How to Build Muscle for Beginners

Learn How to Build Muscle with Fitness and Nutrition Tips for Beginners

If you’re someone who is looking to begin building muscle and increasing strength, this article is for you.

While it can certainly be intimidating, going to the gym isn’t all that scary. In fact, if you speak to any avid gym-goer, they’ll likely tell you that after their first time going, they were instantly hooked!

Nevertheless, it’s understandable to be hesitant. There are so many questions that beginners have when first starting out:

What exercises do I do? How do I do that exercise? Am I doing this right? How long should I go for? Where is that? What is this?!

It can be overwhelming, there’s no doubt about it…

However, building muscle is typically quite easy for beginners. Most can expect to see noticeable strength increases and muscle mass within 8 weeks of committed and consistent muscle building exercise. The infamous initial phase of muscle building known in the gym-world as “newbie gains”.

So… Building muscle can be fairly easy, but how do you do it? Where do you start?

In this article, we’re going to be reviewing everything you need to know as a beginner and how YOU can begin to build quality, lean muscle.

Let’s get into it!

Where to Start

Getting started is the hardest part, but don’t let this small hurdle stop you.

Once you devise a plan, It all comes down to commitment, discipline, and consistency. If you follow that, you’ll be on the fast-track to building muscle!

Start with your bodyweight

While you may think that you need to jump straight to lifting weights in order to build muscle, this isn’t necessarily the case. As a beginner, it’s important to first hone-in on your technique. Utilizing your bodyweight to accomplish this is the single-most safe and effective method of doing so.

You see, when you think of strength training your mind immediately jumps to lifting weights. However, the definition of strength training simply involves the utilization of resistance. Bodyweight exercises can be an extremely effective way to initially gain strength, and as a result, build muscle.

Keep it simple

Once you’re ready to move on and begin to challenge yourself further, start to introduce weights and resistance bands. It’s all about progressive overload. In other words, adding difficulty to your exercise over the course of days, weeks, and months is what creates the results.

Don’t fall trap to instant gratification. This is the fastest route to failure and potential injury.

Aim for 2-3 days per week

Starting slow may seem counterproductive, however, as mentioned above, it’s all about being smart, following a progressive plan, and sticking to that plan.

As a beginner, begin with 2-3 days of exercise per week. Each workout should last anywhere from 25-45 minutes in duration. A great beginner model typically includes 4-6 exercises, 3 sets of 15 reps each. That should be a good starting point for your body to adapt and acclimate to the stress.

Ideally, working up to 5-6 days per week is the goal and in theory it may sound smart to jump right into it. However starting at that rate will result in a catastrophic failure and rarely shows promise in practice. Again, building muscle takes time and rushing into it isn’t the solution…

Find what works for you, listen to your body, and begin to increase workload over time as you see fit.

Eat more!

When the goal is to build muscle, our bodies must be in a caloric surplus in order to do so. That means that you must eat more calories than you burn. Without a sufficient amount of calories, your body won’t have the energy to sustain the necessary training demands, recover properly from those training demands, and ultimately build new muscle.

Eating more doesn’t mean eating everything. You must still aim for a large portion of your diet to be healthy and nutritious. Muscle building foods like lean protein, complex carbs, and healthy fats are what is necessary to initiate hypertrophy.

We’ll get more into what you should be eating to build muscle later in this article, so keep on reading!

Drink more!

In tandem with eating in a nutritious manner, drinking more water will help supply those nutrients to your muscles. In fact, our muscles are made up of almost 80& water, so to negate and neglect water would be a disservice to your muscle gaining goals!

While there are many more benefits to drinking water, we’re only focusing on the muscle building benefits in this article. As such, aiming for at least 1 gallon of water consumption daily is a good place for you to start as a beginner.

Rest + recover

This tip is all about learning to listen to your body.

It includes warming-up pre-workout, stretching and cooling down post-workout, taking forced rest days and necessary rest days, getting a sufficient amount of sleep daily (at least 7 hours), and taking care of your body at all times.

While many tend to ignore and remain oblivious to this fact, recovery is the single most important aspect of a training or workout regimen. This stays constant whether you’re a beginner OR an elite athlete.

Not only does it help you prepare for your next workout, but it helps prevent injury, improves overall well-being, and it improves overall performance over time.

Recover, recover, recover!

Best Muscle Building Exercises

While all exercise is good exercise, there are particular movements that accomplish strength and muscle gains better than others.

Below are some of the best exercises that you need to incorporate into your workout regimen in order to reap optimal muscle building gains:

I. Squats

II. Deadlifts

III. Lunges

IV. Chest Press (dumbbell or barbell)

V. Pull ups

VI. Weighted Row Variation

VII. Shoulder Press

VIII. Bicep Curl

IX. Tricep Extension

X. Plank

Notice that some of these movements are “compound” lifts, while others can be performed in isolation or with just your bodyweight?

While all types are effective, it’s important to differentiate them…

Compound movements

A compound exercise is one that engages multiple joints and muscle groups simultaneously. A squat and a deadlift are two of the most common examples of compound movements.

Isolation movements

An isolation movement is a singular joint, singular muscle group exercise. A bicep curl or a lateral raise are both great examples of isolation movements.

So which type of exercise is better for building muscle?

While both types are effective and necessary in their own respect, compound movements are typically recommended first. Think of an isolation movement as an accessory, or side-course if you will, while a compound movement is the main-course meal!

The reason for this is because compound movements are both functional in real-world scenarios, and highly optimal/efficient in building muscle and strength.

As a beginner, you want to focus on the basic fundamentals before adding in accessory movements. With that said, an all-encompassing exercise regimen is something you should be aiming for!

What Should You Eat to Build Muscle?

4 picture collage of each food group for building muscle

As mentioned earlier in the article, it’s important to eat MORE when building muscle, especially as a beginner. While the infamous “calories in – calories out” phrase does apply here, it’s just as important to be eating healthy, nutritious calories.

All calories are not created equal, remember that!

In addition to calories, it’s important to understand what macronutrients are and how to use them to your advantage. In short, macronutrients are:

• Protein (4 calories/gram)

• Carbohydrate (4 calories/gram)

• Fat (9 calories/gram)

Below are some of the best foods you should be eating to help build muscle:

XI. Chicken & Poultry

XII. Fish (salmon, cod, tuna)

XIII. Lean Ground Beef

XIV. Steak

XV. Eggs & Egg Whites

XVI. Protein Shakes (Grass-fed whey)

XVII. Yam or Sweet Potato

XVIII. Brown Rice

XIX. Nuts & Seeds

XX. Greek Yoghurt

XXI. Avocado

Of course, this list is only a short example of the foods you should be eating. However, notice that many of them are packed with lean proteins, healthy fats, and complex carbs.

In addition, while all of them are “macro-friendly”, many of them are very “micro-friendly” as well, meaning they contain an abundance of vitamins and minerals.

Protein is essential to building muscle and you must determine how much protein you need to build muscle.

Conclusion

In short, building muscle is a complex process.

As a beginner, it’s important to take it one step at a time and to not get too overwhelmed. There are athletes that have been building muscle for 10+ years and are still learning new and innovative ways to build muscle.

The key takeaways are:

• Ease into it if you’re a complete beginner (2x/week)

• Be consistent and committed (work hard, work smart)

• Eat more!

• Drink a sufficient amount of water daily

• Get your beauty sleep

And above all else, have fun. If you’re not enjoying what you’re doing, the likelihood of you sticking to the game plan is minimal.

Good luck!