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If you’ve read any of my previous posts you might assume that I’m against building muscle. Let me clear up something, that is not the case, I have absolutely nothing against body builders or building muscles in general. What I do have a problem with is the training methods and programs being used by the vast majority gym users to build muscle. In this post I am going to try and explain

– The Principles which you must adhere to if you wanna build muscle – What people are doing wrong – What you should do if you want to build muscle

Whilst there are several exercise and training principles that I haven’t included in this post I would like to just provide you with a brief introduction on a few which I believe are fundamental to building muscle and attempt to explain how and why they are relevant to your training.

The SAID Principle

The SAID Principle is an acronym which stands for ‘Specific Adaption to Imposed Demand’. With regards to building muscle this principle basically states that if you place your muscular system under any form of stress, it will adapt to so that it can better withstand that same specific form of stress in the future.

So how does this apply to your training?

Your muscles are made up of lots of muscle fibers. Each time you work your muscles by lifting weights (or performing movements against resistance) with the intention of building bigger muscles you cause micro tears (tiny tears) in your muscle fibers. The damage caused by these tiny tears accelerates a process called ‘muscle-protein synthesis’, which uses amino acids to repair and reinforce the fibers, making them resistant to future damage. And although this happens at a microscopic level, the effect becomes visible over time in the form of bigger thicker muscles. This is what we are trying to achieve.

This type training provides the specific stimulus to create what we refer to as an anabolic environment. The anabolic environment is what is needed in order to allow your muscles will grow in response to this type of training.

The Principle of Progressive Overload

The principle of Progressive Overload basically states that in order for our body to adapt you need to apply a stress or load which is greater than it is normally used to. It also states that the level of improvement will also plateau over time (sometimes referred to as ‘Repeated Bout Effect’) as the body adapts to the imposed physical stress. So in order to continue getting results, you must provide progressively more overload than you did before.

So with regards to building muscle, lifting weights (or performing movements against resistance) will overload your muscular system so that it will be forced to adapt. However, if you want to continue to build new lean muscle, you must continue to provide progressively more overload to your muscular system than before.

The Principle of recovery