3 things you need to consider if you want to build muscle
Are you wishing to become a muscle mommy? If you’ve been living under a rock, a muscle mommy is a muscular badass woman who lifts heavy sh*t - and is proud to show it off! Jokes aside(or not 🌚), we have definitely noticed a shift in the space - just a few short years ago women lifting weights was basically a taboo. Strength training for women is becoming more and more mainstream - and we LOVE to see it!!
There are a lot of great reasons to strive to build muscle - so regardless of WHY you want to do it, the process is always the same! Today we want you to ask yourself these three questions to ensure you are ticking all the muscle building boxes:
Are you eating enough?
Are you following a structured program?
Are you resting enough?
Let’s break it down ⬇️
Are you eating enough?
Right, you know how plants need nutrients to grow their stems, leaves, fruits etc? You know how babies need milk to make the transformation from a little bundle of joy to an annoying but adorable toddler? In a similar fashion, you - yes, a fully grown adult - need nutrients to grow muscle. Loads of them. You need to focus on two main things here. First, you need to make sure you are in a calorie maintenance or surplus. Your body can’t build muscle out of thin air, so thinking that you could eat poverty calories and miraculously grow a booty is not realistic. You should aim for maintenance - and if you want to speed up the process - 150-300 cals surplus depending on your goals and physiology.
How much you are eating is equally as important as what you are eating. Always try to eat a healthy balanced diet, focusing on whole foods. But when it comes to building muscle, protein is king (sorry, queen). It’s the main building block for muscle tissue - so that’s why you need it! Wondering how much protein is enough protein for your goals? Check out our blog here!
Are you following a structured program?
Even if you nail your nutrition, eating enough protein without training won’t do the trick. You have to strength train, and you have to do it smart AND hard at the same time. What does that mean? You need to incorporate progressive overload in your training, and doing random workouts does everything but that. Bodies are incredibly adaptable, so you need to make sure you keep challenging yours week on week. This is where the structured program approach comes in. In general, it should look like a 6-8 weeks strength block where you keep lifting heavier, add more reps or more sets every week. That’s on the training smart bit. In terms of training hard, your sessions should feel challenging. Strength training won’t necessarily make you sweat or send your heart rate in zone 5 BUT your final few reps of each exercise should feel like a reallllll struggle.
Are you resting enough?
Training smart also means … not training. See, when we strength train, we create tiny microscopic tears in our muscles (this is normal, don’t be alarmed); when we eat enough protein and rest enough, our bodies rebuild that muscle stronger and bigger than before. If you don’t rest enough, your body won’t have the time to do that. And you won’t be able to progress as quickly as you could, while also risking injuries in the long run.
So, what should you do instead? Here’s when we once again need to train smart. One way to check if your structured program is good is whether or not it includes rest days and a deload week (take a look here for a deep dive on deload weeks).
How many rest days you need depends on your goals and the intensity of your program, but we’d advise against training more than 5x week. You can take active rest days where you do some yoga or go for a long walk but if you just stay in bed all day binging the latest Netflix show - that’s perfect, too. And we cannot emphasize this enough, sleep!!! Rest days or not, you need to get enough sleep (hint hint muscle recovery) and while we know that’s not always possible, creating a good sleep routine could really help you hit those 8hrs.
Already a member? Our LVL Up programming is designed to make you strongher, and yes that includes deload week too! Make sure you make use of the coach check-ins if you have any questions about your LVL Up sessions.
Struggling with your training programme? As part of our 6 Weeks to StrongHer programme you get structured guidance and 1:1 support to make sure you get strongher every week. Get on the waitlist HERE