If you wanna see visible muscle tone, you have to build muscle.
Sure, fat loss will happen too, but building muscle is what’s necessary if you want to see muscle tone. Plus, unless you are building, you are losing. At around 30 years, women begin losing muscle mass as they get older. So unless you just want to lose muscle and strength, building muscle is important.
Here is everything you need to know about building muscle:
In order to build muscle we need to..
- Be in an anabolic state, hormonally
- Eat adequate food (protein is emphasized)
- Sleep enough
- Have a balanced nervous system
- Do the right kind and amount of cardio
- Lift weights heavy enough to create stimulus
Let’s go into each of these in depth and learn how to build muscle.
1 – Your hormones must allow you to be an anabolic state.
There are actions you can take to get your hormones to cooperate, which I’ll outline in detail in actions 2-6, but first let’s discuss what anabolism is and the hormones involved.
Anabolism is the organization of molecules; it means growth or building and the hormones involved are estrogen, insulin, growth hormone and testosterone.
The actions you can take, outlined below, will help regulate these hormones, but they may be in a state of dysregulation when the following is present:
- Estrogen imbalance from PCOS, hormonal birth control, menopause, chronic digestive issues, chronic exposure to phytoestrogens, etc
- Decreased insulin sensitivity (diabetes)
- Impaired growth hormone creation or uptake from damage to the pituitary gland, autoimmunity, chronic inflammation, etc
- Testosterone deficiency from menopause, aging, adrenal dysfunction, removal of ovaries, etc
It’s also important to note that each individual hormone is a part of a larger system, the endocrine system, and all of these hormones work together. So there’s a good chance if one is off, many are off. For example, in the case of being hypothyroid, your thyroid hormone is compromised which can throw off estrogen, which can throw off testosterone.
You want ALL of our hormones in working order, not just the anabolic hormones. However, the anabolic hormones (estrogen, insulin, growth hormone and testosterone) are the primary ones we are going to focus on today. So let’s get into how we do that.
2- You must consume an adequate amount of calories.
Building muscle is one of the ways your body stores energy. Calories are that energy. Every living body has a certain number of calories required to be function each day (base metabolic rate) and that number is amplified by the activities the body participates in (total daily energy expenditure.) So let’s say you calculate your TDEE and it’s 2000 calories a day. You could consume 2400 calories a day, not train in a manner that helps you build muscle, and you’d accumulate fat. Or you could consume 2400 calories a day, train for hypertrophy (see #6 below) and accumulate muscle. (Learn your BMR and TDEE here.)
It’s also important to note that protein should be emphasized here, and for several reasons. If you are training to build muscle, the amino acids will help your muscles recover and rebuild. Protein is also incredibly important at each meal to help balance your insulin levels, and remember, insulin is one of our anabolic hormones- we want to be sensitive to insulin. Balance keeps this is working order.
But truthfully, all macronutrients are important. Carbohydrates are important because they’re great brain and body fuel, help us poop and have a ton of vitamins and minerals. Fat is important because it helps our cells function properly. The amount each of us need is highly individual and if you need help with this, hire me!
Lastly, when it comes to food, you also need to make sure your digestive system is functioning properly. The fiber from carbs, mentioned above, will help you poop daily which is key to estrogen balance. You don’t want to reabsorb estrogen as this will lead to excess. (Listen to this podcast to learn more about your digestive system and ways to improve your gut health.)
You also want to make sure the foods are being absorbed as they should so GI tract permeability should be in tact. Chronic stress or inflammation can put you at risk here, which we will discuss stress soon. Without absorbing micronutrients properly, your cells cannot function optimally. This puts you at risk for problems much larger than not being able to build muscle. Deficiencies are trouble. Taking digestive enzymes, probiotics, eating fermented foods can all be helpful for optimal gut health. There are other practices we will discuss with supporting the nervous system shortly.
3- You need to sleep.
Sleep is truly when all restoration takes place. The cells in your body repair and restore themselves during sleep. You can only build as much as you recover, so if you are training your ass off but not recovering well, you will probably be sore and injured often. To make sure that you’ll be able to get a goodnight’s rest, Bear Mattress Reviews may have some awesome suggestions.
The amount of sleep we all need varies from person to person, but generally speaking, the appropriate amount of sleep is about 8-9 hours a night. There’s also the matter of getting quality sleep which is in reference to getting into deep sleep/ REM sleep. You can take action to work on your sleep quality and quantity through certain practices (this podcast will help). But for today’s message, let’s just talk about what happens during our sleep.
For one, when you sleep well your brain can function properly and you can handle more mental and emotional stress. This basically means you can make better decisions for yourself, so you can do things like hit the gym, push hard in workouts and choose healthy foods.
Now, let’s get into those anabolic hormones. We will start with insulin. Sleep keeps your cells healthy so they can take up glucose when insulin shuttles the glucose to them! Sleep promotes insulin sensitivity.
Testosterone levels fluctuate all day, but they are at their highest during REM sleep. If you are not getting into REM or not getting adequate time in REM, this can impact your testosterone levels. Low testosterone may lead to lack of motivation, energy and the inability to build muscle.
Finally, growth hormone is released during sleep.. if you are getting adequate quality and quantity sleep. This is vital to cellular repair and recovery. And if your cells are not recovering and repairing themselves, all of your hard training is not helping you.
4 – You need to take action in balancing your nervous system.
Your nervous system is responsible for transmitting signals between the brain the rest of your body. It is the central command center for everything you do, consciously and unconsciously, from your heart beat to digestion to movements.
Your brain sends signals to your organs, glands, muscles. Those organs, glands and muscles can send signals back to the brain. It is important for the nervous system to be functioning properly. Without going into massive detail about everything the nervous system does for us, let’s focus on how it helps with building muscle.
One part of our vast nervous system is the Central Nervous System, or CNS. It is responsible for influencing your body’s activities as it regulates breathing, movements and muscle contraction. The CNS recruits muscle fibers to help you lift. It helps you stabilize in your planks and helps you with the coordination you need to back squat.
You also have the autonomic nervous system (ANS) divided into two categories – sympathetic and parasympathetic, the fight/ flight and the rest/ digest categories, respectively. When you are under stress your sympathetic nervous system is at work. This is a great state to be in while training but it’s not the state you want to spend the bulk of your time in. But, since life has a lovely way of stressing us out, it’s imperative that we consciously spend time in a parasympathetic state to balance things out.
You can do things such as breath work, journaling, taking a warm shower or cuddling our pets to relieve some of the stress hormones created by the sympathetic nervous system. This will also help you body recover. This will help you digest food better, sleep better and ultimately produce more of those anabolic hormones.
When you are in a sympathetic state, your adrenal glands release cortisol. This is good in small doses, but chronically elevated cortisol can lead to decreased estrogen and testosterone levels, two of our anabolic hormones. In fact, cortisol is one of the catabolic hormones so this can directly inhibit muscle building. Not to mention cortisol is not meant to be elevated at night. If it is elevated chronically, this can also inhibit your body’s ability to create growth hormone at night as well.
5 – You may think if you are trying to build muscle doing cardiovascular activity is counterintuitive, but we all need to do some cardio.
Cardiovascular activity gets your blood pumping, large muscle groups working and elevates your heart rate. It strengthens your heart, lowers blood pressure, improves brain function, lung function.. the list is long.
One of the great things about cardio for someone who wants to build muscle is that it aids in sleep. However I don’t suggest doing cardio close to bedtime because it can keep you out of deep sleep. It also helps you flush the lactic acids from your muscles so you aren’t so sore all the time.
Cardio helps regular blood sugar, which ultimately regulates insulin and helps you maintain that sensitivity, which we already know, is important for building muscle.
Cardio is great for the digestive system. This is important to have properly functioning so you can eliminate toxins that may disrupt your endocrine system. A high functioning digestive system is what helps you absorb all of the micronutrients from the foods you eat.
So now that we know the importance of cardio, we need to talk about the right kinds and amounts for building muscle. First and foremost, the exact formula for what will work for you is bio-individual. We all have different genetics, so this recommendation is very general. If you want something specific for you, I recommend working with me.
But generally speaking, I would recommend about 2-4 sessions a week, none longer than 20-30 minutes, unless you are just walking. The best kind of cardio when you are trying to build muscle is interval training. You can read all of the details about HIIT here. Doing true HIIT can actually help you build some muscle and is really great at not using muscle as fuel.
High intensity interval training is very intense so you need about 48 hours to recover between sessions. I would only recommend this twice a week. You could do another session or two of moderate intensity cardio, or zone 2/3 (read about those here) for 10-15 minutes as well.
Then if you want to go for a leisurely paced walk a few times a week for 30..40..60 minutes, go for it. Humans are built to move and walk. Walking is really great for your nervous system as well, especially if you walk outside in sunlight and nature and focus on nasal breathing.
6 – You need to lift in a manner that produces stimulus and is geared toward hypertrophy.
There are essentially three categories for volume when it comes to lifting:
Strength/ power where you are working between 1-6 reps for 3-5 sets
Hypertrophy where we you working between 6-12 reps for 3-6 sets
Strength endurance where you are working for 12+ reps for 2-4 sets
All have their place in training, but today we are really going to focus on hypertrophy, since that means building muscle. This looks like 3 sets of dumbbell chest press for as much as weight as possible for 10 reps. Or doing 4 sets of 8 Bulgarian squats each leg, for as heavy weight as possible.
But you have to make sure you are utilizing progressive overload (read more about that here) so each week you are progressing through time under tension, amount of reps, intensity or load. If you just pick a bunch of random exercises and move through them without really paying attention to how many reps or sets you have done, you are wasting your time.
When you train for hypertrophy you are building muscle. This gives the carbs you consume a place to go – it gets stored as muscle glycogen! This means you are more sensitive to insulin, one of your anabolic hormones. When you lift, it stimulates your body to produce growth hormone as well as testosterone – two of the other anabolic hormones. So technically you could do any kind of lifting, but the best for building muscle is that category of hypertrophy! (Listen to my interview about lifting for building here.)
How many sessions and how long your sessions should be is very individual. The amount you need to make changes in your body varies based on your genetics. But we also need to consider how much time you have, what days you can train, your other life priorities, what equipment is accessible to you, etc. If you want a plan laid out for you, I recommend working 1:1 with me.
Generally speaking, if you can lift 4-5 days a week, that is ideal. I recommend my clients hit legs twice a week. When you work your larger muscle groups your body is stimulated to produce more testosterone. How you break up the muscle groups you do really relies on how many days you train. An easy way of doing this may be..
Mon – upper
Tues – lower
Thurs – upper
Fri – lower
This is what is required to build muscle. And remember, the more muscle you have on your body, the easier it is to lose fat and the more visible muscle you will see.
If you want to work with someone who will help you achieve this and lay your plan out just for you, work with me! We will create a plan that is just for you based on your wants and needs. Learn more about 1:1 coaching at commit2fitcoaching.com
Your Coach,
Kyra