Are you lifting weights regularly but not seeing much muscle growth?
I know how frustrating it is. It sucks. I spent the first year of my training working my ass off and getting nothing back in return. I didn’t realise the weight loss mistakes I was making.
I was putting in the work in the gym, training 6 days a week, drinking whey protein afterwards, sticking to a “clean” diet and still seeing little in the way of progress. You tell me what to do to see results and I would do it. But I was focusing on all of the wrong things. And I don’t want you to make the same mistakes. Instead of spending time researching ‘How to know what body type you are’ I would focus on these simple 7 points that will definitely help you progress in the gym.
How to start getting results
- Training with a plan
- Push yourself that extra 1%
- Ask for help in the gym or from professionals
- Do full body or Upper Lower sessions
- Take more rest days
- Correct your form
- Eat enough to fuel your session
Training with a plan
Training without a plan is a big issue I see with a lot of clients that come to me for online personal training. Consistency is key in achieving success in many areas of life, and the same goes for your training. When you follow a program specifically written to progress you and get you closer to your goal, you will get better results. Structure and routine are the breeding ground for progress and I see it time and time again with my own clients.
It’s often more difficult to go into the gym and put together a random session based on how your feeling and the equipment available. It doesn’t give you time to practice a move over and over again so you can add load to it. It also doesn’t account for tracking progressive overload as there is no consistency.
If you put random effort in, you will always get random results. Random effort doesn’t in anyway mean you’re not working hard. Often the burpees and circuits you might substitute in are ten times harder but they won’t lead to the same results. It needs to be maintainable and measurable.
Push yourself the extra 1%
I’ve realised looking back over my own journey that I definitely didn’t always push myself. In more recent years of training I’ve really peeled things back. Less work but with more intensity and focus. In my training over the last few years every time I felt like giving up, I’d tell myself I had 5 more in the tank, and often I usually did. True muscle growth takes pushing yourself to failure and past it, not stopping when you fee a burn or tired. Most of you don’t realise just how strong you are.
Ask for help in the gym or from professionals
Not asking for help in the gym or from professionals will slow down your journey. I’ve spoken openly about my struggles with anxiety so I do empathise with you if it’s a struggle to ask for help but do know 9/10 it will have a net positive result. Online personal trainers and in person trainers are passionate about training.
We want to help you. In the gym you can always ask a staff member how to work and adjust equipment if you’re not too sure. We all exist for a reason, and most of us are passionate about helping you.
Do full body or Upper Lower sessions
Usually when we start out in the gym we blindly fumble through the free-weights area with a programme we downloaded online. We don’t always know what is best for us and I can tell you from the perspective of my experience as a coach that a full body or upper/lowr split is best.
Training one or two muscle groups per day, unless you’re advanced, is often a waste of your precious time at the start of your journey.
If you’re a beginner with virtually any goal (build muscle, lose fat, get strong, etc.) then I’d recommend these types of sessions. The higher frequency and the lower volume/higher compound exercise focus that typically accompanies it has given my clients great results in their first few training rotations.
Within your full body or upper lower split I recommend that you
- Slow it down and control the movement.
- Have a plan, don’t go in blind
- Progressively overload overtime without sacrificing on form.
Take more rest days
When we start in the gym we assume that more gets more results. It comes to the point of diminishing returns though where too much volume or frequency stops you from progressing. Not taking enough days off is really common and an anxiety that you’ll lose your progress if you rest and recover. Less is not more. It’s important here to manage your fatigue and fuel yourself well. A good online personal trainer can help educate you on the symptoms of over-training and how to implement deloads and structured time off. Again like in point number one there has to be structure in place in the first place to adjust from.
Correct Your Form
when I stopped focusing on the numbers I moved in the gym, and focused on how I moved weight in each rep instead my progress increased significantly and the numbers started to follow. Training with poor form is common. This can only be corrected with time and a watchful pair of eyes (you can correct your own form but it takes years), you could ask an experienced friend, an instructor in the gym, or a online personal trainer.
I definitely recommend recording yourself and working with an online personal trainer if it’s possible to improve your form and your long term ability to progress.
Eat enough to fuel your session
Similar to having a training plan in place, with your food you need to establish a baseline that you can adjust from. Not eating enough to fuel your sessions is common practice with clients. Most people join the gym to lose weight and will reduce food as a result. This can leave you feeling empty without much energy to push in your session.
It can also lead to hunger creeping up on you and finding it difficult to control yourself around food at different times throughout the day. Carbs are your friend!. You can use simple pen and paper or MyFitnessPal to track your food and adjust from there depending on your energy levels and rate of progress in the gym.
If you’re looking to build muscle I would actually aim for a 300-400 calorie surplus (so 300-400 above your maintenance calories) and aim to get 2.2-3g protein / kg of bodyweight in each day.
Conclusion
It’s a long and hopefully enjoyable process to build muscle and push yourself in the gym weekly. In this blogpost I gave you 7 helpful tips to get better results int the gym. If you can avoid the mistakes I mentioned and follow these tips instead, you will see great results !
If you’re interested in getting an online personal trainer to give you the structure to progress at a better rate you can always contact me for a free consultation call.
