Natural Muscle Building

[Debora Mccaffery]

Dr. Grant Tinsley is a tenured associate professor at Texas Tech University and the director of the Energy Balance & Body Composition Laboratory. He has published more than 75 peer-reviewed journal articles in intermittent fasting, body composition assessment, and sports nutrition. He is also a certified strength and conditioning specialist and a certified sports nutritionist.

While researchers and experts continue to study the science of optimizing muscle gains, performing resistance training using moderate to heavy loads, combined with relatively high protein intake, remains the only tried-and-true training method for increasing muscle mass (2).

Building muscle requires your body to deposit more protein molecules into your muscles than it removes. Resistance training with weights and ensuring proper nutrition are the primary means for accomplishing this goal.

While many types of exercise offer health benefits, the only way to reliably drive muscle growth is by using your muscles against moderate to heavy resistance. In addition, muscle growth is specific to the muscles being used.

Understand that these ranges will have some crossover, meaning that 3-repetition sets with the respective weight will cause some muscle growth, 8-repetition sets will build some strength, and 20-repetition sets will build muscle as well.

The overall implication of the repetition range continuum is that you should go through different phases of training using different repetition ranges to see what gives your body the most muscle growth.

For example, to build bigger biceps, you need to perform exercises that work the biceps. This could be an isolated bicep exercise, such as a bicep curl, or a compound movement that uses the biceps, such as a pullup.

Compound movements like a barbell back squat effectively stimulate multiple large muscle groups in a single exercise and provide more functional movement for real-life activities. This leads to both more efficient workouts and more practical muscle strength.

Gaining muscle is possible using all repetition ranges, and some people may respond better to lower or higher repetitions with heavier or lighter weights, respectively. Include compound and isolation movements in your program.

Bulking periods refer to training phases during which you eat more food than you burn to support muscle growth. On the other hand, cutting refers to a period of restricting calories to reduce body fat, all while eating and training enough to avoid losing muscle.

To gain muscle, you need to provide your body with appropriate amounts of calories and nutrients, particularly protein. Doing so will support the creation of new muscle proteins from the dietary protein you eat, which will be stimulated by the work you do in the weight room.

Many factors affect your baseline calorie needs, also known as your total daily energy expenditure, or TDEE. These factors include your age, sex, current lean body mass, physical activity, occupation, and underlying medical conditions.

Your best bet is to use an online calculator to estimate your calorie expenditure based on the data you input. Once you have this baseline expenditure, add 300 calories to establish your daily calorie goal.

When it comes to nutrients for building muscle, protein is the top priority. Recent research suggests that those training to gain muscle should eat around 0.72 grams of protein per pound (1.6 grams per kg) of body weight per day (5).

Next, subtract this number from your calculated daily energy need, and divide it by 4 (the number of calories in a gram of carbohydrate) to get the grams of carbs you need to eat to hit but not exceed your daily calorie intake.

Workout programs for building muscle should primarily rely on compound and isolation movements with weights, but adjust the specific exercises, sets, and repetitions to ensure consistent, long-term gains in both muscle size and strength.

Age-related muscle loss, called sarcopenia, is a natural part of aging. After age 30, you begin to lose as much as 3% to 5% per decade. Most men will lose about 30% of their muscle mass during their lifetimes.

Less muscle means greater weakness and less mobility, both of which may increase your risk of falls and fractures. A 2015 report from the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research found that people with sarcopenia had 2.3 times the risk of having a low-trauma fracture from a fall, such as a broken hip, collarbone, leg, arm, or wrist.

But just because you lose muscle mass does not mean it is gone forever. "Older men can indeed increase muscle mass lost as a consequence of aging," says Dr. Thomas W. Storer, director of the exercise physiology and physical function lab at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital. "It takes work, dedication, and a plan, but it is never too late to rebuild muscle and maintain it."

One possible contributor to sarcopenia is the natural decline of testosterone, the hormone that stimulates protein synthesis and muscle growth. Think of testosterone as the fuel for your muscle-building fire.

This constant challenging builds muscle and keeps you away from plateaus where you stop making gains. (See "Working on a PRT program.") In fact, a recent meta-analysis published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise reviewed 49 studies of men ages 50 to 83 who did PRT and found that subjects averaged a 2.4-pound increase in lean body mass.

Your diet also plays a role in building muscle mass. Protein is the king of muscle food. The body breaks it down into amino acids, which it uses to build muscle. However, older men often experience a phenomenon called anabolic resistance, which lowers their bodies' ability to break down and synthesize protein.

Therefore, as with PRT, if you are older, you need more. A recent study in the journal Nutrients suggests a daily intake of 1 to 1.3 grams (g) of protein per kilogram of body weight for older adults who do resistance training. For example, a 175-pound man would need about 79 g to 103 g a day. If possible, divide your protein equally among your daily meals to maximize muscle protein synthesis.

This is a high amount compared with the average diet, but there are many ways to get the extra protein you need. Animal sources (meat, eggs, and milk) are considered the best, as they provide the proper ratios of all the essential amino acids. Yet, you want to stay away from red and processed meat because of high levels of saturated fat and additives. Instead, opt for healthier choices, such as

Protein powders can offer about 30 g per scoop and can be added to all kinds of meals like oatmeal, shakes, and yogurt. "While food sources are the best, supplemental protein can help if you struggle with consuming enough calories and protein from your regular diet," says Dr. Storer.

Also, to maximize muscle growth and improve recovery, he suggests consuming a drink or meal with a carbohydrate-to-protein ratio of about three-to-one or four-to-one within 30 minutes after your workout. For example, a good choice is 8 ounces of chocolate milk, which has about 22 g of carbs and 8 g of protein.

Building muscle is not all about strength, says Dr. Storer. You also need power. "Muscle power, how fast and efficiently you move, is more connected to the activities of daily living and physical function than muscular strength," he says.

A good way to improve overall muscle power is with your legs, since they are most responsible for mobility. "Doing quicker movements against resistance, like one's own body weight, can be an effective means of developing power," says Dr. Storer.

To gain more muscle mass, older men need a structured and detailed PRT program, says Dr. Storer. "It should be tailored to the individual with the goals being progression and improvement," he says. "It should focus on individual elements like specific exercises, load, repetitions, and rest periods, and should challenge but not overwhelm."

Check with your doctor before embarking on any kind of strength-training routine. Then enlist a well-qualified personal trainer to help set up a detailed sequence and supervise your initial workouts to ensure you perform them safely and in the best manner. As you progress, you can often perform them on your own.

After you have established a routine, there are several ways to progress. The easiest is to add a second and then a third set of the exercises. Another way is to decrease the number of reps per set and increase the weight or resistance to the point where you are able to complete at least eight reps, but no more than 12. As you improve, you can increase weight by trial and error, so you stay within the range of eight to 12 reps.

"Weight training is the best way to keep the muscle mass you have and even increase muscle mass you may have lost with aging," says Shawn Pedicini, a physical therapist at Harvard-affiliated Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital.

Invest in a trainer. A licensed and credentialed trainer can design a personalized program. A trainer can also teach you proper form and technique. Check with your local gyms for referrals. If you're not ready for in-person sessions, many trainers now offer virtual workouts. After you learn the basics, you can work out on your own.

Get free. Training with free weights, like dumbbells, kettlebells, and barbells, is often better for muscle building than machines, says Pedicini. "However, machines are ideal if you have balancing issues or other limitations that make it safer to sit during weight training," he says. You can also go back and forth between free weights and machines depending on the type of exercise and which muscles you are working on.

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