3 Ways to Build More Muscle This Year

When it comes to fitness goal setting, building more muscle might not always be high up on your list. I’m here to argue why it should be, and teach you 3 super effective ways to build more this year!

Muscle plays a major role in many areas of your health and happiness. From improving health markers, to decreasing joint pain, to increasing your metabolism, to looking fantastic in a pair of jeans, muscle is it. Here’s why making a goal to build more muscle is non-negotiable.

Just a Few of the Benefits of Building Muscle

As a personal trainer and weight loss specialist, building muscle is my favorite solution to an infinite number of challenges, requests and pleas for help.

Want to lose fat? Build muscle.

Have a goal to improve your quality of life? Build more muscle.

Looking to change your body composition so your clothes fit you just right and you can see tone muscles in the mirror?

BUILD MORE MUSCLE!

In an abbreviated summary, muscle can:

• 1: speed up fat loss
  The more muscle you have, the harder your body has to work to maintain it (and grow it). All of that work equates to more calories burned on a daily basis. Aka: a higher metabolism. So while watching your diet and doing cardio are both beneficial, building muscle is the real MVP if your goal is fat loss.
  
• 2: create tone and definition
  You cannot have toned or defined arms, abs, triceps, legs (and so on), without muscle. Muscle IS tone and definition.
  
  Fact: muscle is always either growing, or shrinking. When you grow muscle (aka build more muscle), and lose body fat, you start to see that muscle more. That, the visible muscle, is tone and definition.
  
• 3: build strength and stamina
  When you start to weight train consistently, three things happen that contribute to increased strength and stamina.
  
  First, your body builds muscle fibers in order to respond more efficiently to the workload you’re introducing to it. Second, your body produces more mitochondria – the energy producing organelle in your cells. Third, your nervous systems gets better at coordinating muscle and joint movement.
  
  Those three things, acting together, allow you to build strength for as long as you want to and continue to put in the work. They also allow you to word harder, longer, and recover faster.
  
  This is great news for your workouts but it’s even better news for life in general. The more strength and stamina that you have the easier it is to take the stairs, play with your kids or grandkids or pets, and live a vibrant, energized life!
  
• 4: boost confidence
  There are few things more exciting than watching your hard work pay off. That’s especially true when the pay off is a healthier, fitter body that makes your feel strong and proud! Reaching a new PR. Pulling on your favorite pair of pants that haven’t fit you in a while. Someone noticing the changes. Huge confidence boosters!
  
  Plus, building strength allows you to move through life thinking “I can do this“. Imagine always being able to lift the box or finish the hike. *BOOM*
  
• 5: decreases your risk of injury
  Building muscle improves more than just muscle strength. It improves bone health, joint health, core stability, balance and coordination, too. All of that growth offers protection. It decreases pain during movement and allows you to react more quickly and effectively.
  
• 6: improves performance
  Building muscle allows you to move further, run longer, jump higher, and lift heavier objects. It increases muscle coordination, recovery capabilities, energy usage, and core stability. If you have any goals that are fitness related – whether that’s to finish your 1st 5k, hike the Long Trail, compete in weight lifting or have more stamina and energy at work and in daily life – you want to build more muscle.
  
• 7: improves health markers
  Numerous studies across the world, like this one and this one, are proving that there is a real connection between weight training to build muscle and a notable improvement in health markers such as cholesterol level, blood sugar level, triglycerides, blood pressure and of course, BMI.

Now that you know the WHY behind building muscle this year, here are 3 fantastic ways to get started, and stay consistent.

3 Ways to Build More Muscle This Year

Get ready to kickstart muscle and strength growth!

Make Progressive Weight Lifting Your Workout Priority

This might sound obvious, but it’s worth saying because I’m willing to bet most people aren’t planning and executing their workouts with progressive weight lifting as the priority.

That means:

• more strength training than cardio
• consistently increasing one of the following factors: weight lifted, reps completed, sets completed, difficulty of exercise, frequency of lift
• prioritizing big, weighted, compound lifts over isolation movements or bodyweight exercises

Weight lifting is your direct route to muscle. The force of the weight on your muscles – and your completion of the movement – sends a signal to your brain to do something so that next time, you are better able to handle that force. What your brain does is sends a message to your body to use energy to first repair the muscle fibers you worked, and then to build more of those muscle fibers.

To continue to trigger that reaction, you have to continuously add a new challenge. That challenge is what signals to your brain “Hey! We need to grow and adapt to get better at this thing!”. This continuous and careful introduction of more intensity or new variables is called progressive overload. And progressive overload is what makes the magic happen.

There are different ways to introduce new variables and challenges to your workouts. My recommendation is to choose one at a time, track your workouts carefully, and make adjustments based on that data and your body’s feedback (namely: ability to finish the lift with good form and ability to recover from said lift). Here are your options for progressive overload:

• Increase weight lifted. Do the same exercises, same workout as last week but simply lift slightly heavier weights. You want to finish the same reps for the same number of sets but challenge your body to do it with more force moving against your muscles.
  
  For example if you did squats with 45# last week, add a #5 on either end of the barbell and hit the same reps and sets. Depending on the lift you are doing and the amount of weight you are already lifting you can vary the amount of additional weight you add in (i.e. you might add less weight to a bicep curl than you would a deadlift).
  
• Add reps. Using the same weight that you lifted last time, aim to complete more reps with good form. If you deadlifted 45# for 10 reps last time, bump that up to 12.
  
  This option doesn’t work endlessly, of course. Doing 20+ reps gets monotonous. Once you can complete about 15 reps with great form, switch over to options 1: drop your reps back down and add a bit of weight.
  
• Complete another set. You can also increase the challenge by adding sets to your workout. Again, you won’t do this forever but you can work your way up to 4-5 sets and then focus on other variables.
  
• Decrease your rest periods. One surefire way to tax your system is to rest for less time in between sets. This helps to increase metabolic efficiency. If you start off resting 2 minutes between sets, drop that back to 1 minute. Caveat: you don’t want to sacrifice your ability to push to your max so don’t go too low here!
  
• Increase the frequency that you work a muscle. This option is particularly useful if there is a muscle group that you really want to grow in particular. For example if you want to build stronger legs or a bigger butt, throw in an extra lower body day or add a couple of leg/glute lifts to other days of the week. Again, form and recovery come first, so pay attention to how your body responds.
  
  Check out this 3-day a week workout routine if you want to get a good grasp on frequency).
  
• Adjust your intensity. This is one that you can work into your current routine. My favorite ways to adjust the intensity level of a workout (without going faster or lifting heavier), is to add in drop sets, rep pauses, tempo reps or rest pauses (see below for a deeper dive into these strategies).

Final point on strength training: compound exercises are very effective when it comes to creating the above physiological reaction. Compound exercises recruit more muscle fibers and require more energy to perform. The result = better results and bigger burn.

So when it comes to choosing exercises, prioritize squats, deadlifts, presses, rows and other big lifts over accessory lifts like curls and cable kickbacks. You can by all means do the accessory exercises, but make sure that you’re not choosing those over the big lifts but rather as a back up.

Develop a Rock Solid Rest and Recovery Routine

Sexy? No.

Most often ignored? Yep!

Creating a rest and recovery routine doesn’t often make the priority list for women who want to build strong, lean muscle BUT it should be. This focus alone can be the game changer.

The fact is, you don’t actually build muscle at the gym. Workouts actually cause muscle strain and breakdown. It’s the fuel (see below), and recovery protocol that allows your body the time and supplies to grow! I’m not going to deep dive into the why because you are here for the HOW and I get that. But if you do want more information behind the scenes, read this.

In theory this strategy is simple: find ways to wind-down, get 7-8 hours of sleep and allow your body to recover. Do that and you’ll get better results.

But simple doesn’t mean easy to accomplish.

Luckily, there are ways to work rest and recovery into your routine starting right now:

• Develop a nightly wind down routine. Getting 7-9 hours of sleep is non-negotiable. Sleep is the #1 time for your body to repair, build and balance out your hormone levels. To help you achieve those numbers, come up with a nightly routine to help you wind down and signal to your body “time to sleep”. Do this consistently enough and this routine will actually train your brain to release melatonin.
  
  Here are some things that help me wind down at the end of a long day:
  
  • shut off your phone 1-2 hours before bed
  • wear blue light glasses after 5 p.m. if you are going to be on your phone, watching TV or on your computer
  • take a bath
  • drink chamomile tea
  • read a book
  • meditatie
  • gentle stretching
    
• Always warm up before your workouts. Recovery starts before you even workout. Prep your muscles for movement and they’ll respond faster and more effectively to the challenges of your workout. You’ll create less muscular damage and have less risk of injury.
  
• Always cool down and stretch after your workouts. Don’t. Skip. Your cool down. You do it, I do it, we all do it. And we all need to stop. Your cool down and stretch routine is vital to your body’s ability to recovery and get you back to the gym working hard!
  
• Take a 5-minute preventative action. Preventative action is a great way to beat the stress before it hits. What makes you smile? What calms you down? Work in just 5 minutes of that a day. Call it “Me Time” and prioritize it.
  
• Create an S.O.S. list for your most stressful moments. Of course you can’t plan for everything and stressful days are bound to pop up. Don’t wait for that moment to happen to think of ways to de-escalate your emotions and hormones. Make a list (go ahead, I’ll wait), of 8-10 actions or ideas that you know create a sense of calm for you. That way, when stress does hit, you’re prepared.
  
  (p.s. this is something I go over in my free, No Excuses Video Series. You can sign up here!)

Dial in Your Nutrition

If your goal is to build muscle, you’ve got to pay attention to your diet. Not obsessive attention, but enough attention to have a pretty good idea of the what and how much of your intake. I suggest tracking solidly for 1-2 weeks to get a solid, baseline understanding of your calories and macros in. After that, you can drop back to tracking 3 days a week to maintain consistency and stay in the know without driving yourself nuts.

The specifics of your nutrition game plan are unique to you, but there are some general guidelines you can follow to get started:

1. Make sure that you are eating enough. If you want to build muscle, you need to give your body the fuel to do that. You wouldn’t attempt to build a house without supplies…and you can’t build a body without them either! A good rule of thumb for women who want to build is to multiple body weight by 15-16 calories. So if you are a 160 pound woman, You’re shooting for 2,400-2,560 calories daily.
   
2. Prioritize protein. The most important macro for muscle building is protein not because it’s the only macro your body needs to build, but because it’s the macro that is most often far below the necessary level. Aim to eat 0.8-1 gram of protein per pound of body weight.
   
   Protein powders become really helpful as your protein goals get bigger. They’re certainly not required, but you might find that it’s easier to hit your goal with a good, minimally processed protein powder in your pantry.
   
3. Hydration is incredibly important to your health and gains! Shoot for a minimum of 80 oz. per day and aim to increase that amount each week until your easily consuming 100 oz.
   
   *These three pieces of nutrition – calories, protein and hydration – are the most important factors. If you’re within 10% of these goals consistently, you’re in a good place. Nail these FIRST, then turn your focus to…
   
4. Carbohydrates should be complex and consumed throughout the day. Choose whole, non-processed foods that are nutrient-dense and come without added junk like preservatives, sodium, trans fats and sugars. Think oats, starchy veggies, fruits, rice, legumes, beans and grains. A good start is 1-2 servings per meal.
   
5. Fats should also be as minimally processed as possible. The closer to the real thing it is, the better off you are. Aim for a serving of heart-healthy fats at each meal: avocado, nuts, seeds, olive oil, avocado oil, grass fed butter.

There it is! Your three, pivotal priorities to focus on this year when you want to build more muscle, get stronger, and see visible tone and definition.

If you have questions or want to dig deeper into your own programming and nutrition, leave a comment or send me a message on IG @juliahalefitness!