends on you. Test and assess and see how you feel.

Want to gain muscle faster? Read our other content on the blog to optimize your nutrition and exercise program for more gains in less time.