How long get muscular

There's no scientific proof or consensus about whether training a muscle group three times a week is even better and, given the importance of the rest periods between workouts, this is one case where you can't assume that more is automatically better.

Aside from consistently hitting the gym, there are a few other techniques you can use to appropriately exhaust your muscles or, as strange as it may sound, damage them to the point of inducing hypertrophy — which is absolutely not the same thing as injuring them.

In fact, appropriate weight training practices will help you avoid injury as you tone your body. Fitness Training How To Gain muscle. How Long to Notice Muscle Gain? Aubrey Bailey is a Doctor of Physical Therapy with an additional degree in psychology and board certification in hand therapy.

Bailey is also an Anatomy and Physiology professor. Lisa Maloney, CPT. Lisa is a retired personal trainer with more than 4, hours of hands-on experience working with a variety of clients, from sports teams to weight loss and post-rehab populations. She's also a professional writer. Video of the Day. Tip You may notice your weight-training exercises getting easier within a few weeks, thanks to neural adaptation. Your Short-Term Muscle Gain. How Your Body Builds Muscle.

Your Rate of Muscle Growth. A good week general strength training plan can be found here. United States. Type keyword s to search. Today's Top Stories. How to Eat Like Chris Hemsworth. Click here to join for more exclusive health and fitness content. Extra fuel from extra calories expedites muscle recovery and growth. This is one reason many people never reach their muscle growth goals -- they aren't willing to deal with the extra body fat that comes along with a muscle-building phase.

Your sleep schedule: Lifting weights while sleep-deprived isn't a smart strategy. You might see some gains, but you definitely can't optimize muscle growth when you don't give your body a fighting chance to recover.

Your lifting routine: If you're trying to build muscle, you should know about two key strength training concepts: frequency and volume. Frequency refers to how often you train a muscle or muscle group, while volume refers to the total load you stress a muscle with. For example, if you perform three sets of 10 reps on squats using pounds, your total volume is 3, pounds.

More volume and higher frequency typically equate to more muscle, unless you reach the point of overtraining. Your training age: The more advanced you are, the less muscle growth you'll see yeah, that sounds backward. Everyone has a maximum genetic potential for muscle growth, and the closer you get to yours, the harder it gets to build more muscle.

Your actual age: Like a lot of things, building muscle gets harder as you get older. Sarcopenia , or loss of muscle mass and function, is actually a big problem in older adults. That's one reason why it's so important to stay active as you get older.

Other major factors include your genetic potential for building muscle which is impossible to quantify without lab testing, and even then, kind of wishy-washy and your testosterone levels -- which is why men typically have more muscle than women.

Other hormones, including human growth hormone and insulin growth factor also play a role in muscle growth. And the faster you are gaining, the more likely you are going to see the scale creep up from water retention and fat, not just muscle. Not to mention, rapid weight gain also causes stretch marks. And for some, especially women the rate of muscle gain may be even slower 1.

At this rate, the average person can gain roughly 25 pounds of muscle in a year. Of course, this isn't necessarily feasible long term. A more realistic pace is around 5 pounds of solid mass every six months. Many will need to take breaks from their bulk and cycle through cutting phases as needed. Plus as your muscles grow in size, the rate at which you can gain steadily decreases.

Traditional muscle gain is achieved by gaining weight. Yes, you can gain a little bit of muscle while losing fat, but this process is fairly slow and not as efficient as building muscle during a true bulk. If you want to gain some serious muscle mass, this requires weight gain. The thing about weight gain and weight loss is that it is always a combination of lean tissue and fatty tissue - never one exclusively.

Which means you will always gain some additional body fat when trying to gain muscle and lose some muscle when trying to lose body fat. Depending on a number of factors, for each pound you gain, anywhere from one-third to two-thirds will result in fat, with the remaining being lean tissue 3.

Your rate of weight gain, genetics, training schedule, and type of food you choose are all important factors for promoting healthy weight gain in the form of more muscle over body fat.

But the biggest determining factor might be your starting body composition. Studies suggest that naturally lean individuals are more likely to put on weight in the form of muscle over fat. And similarly, those with a higher starting body fat percentage were more likely to add more body fat than muscle 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9.

But this has really only been evidenced in people who are naturally lean, not necessarily those that have dieted down to a lower body fat percentage. And good news for newbies, research suggests that beginners tend to gain muscle more efficiently than those that are highly trained Of course, this rate starts to decrease as you become more fit over time and some of this mass gain might be skewed due to increased water retention in newer lifters Bulking diets , just like weight loss diets, put a slight strain on your body.

And being on a long term weight gain diet is not typically recommended for most people. The longer you bulk, the more muscle you potentially gain, however, you're also gonna add a decent amount of fat in the process. Many will aim to do a slower bulk lasting anywhere from 8 to 12 weeks during winter months when they don't mind gaining a bit of body fat, or during a time period where they require adequate fuel for their training.