What's up, guys?
Sean Nalewanyj on www.SeanNal.com - www.RealScienceAthletics.com.
The title of today's video is The Single Fastest Way To Gain Muscle.
And I'll say up front that if you're looking for some sort of fancy groundbreaking never-before-seen
answer to the question then you might be a bit disappointed here, but I really wanted
to get this video out there because there's just way too much fluff circulating around
when it comes to YouTube fitness content and Instagram fitness content.
And a lot of people just end up losing sight of what is most important in the whole equation.
Now, most people who have done their research and have some training experience under their
belt already understand that progressive overload is the primary driver of building muscle over
the long term.
Meaning, you need to be progressively exposing your muscles to a more challenging workload
over time if you want them to continue responding and growing further.
And this can be done in a variety of ways, the most common method is to increase the
amount of weight you're lifting on each exercise, but you can also perform more reps with the
same weight you can perform more sets per muscle group for the week, you can train a
muscle more often, you can adjust your form to make it exercise more mechanically challenging,
you can reduce your rest time in between sets, slow down your rep cadence, there's also the
option of applying certain high intensity techniques during your sets, those are technically
all forms of progressive overload that can lead to improved muscle growth in one way
or another.
However, it's important to understand that not all forms of progressive overload are
equal.
And I've been seeing a lot of content where people will list off all these different methods
and say, see lifting more weight is not the only answer look at all these other things
you can do to make progress in the gym.
And that's not incorrect, you can do those things as a way of improving your progress
to varying degrees.
However, unless you're a more advanced lifter with at least a couple years of consistent
training under your belt who's already built up a solid foundation of muscle, the simple
fact is that getting stronger and adding more weight to the bar on all of your exercises,
particularly the basic compound lifts, that should be your primary focus by far.
That is the fastest way to gain muscle no matter how you break it down.
You're not gonna build a big chest by pressing thirty five pound dumbbells, you're not going
to build big legs by squatting 150 pounds, and you're not gonna build a big back if you
can't even do pull-ups using your body weight.
And on the other hand, you're not not going to have a muscular chest, legs, or back if
you're pressing, say, 100 pound dumbbells per reps or you're squatting 3 plates per
side or more, or you're doing, let's say, strict pull-ups with 60 pounds or more strapped
around your waist.
You can dabble around all you want with these elaborate bodybuilding pump programs you see
with fancy exercise variations, and drop sets, and super sets, and Swiss balls, and bands,
and all this stuff, and where all the training variables are constantly being mixed around.
That makes for good online content because it seems new and it seems unique and you definitely
can gain some muscle in the initial stages that way.
But if you're looking to maximize your progress to put on significant mass onto your frame
to build a legitimately impressive physique and to do it as efficiently as possible, you
need to stop diluting your focus with all this unnecessary complicated stuff and make
basic strength gain your primary goal.
Not only because progressive tension overload is the most effective way to stimulate hypertrophy
in general but also because most other methods of progressive overload can only be applied
up to a pretty limited point anyway.
For example, when it comes to training volume, how many sets can you realistically add to
your program before it's not practical anymore?
The fact is that you can only do so many sets per workout or per week before the overall
workload gets too high, not to mention that training volume also means a bigger time investment.
So if you gradually work up to, let's say, doubling your training volume that also means
you're going to be spending twice as much time in the gym.
Whereas lifting more weight at the same volume doesn't change the time investment and so
you're able to be a lot more efficient with your training.
The same thing goes for training frequency.
If you're already hitting a muscle twice per week then what's next?
Three times a week, four times a week, five times a week, you can't just keep increasing
the frequency indefinitely.
Whereas when it comes to strength gains, particularly on the basic compound lifts, you really can
continue to just increase in a linear fashion.
And you can do that for years and continue making gains from it and again without changing
the overall time investment.
And the same thing applies to the other methods that I’d mentioned as well, you can't just
keep reducing rest time between sets, or making exercises more mechanical challenging, or
slowing down your reps, these things are all pretty limited in how they can be applied,
where a strength gain is something that can be worked on and improved on over the long-term.
Now, once you do hit that more advanced lifting stage and you've gained a considerable amount
of overall muscle size and strength and maybe the amount of weight that you're lifting on
certain lifts isn't something that your joints can keep up with without discomfort, then,
yeah, then you can start manipulating these other variables to squeeze out some additional
progress.
But for anyone who isn't in the advanced stages yet and is otherwise healthy in terms of their
joints, the single fastest way to gain muscle is to gain strength.
Make no mistake about it.
It's to gradually add more weight to the bar on the key compound lifts over time.
That's where your primary focus needs to be and that's what you need to be using as the
central gauge for determining whether your program is moving in the right direction.
If you're consistently gaining strength and your nutrition is in order then you'll know
for the most part that you're on the right track.
Your body is continuing to make those positive adaptations.
Whereas if your strength isn't increasing then you'll know that something is off and
needs adjusting.
And this is why your training logbook is so crucially important because it's going to
allow you to track your strength progress in detail.
It's gonna give you a concrete record of where you are now and what you need to do to improve.
So every time you enter the gym you want to be thinking about beating the logbook by getting
just a little bit better each time.
And a little bit better is a key phrase there.
People will hear this idea that gaining strength is the fastest way to gain muscle and so they
think that that means they need to be piling on the weight and making rapid increases every
week.
Keep in mind that none of this stuff happens rapidly, and it's often going to be measured
in terms of individual reps and then small increases of 5 to 10 pounds at a time or even
2.5 pounds on smaller isolation lifts.
So maybe one week you lift 100 pounds for five reps, next week it's a 100 ponds for
six, 100 pounds for seven, and then you increase to 105 and aim for five reps again and just
continue in this fashion, making sure that your lifting technique remains exactly the
same with each weight increase.
The changes from week to week are going to be very minor but if you just write it down
and you focus on improving in some way, even if it's just one rep, and then you extrapolate
that over six months, one year, two years, three years, over time it's going to add up
to huge increases in both muscle size and strength.
And following a basic model like this and just focusing on getting stronger can easily
allow you to achieve, I would say around 80% or more of your total genetic muscle building
potential, probably over the course of about two to three years.
And then again, at that point you can start using some of the other methods that I’d
mentioned to help take things further if you want.
And all of this, of course, assumes the other aspects of your program, so your lifting technique,
nutrition, supplementation, sleep, etcetera, that all those things are on point as well.
But the bottom line here is don't get too distracted by all the noise out there.
There obviously are a lot of smaller details involved in structuring an optimal program
in all areas but for beginner and intermediate lifters especially, muscle growth will come
as an automatic byproduct of building up a solid strength foundation and that's where
the majority of your focus should be placed if you want to transform your body as quickly
as possible.
So, I hope this advice was helpful.
If you do want to learn all those other details behind mapping out a complete training program
from A to Z in order to fully maximize your size and strength gains including step-by-step
routines for beginners, intermediates and more advanced lifters then you can check out
my body transformation blueprint by clicking here or by visiting www.BTBluePrint.com.
For those who are new to the channel, my brand new science-based pre-workout fish oil and
multivitamin are also now available over at www.RealScienceAthletics.com, the link is
in the description box and make sure to hit that like button leave a comment and subscribe
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Thanks for watching, guys.
And I'll see you in the next video.