Five Easy Pointers to Gain Muscle Mass Fast

October 30, 2008

If your goal is to get 100% better at something, how would you approach it? I can think of two primary approaches. The approach you select will be somewhere along this continuum: performing one activity twice as well (or 100 percent better), or doing 100 things 1 percent better. I think that most people try the former approach, but the latter is much easier to implement.

Taken a step further, to make each of these small building blocks more effective, you could also focus on things that occur outside of your workouts. So you concentrate on changing your habits and making tiny improvements in many areas that will stack on top of one another to bring you huge benefits.

So here are 5 minor lifestyle changes you can make to help you build muscle up.

1) Replace Aerobics with High Intensity Interval Trainign

Aerobic activities have a negative impact on mass building because it burns branched chain amino acids (BCAA) and glycogen. Instead, focus on interval training for fat burning, for example a 400-meter sprint followed by a 400-meter recovery jog, repeated for a total of four times.

2) Increase Total Time Under Load (TTL)

Rather than concentrating on the quantity of reps, focus on the total time your muscles are under load. Try spending 2 seconds on the negative contraction, 1 second at a neutral contraction (bottom of the exercise), and 1 second on the positive contraction. Lengthening the negative is an easy method to overload muscles and promote muscle weight gain.

3) Increase your Sodium Intake

Sodium increases amino acid absorption and carbohydrate storage while also improving the muscle's receptiveness to insulin. Just do in it moderation!

4) Recovery

Your body will only build muscle up by repairing it in response to your workouts. When your muscles are repaired, they are made stronger than before to respond to the higher stress levels put on them. If you don’t allow your muscles time to recover, they can never rebuild.

5) Cheat on your Diet

If you haven’t yet read the Cheat to Lose Diet, you should. It’s a pretty interesting theory into how the body metabolizes food. The short story is that your body burns fat when a hormone is present in your body, and that hormone appears as a direct result of overeating! So once a week, cheat, and follow your cheat day with two very low-carbohydrate, high protein days. You’ll enjoy the cheat day and burn more fat to boot.