Every industry has trends that come and go. These days, the pace of change is faster than ever. Despite all the fads and new things the fitness world sees, there are basic principles that always stand the test of time. In this article, we’ll focus on 3 such key rules for fitness progress, which are essential for building muscle mass. Follow them closely if you’re truly committed to building quality muscle.
Fitness Progress and Nutrient Intake
The food we eat always matters for our fitness progress. Maintaining a controlled calorie surplus for a sufficiently long period of time is necessaryto:
- Maintain higher intensity levels at the gym, stimulating hypertrophy;
- Facilitate recovery;
- Provide enough energy to produce new muscle tissue.
These are biological processes involved in building muscle and require sufficient calorie intake. To achieve the necessary calorie surplus, we need to consume 10–25% more calories than our basal metabolic rate (BMR). The exact percentage depends on our daily routine, type of work, sex, and genetics.
Fitness Progress and Nutrient Quality
Eating enough is essential for building muscle—in other words, for making fitness progress—but the quality of those calories is just as important. Too often, people eat a lot of “fast food” in an effort to gain weight, but this is far from the best approach.
Getting the right nutrients (protein, complex carbohydrates and essential fatty acids) is essential for both muscle growth and maintaining optimal health.
The health of your immune, digestive and endocrine systems plays a key role in successfully building muscle tissue. High-quality nutrients support immunity and improve all the body’s growth processes.
Optimizing hypertrophy
Stimulating myofibrillar and sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is undoubtedly the foundation for maximizing muscle growth. This will never change. This principle calls for a specific approach to weight training, which should include:
– Periodization – changing your fitness goal and training method at set intervals.
– Different rep ranges – slow-twitch and fast-twitch muscle fibers are activated by different numbers of repetitions.
– Using exceptional intensity at the right time.
To achieve all this, we need to use different methods and approaches to fitness progress at different stages, tailored to our training experience and specific goal. For a detailed consultation, don’t hesitate to contact the Pulse Fitness & Spa trainers.
Whatever new fitness information you learn, never forget that these principles never change and are the foundation of progress at the gym!