This blog post will cover five easy tips to implement into your daily regimen to maximize gains (strength and size) in the gym.
-Rest Periods in-between sets
It might sound obvious, but your body and muscles experience fatigue after applying a resistive force to them (i.e., lifting weights, using resistance bands, cable machines, etc.). It is important to recognize this and understand when your body is prepared to jump into the next set to maximize the output of your volume and energy during your workout/lift. From my experience and knowledge gained over the past several years, I have come to understand my body and what it takes to get the most out of my own gym sessions. The first tip here is proper recovery and recovery time in between working sets. To touch on the point above, there are time ranges that are more optimal for specific goals inside the gym: For hypertrophy or muscle growth the recommended recovery time in-between working sets is typically anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes, Strength requires a slightly longer recovery time since you are typically trying to continuously lift heavy throughout your entire gym session, this constitutes a resting time range of 2-5 minutes, lastly for muscular endurance (if this is your specific goal) you can shorten that rest time anywhere from 10 seconds to under a minute. There are multiple ways to recover properly and the time doing that in between sets can differ depending on what outcome you are looking to get out of your workouts. It is important to note that there is not a single set amount of time that will maximize your ability to rest in between sets for every single workout you do, it is very much goal-oriented. Everyone is different and the goal is to get to an understanding of your body and mind to find the ideal recovery time that works for you and supports your specific fitness goals.
-Water consumption
This is another basic tip, but one that a lot of people can still get complacent with; water consumption (not only during your workout, but throughout your entire day). Water consumption and proper hydration helps in almost every facet of your body/s maintenance and metabolic processes. Proper maintenance of hydration leads to the maximization of: body temperature regulation, cellular function, nutrient uptake and transportation, joint health, waste removal within your body, skin health, digestive health, joint health and much more! What does proper hydration/water intake look like? According to the U.S National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, on average, males should be consuming around 125 ounces of water and females 91 ounces of water. Another popular take is to consume at least half of your body weight in ounces of water; for instance, if you weigh 180 lbs, you should be consuming AT LEAST 90 ounces of water. Once again, this number can vary on a person-person basis, but there are signs that you can pick up on to tell if you are properly hydrated or not. Improper hydration leads to cramping, irregular body temperatures, fatigue, headaches, dry mouth and a dark coloration of your urine. Stay hydrated and I promise you will not only get more out of your workouts, but you will 100% feel better throughout your gym sessions and day.
-Sleep to fuel your recovery
There is nothing more important to your recovery between gym sessions than getting a full 8 hours of rest. In fact, most of your recovery to your muscles and body happen when you are asleep every night. This should be your number one priority within your recovery and gym regimen. Getting proper amounts of sleep allows your body to fully recover through: release and uptake of natural growth hormones, testosterone and other healing substances, enhanced protein synthesis (which is extremely important to muscle building, growth and recovery), increased blood flow throughout your body, and the decrease of cortisol. If you are not getting a full 8 hours and hitting healthy REM cycle ranges within that sleep, than you are fighting a losing battle (as far as overall health, especially muscle building and recovery). Some simple tips and tricks to maximize your sleep schedule are: create a nighttime-routine and stick to it, keep off of your phone or any other form of tech. that produces blue light, make sure your room/area that you rest is dark and at a moderated temperature (typically a bit colder than the ambient temperature of your home) for your full comfort, fuel your body well and drink plenty of fluids throughout the day, and if need be there are sleep aids to use if all of the above doesn't seem to help out your sleep quality.
-Food Intake and Protein Consumption
Another super important factor to maximize your gains inside and outside of the gym is overall food intake and protein consumption. It's important to note that this is also a goal-oriented factor, but for the sake of muscle growth we are talking about remaining in a caloric surplus or ingesting more calories than your body burns throughout the day. Caloric surplus allows your body the proper amount of food and nutrients it needs to support your muscle growth as you continue through your muscle-building program. You will hear gym-goers and the fitness industry refer to this stage as a "bulk." If you're goal is to gain muscle, than you are going to want to remain in a caloric surplus every single day throughout your entire program or mesocycle (typically 6-8 weeks of a specific regimen and workouts). Failure to do so, is going to result in you not gaining weight and feeling like you're (metaphorically) spinning your wheels but getting nowhere. There are tools out there you can utilize to calculate your BMR (basal metabolic rate), and this will give you a rough estimate of the amount of calories you are burning on a daily basis. Knowing this is important, because then you can use this number to adjust the calories you consume every single day depending on what your goal at the gym is. Like mentioned, our goal is to gain muscle so we want to make EXTRA sure that we are consuming more calories than burned on a daily basis. Another large piece of building muscle is the amount of protein you are ingesting on a daily basis. I touched on this in the prior bullet point covering sleep, but protein (and the proper amount of it) is THE building block of protein synthesis, muscle growth, and recovery. If you come up short with your protein consumption, then you are only doing you and your muscles a disservice and not completely utilizing the work that you put in at the gym. A good rule of thumb when it comes to the amount of protein you should be ingesting to increase your muscle size and mass is to consume about 1-2 grams of protein per pound of body weight. So if you weigh 160 lbs, your protein intake (at the very least) should be 160 grams per day.
-Intensity and Quality of Workouts
Last factor to maximize your gains is your training intensity and quality. Muscles growth requires stress to your muscles to cause micro-damage within the muscle fiber. If you aren’t pushing yourself hard enough at the gym during your workouts, then you won’t get your body to react to the stimulus that you are applying, or the stimulus won’t be effective enough to cause growth. Intensity and quality of your workouts has a huge outcome on how much your muscles will react to the stimulus applied. You want your workouts to be intense enough to cause perturbation and stimulus but not intense enough to where you aren’t recovering in time for your next gym session. This is a fine line and once again, differs for everybody. Some tips to make sure that you are pushing hard enough during your lifts/workouts are: during your gym sessions you should be able to feel your muscles experiencing fatigue when applying a resistive stimulus to them, this includes feeling a “pump” (which is just increased blood flow to the targeted muscle(s) after intense force is applied to them), you should be ending your workout with a full “pump” and this is a good guideline to understand whether your body and muscles are pushed to their highest limits, increase your volume in the gym by adding weight/resistance or implementing a higher rep range or number of sets, and lastly perfect your form so that you are applying stress to the muscle(s) you are looking to target in the gym that day.
I hope all of this information was easily digestible for you as the reader and I wish you luck on your journey to add muscle and size. If you have any questions or are looking for some help during your fitness journey email us at forgehealthmt@gmail.com and we can get you the help you need to succeed and achieve all fitness goals you may have. Subscribe to the site for free access to this blog and future posts!
Thanks for reading!
Best,
FHF Team
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