A Beginner’s Guide To Understanding Building Strength and Muscle

If your fitness routine doesn’t include strength training, now is a great time to start. This article is based on my personal knowledge and that of experienced trainers from the “Livestrong” website. (www.livestrong.com)

Building muscle is about way more than looking good in a tank top or short skirt. Strength training comes with a variety of health benefits including a reduced risk of injury, stronger bones, a faster metabolism and increased lean body mass (to name just a few). 

I’ve broken down everything you need to know in order to better understand and incorporate strength training into your routine. 

 How Weight Lifting Leads To Muscle Growth

For muscles to get stronger, muscle fibres have to get damaged. When a muscle is damaged, it triggers cells called myosatellite cells to rush to the scene to triage the damaged fibers together, ultimately leaving the muscle even stronger than it was before. Strength training creates this kind of positive damage to stimulate muscle growth. 

  There are two main types of muscle fibers: type I (slow-twitch) and type II (fast-twitch) and they differ slightly in how they generate power and create muscle tone on your body. 

Slow-twitch muscle fibers are built for endurance activities, like swimming, running or biking long distances, and rely on steady oxygen intake to sustain exercise for a longer period of time. Hence why breathing is so important when you run or jog. Picture lean muscles without too much bulk. 

  Fast-twitch muscle fibers are used for quick, explosive movements like sprinting, jumping and lifting weights and these muscle fibers synthesize energy without oxygen and tire out more quickly (which is why it’s “impossible” to sprint a marathon). Strength training works these muscle fibers, which are responsible for muscle size and definition. Picture strong toned muscles, ideal for bulking up or simply getting more consistent muscle definition. 

 The Best Program to Build Muscle

There is no singular best program to build muscle, the best programs are built by experienced personal trainers and will always depend on your body, experience and goals. 

 If you are looking to bulk up or grow a specific muscle or area, you want to focus on single joint, isolation exercises. 

  You want to do single joint exercises until you can’t lift another rep, indicating muscle failure. When a muscle gets to failure, it creates more damage to all the muscle fibres. After the muscles repair themselves the muscle grows in a process called hypertrophy. This necessary reparation/recovery process is why you shouldn’t exercise the same muscle group two days in a row: you need a bit of recovery time. 

  If you want to improve overall muscle tone and strength, compound exercises that work more than one muscle group or combine two exercises into one continuous flow are generally the best and most recommended. This is why on total body days at Barry’s, we like to use build-ups to compound movements, that result in executing the full compound movement and using several muscle groups, simultaneously.

  Compound exercises are good for people who want to increase lean muscle or for overall full-body strength. Using more than one muscle group allows more muscles to be broken down and helps you get the most out of a workout because you create more overall damage in a shorter amount of time. (Remember, breaking down muscles is a good thing in order to create any kind of muscle tone!)

 How Fast Can You Build Muscle?

The most important aspect of building muscle is consistency. Ideally, you also want a program that loads over time. If you consistently work out and gradually increase the weights used in strength training, specialists say it can take up to 6-10 weeks to see the changes in muscle size. Don’t forget, your diet is a huge component in actually being able to see improved muscle tone and size. If you combine strength training with healthy eating to not only build muscle but lose fat, it will be easier to see muscle growth sooner. 

 How Often Should You Lift Weights?

  According to Harvard Medical School Health Publishing, you should exercise for a minimum of 30 minutes a day, every day. If muscle growth is the goal, 30-60 minutes of weight lifting, with a warm up and cool down is a good amount of time, just not every day of the week. To stay consistent, you should be lifting weights at least three times a week to be able to build muscle and see a difference. On recovery days, I like to focus on Kayla Itsines’ principle of LISS (Low Intensity Steady State cardio). LISS is any form of cardio exercise where you maintain the same low-intensity cardio pace (a steady state) for a set period of time, and it’s especially good for active recovery days between strength training workouts. So instead of lifting weights seven days a week and fatiguing the muscles, balance strength training with LISS (like walking or riding a bike) to help your muscles repair and grow. 

*This article is based on my personal experience as a professional trainer as well as information provided by health.harvard.edu and livestrong.com