Following our Biggest Weight Loss Mistakes, it is natural that we follow up with this article. Without further ado, let us present to you some of the biggest mistakes people make when trying to gain muscular weight.
1) Eating Too Little Calories
This must be by far the biggest mistake ever. Eating protein is not all it takes to gain muscles. Other than eating enough protein, taking in a total amount of calories that is greater than what your body requires is key to gaining muscles. This extra calories provides raw materials and energy to help you build new muscle tissues. In addition to this, once you hit a plateau after gaining some weight but can gain no more, look at your protein and caloric intake again. It has to be increased before you can start gaining muscles again.
2) Not Training Hard Enough
I already assume that all of you are doing resistance training in the gym to try to gain muscles. You simply can’t be doing pushups or crunches at home when trying to build significant amounts of muscle mass.
If you don’t see progress in your training, ie. poundages are the same as last year, reps and sets are not increasing, chances are you’re not going to build new muscle mass. The body needs to be challenged to provide it with a reason to build new muscle. And hard training, stressors to the muscle tissues, are keys to illicit muscle gain. It doesn’t matter if you are carrying very heavy weights already. There must still be progression in training for you to see results.
3) Eating Too Many Calories
In an attempt to gain muscle mass as soon and as much as possible, some people go into binge eating mode and stuff themselves with as much food as they can get. Well, this ensures that you have enough raw materials to build muscles, but at the same time you will also be piling on too much fat. You can only gain muscles that fast and the excess calories will have no where to go but your belly and thighs.
Weight gain should be monitored throughout a bulking phase and aiming for about 1lb of weight gain a week should be reasonable. Anything more than that chances are you’re building fats at a speed that’s too fast.
Start by eating clean first (no ice cream, fast food etc). Bulking doesn’t give you full access to junk food as an excuse to beef up.
Need more help to gain muscles? Hire a personal trainer to write you your individualized training and diet plans today!