How do I grow muscle?

Building an aesthetic, healthy and strong body is at the forefront of most gym goers goals. It is no secret that gaining significant amounts of muscle takes consistent hard work. However, this process is often over-complicated, with many people 'spinning their wheels' and making no progress. Here is some quick and straightforward tips to ensure you are making as much progress as possible!

1. Progressive Overload - This term is commonly cited within the gym community, but what does it actually mean? PO simply means to progressively make what you are doing in the gym harder. Whilst this can be achieved through several methods, the most common way is to increase the number of repetitions and/or amount of weight you are lifting over time. For example, you can comfortably complete a set of 60kg x 10 reps on the bench press, so next week you attempt 60kg for an extra few reps or you add 2.5kg to the bar and try to get 10 reps. Continually repeating this process and gaining small, but significant, progress leads to big changes over time.

2. Consuming Protein - To support your hard training in the gym, it is vital that you consume enough daily protein. Protein repairs damaged muscle from training and helps it to grow back bigger and stronger. If you are failing to consistently eat enough protein whilst resistance training, you will likely make little muscle gains. Whilst the precise amount of required daily protein is often debated, most studies indicate that anywhere between 1.4-2.2g per kg of body weight is sufficient to support muscle growth.

3. Sleeping - In the modern world, sleep is something a lot of people struggle to get enough of, yet it is necessary for optimum health. However, it's also very important for adequately recovering from training and helping you feel fresh to attack the next workout. If you constantly fail to get enough high quality sleep, productive training and efficient muscle growth becomes very tricky. Anywhere between 7-9 hours is a sufficient amount. However, this is extremely person-dependent and many individuals may feel better on more or less, albeit running off of 4-5 hours every night is counterproductive for gaining muscle.

Although there are various factors which may smooth the muscle gain process, these three points are the fundamental basics everyone should be following!