How To Build Muscle?

How can you build muscle?

• How to Build Muscle ? From talking to a trainer at my local gym ” OnetoOne Gym”, he said that in order to grow muscle we need a whooping 400g of protein a day and only 22g of protein to maintain it. THATS AMAZING RIGHT In addition, from Patrick Holford‘s book ” the optimum nutrition bible“, he states that Sylvester Stallone‘s former nutritionist, Micheal Colgan, explains that you can only grow 8lb (3.6Kg) of muscle in a year with a hard training. That is 70g a week or 9.5g a day. The trick is to drink a protein shake before and straight after your workout because this will save your body going into a catabolic state (eating your muscles for energy). When you do this your muscles can repair quickly and you can burn more fat with that extra 9.5g of muscle you gained in that work out. Is this true ? From my blog site: www.empowernetwork.com/onehealth/blog/we…

• Answer:

  Ok let's get started, hope you're in the mood to read ;). 400g of protein are a LOT, only bodybuilders (who weight over 200lbs) who take steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs should eat THAT much protein, since steroids actually double the metabolism. For your average lifter, protein should be about 1-1.5 grams per pound of body weight per day (meaning if you weigh 100 pounds, you need 100-150 grams of protein a day), not nearly as much as you imagined huh? In addition you need a high amount of complex carbohydrates and fiber, and a good amount of healthy unsaturated fats to promote muscle growth. And you obviously need to be on a calorie surplus of about 250-500 extra calories (meaning if you need 2500 calories to maintain current weight, you need about 2750-3000 calories to build muscle without adding too much extra fat). The book is only partially correct, it's true that you can't gain 100 lbs of muscle in 2 months but there are more things to play besides proper nutrition and workout. First of all a new guy with under a year of PROPER weight training (meaning if you were lifting for a year without even knowing what you were doing and not even having the right nutrition, you still count as under a year of proper training) can gain a whooping 20-25lbs (some may build even more!) of muscle in a year. The next year the results are halfed, and each year you see much less results. That's because each year you're getting closer and closer to your genetic potential limit (unless if you take drugs, then the sky's your limit). But in any case, new guys can gain a lot more muscle than that by doing things correctly. Genetics also come in to play here; naturally skinny people (ectomorphs) will build a lot less muscle than the genetic freaks (mesomorphs) who are able to build muscle quickly. Some people are actually born with the right genetics to build muscle. It should be safe to mention here that most Mr. Olympia winners were mesomorphs. This is actually pretty tricky. If you've had a good meal of complex carbs and slow-digesting protein before your workout, your body might not go in a catabolic rate. But the main reason people drink fast-digesting protein shakes right after workouts is not to prevent the body from going into catabolic rate, but to enhance the muscle building even more. You see 30-60 minutes MAX after a workout there's what you may call it "the window of opportunity". At that time your glycogen stores are almost empty and your muscles are begging for nutrients. The trick here is to combine 20-30 grams of fast-digesting protein (whey protein shakes) and 50-60 grams of SIMPLE carbohydrates (some fruits, honey, dextrose supplements, table sugar, white bread, white rice, white pasta) while MINIMIZING fat intake and fiber intake. This will cause an insulin spike; while in normal circumstances an insulin spike is bad and will cause fat storage, right after a workout an insulin spike will instead literally "push" the amino acids from the protein into the muscles and cause muscle growth. Fats, fiber and complex carbs slow down digestion and should be utterly avoided at this time. There's actually a lot of confusion about how extra muscle can help lose body fat. Recent studies showed that a pound of muscle only burns a mesely amount of 6 calories, while other still insist that it burns 50. In any case do your workouts and don't rely too much on added muscle to increase metabolism. The workouts by themselves are great metabolism boosters as they provide you with the after-burn effect, which makes the body burn more calories.