1) What exercises are best for building muscles?
We typically want to focus on compound movements, particularly earlier in the workout.
We would generally want to split the body parts we train across the week and not doing full body sessions each workout.
If we are going to the gym 3 times a week for example, we could look at doing a solely push session one day, followed by a pull session another day and finish off with a legs day. Or we could do one day back and shoulders, one day chest and arms and one day legs.
Legs are key – do not neglect them!
For our legs we are looking at exercises such as barbell squats, leg press, split squats, lunges, leg curls and stiff leg deadlifts. We could also do a trap bar deadlift but we recommend to avoid conventional straight bar deadlifts because the risk of injury is too high. We can then finish the workout with some leg extensions and sled work.
For our back, chin ups, pulldowns, seated rows and prone rows are our go to.
For chest, bench press and dumbbell chest press are staples, with cable flyes added at the end of workouts.
For our arms, we want to do a variation of bicep curls with dumbbells both seated, standing and also using the cable. And then for triceps we can use dips along with a variation of cable pushdown movements.
For shoulders we are mainly focussing on seated shoulder presses and lat raises.
2) Are there rules – ie a specific number of reps and breaks, or ways to foster lean long muscles – to stick to?
For muscle gain, we typically use sets of 3-4 and rep ranges of 8-12.
Usually, sets and reps work together, the higher the reps, the fewer sets you will perform and vice versa.
However, this is not always the case and you need to consider your goal when planning the number of sets and reps. It’s also important to keep in mind the type of exercise, and whether it suits more or fewer reps.
For example, a great muscle building programme is 10 sets of 10 reps, however you would not perform a Romanian deadlift in this workout, as this could injure your back.
3) Is heavier weight always better?
Heavy is relative, the weight needs to be heavy for you and the amount of reps you are doing.
MOST IMPORTANTLY – You want your reps to be under control using a controlled tempo and certainly not rushing the exercise.
Tempo is a way to control the rate at which an exercise is performed, and is a simple and effective change to make in the gym to see significant results in your training.
With the correct prescription of tempo, you can place an emphasis on weaker body parts to get them stronger, make exercises more challenging (and therefore more beneficial), or simply slow things down in order to really feel the movement of a new exercise and improve technique.
From improving your strength to shedding extra pounds, no matter your goal, tempo is a necessity in training.
A good recommended tempo would be 3110 for a lot of exercises – explained this means with a 3 second eccentric phase, 1 pause in the stretched position, 1 second concentric and 0 pause.
For example, when performing a squat, 3 seconds on the way down, hold for a second in position and then one second blast back up.
You also want to ensure you are focussing on contracting the muscle tissue as you do the exercise not just moving the weight.
So dropping the ego lifting and focusing on mastering good technique, using a controlled tempo and getting the muscle contracted will deliver better results, much better than just moving a heavier weight from A to B
4) Do you need to exercise every day or have rest days when building a muscular body?
For effective muscle building you want to be training around 4-5 days per week.
For most people, a 3 way split, for example push, pull and legs, would be best to keep on top of training body parts frequently enough to grow muscle.
We don’t however recommend a 5 way split meaning you train one body part each day, 5 days per week for the majority of people.
5) Which foods should you eat and avoid if bulking?
The goal should be to build as much muscle tissue as possible with as minimal fat.
Sometimes a lot of food and calories will be needed, but a lot of the time it isn’t as much as people think.
Building muscle should not involve putting on too much body fat.
A calorie surplus of 250-500 calories per day should be plenty for most people to start with.
It should be the opposite to fat loss, in the sense that with a fat loss goal you are trying to eat as much as possible while losing fat. For a muscle gain goal, aiming to eat as little as possible while gaining muscle is a good idea to have.
Start with a 250 calorie surplus and then build from that as you develop your training.
In terms of macronutrients and food:
Protein
We’re looking to aim for a daily average of 1-1.25 grams of protein per pound of body weight from lean protein sources in order to start to bulk up.
Carbs
For carbs, you need to be looking at eating around 2 grams of carbs per pound of body weight on the days you are training in the gym and 0.5-1 gam per pound of body weight on a non-training day.
Fats
Fats should make up the remainder of calories you have left after working out your protein and carbs. This will generally be around 15-30% of your overall calories
The leaner you start, the better a muscle building plan will work, ideally should aim to lower your body fat before you start a muscle building phase.
The body fat % can vary between clients but the closer to 10-15% body fat the better to really start to bulk and achieve excellent muscle definition.
You can bulk when you are higher in body fat, but you will struggle to achieve the desired definition. Bulking when you are fat is like decorating a burnt cake,
6) What other lifestyle elements come into it?
Number one – Recovery. The better you recover the more your muscles will grow.
The number one thing for this is sleep and aiming for 6-8 hours of good quality sleep each night.
The less stress on the body outside of the gym the better too. To build muscle your body will be going through a lot in the gym. It therefore needs the time to relax and recover.
7) How long does it take to build significant muscle?
Muscle building is a much slower process than fat loss and being consistent over a long period of time is key to results.
You can get incredible fat loss results that start to show muscle definition in 6-12 weeks but to really then pack on muscle tissue is a long term process.
Being consistent with your training and making going to the gym a habit of yours over the long-term will mean you stick to your goals and bit by bit you will start to see you body getting bigger.
A good tip is to take regular photos of your progress as it can be hard for us to see how results are progressing. This can disappoint a lot of people and force them to give up. If you take regular photos you will see how you are progressing over time and this will motivate you to continue.
