The Basics of Building Muscle - Exercise and Nutrition
Hello again! A very popular question is "how do you build muscle?" Almost anyone who starts getting into fitness wants to know this! Whether you are trying to lose weight, get stronger, or change your body composition, building muscle is one of the most important elements (besides nutrition of course!). Let's get right into this! There are three main steps in gaining strength and building bigger muscles: Breakdown Recovery Overcompensation The first step is muscle breakdown- this happens when you do resistance training such as weightlifting. Your body tries it's hardest to be as efficient as possible, and does not like to expend extra energy. So in order to get stronger, you need to push your body outside of it's comfort zone so it will adapt to a new amount weight it needs to lift. So when you exercise, you are not actually growing your muscles, you are causing micro tears in the tissues. This sounds like a bad thing, but it's not! Overtraining I...