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This could be due to the number and proportion of their muscle fibers, hormonal differences or other individual factors.

Similar to the amount of muscle you can gain, how quickly you can add mass is highly dependent on individual factors.

In reality, there is only so much food your body can process and turn into muscle, and gaining multiple pounds of muscle a week is not realistic for most, especially long term. Not to mention the faster you are trying to gain, the more likely you are going to see gains from water retention and increases in body fat, not just muscle.

For most, gaining one-half to one pound of weight per week, or a couple pounds per month, represents a fairly quick rate of healthy weight gain - with anywhere from one-third or more of this weight resulting in muscle gains For some, especially women and seasoned lifters, the rate of muscle gain may be much slower Years of fitness expertise coupled with research have shown us that strength training works to promote muscle growth.

And this lack of clarity has led to a lot of "Bro Science" and misinformation in the fitness world. We do know that a key component of increasing muscle size is the act of wearing them down in the first place.

Strength training exercise puts stress on your muscles and causes micro-tears, which your body then works to repair and rebuild stronger and bigger, leading to muscle growth But it is also technically possible to gain some muscle without strength training, in some studies, higher protein intakes in a calorie excess lead to increases in lean mass in addition to increases in body fat, this approach is not nearly as efficient as including muscle building workouts in your plan and typically results in poor quality muscle gains Regardless, without some sort of strength training, you likely won't be successful with your gains.

But what type of training is best? To help you get the most out of your workouts, we dug through the existing research and asked expert trainers for their advice on how to promote muscle growth through evidence-based hypertrophy training. Hypertrophy training is training for the goal of increasing the size of your muscles, by expanding the cross-sectional size of the tissue Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy relates to increases in fluid, giving you the appearance of larger, puffier muscles.

Myofibrillar hypertrophy relates to increasing myofibril size, or the size of your muscle fibers - this is the type of hypertrophy many strive for when looking to gain strength and size. Slow-twitch are used to support endurance training like jogging or cycling, and fast-twitch are used in more explosive and quick burst exercise 21 , Fast-twitch fibers are more likely to increase in size compared to slow-twitch fibers because fast-twitch fibers fatigue more quickly, leading to an increased need for repair and strengthening.

This is also why strength training and CrossFit style workouts lead to muscle size growth more than running or swimming. There are also large muscles and small muscles. Larger muscle groups include your upper legs, back, chest and glutes, and smaller muscles include your arms, shoulders, and calves.

The distinction is important because larger muscles are easier to increase in size, and these muscles tend to be more foundation, support full-body training, and lifts. As it turns out, just about any type of strength training can lead to muscle growth, since hypertrophy is the result of mechanical tension.

However, your focus should be on training volume or "time under tension" rather than how heavy you are lifting. The longer and more often you can stress your muscles, the more effective your hypertrophy training is. You can build muscle using bodyweight, light weight, or heavy weight; it all depends on your personal strength and fitness level.

So if you are just getting started, don't feel like you need to jump right into Olympic lifts and heavy squats. Instead, take time to build your foundation and find a muscle building workout plan that meets your personal needs. If you are new to lifting, you probably don't want to go into and gym and start throwing around weights until you know what you are doing.

Even many advanced lifters can benefit from taking it back to basics every now and then by focusing on their range of movement and flexibility. Building a good foundation is essentially establishing fundamentals that you can build on, which results in improved training.

Focusing on fundamentals can help reduce pain, future injuries, and other issues associated with poor form or incorrect technique during exercise. When looking to train for muscle growth, make sure you've mastered the basics of core movements and can perform each movement correctly and fully before increasing the weight.

Establishing these big core competencies will allow you to train harder and more often- which can support more muscle growth in the long run. In addition, being able to train with a full range of motion ROM engages more muscle tissue and may support better hypertrophy training 23 , Muscle balance and recovery are also important.

You should not be training one side of your body more than the other. There is also growing research looking at the mind-body connection when it comes to weight training. By learning to focus your intensity throughout each movement, research suggests you can increase muscle activity and support more muscle growth You can establish a better mind-body connection by learning where you should "feel" each movement.

If you are squatting to increase glute size or bench pressing to grow your chest muscles, make sure you can feel these specific muscles working before adding weight. It's not about how fast you can lift, how many reps you can do, or even how heavy you can lift if you aren't targeting and engaging the muscles you want.

Learn how to isolate certain muscle to establish a good mind body connection. Compound lifts are multi-joint movements that engage more than one large muscle group at a time.

Examples of popular compound lifts include squat, deadlift, bench press, overhead press, and pull-ups. Compared to isolation exercises, like a dumbbell hammer curl, compound lifts are an efficient way to engage your full body and build more muscle, faster. There is also some evidence suggesting that compound lifting leads to a slightly higher release of muscle building hormones - testosterone, growth hormone, and IGF-1, but this increase in hormones hasn't been shown to positively affect or increase MPS 26 , You can use multi joint movements at any fitness level.

And working on big core competencies will add overall strength and muscle building capabilities. Building strength and building muscle mass are often thought of as the same thing, but actually, they may require different training techniques.

Muscle contraction is the result of motor neurons activated by your central nervous system—your brain sends an electrical signal to your muscles to excite muscle fibers and cause them to contract.

And some research suggests that heavier lifting may engage your central nervous system more, resulting in increases in strength and power with training Heavier lifting relies on quick, powerful lifts within a 3 to 5 rep range , with a focus on the external force you can exert on an external weight.

Hypertrophy training, on the other hand, relies more on time under tension to stress the muscle for longer. It is well documented that mechanical tension is a major proponent of muscle growth, so it would make sense the more longer you can create mechanical tension on your muscle AKA the number of reps , the more muscle you will be able to build 29 , Increasing muscle size can often result in increased strength - mainly because you have more muscle fibers to engage in lifting heavier weights.

But for muscle gain purposes, aiming to lift as heavy as possible or using max weight often is likely not be an effective approach to hypertrophy. Because this is based on a percent of effort, the amount of weight can look drastically different from one individual to the next.

Beginners may be able to build muscle using just bodyweight, but the more advanced you become, you'll need to adjust the weight accordingly. The reality is there may not be an exact rep amount to strive for across all styles of lifts and individuals differences will always be at play.

Then play within that range to make it more challenging with pauses, slowed reps, decreased rest, etc". High-intensity training and conditioning with light weight can work against your muscle building efforts. Since a calorie surplus is ideal for gaining mass, increasing your calorie burn with too much conditioning can make it harder to gain weight.

Consider opting out of high-intensity training for a few months and allow yourself to focus solely on gaining muscle first. Then add conditioning back in later to help burn any body fat gained in the process.

When it comes to weight lifting frequency, more is not always better. Training the same muscles every day or even twice a day has not been shown to result in more muscle gains overall, especially in newbies How quickly you can build mass is more dependent on how quickly you can recover - since MPS occurs after training.

In one study, training once a week was adequate in supporting muscle growth But for more seasoned lifters, training more frequently might be more beneficial for growth, since they are able to recover quickly and can stimulate more MPS with more frequent training Overtraining doesn't really exist, but under recovering does.

Recovery is more than just sleep and time off the gym; you should also be massaging your muscle and working out the tissue to keep it healthy. You can train all day every day if you can recover just as much.

A good rule of thumb is: the time you put in working should equal your recovery. Over time you'll want to increase the stimulus by the number of reps, amount of weight, or a decrease in rest time.

The more seasoned of a lifter you become, the more your muscles will adapt to the type of training you are doing. Just as bodyweight won't cut it forever, you'll need to keep challenging your muscles and switching things up to keep seeing progress.

Aim to work a little harder each time you hit the gym and consider switching up your routine entirely every four to six weeks. When it comes to gaining weight, the amount of food you eat is the most important thing to consider. Eating more calories than you burn will lead to weight gain.

But the type of weight you gain—muscle vs. fat—can be heavily influenced by the quality of your calories. With any weight gain , you can expect to add a combination of body fat and lean tissue. But with a strategic dietary approach, you can increase the amount of potential muscle gain and limit excess body fat where possible.

Gaining fat only requires calories, but gaining muscle requires more. To promote muscle growth you'll need:. Step one before heading into any goal around changing your body composition should involve assessing your starting body fat percentage.

This metric can also influence how successful you may be in gaining more muscle over fat. If you are lean from the start, you may be more likely to put on muscle than those who are less lean.

Also, if you have excess body fat, to begin with, it might be worth starting with a cut to lose some body fat before thinking about going on any bulking diet. For newbies, a higher starting body fat percentage might not be as detrimental, since they might be able to lose fat and gain mass at the same time.

However, this process would ultimately require a calorie deficit or weight loss diet and not a traditional muscle gain diet. The scale alone won't help you decipher between fat and muscle, so the best way to assess how much muscle you are gaining is through body composition testing.

This can be through an at-home device like a handheld reader or body fat scale, or through a paid service using skin-fold calipers, BodPod, hydrostatic weighing, or DXA scans. Each method varies slightly in terms of accuracy, but the most important thing to remember is to use the same method of testing initially and when interpreting results.

This will ensure you have the most accurate assessment of any changes in your body over time. DXA scans are thought to be the most accurate measurement of body composition and many companies will provide multi-location testing options.

DXA scans provide detailed imaging for muscle and fat storage throughout your body, showing you exactly how much muscle and fat you have and where. They also assess bone density. You might have heard the common saying that it takes cutting 3, calories from your diet to lose a pound of fat.

Many see this and assume eating the same amount will result in one pound of muscle gain, but calorie control for weight gain is not the same as cutting calories for weight loss.

While it is easy to simplify the calorie equation and assume excess calories automatically turn into weight gain, it's not a clear-cut as you'd think.

When you don't get enough calories from food, your body is able to release stored calories for energy typically in the form of body fat and this process does not require a ton of energy.

Weight gain on the other hand does require energy, and gaining muscle requires more energy than fat. Turning food into muscle requires more metabolic processes than just releasing body fat stores for fuel.

In addition, protein provides less than half as many calories per gram as fat - fat provides nine calories per gram, compared to protein which provides only four calories per gram. It has been documented in numerous research studies that somewhere between 2, to 2, excess calories are needed to produce one pound of lean mass.

However, this amount can vary depending on your fitness level, body composition, and diet. For most adding to calories per day is sufficient in promoting healthy weight gain, but others may require much higher intakes. Learn more about how many calories you need each day to gain weight.

In addition to higher calories and strength training, protein intake is also essential for muscle growth. Protein supplies the essential amino acids needed to create muscle through muscle protein synthesis MPS , and cannot be replaced by any other nutrient for this purpose.

Muscle growth occurs whenever the rate of MPS is greater than the rate of muscle protein breakdown. The solution is to lift weights — often enough, long enough, and heavy enough. Invest in a trainer. A licensed and credentialed trainer can design a personalized program. A trainer can also teach you proper form and technique.

Check with your local gyms for referrals. If you're not ready for in-person sessions, many trainers now offer virtual workouts. After you learn the basics, you can work out on your own. Get free. Training with free weights, like dumbbells, kettlebells, and barbells, is often better for muscle building than machines, says Pedicini.

You can also go back and forth between free weights and machines depending on the type of exercise and which muscles you are working on. Leg up. While you need full-body workouts that address all your major muscles, older men should pay special attention to their leg muscles: quadriceps and hamstrings in the thighs , the gluteals in the buttocks , and the calf muscles.

Compound exercises that work different muscles in one movement — like squats, deadlifts, and lunges — are great for building leg muscles. Weight, reps, and sets.