Bert Swope
Many people associate muscle-building with heavy bars and dumbbells, but bodyweight exercises such as push-ups, pull-ups and squats can also promote growth. Cadiz Saldarriaga recommends starting off light before gradually increasing your weight until you can lift for 15-20 reps before switching over to higher rep training.
Increased strength and endurance
Muscle strength refers to the maximum force a muscle can produce during one repetition, while muscular endurance refers to an athlete’s ability to sustain an exercise for an extended period. Both components can increase with regular training, making aging well possible. Adults 60 years and over should include three or more sessions of high-rep, low-weight strength training along with aerobic exercise within their weekly regime to hone both strengths and endurance.
There’s an ongoing misconception that adding muscle helps increase caloric burn at rest, even without exercise. Unfortunately, each pound of muscle only burns about five calories at rest when at rest compared with fat which burns significantly more.
Weight loss can be difficult for those focusing on increasing muscle mass. To maintain bodyweight effectively, the ideal is to build lean muscle while cutting back on unnecessary calories to create lean mass and keep weight steady.
Increased muscle mass can also alter your metabolism, forcing you to expend more energy during activities such as running. Therefore, adding strength training into your routine and intensifying workouts in order to reap all the advantages that come from increasing muscle mass is key if you wish to maximize its benefits.
Ria Trujillo, an ACE-certified personal trainer and nutrition coach, and Kimmy G, an NASM-certified hypertrophy trainer specialized in hypertrophy training, share their tips for increasing strength gains and building more muscle.
Men and women alike can benefit from a basic strength-training program incorporating high-rep, low-weight exercises in order to strengthen muscles while at the same time losing body fat. Women may find building muscle more challenging due to physiological differences.
One tip for effective strength training is keeping workouts short and focused to avoid discomfort or injury, as well as supplementing it with a healthy diet that provides your muscles with essential nutrients needed for growth. Be patient; initial results might take several weeks of consistent strength-training before becoming evident: your strength-training regime becomes gradually more difficult with time.
Reduced risk of injury
Building muscle can have numerous health advantages. It can prevent injuries, decrease chronic inflammation and take competitive athletes to the next level by stimulating their bodies’ release of anti-inflammatory catecholamines that reduce damage caused by chronic stress and overtraining.
Increased muscle mass also benefits joint and ligament health as well as overall balance, so it is wise to listen to advice from qualified trainers when engaging in any exercise that exceeds your abilities. Pushing through an exercise that is too strenuous may cause serious injury which in turn reduces how much muscle can be built.
One final reason to gain more muscle is because it burns more calories than fat, although this is somewhat inaccurate: “the truth is that each pound of muscle burns around six calories at rest compared with two,” Bouchard states.
Muscle may technically weigh more than fat, but due to their greater volume and lower density of lean tissue they both still weigh less than water or air. This explains how muscles may appear denser than equivalent amounts of fat despite still both having lower weight than these substances.
Improved balance and coordination
Building muscle also involves strengthening your balance and coordination skills – an often neglected aspect of exercise. Muscle coordination refers to activating multiple muscles simultaneously for physical tasks while balance refers to being able to keep yourself upright when moving in different positions.
Balance and coordination skills are an integral component of everyday life for people of all ages; but in later life they become especially vital. Without them, falls may result in serious injuries; unfortunately many seniors lose these essential abilities as they age which increases the risk of falls-related injuries as well as hindering everyday tasks like standing on one foot or brushing teeth.
Enhancing your balance and coordination can be accomplished with simple exercises like standing on one foot or walking in a straight line, as well as more advanced balance and agility drills like shoulder press, lunges or crane pose standing.
Balance and agility exercises can enhance your workout and increase energy levels by engaging more muscle strength. Their dynamic movements require greater muscular stimulation than static exercises like squats and lunges, which will raise your heart rate during and after each session and cause greater caloric expenditure post workout – helping you become leaner and healthier with increased fat burn while simultaneously keeping metabolism high and preventing muscle loss. Check out ForceFit group fitness classes as a great way to incorporate balanced workouts into your routine!
Better sleep
People looking to build muscle often focus on weightlifting and protein supplementation as tools for muscle growth and fat loss, but often overlook one of the most essential elements for successful muscle building: rest. Even when eating enough calories to support growth, poor sleep can thwart these efforts significantly.
Lack of sleep causes protein synthesis pathways to decrease, while degradation pathways become more active, leading to muscle degradation rather than gain. This could seriously hinder your training plan as you lose muscle instead of building it, impairing injury recovery and shortening recovery time after workouts.
Studies have demonstrated the benefits of adequate rest for muscle growth. Sleep allows your muscles to better absorb amino acids from food, supporting muscle growth. Furthermore, rest helps clear metabolic waste out of cells; without enough shuteye your body can’t recover properly following exercise sessions.
For optimal muscle building results, a seven to nine hour sleep schedule should be adhered to each night. If this goal proves challenging to attain on an ongoing basis, consider making changes to your lifestyle and diet that might help. Fiber-rich foods, eliminating caffeine intake and limiting electronic device usage prior to bed may all help facilitate better restful slumber. It’s also wise to refrain from exercising too close to bedtime as doing vigorous workouts can increase both heart rate and metabolism rates that inhibit sleep quality; resistance training exercises with dumbbells or bands are great ways of relaxing before sleep begins!
