Making a brave change and joining the gym is one of the most positive lifestyle choices that you can make, but when progress is slow, or begins to plateau, people often blame poor genetics for their lack of muscle growing prowess. Fortunately, coaches like McKenna Henrie, who has been a competitive bodybuilder and knows a thing or three about packing on lean mass, explains that there’s more to muscle than the gym membership alone.
Taking to Instagram, Henrie provided some essential points that must be covered in order to crush your muscle building goals. M&F breaks it all down here, so that whether you are a complete newbie, or just need a bit of a nudge in the right direction, there’s a way to build more mass.
Tip One: Lift with Intention
Okay, you’ve purchased the gym membership and you’re even managing to make regular visits, but if the muscles are still not growing, you might need to take stock of what you’re actually doing while you’re there. “Just because you are lifting does not mean you are building,” Henrie told her 80,000-plus IG followers in a frank but fair post. “There is a difference between lifting weights and lifting with intention, progressing over time, focusing on range of motion and muscular contraction. Anyone can lift weights but to build, you have to lift with intention.”
To unpack Henrie’s advice, start out by focusing on form and activating the target muscles for each exercise. From there, aim for 8 to 12 reps per set, and find a weight that you almost fail at as you try to complete the final rep. Then, as your body gets accustomed to the weight and it begins to feel easier, increase the load to keep failure within reach. This is the kind of progressive overload that signals your body to build back stronger, and if you want to really increase hypertrophy, complete around 3 sets with each exercise, adding further exhaustion to the muscles.
Muscles need fuel to grow, so trying to build lean mass without addressing your nutrition will put you on the fast lane to muscle breakdown. “Nutrition is critical for muscle building as muscle is more metabolically active, meaning it requires more calories than fat to maintain,” explained Henrie, who has competed in the Bikini division. “If you are working out but not fueling appropriately, it is going to feel difficult to build. This means adequate calories but also protein + carbohydrates as they are the building blocks for muscle.”
Henrie explains that adequate fueling is not just about eating before a workout but also making sure there’s enough left in the tank for recovery, because the recovery phase is where the muscles are actively built.
Tip Three: Recovery is key
Speaking of recovery, this is often those most neglected, and yet most important aspect of making gains. Sure, getting to bed on time is a less glamorous than pumping iron, but dialing in your recovery could lead to surprising growth. “This is where muscle tissue is repaired (in the deepest phases of our sleep cycle),” explained the coach. “You can workout all you want, but if the recovery piece is not there (and I am not saying you need perfect sleep every night), you won’t see muscle growth.”
