4 Ways To Increase Muscle Mass
What do you think when you see the hashtag “gains” or all those people flexing at the gym? Is it a whole other world or a bit intimidating?
I used to be a gym rat and I think weight lifting is a fun thing when done in moderation.
There are many benefits to having muscle. It helps your metabolism, helps stabilize your hormones, reduces injuries, and makes your body stronger.
Weight lifting is its own topic and we could go into a lot of detail discussing its many aspects. But today we’re focusing specifically on how to actually gain muscle mass.
I am going to share my four tips on how to gain muscle mass. You may not want to bulk up, but don’t worry. These tips will also help you simply tone and gain a little more muscle so you can experience the benefits in your body.
Tip #1 - Get your daily intake of protein
Most people know that you need protein if you’re trying to build muscle. But do you know how much protein you actually need per day?
You might be someone who does really well calculating things and logging specific amounts in a journal or an app.
Or you might be like me. If I try to do that, I get a bit obsessive and it drives me crazy. If you’re more like me, I’m going to show you another method to calculate your daily intake of protein without going nutso.
Here is for my people who need calculations and do well with that.
If you’re a sedentary person, you need about 0.8 kilograms to 1 kilogram of protein per kilogram of body weight every day. Sedentary means you don’t do much and you sit most of the day. Maybe you go on short walks, but for the most part, you drive to work, you go home, and you watch Netflix.
Note that 0.8 to 1 gram is also the amount of protein you need if you don’t want to gain muscle but just want to maintain the current muscle mass you have.
If you are a bit more active and your goal is to gain muscle mass, you need to eat 1.4 grams to 2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day.
Now, here’s for the people like me who start obsessing if they have to calculate and want a different way to measure protein. I use the hand portion model. If you’re part of my programs you know very well that I teach this method. It is used by Precision Nutrition, where I got my nutrition certification.
To do this, you look at the size and thickness of your palm. You should have one to two palms of protein per meal. The cool thing is that since a person’s hands are usually proportional to their body, you can use your own hand as a guide and it will be the right amount for you.
Usually I recommend one to one and a half palms if you have a body type called an endomorph. This is where your body’s metabolism isn’t as fast, and you tend to have to monitor how much you eat.
If you are an ectomorph, you can digest carbs better and have a faster metabolism and a leaner body by nature. In this case, you can go ahead and eat two of those palms because your body is burning so much of your energy all the time that you need to eat more.
Tip #2 - Eat protein throughout the day
Why throughout the day?
Because our body can only store a certain amount of protein at one time.
When you eat protein, your body breaks it down into smaller components which we call amino acids. Amino acids help create muscles, hormones, neurotransmitters, and enzymes. The amino acids essentially hang out in a pool all together and they’re available when you need them.
Our body is continuing to use and break down the protein throughout the day, but cannot go past holding a certain amount of protein in that amino acid pool. It has a limited amount of space. If you eat a ton of protein at once, your body won’t absorb it all.
This means if you forget to eat protein for breakfast or lunch and think, “I’m going to double my portions and have all my protein for the day for dinner,” it’s not going to work.
Research shows that the best and fastest way to gain muscle mass is to eat protein throughout the day. Make sure you get three meals, or even four to five small meals, to give your body the amount of protein it needs.
When you are trying to build muscle mass, this is all the more important.
Tip #3 - Eat protein before and after a workout
When you workout, your muscle tears and breaks down, so the key to growing muscle mass is having more protein synthesis (the creation of muscle) compared to protein breakdown (the breakdown of muscle).
It is similar to the scales in a balance. You want more protein synthesis than protein breakdown, so the scales are weighted in that direction.
Which makes sense, right?
This is why it’s so important to have a post-workout protein snack. Some people also recommend having protein while you’re working out, like in a protein drink. Whether you have it while you’re working out, or right after, the protein is there and available for your body to use.
You can also have protein before your workout, but the most important time is right after. To get specific, protein synthesis happens up to 48 hours after a workout. This means you have two days to refuel on protein.
However, the time to get the best bang for your buck is to eat protein immediately after a workout to two hours after the workout. During this time, your body will absorb the protein most effectively.
I bet you’re wondering, “Okay, so how much protein do I need to intake after my workout?”
Some people go out after a workout and eat Korean BBQ to get in a ton of meat. But as with most things, you don’t want to overdo it. It’s all about balance and moderation.
You need to have 15 grams of protein per hour of your workout. So if you just did a 30 minute lift session, you just need 7.5 grams of protein.
Also important to note is that you don’t only need protein for muscle gain. You also need carbohydrates post-workout, to refuel the muscle glycogen. So having that protein/carb combo is awesome.
The amount of carbohydrates you need is 30 grams per hour of workout. To recap, this means 15 grams of protein and 30 grams of carbs per hour of your workout.
There are drinks and shakes for this, and usually that’s more convenient than eating a meal.
Personally, I tend to workout right after I’m done with work, and then after that I have my dinner, so for me it works out to eat real food. This is my rhythm that works for me and my family.
But since a lot of people go to a gym or somewhere else that’s not in their home and don’t have food right there with them, drinks are a great way for them to get in the needed protein and carbohydrates.
Tip #4 - Do Hypertrophy Weight Training
There are four main types of goals when weight lifting. It is important to know what you want to achieve so you can train appropriately. The four types are power training, strength training, endurance training, and gaining muscle mass.
Power Training - In power training, your goal is to gain more power.
Strength Training - In strength training, as you can probably guess, the goal is to get stronger.
Endurance Training - In endurance training, you’re trying to gain lean muscles that can last for a long time, such as during a bike race or a marathon.
Hypertrophy Training - Last is hypertrophy training which is gaining muscle mass, which is, of course, what we are focusing on.
To build muscle mass you need to do power and strength exercises or functional exercises. What the heck are power and strength exercises? Power and strength exercises are exercises that use multiple joints, meaning you work different parts of your body at the same time. This could be things like squats, deadlifts, pullups, weighted jumps. You can also do functional exercises. That means something where you’re accomplishing a task or doing something similar to what you might do in daily life. For example, in Cross Fit, they do a lot of things like pushing tires or carrying sandbags. You can do that for strengthening if you happen to have a giant tire laying around.
There are a few differences between hypertrophy training and strict power and strength training. One is that in hypertrophy training, you can also do isolated muscle exercises, such as bicep curls. In this case, only your biceps are working. Tricep extension is another example, where the exercise is isolated just for the triceps. Another is that hypertrophy training requires you to lift a slightly lighter weight of 60 to 80 percent of your one rep maximum. If you don’t know, a one-rep-maximum is the most you can lift successfully in one lift. For example, let’s say you can lift a hundred pounds successfully in one rep in a squat, but you wouldn’t be able to do two of them. One hundred pounds would be your one rep max. For hypertrophy training, you want to lift 60-80 percent of your one rep max. If 100 pounds is your max, that would mean lifting 60-80 pounds.
Another difference between hypertrophy training and power and strength training is the number of repetitions you do. For hypertrophy training, you have that lighter weight, and you want to actually do more repetitions. You want to lift 6-12 reps, meaning 6-12 repetitions of an exercise at 60-80 percent of the weight of your one rep max.
If you were doing power and strength training, you would do less repetitions and a heavier weight.
One last difference is the amount of time you rest. For hypertrophy training, you rest about 30 seconds to about 2 minutes between sets, whereas for strength and for power training, you rest a lot longer. In that case, the muscle fibers need more rest because you’re lifting a much heavier weight.
So there you have it, those are my four tips on how to gain muscle mass. I hope you learned something new!
As always, if you have any questions or need support on your health journey, you can email me at cktan@verticalmovementwellness.org or send me a message on Instagram @verticalmovementwellness.
Warmly,
Dr. Cindy Kimmi Tan