10 rules to build muscle without getting fat

Building muscle without getting fat is not complicated, but many exercisers are forever searching for the best new method or secret. The truth is, there is no such secret. The right method or tip can help, but the real way to get more muscular, stronger and leaner lies in solid principles followed with ruthless consistency.

1 - Set realistic goals

Far too many young exercisers come into the gym expecting that a four-week training cycle will transform them from a pubescent boy into "The Rock" Dwain Johnson. Of course, they won't achieve this goal and will either search for relevant articles on the internet or throw in the towel altogether.

The muscle building process is a journey, not a sprint. You need patience and a reasonable idea of what you can achieve and in what time frame. Fitness author Alan Aragon has developed a clear list of the maximum rate of muscle gain:

• Beginners: 1 to 1.5% of total body weight per month
• Somewhat advanced: 0.5 to 1% of total body weight per month
• Advanced: 0.25 to 0.5% of total body weight per month

Let's put these numbers into action. Let's say Ben is a busy guy who hasn't exercised much so far. He weighs about 70 kilos, is 19 years old and has the hormone profile of a young bull (huh?). If Ben trains hard 3 to 5 times a week, does everything right with his diet and regenerates adequately, here's what he can expect:

Year 1:

Ben weighs 70 kilos with a body fat percentage of 14%.

• 70 kilos x 0.1 = 700 grams per month x 12 months = 8.4 kilos per year
• 70 kilos x 0.15 = 1.05 kilos of muscle per month x 12 months = 12.6 kilos per year

If Ben does everything right, he can be anywhere between 78.4 and 83.6 kilos after a year of training. We will take 80 kilos as an approximate average.

Year 2:

Ben weighs 80 kilos.

• 80 kilos x 0.0075% = 0.6 kilos per month or 7.2 kilos of muscle per year.

Ben is still building muscle at an impressive rate and now weighs about 87 kilos.

Year 3:

Ben weighs 87 kilos.

• 87 kilos x 0.0025 = 0.2176 kilos per month or 2.61 kilos per month.

After three years of intensive training, Ben now weighs 198 kilos with a body fat percentage of 15%. This sounds good for three years, but young exercisers rarely have the foresight to look three years into the future.

Genetic outliers and steroid users can expect to build 2 to 3 pounds of muscle per month as true beginners, 1 to 2 pounds of muscle per month as somewhat advanced, and about 0.5 pounds of muscle per month as more advanced. Water weight and fat will add a few more pounds to your total weight, but it takes a lot of time to build lean muscle even if you're doing everything right.

Adjust your expectations to reality and commit to the long term. Building muscle without gaining fat is not a one-night stand but a long-term relationship.

2 - Get lean and build lean muscle

The biggest mistake exercisers make? Trying to build mass before they're lean enough to make the most of the extra calories they're eating. Generally speaking, men should aim for a body fat percentage of around 12%, while women should be in the 17% to 21% body fat range. A good indicator that you are on the right track is that you have some abdominal muscle definition before you try to bulk up.

If you go through a 'dirty' bulking phase or try to bulk up when you are too fat, then you will face a variety of problems:

• Fat hyperplasia - Your body will increase the number of fat cells as a result of excess calorie intake. This makes it easier to store fat in the future and harder to lose fat here and now.
• Reduced insulin sensitivity - You make it harder for your body to convert food into energy. You will find it easier to build fat and struggle to build lean muscle.
• Developing bad habits - Sure, it's fun to eat junk food occasionally. But a mass-building phase is no excuse to stuff all kinds of junk into you like an idiot with the self-control of a 14-year-old pubescent boy visiting his first porn site. It's harder than you might think to break these habits.

Ignore this advice at your own peril. Sure, you'll build mass faster, but that mass will consist of life preservers over your jeans, not an armor of muscle over your chest. Get lean and keep your diet "clean." Progress will be slower, but you'll build big muscles instead of a big belly.

3 - Maintain a moderate calorie surplus

In a perfect world, eating more food would directly correlate with more lean muscle mass. Unfortunately, that's not how it works. Unlike those who use banned performance-enhancing compounds and therefore have a 24/7 increased rate of protein synthesis, steroid-free exercisers need a moderate calorie surplus to prevent too much body fat build-up.

For this reason, you need to calculate your calorie needs and aim for 300 to 500 kcal above maintenance calories. You will find dozens of equations on the internet that will help you calculate this value and these formulas are all quite similar. Here is a simple one:

• Body weight in kilos x 33 = maintenance calorie intake
• 73 kilos x 33 = 2,409 kcal per day

So to build muscle, this hypothetical person should consume 2,700 to 2,900 kcal per day.

If you build fat easily, you should aim for a value at the lower end of the spectrum. If you have a faster metabolism, then you should aim for 2,900 kcal or slightly above. You'll have to experiment to see what works best for you, but you'll end up near this range.

This reasonable increase in calorie intake is equivalent to one or two protein shakes and one or two bananas above the maintenance calorie amount. Alternatively, those extra calories could be an extra sweet potato and a chicken breast a day - but not a 1,200 kcal burger from the nearest fast food joint.

4 - Set your macronutrient intake

Calories are most important when it comes to building muscle, but the composition of macronutrients is also important.

Protein

Keep it simple. Aim for a good 2 grams of protein per kilo of body weight. There doesn't seem to be much benefit to consuming more protein as a steroid-free exerciser. Of course, if you're struggling to get your calorie intake down, feel free to consume more protein. Just be aware that it won't have any additional benefits, at least for your muscle gains.

Carbohydrates

If you have followed rule two and are already lean enough at the start of the mass-building phase, carbohydrates are your best friend when it comes to building lean muscle. Carbohydrates have a protein-sparing effect, which means that they can prevent the breakdown of muscle tissue. Similar to saving money, a penny saved is a penny earned. Think of carbohydrates as the key to maintaining the muscle you've already built while encouraging further muscle growth.

Men with a body fat percentage of 7% to 12% and women with a body fat percentage of 17% to 19% should aim for 4 to 5 grams of carbohydrates per kilogram of body weight.

Men with a body fat percentage of 12 to 15% and women with a body fat percentage of 19 to 21% should aim for 3 to 4 grams of carbohydrates per kilogram of body weight. If you have a higher body fat percentage, get lean first.

Fat

The rest of your calories should be consumed in the form of fat. And yes, there are exceptions. Some exercisers do better on a higher fat diet. But in general, too many exercisers suffer from carbohydrate phobia. As a result, they remain leaner and weaker than they could be.

5 - Sleep 7 to 9 hours a night

Your body needs rest - especially if you want to build muscle and stay lean. A 2010 study found that even 14 days of 5.5 hours of sleep per night vs. 8.5 hours of sleep per night reduced fat loss by 55% and increased lean body mass (muscle) loss by 60%. All this happened in just 2 weeks.

And chronic sleep deprivation? Numerous studies have shown that chronic sleep deprivation increases cortisol levels while simultaneously decreasing the release of testosterone and IGF-1. When you consider all of this together, a lack of sleep seems to promote a loss of muscle mass.

Make sure you get 7 to 9 hours of sleep if you're serious about building muscle. Put away your cell phone and turn off Netflix. This is the lowest hanging fruit for bodybuilders (can't translate that literally, dear comparison) and the easiest way for most exercisers to get more muscular, stronger, leaner and healthier.

6 - Pay attention to progressive overload

If you're not controlling, you're just guessing. Most exercisers tread water for years. They train bench presses with 85 kilos and 5 x 5 and then go straight on to barbell curls. Same thing the next day. The same weight. The same volume. And they make minimal progress...for years.

To build muscle, you need to push your body beyond what it's doing right now. The simplest solution is to take a notebook to the gym and write down your workouts. Aim to get a little better every time you set foot in the gym.

Find a good training program like 5/3/1. Without progression, there is no progression. Don't make it more complicated than it needs to be. Document your workouts, assess your progress and increase the weight on the bar to put more stress on your body.

7 - Underpin your strength base

If you are a beginner, getting stronger is the most important thing you can do. Training purely for strength in combination with a muscle building diet will build thick layers of muscle mass simply because your body is not used to the stressful environment of proper training.

Strength is important for those who have been at it for a while, but the mechanisms for hypertrophy are slightly different. Once you have built a sufficient strength base, heavy training will help you build muscle through two mechanisms.

First, building more strength will allow you to progressively move more weight at a higher volume. For example, you could progress from 3 sets of 10 repetitions with 35 kilo dumbbells to 45 kilo dumbbells and 10 sets of 3 repetitions on the bench press. This gradual increase will lead to a much stronger overload stimulus.

Secondly, heavy training will improve muscle fiber recruitment. Using hypothetical numbers, you could go from recruiting (weird word choice... maybe another word?) 40% of the muscle fibers in your pecs to 70%. The more muscle fibers you recruit, the more muscle fibers you can train.

So strength is still important for advanced exercisers. But instead of being the primary mechanism for building muscle, heavy training will allow you to improve your muscle fiber recruitment to use more muscle fibers during training and improve your work capacity for exhausting more muscle fibers.

Beginners need to train heavy to build muscle. Experienced exercisers need to train heavy to make all subsequent training more effective.

8 - Chase the pump

Chasing the pump just because Arnold said it feels like an orgasm is no longer bro-science - it's science.

Brad Schoenfeld, a scientist who specializes in muscle building, has found three main components to building muscle:

• Mechanical tension (heavy weight training)
• Metabolic damage (the pump)
• Muscle damage (muscle soreness)

Mechanical tension is covered by heavy strength training and limited muscle damage should be a by-product (and not the focus) of light progressive overload. In many cases, the best results can be achieved by performing a heavy exercise and then generating metabolic stress (the pump).

If you train with moderately high repetitions and short rest intervals, then the longer lasting muscle contractions will generate an occlusion effect and short rest intervals will further contribute to this effect because they do not give the blood enough time to drain from the muscles. As a result, by-products of muscle concentrations remain in the muscles, activating the mTOR pathway (a key regulator of growth) while increasing the activity of satellite cells (precursors of muscle cells).

In short, this means training with heavy weights at the beginning of the workout and then performing 2 to 3 exercises with 8 to 15 repetitions per set, longer eccentric phases (negative repetitions) and incomplete recovery between sets for a good pump.

9 - Train to muscle failure...occasionally

Training to muscle failure can give you a rapid growth spurt - if done correctly. By exhausting every possible muscle fiber and continuing sets to the point of mechanical muscle failure, you're generating an insane amount of metabolic stress and muscle damage for future muscle growth.

But how can you safely train to the point of muscle failure? Use light weights in the range of 30% of your maximum weight. Choose your exercises carefully. Use cable pulls, machines and a few bodyweight exercises. No deadlifts or snatches please.

Aim for muscle failure without excessive bending. Some momentum is fine. Aim to target a muscle towards the end of a training session with a 2 x 50, 3 x 30, or 3 x 20 repetition scheme.

Here are a few exercises that are good for training to muscle failure:

• Chest: bench press on the machine
• Latissimus: Rowing with supported chest
• Biceps/forearms: machine curls
• Quadriceps: single-leg leg presses, leg extensions, goblet squats
• Triceps: Tight push-ups until muscle failure
• Leg curls: leg curls on a stability ball
• Gluteus: one-legged hip thrusts
• Trapezius: 2 minute farmer's walk

10 - Plan for the long term

You can follow an aggressive fat loss plan and change your appearance quite quickly, but building muscle is a completely different story. It takes months and years of hard work - not days or weeks.

Most exercisers fail in their efforts not because of a lack of knowledge. They fail because of a lack of strength of character, a lack of tenacity and a lack of consistency. You can't build muscle for a month, watch your abs dwindle and then move on to a definition phase. If you're dead serious about building muscle, give it your all for six months.

Remember that the muscle building process is a slow process - you won't build more than 1 to 1.5 kilos of muscle per month if you do everything right with diet and training and get plenty of rest and recovery.

The goal should remain the goal

Stick to your muscle building diet, ditch inconsistent training and take your recovery just as seriously as anything you do in the gym. And most importantly - strive for your goal. If you're willing to pay the price, you'll be rewarded with a stronger, leaner and more muscular body.

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/10-rules-for-building-muscle-without-getting-fat

By Eric Bach