How Long Does It Take to Build Muscles: A Basic Guide
When it comes to health and fitness, one of the common questions we find people asking is “How long does it take to build muscle?” The truth is, building muscle isn’t the same for everyone because there are plenty of factors that go into how fast you can build. It also depends on what type of workouts you’re doing and if you’re eating a balanced diet.
While a dietician, fitness coach, and body trainer will be able to give you the specifics, we can always provide you a general breakdown on how you can build muscle and how much you might be able to gain within a specific amount of time. So, let’s get into the different factors that affect muscle gain.
How Long Does It Take to Build Muscle?
Every individual tends to grow muscles at different rates, but there are still general models that you can use as estimation:
The McDonald Model
According to the McDonald Model, you should expect to gain anywhere from twenty to twenty-five pounds per year. This is mainly an estimate based on following a healthy workout regime with a proper diet.
A year after that, you can gain up to ten to twelve pounds, and after three years, five to six more pounds. Anything after that, you may struggle to gain even a few pounds because by then, you have hit a high muscle to fat ratio.
The Alan Aragon Model
If you’re looking for a more accurate measurement based on your type of workout routine, you can expect as a beginner to gain one to two percent of your total body weight every month.
If you’re working out intermittently, then you’ll be able to gain at least half a percent to one percent of your total body weight per month. Lastly, when you reach advanced, you can expect to gain at least ¼ to ½ percent of total body weight per month.
As you can see, you can potentially build a lot of muscle in the first year of weight lifting. However, the next few years maybe more challenging. You’ll need to buckle down and begin to look at your diet and adjust it accordingly.
How Do Your Muscles Grow?
Muscles are a fascinating tissue as they’re one of the most adaptable in your body. During strenuous activities, you’ll be putting your muscle fibers under trauma, which is a good thing. With the trauma, your muscles will start to contract and detract, causing satellite cells and muscle fibers to become active.
The more intense your workout, the more trauma you’ll put on your muscular tissues and cause them to become damaged. The satellite cells and muscle fibers will start to repair the muscles and will create new muscle fibers. Hence, the more you repeat this process, the more muscles you will grow.
How Much Exercise Do You Need to Build Muscle?
One belief that many beginners have is that you need to spend hours at a time to build muscle, but that’s not true. In fact, just merely weight training for 20 minutes a day a few times a week can help make a huge difference and keep you on track. You’ll see a steady build of muscle and be able to gain a pound every month.
Of course, you can work out as much as you want but shouldn’t go overboard. Your muscles still need a day or two to record and create new muscle tissues, which is why it’s beneficial to switch out which muscle groups you’re working out per day. This allows you to work out every day but gives specific muscle groups time to recuperate and recover.
What About Diet and Muscle Growth?
You could work out as much as possible but still, see no definition or change in your physical appearance because of the fat you’re gaining. The problem is that muscles tend to grow on the inner layer of your body, which leaves any fat to build on top. If you have too much fat on your body, it can cause the illusion that you don’t have any muscles.
If you’re working out, you’re still gaining muscles and will be growing muscle tissue, and the only difference is that the fat will be hiding it. So, it’s essential to eat a well-rounded diet to help prevent this from happening. You’ll be able to see more muscle definition if you’re following specific guidelines for your body type and weight.
Visual Impact Fitness
Now that you’ve understood the basics of how to build muscle, you may want to take the time to learn how to sculpt your body. Following a program can help you keep on your fitness goals and give you advice on diet, tips, and tricks to help mold your body to the way you like. If you’ve already been struggling to do it yourself and can’t afford a trainer, you may want to check out Visual Impact Fitness.
Attaining a sophisticated physique requires patience, training, and a little bit of help from a program that’s been proven to work. They’ve spent countless hours researching how to sculpt the male physique and can help you attain a celebrity-like body. Of course, you’re still going to have to put in the work. They’re offering a 227-page eBook packed with exercise demonstrations to help you locate those hard-to-find muscle groups.
Unlike other programs, you’ll have detailed information and pictures to help you mimic and perform each exercise. Plus, they include more than one type of workout for a particular body part, which means you can switch up your routine, so you don’t get bored.
Verdict
Whether you’re just starting to build your muscles or already are well on your way, you can count on Visual Impact Fitness to help boost your progress. It’s hard enough trying to figure it out on your own, and with some professional guidance, you’ll be able to sculpt the perfect body that you’ve always dreamed of in the past.
This program is designed around those perfect beach bodies that you’ll see celebrities sporting. The problem is that they use specific workout routines to help sculpt their body to look a certain way. While you may not have a coach to help you, the eBook does come with many workouts to help target specific muscle groups which you’ll find useful.
