Most people join a gym to improve the way they look by losing body fat, toning up or to improve performance such as lifting a heavier weight. Either way the primary goal is to build muscle. The purpose of this short article is to highlight our 5 top tips for building muscle. We often outline various methods and tips on our personal training courses which help our newly qualified personal trainers achieve outstanding results with their clients, but we wanted to share a few of them with you..

• Get Lean: It is far easier to build muscle when you are lean in comparison to when you are carrying excess fat. The main reasons for this are A) improved insulin sensitivity and B) reduced inflammation in the gut which results in better nutrient absorption.
• Progression: Quite often clients won’t track their performance such as weights lifted, number of reps or how long their rest period was. Without tracking information like this, it makes it hard to ensure you progress week on week. If your goal is hypertrophy, then progression is key and you must improve your lifts regularly where possible otherwise no adaptation will occur. After all, why will your body develop or build more muscle if it has no need to?
• Overload: Similar to point two, the body needs a reason to adapt. If you don’t overload the system by challenging it, then it will NOT change. Most clients tend to stop training or quit the set when it starts to ‘hurt’. In most cases that is actually the time for more reps!!
• Create Tension: Most trainers and clients are to fixated on moving an object / weight from A to B and not really focussing on the amount of tension they’re generating through the muscle. If you can’t ‘feel’ the muscle contract during the exercise, then you’re wasting your time. The easiest way to generate tension is to control the eccentric contraction and work with a tempo similar to 4010. As you progress and become more experienced in lifting weights then you will find it easier to contract the muscle without focussing too much on the tempo.
• Eat: With social media and ‘online personal trainer guru’s’ demonising carbohydrates over recent years, most people don’t eat enough to generate growth. If you want to grow you must eat.

Hopefully these 5 simple yet short tips will help you with your pursuit of growth. For more information on our personal trainer courses or to contact us regarding other courses such as the Olympic lifting qualifications then e-mail us at [email protected] or call us free on 0800 112 3431.