Reveal four truths about building muscles to help you get out of misunderstandings, gain more muscles and develop a great figure faster.
Truth 1: The growth rate of muscles is limited.
Why is the muscle building cycle longer than the fat loss cycle? One very important reason is that the growth rate of muscles is limited and cannot grow rapidly in a short period of time.
Under the premise of a person conducting scientific fitness training and not using supplements such as steroids, one can grow no more than 2 catties of muscle in a month at most. It is impossible to grow 5 catties or even 8 catties of muscle. This is unrealistic. If someone tells you that he has grown 10 catties of muscle in a month, that is just bragging.
Truth 2: The importance of progressive overload.
Our body is very intelligent. When you do training of the same intensity every day, the muscles will gradually adapt to this load, and muscle development will stagnate and cannot become thicker, but it will not degenerate either.
Progressive overload training brings new challenges to muscles and the nervous system by gradually increasing the load, promoting continuous muscle development.
Novices and veterans choose different weights. Our training intensity cannot remain unchanged. We can give greater stimulation to muscles by increasing weight, increasing repetitions or shortening rest time.
If you can only push 30 kilograms of weight when you start bench press training, after a period of time, as your strength increases, you can increase it to 35 kilograms, 40 kilograms or even higher, and your muscle strength and endurance will be significantly improved.
Truth 3: Muscles need sufficient rest.
The training principles for muscle building and fat loss are different. If you want to gain muscles, don’t exercise the same muscle group every day. Muscle growth occurs during rest. Exercising the same part every day will keep the muscles in an injured state and cannot be repaired to become thicker.
Sufficient rest can replenish the energy reserves in muscles and promote the excretion of metabolic wastes, preparing for the next exercise. During the rest period, the body will secrete various growth factors and hormones to help repair and grow muscle fibers, thereby enhancing muscle strength and endurance.
Truth 4: The growth of muscles requires protein.
Protein is the ‘building material’ for building muscles and participates in the repair of damaged muscle fibers and the synthesis of new muscle fibers. If there is not enough protein in the body, the growth of muscles will be significantly restricted and may even atrophy. Only by consuming enough high-quality protein can we provide sufficient nutrition for muscles and promote muscle growth and strengthening.
How to judge whether your protein intake is sufficient? If a person weighs 60 kilograms, 1.5-1.8 grams of protein should be supplemented per kilogram of body weight. That is to say, you need to supplement at least 90 grams of protein every day. We can obtain it from high-protein foods. High-quality protein sources include chicken breast, fish and shrimp, eggs, beans, etc.
