A lot of people might tell you that you must work hard to get the most out of your muscle-building routine. However, this isn’t entirely true. For it to be effective, you should focus on working out smartly, which means that you must learn what you shouldn’t do, as well as what and when to do it. To make things simpler for you, here is our list of the five tips and mistakes to avoid when you’re trying to build muscle:
1. Not Implementing The Right Diet
Everything that you do in the gym won’t have any effect if you haven’t implemented the right diet that has a sufficient amount of calories. Without consuming enough calories, you won’t be able to build muscle. Calories are the fuel you’ll need to help your muscles grow, and although it might seem a bit daunting to count them at first, you should do it, especially since you’ll learn how much you’ll need during a day.
2. Not Staying Hydrated
Besides having a good diet, another thing that could prevent you from building muscle is not drinking enough water. Our muscles store 2/3 of the water in our bodies, and because of this, you must ensure that you’re hydrated at all times. You could opt for drinking six to eight glasses of water per day – which is what most experts recommend – but, if you want to drink as much water as your body requires, there are guides you can use to calculate how much water you need based on your weight, so use them if you want.
3. Not Focusing on Breaking Your Routine
Did you know that muscle building plateau occurs when your body gets used to the exercise routine you have? Yup, for them to grow, they must become stressed and the fibers need to be torn so that they can get repaired stronger and bigger than they used to be. This means that from time to time, you must ensure that you change your routine so that you can shock your muscles, and thus, challenge them in a new way.
4. Not Resting Enough
This is closely connected to the aforementioned tip, mostly because sleep will encourage your muscles to recover and repair themselves. If you aren’t resting enough, your body won’t be able to repair itself, but it could also lead to you being stressed out. Also, not getting enough sleep won’t allow your body to break down fat, which might be the reason why you cannot build muscle. Because of this, ensure that you get enough sleep – at least seven hours of it.
5. Lifting Too Much And Too Fast
Last on our list is the fact that one of the things that might be hindering you from building muscles is that you’re lifting too much weight, too fast. It’s better if you do ten to fifteen reps and don’t forget to take things slow, which means that each of the sets you do should last at least thirty seconds, if not more. By doing so, your muscles will have enough time under tension and stress, which will encourage them to grow faster.