Top 10 Muscle Building Tips for BEGINNERS

It’s no secret that it takes time to build muscle but what if you could do it faster by working smarter rather than harder.

Well, that’s exactly what I want to go over today the 5 biggest and best muscle building tips for beginners and naturals.

And you might be thinking well who the heck are you to be giving me tips on building muscle and that’s a very fair question.

Check out my client David’s transformation where he gained a whole bunch of muscle.

 After all, I spend most of the time on this channel talking about fat loss but my experience in fitness is firmly rooted in natural bodybuilding.

I took myself from being a chubby teenager with hardly any muscle to a 230-pound fitness model and I did it all naturally.

So if you want to learn how to build muscle using steroids there are probably way better sources out there

but if you want to learn how to do it naturally give this video a chance because I spent over 10 years focusing on finding the fastest ways to build muscle,

and in the process of opening 3 gyms, I also prepped a lot of men and women for natural bodybuilding and bikini competitions.

So today I want to give you all my most guarded muscle building secrets for free. I’m also going to do my best to make all these tips unique

so it’s not going to be the same old stuff that you’ve heard over and over again like simply telling you to eat more protein.

With that said let’s start with the very first tip which is to incorporate periodization. When done correctly this is one of the most powerful things you can do to improve your muscle strength and size consistently.

In a nutshell, periodization is the systematic breakdown of your training plan over the course of time and it will include micro mesh and macro Cycles.

Which will essentially break down your training plan into weeks months and years? But instead of explaining to you every possible way that you could incorporate different cycles of periodization

I’d rather give you guys a simple actionable plan to consistently make progress using the exact periodization strategy that helped me the most.

You’re gonna start by finding out what maximal weight load you can lift for each of your compound exercises for roughly 9 to 10 reps.

This means that if you select a weight that you can do for 11 reps you should up that weight and the same goes vice versa if you select a weight that’s too heavy and you can only do it for 7 reps drop the weight.

After those two to three weeks are over you’re going to switch to a rep range of 5 to 7 reps. Again find the maximum weight you could do for that rep range which should obviously be more weight than what you were doing for 9 to 10 reps.

Now you’re going to stick to this new rep range for another two to three weeks once again trying to up the weight whenever you can as long as you stay Within that 5 to 7 rep range.

Finally, after you’re done with those weeks you’re going to do a rep range of 3 reps for all those compound exercises again for two to 3 weeks before switching back to the original 9 to 10 rep range.

When you come back to the 9 to 10 rep range you’ll notice that you were significantly stronger and able to lift more weight.

And you just continuously work through these Cycles. Every time you come back to an old rep range you want to try to increase your weight load even if it’s by 2.5 lbs.

This method helped me break through some of my biggest plateaus that I’ve experienced with building muscle.

Literally do exactly that and I promise you won’t be disappointed with your results.

Let’s move on to the second tip increase meal frequency. Now I know this goes against my typical advice that I give for fat loss.

The only way that you’re going to be able to eat enough throughout the day is by eating more often.

As you build more muscle the only way you’re going to be able to continue building muscle is by continuing to up the amount CLEAN food you’re consuming throughout the day.

When I was at my biggest at 230 pounds I was eating 8 to 9 times a day waking up in the middle of the night to have an additional protein shake to keep my body in a constant muscle building mode.

When you first start bulking up you don’t have to start with 8 to 9 meals a day you can start with four to 5 meals a day but as your muscles grow your diet will have to grow as well.

So I need you to get used to being uncomfortable with the amount of food that you have to eat and I want you to get used to feeling really full.

Just like feeling hungry when you’re cutting it’s a necessary sacrifice that you have to make to hit your goals.

I know right now is very popular and I’m a big fan of intermittent fasting

but I don’t recommend intermittent fasting if you seriously want to build muscle as fast as possible because it’s only going to make it harder to eat the amount required per day.

Let’s move on tip number 3 is to increase your carb consumption. This is a very important piece of advice that most guys are not following.

Most beginners are obsessed with protein consumption which leads them to ignore other macronutrients.

And when I say increase your carb consumption I don’t mean eat more sweets I’m talking about only eating low glycemic healthy sources of carbohydrates

like brown rice sweet potatoes yams buckwheat barley you get the idea.

There are two reasons why you want to increase your carb consumption. The number one reason is that carbs are very insulinogenic

and when you’re trying to build muscle as opposed to burning fat you actually want to increase your insulin levels.

Even though insulin will transfer energy into your fat cells it is also the hormone that transfers energy and nutrients into your muscle cells.

This ultimately spares muscle breakdown and helps your muscles grow.

The second reason why you want to have more carbs is that you’ll constantly be refilling the glycogen stores in your muscles allowing you to lift more weight and have more intense workouts at the gym.

Carbs will help give you that push you need to consistently make progress with your total training volume.

But its worth it because those carbs will allow you to have more intense workouts,

which brings us the right to the next tip… if you’re a natural trying to build more muscle its critical for you to focus on increasing intensity over time.

The best way to increase intensity is by progressively lifting heavier and. You have to focus on incrementally increasing the amount of weight you put on the bar.

This is why the first tip I started with was periodization where I laid out exactly what to do to consistently increase your strength and muscle size.

But even if you don’t follow that exact method you have to prioritize increasing the intensity by increasing the weight load used overtime for every one of your workouts.

When you make lifting heavier and heavier weights over time a priority you’re setting up one of the best situations to build more muscle as a natural.

The next tip is to increase the training frequency. This means that you want to increase the number of days per week that you hit the same muscle group.

Of course, you want at least 48 Hours of rest before hitting the same muscle group again and some people need more time for recovery.

However you’ll be able to double your volume by working your chest for example twice a week instead of just once a week.

More overall work or volume throughout the week will lead to more overall results. Try hitting each of your muscle groups at least twice a week.

To accomplish this you would want to do this in a split training style and this is actually my next tip

For muscle building purposes, to strictly gain size you’re going to be better off with a split training routine rather than a full body routine.

Great split training routines include combining chest shoulders and triceps then on a separate day back and biceps and then on a separate day leg.

Also, you could do opposing muscle groups like the split in which you would do chest and back one day

then legs the next day and then arms which would include shoulders biceps and triceps on the third day.

then if you’re trying to do this twice a week you would repeat going back to your first day.

split training is going to work better because you have more of an opportunity to focus in on one muscle group and completely break it down.

And this is exactly why you’re going to want to follow this next step which is to go right to the borderline of failure with every set.

Ideally, if you’re working out very often you don’t want to fail on every one of your exercises but on key compound lifts the list that you’re trying to get your strength up in you want to spend at least a couple sets hitting failure.

Failure is not the point where it’s getting too difficult and starting to burn so you rack the bar. That is not a failure.

Failure is right before you literally can’t lift the bar up anymore and the bar is one rep away from crashing down on you.

Obviously do this safely especially if you go full out to actual failure you will want a spotter.

Moving on we have our 8th tip which is to incorporate training styles like supersets and Drop sets.

a superset is when you do two exercises back to back with no break and for muscle building purposes you’ll typically want to focus on the same muscle group for both of the exercises that you select.

With drop sets you start with  your heaviest weight and after being right at the point of failure you rack that weight drop a little bit of weight off and continue for more reps.

You can repeat this process of bringing yourself to failure and dropping the weight down multiple times to fully exhaust the muscles youre working on.

Tip number 9 is 2 stick to mostly compound exercises involving free weights or if you must use a machine make sure it has a free range of motion.

You don’t want the majority of your workout to be made up of selectorized equipment because all those machines are locked into a range of motion.

You won’t get the kind of results you can get from using barbells dumbbells and free-range equipment if you’re using selectorized equipment.

Of course, you can throw in a little bit of selectorized equipment but mostly just as a finisher towards the end of your workout after you’ve already broken down your muscles quite a bit.

Let me repeat that if you want the best results in terms of building muscle then spend the majority of your strength and energy focusing on compound heavy lifts with barbells and dumbbells.

The last tip is in the realm of supplementation. You will not need most of the supplements that are advertised for gaining muscle.

The only supplements that you’re really going to want are a protein powder to take after your workouts a good pre-workout made up of natural ingredients and creatine.

Those are the only supplements that you’ll really need for building muscle. You can also get dextrose

which is just a pure form of sugar and you could use it along with your protein shake after your workouts to spike your insulin to get more nutrients amino acids and glycogen into your muscles.

since you’re looking to put on muscle and you’re going to be eating in a calorie Surplus you don’t need things like BCAAs and L-glutamine, you’ll just need the protein, creatine, and pre-workout.

 That’s it guys I really hope this tips has helped you out also if you’re looking for a little more guidance on how to build muscle faster with the proper program check out my 6 week challenge that I’m running right now that includes a workout plan a diet plan and an accountability coach to guide you through the entire program.

Besides building muscle Most beginners also have some excess body fat I’m a great thing about this program is that on average people are losing either 20 lb or 5% of their body fat in just 6 weeks.

So if you’d like to build some muscle and burn some fat in the next 42 days and you stay really committed for a limited time you can have the program for free.