Gaining Muscle Mass

There a lot of factors involved with gaining muscle mass if you really want to achieve the best results.
It's an oversimplification of the issue to think that all you need to do is lift some weights a few times a week and you'll gain muscle mass.

It's not that easy—but if you follow some basic guidelines it will still be a relatively easy and
attainable goal.

These simple and often overlooked tips will help get you on your way to building solid lean muscle mass.

Gaining Muscle Mass by Sleeping

An overlooked element of packing on muscle is allowing sufficient time for your muscles to build and repair. For one thing that means not overworking your muscles and waiting a minimum of 48 hours before working a muscle group again. But also important is that you need to get a full night's of sleep every night. That means at least seven hours and ideally eight hours of rest so your muscles can do all the hard work while you're catching some z's.

Gaining Muscle Mass by Drinking

Not by drinking alcohol, but by drinking plenty of water. You need to hydrate not just before, during and after a workout but also throughout the entire day. Water helps your body's metabolic processes by helping to process things quicker. Staying hydrated is also important for your health and it will help you achieve your fitness goals as you'll eat less, avoid unhealthy and sugary beverages and digest your meals quicker and more efficiently.

Gaining Muscle Mass by Eating

The concept of gaining weight and losing weight is often simpler than people like to make it seem. If you consume more calories than you burn on any given day, those extra calories begin to either be used for other functions – such as building muscle – or they get stored as fat. If you consume less calories than you burn, than you'll use weight, which does not coincide well with a goal of putting on lean muscle mass!

The key takeaway is not just to eat more calories, but to eat the right kind of calories that will allow you to gain muscle while keeping extra fat storage at bay. That means a whole lot of protein in your diet, up to a gram of protein for every pound of body weight. But you want to round out your diet with a sufficient amount of healthy carbs and fat as well. You don't have to take away the foods you enjoy, but rather limit them to better portions and spruce them up with extra protein punch. For example, make your own pizza using low fat mozzarella and chicken on wheat pita for a huge dose of protein.

Gaining Muscle Mass by Lifting

Last but not least, is of course, actually weightlifting in order to achieve the results you want to see. It's really the most important step, but because the other areas are so overlooked and so commonly ignored, it's important to get your mind focused on those as well. If you want to gain muscle mass you should be focusing on compound, multi-joint exercises which target more than one muscle group at a time. Exercises such as deadlifts and squats are great for this.

Conveniently enough, these exercises also target some of the largest muscle groups in your body. This is also important, because the larger the muscle, the more testosterone is released when it is being used. Testosterone helps to encourage muscle growth throughout the entire body, so the more of it that you naturally produce the better your results will be when trying to gain muscle mass.

If you're looking for a more comprehensive guide to gaining muscle mass I strongly recommend you purchase Jason Ferruggia's Muscle Gaining Secrets eBook! Ferruggia is a renowned fitness expert, not just some guy off the streets. He has written articles for and been featured in many top fitness magazines, including Men's Health and Men's Fitness. With his expertise you would certainly expect great things from his training program and eBook Muscle Gaining Secrets.