Building muscle- As a city worker
Building muscle… Whether your goal is to look like a 120kg bodybuilder or an 80kg Men’s health cover model, the core principles remain the same. Depending on how consistent you are, will determine how much muscle you can build.
How do you build Muscle?
Create disturbance – Your body prefers holding as minimal muscle as possible, as a more muscular body costs the body more in running costs (calories). You can create disturbance by using different overload techniques to target muscles, this will create micro-tears which results in the body adapting and being better prepared in the future. One of the easiest way to create overload is recording the weights you use, and trying to beat the number or reps and/or weight used.
Below is an example of creating overload by using an increase in weight.
Week 1. 3 set of 10 reps at 10kg
Week 2. 3 sets of 10 reps at 12kg
Training Frequency
When training to build muscle you should aim to train a minimum of 3x a week, to gain a significant amount in 3, 6 or 9 months time. In the pursuit of creating disturbance, if you train and don’t return to the gym for another 7 days you will lose the training effect. As a result it will be more difficult to create overload to the muscle.
Nutrition for Building Muscle
“You are not what you eat, you are what you digest and assimilate” Tony Robbins. I don’t consider Tony Robbins as a nutrition expert, however he is certainly correct, we understand you may have very busy schedules. Nonetheless if you eat whilst rushing you don’t allow the body to prepare to fully digest the meal and absorb nutrients and minerals. Make sure you take 10 seconds between each mouthful, sitting down to eat for an absolute minimum of 15 minutes, ideally followed by a 20 minute walk improves the assimilation process.
Additionally where you can improve nutrition, is making sure your source of protein is the first thing on your plate. This is the macronutrient we find clients typically don’t consume enough of. Protein in Greek is “first place”, it is the only macronutrient you use to build muscle and is an important building block to creating cells, bones and skin.
Rest
We find most city workers benefit from an improvement of sleep. Firstly quantity of hours followed by quality. Getting enough sleep will improve body composition which makes it easier to build muscle tissue, but sleep is also the time when you recover from the micro-tears from your training. A lack of sleep will affect your ability to fire on cylinders, ensure you get minimum 6-8 hours per night uninterrupted.
What you should expect over the course of a successful program following these 3 core principles, is an increase in strength and muscle tissue.
Article written by William Nkrumah