So You Want to Build Muscle? Here’s How to Train.

For a long time, I thought training for aesthetics was a waste of time, an ironic opinion considering the initial reason I started lifting weights was to lose weight. Nevertheless, I was steeped in powerlifting culture and believed that training for strength was the superior goal. I chased 1 rep maxes, took 5 minute breaks in between sets, and laughed at people performing curls and shoulder raises.

I did get strong following this approach, but after a few years of lifting I realized I wasn’t really happy with the way I looked. I lost a lot of weight, but I wanted look more muscular and athletic. Put another way, I wanted to look like I lifted.

In the summer of 2016, I decided I was finally ready to commit to building the body I wanted. I stopped chasing strength and spent a year and a half training exclusively to build muscle. This period was one of the most fun experiences I’ve ever had in the gym. I got great results and learned a lot about myself. Even though I’ve since returned to heavier lifting, I still incorporate elements of this training style in my workouts.

The difference between training arms and not training arms was quite pronounced.

Building muscle is one of the most enjoyable and empowering things you can do in the gym. Even if you don’t want to look like a professional bodybuilder or fitness model, you can still chase this goal. Many of my clients want to build some more definition in their arms, legs, butt, and back. In order to build the body you really want, you need to add some muscle to your frame.

Today’s post is the first in a two-part series about the essentials of building muscle for beginner and intermediate lifters. Those of you who are already jacked may need more advanced considerations that I won’t cover here. In Part 1, I dig into the why, what, and how of training to build muscle. Next week, I’ll be back with a second part covering nutrition and lifestyle considerations.

Training is essential.

Although you can lose weight using diet alone, hard strength training is 100 percent necessary to build muscle. You have to give your body a reason to build new muscle tissue by consistently pushing your physical limits.

I recommend working up to 4-6 lifting sessions per week. These sessions can range from 30-90 minutes depending on your schedule and ability level. If you have a hard time staying lean, complete some additional cardio and high intensity interval training each week. On the flip side, if you struggle to gain weight, consider reducing cardio to the bare minimum or removing it altogether.

My favorite muscle-building training splits are as follows:

Upper-lower: Two upper body days and two lower body days. I especially like upper push, lower push (squat and single-leg focus), upper pull, and lower push (deadlift, hip hinge, and hamstring focus).
Push-pull-legs: Two upper body days, one lower body day. I’m not a big fan of only training legs once per week, but this can work if you have less time to train.
Modified body part split: This split works well if you want to train more than 4 days per week. Be sure to train your legs at least twice per week no matter how you divide up your training days. I don’t recommend this split to beginners because you won’t be able to generate the right kind of intensity to get the most out of your workouts. Stick with one of the first two splits for your first six months of training.

What should I focus on during my workouts?

Training to get strong and training to build muscle are different in important ways. You do not need to be lifting super heavy weights or chasing personal records all the time if you just want to change the way you look. Charles Staley explains that building strength is about lifting as much weight as possible whereas building muscle is about stressing the muscles as much as possible. These don’t always look the same for the same exercises.

One of the best ways to challenge your muscles and promote growth is to focus on the mind-muscle connection. If you’re targeting a specific muscle with an exercise, you should feel that muscle working. This is one of the biggest differences between training for strength and training for muscle gain. If you can’t feel the muscle working, adjust your form, slow down the tempo, use a different weight, or pick a different exercise.

Brad Schoenfeld, a premier fitness researcher, writes that there are three main mechanisms to promote muscle growth. The first, mechanical tension, requires you to lift challenging weights for many sets and reps over the course of your training program.

The second, metabolic stress, refers to the burning sensation you feel in your muscles after doing high rep sets, giant sets (combining several exercises for the same muscle without taking a break), intensity techniques, or static holds. You can also create metabolic stress by keeping your rest intervals short.

The final mechanism, muscle damage, happens primarily during the stretching portion of a lift. To take advantage of this, you should occasionally drag out or overload this portion of exercises. You can also create muscle damage using exercises that emphasize the stretching portion of the lift, such as Romanian deadlifts. If you want to maximize your results, make sure your training includes all three mechanisms.

Focus on compound movements like squats, presses, rows, and hinging, but don’t be afraid of isolation exercises. In my experience, most people need plenty of dedicated work for muscles like arms, shoulders, glutes, and calves if they really want them to grow. You won’t need as much time to recover from isolation work, so it can be performed throughout the week at the end of multiple workouts.

Volume, Intensity, and Progressive Overload

I define volume as the total number of sets and reps performed and intensity as the amount of weight you’re lifting. Volume and intensity have an inverse relationship; if your intensity is very high you won’t be able to use as much volume and vice versa.

Play around with higher and lower volumes and intensities to see which gives you better results. Some people can build lots of muscle lifting heavy weights alone. In my experience, however, it’s more common to see better results with higher volume. Most people need lots of exposure throughout the week to see noticeable muscle gains.

Use a variety of set and rep schemes. I program sets ranging from 5 reps to more than 25 reps for clients who want to build muscle. I also love occasionally pushing people to train close to failure. Choose an exercise you know you can perform with good form, and perform as many reps as you possibly can on your last set. When you repeat the workout the next week, try to add a couple more reps to the end of this set.

Push yourself in the gym and aim to progress in some way each time you repeat a workout. This could mean adding weight, reps or sets. You can also challenge yourself by reducing rest time, adding intensity techniques like drop sets and rest-pause sets, or by simply using better form or getting a better mind-muscle connection.

Get your butt in the gym

Now that you know the nuts and bolts of training for muscle growth, it’s time to create a plan. Your homework assignment this week is to find a new program or adjust your current workouts to help you adhere to the principles above. Schedule your workouts for the week and get after it.

Check out Part 2 for advice about eating, sleeping, and stress management for muscle gain.

Squats and deadlifts are two of the best exercises for building muscle. If you want to get better at these great lifts, you need to download your free copy of my ebook Squat and Deadlift school.

I share my favorite form tips, troubleshoot common problems, and provide progressions to help you work toward (or supplement) barbell training.

I’m confident both novice and experienced lifters can use the book and accompanying videos to take their training to the next level.

June 19, 2018

4 Ways You’re Sabotaging Your Progress

“I feel like I’m working hard and not seeing any results. What am I doing wrong?”

I’m asked some version of this question on a regular basis. It’s heartbreaking to hear stories of people who’ve been riding a never ending roller coaster of progress without getting much farther along than where they started.

I can also relate because for a long time, this was me. Before I got really serious about losing weight, I made a lot of half-hearted attempts to change my eating and start exercising. None of these attempts were ever successful. I either tried to do way too much at once and burnt myself out or I didn’t work very hard and ultimately gave up because I was impatient and expected more dramatic results. It took a serious health scare for me to take an honest look at what I was doing and make the necessary changes to actually move forward.

If you’ve been working hard for a long time with little to show for it, you may be sabotaging your progress like I was. Keep reading to learn the top four mistakes I see people make that interfere with achieving positive results.

Lack of Consistency

I put together an entire email course on consistency because it’s one of the biggest mistakes I see people making in and out of the gym. Losing weight, building muscle, getting stronger, or performing better don’t happen on accident. It takes months and years of repeated efforts to take you from point A to points B, C, D, and beyond. You don’t have to be perfect, but if you aren’t consistently exercising, eating well, and managing sleep and stress, you will have a very hard time achieving any health or fitness goal.

How consistent do you have to be to see results? This depends on your goals and experience. As a general rule of thumb, I recommend everyone do some type of exercise at least 2 to 3 days per week. Certain goals, like building muscle and strength or training for an event, may require more frequent training. If you’re trying to lose weight, you likely need to watch what you’re eating beyond just Monday through Friday. It’s depressingly easy to wipe out a hard-earned caloric deficit with just a few cheat meals on the weekend. In my experience, if you can consistently eat well 6 or 7 days per week, you’ll start to see much faster progress.

In order to become more consistent, it helps to have some semblance of routine. You don’t need to map out every hour of every day; if you’re like me, this level of planning is suffocating. However, you should have some idea of how you’re going to spend your time and energy. Schedule in the most important obligations including your training sessions. Decide when you’re going to go to the grocery store or place your online grocery delivery order. Make sure you get enough sleep, preferably getting up and going to bed at the same time every day. When you have daily routines, it’s much easier to build in time for exercise, cooking, and stress management.

Lack of Patience

Another big mistake people frequently make is giving up too soon because they aren’t seeing results as fast as they’d like. Everyone wants immediate, dramatic results. I know I’ve been guilty of this myself on numerous occasions. Unfortunately, most fitness goals take a loooooong time to achieve. The sooner you accept that you’re in it for the long haul and learn to embrace the process of change, the more likely you are to see real results.

One thing I’ve learned in my own fitness journey is the power of riding out plateaus. It can be super frustrating to step on the scale day after day and see little to no progress, especially when you think you’re doing everything right. This is when we are most vulnerable to quitting because it seems like our hard work isn’t paying off. However, if you are patient and ride out the plateau, you often make dramatic progress very quickly. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve held the same weight for 5 to 7 days and then dropped 3 or 4 lbs seemingly all of a sudden. If your progress seems to have stalled, wait it out and keep doing what you’re doing. You will often see a similar leap forward. If you go a few weeks and still haven’t made any progress, then you should consider changing some part of your approach.

Constantly stopping and restarting leads to slow progress at best. As mentioned in the previous point, if you can try to keep exercising and eating well on the weekends, you’ll be less prone to weekend binges and the accompanying setbacks, guilt, and frustration. Do your best to keep moving forward in some small way. If you’re working with a coach or following a program (which you should be), be patient and work through your entire program before looking for something else to do. Jumping from program to program is a surefire way to waste time in the gym.

Exercising too much

This seems counterintuitive, but hear me out. Some people are simply doing way too much work in and out of the gym. Our bodies need time to recover and adapt to the stresses placed on them during exercise. If you’re constantly training, you can run yourself into the ground and actually end up worse off than when you started. More is not always better; sometimes more is just more.

To avoid reaching a point of diminishing returns with your training, make sure everything you’re doing has a purpose. This is especially true of taxing activities like heavy strength training, high intensity interval training, and long cardio sessions. You don’t need to do these activities every single day to see results. If you’re feeling burnt out, beat up, overwhelmed by how much exercise you think you need to do each week, or frustrated by your lack of progress despite tons of effort, scale back your training. Do the most important things, take some days off of training, and cut everything else out for a while. Give your body time to rest and recover.

As a member of Strength Faction, I’ve seen the value of organizing my training week along the neurometabolic continuum. This is a fancy term that basically means you perform your most neurologically taxing activities at the start of the week and your most metabolically taxing activities at the end of the week. The first half of the week is a great time to lift really heavy weights, perform sprints, and do high intensity interval training. During the latter half of the week, get your pump on, perform higher rep sets, and do some low intensity recovery cardio. Since I started organizing my weeks like this, I’ve felt less burnt out and more capable of really pushing myself at appropriate times. Try this out to help you recover better and get more out of your training.

Not working hard enough

On the flip side of the previous point, many people aren’t seeing results because they aren’t working very hard. I’m not big on “tough love,” but I do think some people could benefit from taking an honest look at how much they’re truly pushing themselves. If you want to disrupt your current equilibrium and achieve a health and fitness goal, you need to test your limits and get out of your comfort zone.

There are many types of discomfort you can expect as you chase different goals. Building muscle requires enduring burning pain to eek out a few more good reps beyond what you thought you could do. Getting strong requires a similar kind of discomfort and focus to crush a new PR with great form. If you want to lose weight, you will certainly have to get comfortable with being a little bit hungry much of the time. The opposite is true if you want to gain weight; you’ll need to eat past the point of fullness to give your body the fuel it needs to build new tissue.

Few people want to experience these feelings for their own sake. But if you’re serious about your goals, you have to learn to embrace them. If you never feel uncomfortable, you likely need to kick your efforts up a notch. An absence of any of these feelings is a clue that you’re probably not doing the things you need to do to make progress.

If you want to receive more tools, tips, and strategies to help you get strong and feel great despite your crazy schedule, sign up for my email list here.

June 12, 2018January 21, 2020

The Best Exercise You Aren’t Doing: Single-Leg Deadlifts

A couple years ago, one of my regular clients started having knee problems. What started with a minor tweak outside the gym developed into a case of serious pain that required months of physical therapy.

While she was recovering, however, my client still wanted to get crazy strong and feel like a boss in the gym. Since many lower body exercises caused pain, we started spending a lot of time training single-leg deadlifts.

With single-leg deadlifts, my client was able to move lots of weight safely while also building strength in muscles which helped her recovery.

This is just one way to use gym workarounds to avoid pain and still chase your goals. A single awesome exercise can allow you to progress in multiple ways without restrictions.

This week’s blog post is the first in an occasional series I’ll write about great exercises you should perform more often. In this first edition, I wax poetic about why the single-leg deadlift is such a useful exercise and how you can master it despite its unique, challenging demands.

Why they’re awesome

Almost everyone can benefit from more posterior chain work. Years of sitting, running, or lower body workouts centered around squats, leg extensions, and leg presses consist of too much attention paid to your front side and too little attention paid to your back side. This can cause you to feel weak and stiff, and make you more vulnerable to injuries down the road.

The single-leg deadlift lights up the muscles on your backside like few other exercises. Beyond helping you feel better and get stronger, this builds muscle in your glutes and hamstrings. If you’re looking to build buns of steel and tree trunk legs, or just want to look more toned, you definitely need to include single-leg deadlifts in your training.

Single-leg deadlifts are also a great tool to help you improve your balance. Balance is important as we age, when recovering from certain injuries, and when training to maximize athletic performance.

Many people think they need to exercise on unstable and wobbly surfaces for balance training, however, the reality is that most situations that require balance happen on solid ground. Single-leg deadlifts teach you to stabilize your body on one leg without the risks of falling off a tool like a bosu ball.

Finally, as mentioned above, single-leg deadlifts are injury-friendly. I often use these with clients suffering from knee and back pain because they can usually be performed without pain. Readers with cranky knees may actually find performing single-leg deadlifts on a regular basis helps their knees feel better.

Learning the single-leg deadlift

One of the biggest obstacles to learning the single-leg deadlift is poor balance. Many people give up on this exercise after their first try because they hate wobbling around and feel they aren’t able to reap the full benefits of the movement.

Thankfully, there are several simple ways to practice single-leg deadlifts without taxing your balance. If you can master these variations, you’ll have a much easier time progressing to loaded variations.

You can use a slider to practice this exercise while keeping both feet on the floor. Start with this variation if you struggle with balance. Focus on feeling this in the stationary leg as much as possible by keeping a light touch on the slider.

After you’re comfortable with the slider, you can progress to lifting the back leg off the floor. I love this bench-assisted single-leg deadlift that I learned through Strength Faction.

Stand with one foot on the floor next to an incline bench. Place your opposite arm on the bench for balance. As you hinge backward, your arm slides down the bench in front of you. Reach your same side arm out in front of you to provide additional counterbalance.

Next, it’s time to nail down the position of the back leg. There are two variations I use to teach an active and straight back leg. First, position your back foot on a flat bench. Try to push your foot along the surface of the bench as you hinge backward.

You can also use a foam roller to guide the back leg through the movement. Hold the roller on top of your back foot. As you hinge, push the roller backward to guide your leg.

These two drills teach you to actively push your back heel to the wall behind you and keep your toes pointed at the ground beneath you.

Loading the single-leg deadlift

Once you’ve mastered the basic mechanics, it’s time to load the single-leg deadlift up with weights. I use a progression that moves from least balance demand to most balance demand.

The first way I load the single-leg deadlift is with a landmine. I love using the landmine as a teaching tool because it allows you to push into it to stabilize yourself if you lose your balance.

As you use more weight, or if you have small hands, it can become difficult to grasp the barbell. Lifting straps can help you load an appropriately challenging amount of weight.

Next, I have clients hold two dumbbells or two kettlebells at their sides in the suitcase position. If you want an extra challenge, you can also use a loaded barbell. Barbells and kettlebells can be set on the ground and done in a bottoms-up variation. To keep things simple, just hold the dumbbells and kettlebells in your hands and hinge back as far as you can without worrying whether or not you set them on the ground.

Finally, load the single-leg deadlift contralaterally by holding a weight in one hand on the side opposite the leg on the ground. This is the most challenging loading variation because you’ll need to use your core to resist rotation. Only attempt this variation if you feel confident in your balance and ability to execute the movement.

Want to get better at squatting and deadlifting? Download your FREE copy of my mini ebook Squat and Deadlift School below.

June 5, 2018September 13, 2018

I Only Have Two Days to Train. What Should I Do?

Even with all the time management and productivity hacks in the world, there isn’t always enough time to get everything done.

Most of my clients are high-powered professionals working in downtown Chicago. They have demanding work schedules, sometimes with little flexibility and numerous travel days every month as well as relationships, families, and active social lives.

It’s easy to put self-care on the backburner with all these obligations especially when you mistakenly think you must spend many hours in the gym to see results.

One of the most common goals I help people achieve is to increase exercise consistency (for more information and a free 5-day course, check out my #4CSystem here). If you’re like my clients, you probably don’t have hours and hours to devote to training each week. However, you still need to exercise to stay healthy, focused, and energized. And if you have any interest in changing your body or achieving a performance goal (such as helping your team win the rec softball league or squatting twice your bodyweight), consistent training is essential.

Are you doomed to mediocre progress if you can only train twice a week? How can you make the most of your limited gym time to maximize your results and not waste precious energy?

The good news is you can still get good results training twice a week. Training twice per week is much better than training zero times per week. With a few simple adjustments, you can still see progress toward your goals.

The Essentials

The first key is to have a plan or follow a program. I’ve written extensively about the value of following a smart, progressive program. Most people come to the gym with only a faint idea of what they’re going to do. This is a waste of time and does little to challenge you or stimulate growth.

There are many ways to find an appropriate program. The best solution is to hire a qualified in-person or online coach. You can also purchase DIY training programs from people you follow and respect in the industry. Some coaches and websites have free programs available. I followed free training programs for years when I was just getting started and saw great results. The most important thing is to find some kind of structure and stick with it.

Second, stop wasting time. Following a program helps because it eliminates time spent wandering around the gym looking for equipment and making split-second decisions. It’s also a good idea to leave your phone in the locker room or turn it to airplane mode if you need it for music or to track your workouts. Don’t waste half your training time answering emails, taking calls, and scrolling through social media. Focus on your workout and push yourself if you’re serious about making the most of your time.

What to do in Each Workout

If you are only training twice a week, adjusting priorities is key. Full-body workouts help you get the most bang-for-your-buck over the course of the week. These ensure you will hit each major muscle group and movement pattern at least twice every week. Two times is the bare minimum you need to get stronger or build muscle; anything less may allow you to maintain your current fitness level but won’t help you improve.

Prioritize compound movements that work many muscles and joints at once. Each workout should include at least one exercise for the following movements: squat, hip hinge, upper body push, upper body pull, and core or loaded carry. If you have time at the end, add in extra isolation work, high intensity interval training, or longer-duration cardio. However, these things are not 100 percent necessary and can be skipped if needed.

Set up your workouts to save time. I love using supersets for opposing muscle groups such as pairing a squat with an upper body pull or a deadlift with an upper body push. Supersets minimize set-up and tear-down time and allow you to take less rest between exercises. In general, I recommend keeping rest intervals short if your training time is limited. You can get away with 30-60 seconds rest between most exercises. Increase this to 90-120 seconds if you’re completing a heavy barbell lift which requires longer recovery.

What to do the Rest of the Week

Just because you’re only in the gym twice per week shouldn’t mean you completely neglect your fitness the rest of the week. If you’re serious about getting stronger, changing your body, or improving your health, find other ways to sneak activity into your week. Small changes like walking more, biking to work, taking the stairs, investing in a standing desk, or participating in active hobbies can go a long way.

If your primary goal is to lose weight or build muscle, nutrition becomes even more important with limited training time. Try tracking your food for a few weeks to learn more about your intake and determine the appropriate amount of food to move toward your goals. If you are less active and trying to lose weight, you may need to restrict your calories a bit more to see the scale go down.

Not everyone exercises to lose weight. I’ve helped dozens of clients over the years whose primary goal was to move and feel better. If this sounds like you, twice weekly training can go a long way, especially if you monitor the way you’re moving (or not moving) the remainder of the week. Pay attention to your posture and try to sit less. If you engage in repetitive movements at work, be sure to use good form.