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Why don’t I get any bigger muscles from weightlifting? I've been lifting weights for 10+ years and I
still not very muscular, what's wrong with m
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Why won't my muscles get bigger?
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Why Its so hard to gain muscle even though
14 Answers train and eat good food?

David Smith, fitness expert from San Francisco Unified School District What are the best tips to gain strength the
(2012) quickest?
Answered Jan 19, 2021 Add question

You’re hitting the gym consistently, eating healthy, focusing on your weight training,
and not gaining muscle. What gives? The casual gym-goer might not need to know
about pyramid training or the hypertrophy phase, but such wisdom is crucial for
anyone interested in gaining muscle.

You aren’t lifting heavy enough.

“Whenever you’re looking for muscle hypertrophy (muscular growth at the cellular
level) and increasing muscle mass, the preferred method is heavier weights and less
reps,”. In the resistance training context, hypertrophy occurs when skeletal muscle
tissue enlarges, because the resistance stimulus increases the size of the muscle’s
component cells.

Achieving hypertrophy puts you in a muscle-building state, but you won’t get there by
lifting light weights. If you can do 12-15 reps with the weight you’re lifting, you’re
probably not in hypertrophy. Instead, try a pyramid workout: Start with a weight you
can lift for eight reps, but not more than ten. Increase the weight and do six reps; add
more weight and do four reps; increase again and do two reps.

You aren’t trying hard enough.

“Until failure” isn’t a bad thing in resistance training; it’s actually how you get stronger.
Although the amount of reps is still crucial. “In hypertrophy training, you’re going to
have failure at somewhere between two and eight reps, “Someone who’s just looking Messages
for muscle tone and the ability to become more fit is [reaching failure] at 12-15 reps.”
Quora Mar 16, 2017
Going through the motions won’t get you anywhere. You don’t have to achieve failure
Hello! We will be moving to
(not an oxymoron, weirdly) in the first set, but the goal is to get there by the end. “If the new anonymity on Quo…
you’re not working to failure in the last set, you’re going to get the minimum benefits;
that holds true for men and women.
Divyadeep Feb 2, 2016
Sawhney
Your recovery between
1 sets is too short.
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Performing multiple sets in rapid succession doesn’t help you gain muscle; there’s a
reason why the biggest people in the gym tend to hang out on one bench for a while.
We’ve been pushed lately to do as minimal time as possible between sets, because of
the trend toward CrossFit and those types of training. If you’re looking to gain
strength and size, you need to have a bit more time for recovery to occur.

Pelitera notes that muscles can recover to 85 percent of maximal capacity after just 15
seconds. This is great for building muscular endurance, but not so great for building
mass. A good rule is to wait at least two minutes between sets. At this point your
muscles should be fully recovered (although you can add another minute or two, if
necessary).

You aren’t lifting often enough.

You’re right to assume that your body needs rest days between resistance sessions,
but you can safely lift four times a week by stratifying your efforts into specific muscle
groups. You should only be working one muscle group twice a week. It’s too intense
and there’s too much break-down to work a muscle group more than twice.

my recommendation for a four-day resistance training schedule is this: Hit a chest-

shoulder-triceps workout Monday and Thursday and do your leg routine on Tuesday
and Friday. Each muscle group gets two days recovery, and lifting more often means
less lactic acid build up in the muscle tissue. Lactate threshold applies to resistance
training, my says of the phenomenon by which the body disperses lactic acid at a
certain effort level. The more often you train, the higher your lactate threshold will be,
meaning you’ll be able to lift heavy multiple times a week without as much lactic acid
weighing you down. Delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) also decreases with
more frequent resistance training bouts.

You could use more protein.

Protein should constitute 15 to 20 percent of the average person’s total caloric intake,
but you’ll need more to build muscle mass. Somewhere between 25 and 35 percent of
your diet should be protein, if you’re really into weightlifting,

An important note: At a certain intake, the unused protein goes to waste. Americans
have some of the most expensive bowel movements. We do not store protein well, so
excessive protein will be excreted. Excessive protein intakes can cause gastrointestinal
distress and more frequent trips to the bathroom.

You can likely get all the protein you need through natural food sources. Still, if you
are going to supplement, my recommends a combination of whey and casein protein.
Animal proteins tend to be complete proteins, as opposed to plant proteins. Whey is
the type you’d use right after a workout for recovery. Casein is more effective for
long-range recovery; it allows you to recover overnight.

Your body needs rest.

An aggressive four-day-per-week resistance routine does mean you’ll need to

prioritize sleep. The average person should get a bare minimum of seven hours; the
ideal scenario is to have eight. That said, not all sleep is created equal. prolonged
daytime naps can rob you of REM sleep at night, which is crucial for healing torn-
down muscle fibers.
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Updated Nov 19 Divyadeep Feb 2, 2016
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