Building muscle has always been one of the goals that every person who goes to the gym regularly desires. So that building muscle is an art that must be handled with caution because you are building muscles, it is like building a pyramid or something that requires accuracy.
Many people may fail to build consistent and strong muscles due to making some mistakes so that most people do not know what to count on, and how one can determine what will really work with their muscles, while some professionals may be able to change their entire body within 6 months to 12, inevitably many people wonder about the magic formula.
I tell you that there is no magic formula, because experience and good guidance play an important role in this matter. These athletes know very well how to build and maintain muscle mass, they also know the right supplements and combinations to build the required muscle mass successfully.
Therefore, in this post, we will learn about some general errors that cause many people not to obtain satisfactory results and work to fix them and wait for positive results that will give you some motivation to move forward.
How does muscle growth happen?
According to John Leyva, “Mass hypertrophy or muscle building occurs when the body repairs or replaces damaged muscle fibers through a cellular process in which it fuses muscle fibers together to form new muscle protein strands or new myofibrils”.
The primary growth factors are hormones or hormone-like compounds that stimulate satellite cells to produce gains in muscle fiber size. (Source)
Studies have shown that fanatical bodybuilders have the ability to activate their muscle fibers by 58% with exercises, and this is a huge percentage, while normal bodybuilders stand in the middle by up to 23%, and in the end come people whose muscles do not respond or cannot activate their muscles During resistance exercises, the satellite cell activation rate is 0%.
What is the role of exercise in muscle hypertrophy?
According to several studies conducted on this topic, it was confirmed that resistance training leads to injury of cellular proteins in the muscles and this in turn leads to the activation of satellite cells, and from here begins a chain of events that leads to muscle repair and growth.
The question remains, how can people whose muscles do not respond to exercise and whose cells do not have activity?
That is why we will mention the most important mistakes that prevent many individuals from obtaining good results and achieving the goal of building muscle.
20 Muscle building mistakes to avoid
The mistakes included in this list are presented by several trainers who share the same opinion about them, so that they note that it is one of the reasons that may not encourage the growth of your muscles.
It is difficult to make these mistakes suitable for everyone, or we are certain that if you fix them, you will get better results because bodies differ And it doesn’t work the same for everyone, so at least we will all benefit from these mistakes and maybe they may help fix your muscle growth.
1- Always sticking to the same rep range
Sticking to the same range of repetitions all the time is one of the mistakes that may hinder a progression path with building muscle, especially if you are a beginner, as most people rely on doing between 8 to 12 repetitions with a weight with resistance that causes muscle failure sometimes when repetitions 6 or 8.
While the best way to achieve muscle hypertrophy is to go with heavy weights, but with fewer repetitions of 4 to 6 repetitions, and it is good to vary the range of your repetitions between 4 and 6 and between 8 and 12 and also more, try going with each movement range for two weeks and you will discover that Your muscles respond well to this change.
2- You don’t train hard enough
Building muscle is not an easy thing at all, as I mentioned before, it is something that requires a lot of commitment, so you can’t go to the gym for fun and do a few repetitions and wait for the blue fairy to bring you Arnold’s muscles.
One of the most common mistakes that prevents many people from getting good results is that they do not train hard enough, that is, they do not even approach the repetitions that cause muscle failure, and this is one of the obvious reasons that prevent the muscles from activity and benefit from the exercise, so you must do your best Your effort in the fitness room.
3- You think fatigue is what makes your muscles grow.
Lots of beginners in their first days at the gym go there and do everything they can and sweat and fumble in that fatigue and feel a sense of joy because they feel like they’re doing something good, muscle hypertrophy doesn’t just happen because you threw a few drops of sweat on the gym floor.
Do not go to the gym in order to overcome yourself and the challenge, some exercises that you may not feel effective may be in fact good in the long run and some perseverance and a good discipline with commitment.
4- Going with unstable exercises
There are many videos on social media that promote these athletes doing chest press on an inflated balloon or doing bicep curls on one leg and so on, it may seem more challenging, but coach Sean has another opinion.
He says that doing exercises in an unstable position does not encourage muscle growth, but rather does the opposite, because they put you in a weak position and do not encourage muscle fibers to be active and respond to exercises, so if you want to achieve the greatest benefit, you should do exercises in a stable position that allows you More control over the movement.
5- Chasing the PUMP
Also, your focus should not be about the pump because it is not the secret behind building muscles, it is good and may help you pump your muscles and increase the size, but this is not what will stimulate your muscles to grow, while if you train hard, the pump will be a byproduct that comes automatically.
You can use the pump to measure muscle activation because it will be an ideal performance to do so, and it will help you know the performance of the muscles you are trying to target, so try to make the pump serve for this purpose.
6- Going with wrong lifts
For this purpose, we always offer muscle anatomy along with exercises that target these muscles, so that you must be aware of how the exercises target the muscle, but first you must understand how this muscle works by looking at its anatomy, and thus you will be able to discover the combinations of exercises that You should go with it to target specific muscles.
Therefore, coach Sean advises not to choose exercises randomly in an inconsistent way, instead you should go behind groups of exercises that target a group of muscles in a coordinated manner and stimulate the growth of these muscles.
7- Seeking more instead of what is recommended
Every time you go to the gym you go with a dose of energy and it is exhaustible of course because after this dose is over, every repetition you add to a certain set of exercises may not serve the muscles of any kind, you might think that if you overwork your muscles you are doing something good, in The truth is that this is not true, because the good thing is to suffice with the appropriate repetitions.
In fact, this keeps you in a cycle of doing more every time, because you do not get results and therefore you have to do more and more without results, and this leads to muscle damage more than repairing and helping them grow, so it is better to follow the rules of the training program that encourages Do a set number of sets and repetitions.
8- Avoiding hard exercises
You may always see some bodybuilders under that heavy weight and their body veins are visible on their body as a result of that heavy weight and you stand there in astonishment and wonder why all this suffer? And that makes you feel kind of afraid of these exercises, but if your goal is to build muscle mass, you must put yourself in the face of these exercises.
Because some exercises such as the deadlift, the bench press or the loaded squat, these exercises encourage muscle growth because they occupy a group of muscles at the same time and achieve high muscle activity, so you must break that fear and not try to play the role of the hero. Go with light weights and so on.
9- Measuring your muscle growth visually
If you rely on measuring your muscles visually, you miss a lot, because muscle growth is very slow and you may not be able to notice it, and this makes you late for observing the small details that will work interconnectedly to increase muscle growth actually.
So you can use a note to record your exercises and the number of repetitions you do with a particular exercise and any group you add, this keeps you on the right track, the more numbers on the note, you are on the right path, and if the numbers stop increasing, it means that there is a mistake you must deal with it.
10- Avoiding compound exercises
Compound exercises are like a cornerstone, if you do not rely on them mainly, you are making a serious mistake because compound exercises occupy several joints and target multiple muscles and stimulate them to activity and also help to increase muscle mass significantly, so do not avoid them at all.
Do not rely on isolation exercises entirely because they work specific muscles and consume more energy, while you can save that energy to do a compound exercise that targets several muscles in the upper part of the body instead of burning a lot with the front raises in order to train your front delts.
Know what specialistes say about the compound exercises
Muscle building: nutrition mistakes
The diet that you follow or some of the habits that you make are related to feeding, such as the amounts you consume of carbohydrates or proteins, and how you deal with these elements in order to contribute to the success of your plan.
It is important to say that macronutrients are the foundation of the muscle building pyramid and you will not get muscle if you have a nutritional imbalance.
That is why you should avoid the 5 most nutritional mistakes you make while building muscle.
1- Undervaluing the importance of food
Never underestimate eating, because the secret of muscle growth is the complete healthy food, because the muscle biologically needs energy, and the muscle does not want to grow, but it automatically needs energy in order to carry out its daily functions, but you must force it to grow, but at the same time you must Create a healthy eating plan that includes protein, healthy fats and carbohydrates.
In case you discover that your muscles never grow despite following a balanced diet, try to add 500 calories to your diet regime.
2- Overvaluing supplementation
Also, this mistake can prevent you from getting good and fast results, you should not overconsumption of nutritional supplements because they are only supplements that make you compensate for if you have a deficiency in one of the healthy nutrients, or you want to get a boost of pure protein before training.
So try to get the important elements from natural food, and keep supplements as an alternative or as an aid to natural food, as well as consuming the recommended amounts.
3- Ignoring cholesterol
Cholesterol is a major factor that stimulates muscle growth and in fact may slow your gains as well, so many studies have been done on the role of cholesterol in building muscle and its relationship to achieving lean muscle mass gains, so that a group of people took 800 milligrams of Cholesterol On the other side, another group contented itself with only 200 milligrams.
The group that consumed 800 milligrams was able to achieve three times higher levels of muscle protein synthesis for 22 hours after intense resistance training, and these are real gains that cannot be overlooked.
4- You’re not getting enough protein
We all know that protein is important for muscle growth and you may not be able to build strong muscles if your diet lacks a protein component, because the amino acids in the food we eat daily are used as the building blocks for your muscles to be more integrated, but what many do not notice is that growth occurs Muscle when more amino acids are formed within the muscle than the amount being broken down.
In order to get this equation, you must make sure that you are getting the appropriate and recommended amount of protein, which is estimated at 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight.
5- Empty eating
Empty food is that food that does not add any benefit to you and does not help you with anything. It is just empty calories that neither the body nor the muscles benefit from. You may wonder what empty food is. Empty food may be fast food, or your friend is asking you Pass the popcorn plate and you can’t stop yourself from tasting it before passing the plate.
In fact, empty eating may spoil your plan that you are trying to build with all effort and fatigue, so do not enter your body unwanted food and do not eat at times that are not designated for eating according to your schedule.
Useful Links
These links may be useful to you because they contain a lot of information about healthy eating and what is right for you. You can also check out the Zone Diet that CrossFit athletes follow, and you can also discover a list of the best sources of macronutrients from natural food.
Zone diet guide for max mass gain
Best high carb sources for pre workouts
What to eat before strength training
If you have some equipment such as dumbbells, or a bar and some weights and you are a fan of building muscle, you may want to try the best CrossFit workouts for strength and build muscle endurance.
Focus on growing your shoulders with the best shoulder presses
Build your lower body with most powerful compounds exercises
