5 Ways to Build Muscle and Strength
Body By Drake only utilizes tried and true methods for building muscle and strength.
For many stuck in a physique or strength plateau, 95% of the time they are not paying enough attention to the details of their lifting sessions, diet, and/or recovery. Generally there is always a missing link in one, or all of those categories. The process of building muscle and strength is not complicated. Eating enough protein, adding weight to exercises gradually, and prioritizing recovery is all you need. Human nature does have a tendency to get in the way. Lots of people follow these principles, get results, but then stop because they weren't patient enough for the process. They get derailed. They start looking towards all the shiny products and labels that promise everything, but deliver nothing. That's because none of that stuff works. Whether you want to believe it or not. It all comes down to keeping consistent, working hard, being positive, and staying patient.
1.)Mindset - Before you pay attention to anything else in the gym, it's important to reflect on your current mindset. Before starting a program, your mind has to be ready. You don't have to be hungry for progress...you must be STARVING for progress. If your goals are not a top priority in your life, then how can you expect to get better results? I'm only talking from personal experience. The clients who have had the most success in our programs were the ones that were fully committed. Always be honest with yourself and ask if you're truly ready to commit to a program.
2.) Diet - Are you getting enough protein, carbs, and fat? Are you taking a multivitamin? Protein aids recovery, fat helps produce hormones, and carbs fuel intense workouts. Not getting the adequate amount of macros in your diet could be holding you back. Pair that with being vitamin deficient and it could be a major key player as to why you are not making gains. Macros, vitamins, and minerals all have key functions to help the body operate. Wouldn't it make the best sense to have all those boxes checked before you look anywhere else?
3.) Log Book - Wondering why you aren't gaining more muscle mass? Answer this question: Are you getting stronger? If the answer is a "No", or "I don't know", then you might be leaving some serious cards out on the table. It might be a little tedious to track everything single exercise and rep and it might take away from the intensity of the workout. I encourage people to build an arsenal of compound exercises, and track those. Typically the exercises performed first in a workout will be your strongest and most accurate. Personally, I track my major lifts on my cell phone using the Notes app. It's Simple, Easy, Fast, and allows me to track my lifts without compromising intensity
4.) Multiple Rep Ranges - This is something I see plague a lot of lifters. They get too focused on what they can do for a 1 rep max. They get the lifting belt, elbow sleeves, wrist wraps, go on a permabulk diet, and all in efforts to get a better 1 rep max. When the answer is much more simple. While all those tools will help your strength, the key to busting past your 1RM is training in different rep ranges. Instead of always going to your 1 rep max, take some weight off the bar and try to do a double or a triple. Once you hit a plateau on your 1RM for a few weeks. Dial the weight back just a little bit and start competing with those higher rep numbers in your log book.
5.) Recovery - Do you sleep 6-8 hours a night? What is the quality of your sleep? Do you do anything outside of lifting weight to promote blood flow to the body without damaging muscle fiber? Do you drink caffeine just to "wake up"? Are you constantly tired even though you have a high caffeine consumption? If you checked some of boxes, your recovery patterns might be holding you back. I think there is a saying out there, "You can't outwork a poor diet". There should be another one right on top of that saying, "You can't outsmart poor recovery". Your body knows what it needs and it's going to tell you. It's your responsibility to act on those warnings. Your body is smart. It knows the difference between real rest and masking caffeination. Put the pre workout and massage gun down, get some good sleep, and see how much better you feel. The better you feel, the harder you train, the harder you train, the more muscle and strength you get.
