Setting goals for muscle gain

How many days a week do you go? What excerises do you do? What supplements are you taking? At what intensity? What/how much are you eating? Are you having good form? There's no information here.

If you've been doing weightliftng for a year and made no prgress, something is very wrong (with or without supplements).

So idk if this is impressive or not. But just to give you example. If you go Mon-Fri you'll make visible gains in 3 months. It's been about a year maybe a little over since I began weightliftng and I was 180 lbs, now I'm 225 lbs, so that's 45 lbs in a year. Idk if that's good or bad, but at least it's progress.

-Make a weekly routine (monush , tuesull, wed: legs, Thursush, Friull)

-Drink whey protein post workout. It's necessary to help repair your muscle fibers and pack protein on.

-Set duration and intensity of workout (I do 5 sets if each workout, reps vary. Always to muscle failure)

-Increase weight every 1-2 weeks for workouts. If always have to push your muscles and go to failure.

-Do COMPOUND exercises and free weights. If you're doing just machines then forget about it. Machines at the end.

-Eating is 50% of it. If you go hard at the gym and don't eat that much. Then you're going nowhere. You have to force yourself to eat protein on a daily basis. Typically weightliftng days. If you think, "did i eat enough", then eat more.

Bodybuilding.com (the title of this website sounds intense, but this is where I learned workouts for beginners, they have more info then you could possibly need)

Good luck

 

Those pink emojis faces are supposed to be p's idk what happened (push, pull)

 

You probably are not training (long, hard, intense) enough. Of course assuming that you are getting adequate nutrition, sleep, etc. We advance when we really push ourselves. This is why programs that are constructed by professionals are so great - they make us progress just fast enough so we would push ourselves but not too fast so we would overtrain.

Try exercising every single muscle three times a week, with one day rest in between. Instead of just doing one muscle once a week. That would equal to a full body workout three times a week. Generally one day in between should be enough to recover. See how you can handle that and if everything is fine then increase intensity. Such as maybe start training till muscle failure. Usually I think not being able to progress as fast as one should is because they do not train as intense as they should.

 

Both these guys gave great advice! When trying to gain muscle and bulk up, you need to eat ALOT. Take your post workout shakes, limit fast food to 2-3 times per week and try to eat big clean healthy meals. Carbs and protein are your friend when trying to gain muscle so make sure to eat a lot of both.

 

If you can gain 1 pound a month that is considered Very good. If you can gain even 4-5 pound in 6 months its good.

Compound movements.

Protein requirements are over rated. 1.5g per kg is plenty and you dont need why, it helps its convenient but it doesnt fill you and the cost adds up.

 

Ok guys very simple. I made more progress in a month then I have in a year. 1lb a week is easy.

My biggest mistake. I used to train hard and I thought I was eating enough but I wasn't.
5 meals a day. Nutrient dense food. Whole wheat breads, avocado, peanut butter eggs etc.
If you eat 5-6 meals a day and you're training hard you'll gain 1lb a week.
I'm proof of that.
A guy who competed told me nutrition is 90 percent bodybuilding.

Always stretch after.

 

How do we get to that perfect balance? Should we be barely able to finish the last set of our last exercise or what? I wonder if I rest too much, I rest anywhere from 20 20 seconds to a minute

 

If you're lifting heavy, you'll need 2-3 minutes between sets. Don't worry if it takes "too long", it's about how much work you do, not how much you can cram in 10-20 minutes.

My sources say 2lb/month (of just muscle) is excellent progress. The first couple of months are exceptions so you could gain a lot more then.

 

So more exercises/sets? What do you think about 6 back workouts with 5 sets each or 4 chest exercises with 5 sets each

 

You mean, that's it? Aren't you going to target your legs or arms?

t-nation.com has some good info on how to break up exercises. But yes, in general it's good to do 5 sets of 5 reps (plus or minus some reps).

 

Haha yes I target legs and all the major muscles, but I was just trying to get an idea of how much I should be doing. 5 sets of 5 reps but how many exercises?

 

@theMorningSword

As @primaljade pointed out, ho much you can pack into a short amount of time does not matter as much as total workload. As far sets and reps I would recommend to go higher on reps if your goal is muscle size. So 12 to 15 reps instead of 5 reps. Generally the lower we go the more we train our strength and less we train muscle size. By the time you build vig muscles your strength will be way greater than the same size dude who reached it by doing high reps. But you will get there slower. And unless you are powerlifter it does not actually matter, it will just make you more prone to injury.

For muscle size focus on pumping muscle with blood and really exhausting it. Putting a lot of emphasis on slow and controlled eccentric contraction. For powerlifters any wasted muscle is dead weight. They want to add as much strength while not adding any extra muscle that does not contribute to strength. Hence they will be focusing on heavy weights, low reps, lot's of rest and may be dropping weight instead of bringing it slowly down during negative motion. Bodybuilders want the most muscle in the fastest time hence they will train the opposite way. Rest for bodybuilders usually will be shorter too. Like maybe 1 to 3 minutes while powerlifters might even rest as much as 10 minutes between sets. Also generally, if you have made good use of all your sets, anything more than 3 sets of 12 to 15 reps will have diminishing results. I would recommend not going to failure but close to it during your sets, like 3 reps away from it. Less often you exercise the same muscles higher on sets you should go between workouts. I think 3 sets 3 times a week will give you better results than 6 sets 2 times a week, but that's just my opinion.

 

To add what @The Serpent of Fire said, if you can take a weight and do too many reps (above 20 I think), then you're not lifting heavy enough. At that point you're not triggering the body to make bigger muscles, but triggering it to just be able to lift that weight longer.

 

Get a coach to help you out.