Intro and What to Expect

Hello! Welcome back everyone! I have gotten a lot of questions asking, “How do I grow my muscles?” and “What kind of exercises can I do to grow my glutes?” and LOTS of messages from fed up individuals wondering why they aren’t seeing results as quickly as they’d like. Last week we talked about the nutrition basics behind how to lose fat (check it out: https://taylormillerfitness.com/how-to-lose-fat-nutrition-basics/), so this week we are going to talk about how to gain muscle in the most efficient (and science-backed) way possible. We will be laying out what to do to build muscle when it comes to data collecting, nutrition, exercise, recovery, realistic expectations, and common obstacles (and their solutions), so get your notebook out, buckle in, and let’s build some muscle!!

The goal from this post is to give you a better understanding of the basics behind building muscle, so that after reading this you will know EXACTLY what to do next, and why! 

Data Collecting

Let’s start with one of the most important parts; data collecting. We collect data in order to figure out the next best step, and to see what works and what doesn’t work for your specific body (something that is VERY useful is to build a user’s guide to YOUR body, that you can look back on whenever you’re stuck, or whenever you’re ready to get to your next goal!). What I would recommend you start with would be the body composition scanner (most gyms may have these, they send an electrical signal through your body to determine your body fat and muscle mass), circumference measurements, progress pictures, and a daily tracker on your energy and sleep quality. I want to point out that I did not include scale measurements or weight, that is because the scale on the weight tells you very little about your progress, and is almost entirely unnecessary (in my opinion). 

*Start by doing all of these measurements in the morning before you eat or drink any fluid (make sure you wear the same outfit, collect the data at the same time, go to the bathroom before, and NEVER do the measurements when on your period). 

1. Take your progress pictures from the front, each side, and back. 
2. Take the circumference measurements around the middle of your arms, waist (smallest part), hips (largest part), and legs. 
3. Get your body scan measurements and note your muscle mass, body fat, and how much fluid you’re retaining. 
4. Set up an easily accessible way to track your energy levels during your workouts, energy levels during the day, and sleep quality each night (it can be easiest to do on a scale from 1-10). 

(Example: 

9/20/2023

Workout Energy: 7/10

Day Energy: 8/10

Sleep Quality: 10/10)

Nutrition

Now that you’ve collected your data, let’s talk about nutrition! In the simplest terms, to build muscle you want to prioritize protein, and either be at calorie maintenance or in a slight surplus. Those are the basics! In order to determine how many calories it takes for you to maintain, you would start by tracking your calories for 7 days straight (as accurately, honestly, and as normally as possible, without making ANY changes). Divide the number of calories you ate total (during the 7 days) by 7, and that is around where your maintenance would be at. I highly recommend continuing to track to make sure you’re hitting your maintenance calorie intake with about 80% consistency, and do that for 2 weeks. After the 2 weeks you would collect data again and determine your next steps from there (we’ll talk about how to determine next steps in the section about “Obstacles and their Possible Solutions”). In order to prioritize your protein you could either do that by eating the protein part of your meal first, by doubling how much protein you have in each meal, or by tracking and making sure you have about 0.8-1g of protein per pound of bodyweight. Now that you have the starting caloric intake goal, and the plan for your protein intake, we can move on to the next section! 

Exercise

Exercise is the most fun part (in my opinion!) because you can be extremely flexible with what you choose to do! In order to build muscle the most efficiently, you’d want to do strength training anywhere between 1-5 times a week (of course you could do 6 or 7 days, but you’d definitely want to make sure your programming is good enough to allow your muscles to recover). And I recommend hitting each muscle group about 2-3 times each week.The rep range would be between 8-20 reps (although I usually stick to 8-12, for time) and your set range would be somewhere between 2-5 (this is my own preference). Your break time between each set would be between 1-2 minutes. As far as programming goes (I don’t want to get TOO technical with it, I will be making a post in the future about how to program your workouts) the structure would depend on how many days you’d be able to make it to the gym. (For example, if you’re going 4x per week you can do a program that has 2 upper workouts and 2 lower workouts. If you’re going 1x per week you can do 1 full body workout.) After that you’d build your workout for each of those days, starting with a compound movement (like squats or bench), and adding in other exercises using single muscle groups. You’d stick to that program for about 6-8 weeks, evaluate your progress so far, and update your program from there. 

One of the MOST important parts to this is being consistent with progressive overload, that means that you are constantly trying to increase either the amount of weight you’re lifting, how many reps you’re doing, or how many sets you’re doing with each exercise. This helps you to continue overloading that muscle to make it larger and stronger. A good way to see how to do this is whenever you get to your max rep for an exercise with good form, you should be going up in weight. Start with that! Keep track, so you can continue moving up in weight, sets, or reps every single time you do that same exercise. 

 Since programming is so dependent on the person and what their goals are, we’re going to leave it at that, if you do have ANY questions on what a good program would look like for you, please DM me @taylormillerfitness on Instagram and I can give you a great outline (for free of course). Main takeaways to build your program would be to figure out how many days a week you can CONSISTENTLY go, how many sets and reps you’re shooting for for each exercise, what structure you want for your program(upper/lower/full, all full bodies, push/pull/legs, bodybuilding format, etc.), and then what exercises you’re planning to do each day, and to keep progressive overload at the front of your mind every time you do your workout. Lastly, I would recommend trying to keep your workout under 2 hours total, for most people it helps them maintain consistency and not overtrain! Okay, now you have your program! Let’s move onto RECOVERY 😉 

Recovery

One of the main things you MUST do to build muscle is to allow yourself to recover. You will NOT grow muscle if you don’t let it heal. This is nonnegotiable. This means taking necessary rest days when needed (even if it forces you to switch around your workout plan for the week), getting quality sleep, and keeping stress levels down as much as possible. 

A good way to know if you need an extra rest day is if your energy levels during your workouts and your day have been under a 6 or a 7 for 3 days in a row. When on your period you may need more rest days than normal, or may need to go a bit lighter in the workouts as well since your body is doing a lot internally during that time. The goal for sleep is to get at LEAST 8 hours of quality sleep, meaning you aren’t tossing and turning and waking up periodically. A good place to start when working to improve your sleep is to limit light (from your phone, lamp, TV, etc.) about an hour before you plan on going to bed, try not to eat less than about an hour before bed (so your body won’t be working to digest your food all night), and to set up a calming routine to relax yourself and help yourself get better sleep. Keeping stress levels low helps trememdously when building muscle too, so gaining tools and setting up game plans for stressful times (bringing in a therapist to add to your team can be really beneficial) will help you be able to combat the stress. Now that you have a game plan on noticing when you may need extra rest days, how to set yourself up for quality sleep each night, and how to combat stress, we are ready to move on to how to set realistic expectations! 

Realistic Expectations

Setting realistic expectations from the start is KEY to keeping yourself motivated and on the right track while on your muscle gain journey. Keep in mind everyone is VERY different in every way (including how their body responds to exercise, stress, food, sleep, gaining muscle, etc.) and the biggest thing I want you to takeaway from this section is that these guidelines are only here as estimates to determine if you’re heading in the right direction during data collection checks, but the main thing you should be doing is noting how YOUR body is responding and what you can expect from your OWN individual being as far as progress goes. The numbers I’m about to give you are average amounts, and differ from person to person, so although I recommend using these as loose guidelines, I do NOT recommend using them as fact. 

These numbers will vary depending on how consistent you are with maintaining healthy nutrition, a well-rounded and sustainable exercise routine, and solid recovery. For women, you can gain about 0.65-1 pounds of muscle every week as a beginner, around 0.325-0.5 pounds of muscle every week as an intermediate lifter, and around 0.1625-0.25 pounds of muscle each week if you are advanced. For men, you can expect to gain about 1.5-2.5 pounds of muscle each week as a beginner, around 0.75-1.25 pounds of muscle each week as an intermediate lifter, and about 0.375-0.625 pounds of muscle each week if you are advanced. Keep in mind muscle gain is not linear, so these numbers should not be taken as fact. 

Now that you can set realistic (although estimated) parameters so you can see whether it’s time to change certain aspects, or keep them the same in order to gain muscle, we can now talk about common obstacles that may come up and how to overcome them! 

Common Obstacles and their Possible Solutions

Part of setting yourself up for success during this journey is preparing ahead of time (to an extent) for possible obstacles that might get in your way. To make this nice and concise I will lay this out for you in a question/answer-type format! 

Q: What if I gain fat and not muscle after the 2 weeks? 

A: Lower your calorie intake by about 200 calories (I would recommend trying not to drop lower than 1200 for women and 1500 for men, depending on your size and frame of course) by lowering fat and carb intake, and work to increase your protein. Protein grams should be about 0.8g/pound of body weight. Example: If you weigh 150 LBs you should be eating around 120-150 g of protein each day. Keep this consistent for another 2 weeks, check your data, and go from there! 

(Contrary to popular belief, you CAN still build muscle in a slight calorie deficit, as long as it isn’t drastic). 

Q: What if I start losing muscle? 

A: Try increasing your calorie intake by 250 calories, and make sure you are eating at least 0.8-1g of protein per pound of body weight each day, consistently. Check that you’re keeping your stress levels low, are getting quality sleep, and are giving yourself enough recovery time in between sessions. 

Q: If I can only go to the gym 1x/week due to a busy schedule, will I still build muscle? 

A: Absolutely!! I would recommend doing 1 full body workout each week, make the exercises mainly compound movements so you can work all your muscle groups in that one workout (like squat, bench, deadlifts, hip thrusts, pull ups, dips, hanging knee tucks, etc.), aim for 3-5 sets of each exercise at 8-12 reps each, and continue progressively overloading by increasing reps, sets, or weight each time you do that exercise. Make sure your nutrition is solid and consistent, recovery is great, and you will build muscle slowly but surely!

Conclusion/Pulling Everything Together

I hope this gave you some insight into how to build muscle in the most efficient way possible! Some BIG takeaways from each section: 

1. Collect data every 2 weeks to start and make sure you’re on the right track, then switch it to once a month so you can REALLY see the progress. 
2. Keep your calories around maintenance or in a slight surplus, and prioritize protein (about 0.8-1g of protein per pound of body weight each day). 
3. Progressively overload your muscles each session, either increasing reps, sets, weight, or all 3.
4. Give yourself proper recovery days, warm up before and cool down after your workouts, get quality sleep, and work to lower stress as much as possible. 
5. Set REALISTIC expectations and understand that the only way you can really see yourself progress is to learn how your body responds to different factors, and the only way to do that is by consistently collecting data and responding accordingly! 

If you have ANY questions or specific obstacles you need help with, please feel free to reach out and DM me @taylormillerfitness on Instagram (https://instagram.com/taylormillerfitness?ighsit=MzRIODBiNWFIZA==)! I am here to help! Thank you as always for making it this far, let’s build you some muscle!!!