(ARTICLE) The Briefest “How to Build Muscle” Article You’ll Probably Ever Read - FOR MEN AND WOMEN

1. Sleep

Ideally, you want to be sleeping 8+ Hours Every Night. If you’re in a phase where you can’t get that many hours of sleep, then get as much sleep as you can when you go to bed.

Sleep deprivation will wreck your progress. Sleep is VITAL for building muscle.

Not enough sleep slowly reduces your testosterone, and slows down muscle recovery.

Forget what all these entrepreneurs say about “sleep is for the rich” that absolute bs. Without a good nights rest you won’t even be able to function properly in your day to day life.

2. Implement Progressive Overload

Your body builds muscle and strength as adaptations to the increasing demands placed on it…..through higher reps, sets, or weights.

3. Train Every Muscle Group at Least Twice a Week.

Since our muscles recover within 48 to 72 hours, training them twice a week is superior to only once.

4. Prioritise Compound Lifts

Mainly squats, deadlifts, rows, weighted pullups, overhead presses, and bench presses.

Thanks to insane loading capability and multi-muscle involvement, they provide the most bang for your buck.

Start light, get your form right before working with heavy weight.

5. There’s No “Perfect” Rep Range.

The 8–12 “magical” rep range is a myth.

Mix up reps — prefer high (12 to 20) reps for isolation exercises and low (6 to 8) reps for compounds.

6. Train (Very) Close to Failure.

If you’re breezing through your workouts, you’re not training hard enough. When going hard, even a set of bicep curls will get you sweating.

7. Perform “Clean” Reps.

Don’t half ass / rush through the exercise.

Take advantage of all 3 major muscle-building mechanisms, use perfect reps — explode the positive, pause at peak contraction, and control the negative.

This is also known as “range of motion”

8. Supplements

Supplements aren’t magical, they just supplement your diet, sleep, and workouts.

Even then, only creatine, and whey protein have research backing and are worth using.

I personally don’t use any supplements as of right now. Not that I have anything against them, I just keep forgetting to consume them.

9. Diet

Diet is key.

If your goal is build muscle and you don’t eat enough. You will not build muscle, no matter how hard and consistent you train.

If your goal is to lose weight and you’re not disciplined with eating cleaner / smaller portions, you will not lose that weight no matter how many miles you run on that treadmill.

Eat according to whatever your fitness goals are.

10. Patience

Body transformations take time…..a long time

As a natural lifter, gaining muscle is an excruciatingly slow process.

Expect to see good progress and a difference in the mirror within 3 - 6 months.

Enjoy your workouts, take pictures of your progress, and let the results automatically follow.

Don’t compare yourself to elite fitness models on IG or on the magazines because most of them did not get those physiques naturally.

If it’s men, some of them were cycling some type of steroids which was specifically made for them by their VIP doctor and getting their blood work constantly monitored to keep them safe.

Many of Hollywood’s leading men have used performing-enhancing drugs to attain their muscular onscreen physiques.

If it’s women, some (not all) of them do go and pay for a surgery to resculpt their body. So it can affect a natural woman’s self esteem if she’s trying to compare her progress to someone who paid for it.

If anything, use them physiques you see as motivation.