10 Muscle Building Mistakes

When it comes to building muscle, many people are going about it the wrong way. You may feel like you have been lifting forever, but you don't have much progress to show. Muscle building is a science. We have to treat it as that. If you are doing one of these 10 things, you may be slowing or even halting your progress:

1. You always train in the same rep range. 
   • When it comes to training, different rep ranges provide a different stimulus to our body. Some rely more on nervous system adaptation, some on hypertrophy adaptation, and some more on metabolic adaptations. If you are always training in the same rep ranges, you will hit a plateau once your body has made those adaptations. Rather than sticking only to the "8-12 magic range", be sure you are mixing in some high intensity (low rep, high weight) training as well as some endurance training (15+ reps). 
2. You switch up your exercises too often. 
   • A good program takes a bit of time to work. A lot of the initial "strength" gains we see at the beginning of a program are just neurological adaptations that our body goes through in order to become more efficient at those new movement patterns. After that, we are able to really get more muscle growth through progressing in these movements. "Confusing your muscles" every other week IS NOT what we want if you we want to make some actual gains. We want to get good at our current routine and let our body go through those adaptations before hopping programs again.
3. You aren't actually using the correct muscles. 
   • This sounds obvious, but I can't tell you how many people don't hit the muscles they are actually aiming to hit due to compensating with other muscles. For example, throwing the weight up with your calves in a hamstring curl then letting it fall back down...no hamstrings were worked there. Letting your back arch at the bottom of a squat...you transferred that load to your lower back. Proper form is KEY to actually building the muscles we want to build and prevent injury in muscles that aren't equipped to take the load we end up putting on it. 
4. You are under-eating. 
   • You have heard this one before. Eat to grow!!! In order to build new tissue, our body needs fuel for that. If you aren't even eating enough to supply energy for ESSENTIAL functions, you won't be putting on new muscle tissue. An exception of this is going to be beginners or people who have been training poorly for a long time. You may be able to put on some new muscle while in a caloric deficit. But eventually, you need to be in a surplus to make more changes and add new muscle tissue. 
5. You don't track your progress. 
   • Progressing in the gym is the biggest factor in putting on new muscle. This doesn't always mean adding weight. This can mean changing the resistance profile, changing the range of motion you are working, using some time under tension variables, etc. But either way, we need to be able to quantify our progressions so we can make the appropriate changes to continue making that progress. 
6. You forget about the basics.
   • In order to put on new muscle, we need to create a stimulus great enough to do so. By doing the foundational compound movements, we are able to load the muscle tissue more. These will be your squats, deadlifts, rows, presses, etc. By strengthening these, we will also strengthen our other accessory lifts as well. I'm not saying don't do ANY other exercises, but don't neglect the foundations!  
7. You only lift "light weight, high rep".
   1. Again here, you must provide your body with a great enough stimulus to build new muscle tissue. While high rep has its place, it isn't going to be enough to build muscle in the long term. You have to create that demand inside your body to overcome a heavy load. Don't be scared to lift heavy!
8. You are overtraining and not allowing for recovery.
   • When it comes to putting on muscle, we have to look at thresholds. Our bodies have a certain recovery threshold for our training. If we aren't allowing that recovery, we aren't going to make progress. Being sure we have proper programming that isn't overtaxing the body constantly and being sure we are getting adequate rest is just as important as the training itself. Diet and other outside factors will play a big factor in the recovery process as well.
9. You aren't getting enough sleep.
   • I had to put this in here because it is so overlooked!!! As we are sleeping, our body goes through processes to allow for tissue repair and rebuilding (as well as reducing inflammation). This is crucial to our ability to recovery and put on new muscle. Blood glucose also gets stored as muscle glycogen during sleep. On top of that, important hormones such as HGH (human growth hormone) are released during sleep. AND our mood directly impacts our performance so you could see how not getting enough sleep can really impact your progress.
10. You rely on supplements. 
    • While supplements such as creatine monohydrate can be useful (and in my opinion, should be used), they don't make up for our efforts. You can drink the pre-workout and take the creatine and drink your post workout. BUT, if you aren't providing the proper stimulus in the proper amounts to the correct muscle- they won't do much for you. 

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