“Why Am I Not Gaining Muscle?” – This is a question we hear very often! Read on below to find out many common reasons why you might not be seeing the muscle mass you’re expecting.
Why Am I Not Gaining Muscle – Introduction
Our bodies are very interesting and sometimes they don’t work well with our goals. They seem to have minds of their own and when we want to build muscles, it seems like we’re experiencing a standstill.
Quite often, it’s small, overlooked reasons why someone might not be building the mass they desire.
But that’s the good news – once you discover the reason, your results will go through the roof!
Let’s dive into the most common reasons why you might not have the muscles you’re after – yet!
Your Muscles Remember
Your muscles are very smart. They remember everything and while this can be good, it can also hurt your plans to gain muscle.
When you keep doing the same work out over and over again, it’s not going to serve you. Your muscles are going to get used to doing the workout and there is going to be no reason for them to change. They are already able to handle these workouts.
If you want to gain muscle, you’re going to have to switch it up. We don’t mean that you never get to do a lunge or situp again. We mean that you should switch out exercises, so you keep your muscles guessing.
The Same Weight Isn’t Going to Cut It Anymore
Do you continue to use the same weight over and over again? If you’ve been using twenty five pound weights for years — that’s a big reason why your muscles aren’t growing.
You have to put extra stress on your muscles, so they are able to grow and develop. Extra stress on your muscles makes them repair and rebuilds themselves and that is how you gain more muscle.
By the time you get done with your reps, you should be feeling some pretty serious strain. If the fist and last rep feel similar — you’re definitely not lifting enough.
It’s a Rep Problem
Are you afraid to pick up more weights? If you don’t want to increase your weights to get the muscle growth that you want, you can get your results by increasing the number of reps that you do.
To get results with the same weights, you want to do reps until your arms feel like jelly. You’ll need to rep it out until you can’t do another rep.
Your Diet Isn’t Fueling Your Body
If you’re not on a good diet like The Diet Authority, then your diet might not be fueling your body enough for you to get the results you want.
Eating right and providing your body with proper nutrition is essential. You can’t expect to build a beautiful and muscular body off of food that is questionable at best.
When you want to build muscle, you need plenty of protein in your diet. You might decide to drink protein powder mixes or you could eat a lot of chicken and other meats.
If you’re a vegetarian or vegan, you’ll need to look for replacement proteins, obviously. Beans and lentils are a great source of proteins that are vegan and vegetarian-friendly.
An Ab Super Focus
Are you super focus on abs? You want that six-pack, don’t you?
If you are limited on time and you’re spending your entire workout on abs, that’s not going to help you with muscle growth.
Instead of just working on abs, you should try doing workout moves that allow you to exercise multiple muscle groups. Maybe you can do squats while you’re doing a bicep curl.
Abs and biceps!
While there is no rule against just working out your abs, always make sure that you are using your time as best you can.
You’re Overdoing It With Cardio
Are you one of those people that are of the mind that cardio is most important and then you can work on strength training?
Putting strength training behind cardio in its importance isn’t going to help you.
If muscle gain is your goal, cardio isn’t going to help you get there. If you do too much cardio, you can actually lose some of your muscle.
Instead of focusing on cardio, do some cardio workouts to keep up your cardiorespiratory fitness but then work on lifting more weights or doing more reps instead of doing so much cardio.
Lack of Intensity Variation
If you’ve set your workouts to one intensity, your muscles have figured this out and you’re not going to see growth.
It’s understandable that humans are creatures of habit but you need to vary your habits a little bit more if you’re going to get the results that you want.
You can create three workout schedules and do a different schedule every week and just rotate them. This will make things much simpler for you so you don’t have to keep coming up with new things and your body is still getting the variation of intensity it needs.
Make sure to include in the workout schedules how much effort you’re going to put into the exercises. We don’t just want to vary the exercises but also how much effort we are putting into them.
Why Am I Not Gaining Muscle – Conclusion
There you have it! I hope this article has helped uncover some of the most common reasons why you might not be building muscle, with ways to resolve these issues.
Now that you know why you’re not gaining muscle you can start working towards your goals and start getting results. Having the right amount of muscle on your body can not only make you look good but it can make a big difference in how you feel.
But why stop learning there? Our website is filled with more articles that can help you with health as well as with life in general.
For example, you may enjoy reading these related articles too:
High Reps vs Heavy Weights – Which Is Better?
How To Do Goblet Squats Properly
How To Do a Sumo Deadlift
