Muscle Growth
The Expert Rule on Building Muscles Beginners Don’t Follow
An article on the importance of nutrition if you want to see serious gains.
I had been training for half a year back then. That’s around the time it takes a lot of beginners in the gym to see their first results. However, I was not among them. Despite all the time and effort, I invested into my body through my habit of hitting the gym 4 times a week, I was making progress so slow that it was barely even noticeable. Nowadays, I know what I did wrong: I failed to follow one very important role when it comes to building muscles. I’m fact, it is so important that even professionals need to be aware of it daily. Beginners however oftentimes don’t know or follow it.
This is the reason why I wrote this article. To inform you about the importance of proper nutrition when trying to build muscles. In this article, I will teach you the 30:70 rule on the relation between nutrition and training and also share some free but still very useful tools with you to help you follow it.
To build muscles, you need two things: a stimulus to signal your muscles that they need to grow and a proper supply of food so that your muscles can grow.
The stimulus is the easy thing. Just go to the gym and lift weights. The most important thing when doing so is to always focus on progressive overload. As long as you do so, stay consistent, and perform all your exercises with proper form (to not hurt yourself), you will always provide a stimulus to your muscles.
The 30:70 rule
By exposing your muscles to a stimulus, that shows them, that they need to become stronger, you will start the natural adaptation process of your body. Your body will get used to moving heavy things, and as a reaction to it, try to make the process as effective as possible. This is the reason why your body is going to try to let your muscles grow.
However, your body needs the right kind and amount of nutrient-rich food to let your muscles grow. This is where your nutrition comes into play.
Ask yourself:
- How many calories do I eat?
- How many grams of protein do I consume per day?
Or even better, track those values with apps like MyFitnessPal (which I am a big fan of). The right kind of nutrition is so important to muscle growth, that a lot of bodybuilders say that going to the gym is only 30% of what gets you those sweet gains everyone is after. The other 70% is your nutrition.
This opinion is even more widespread when it comes to building a six-pack. Everyone in a gym will tell you that you might be able to get strong abs through training but to make them visible you will need to adapt your diet and lower your body fat percentage.
All in all, you need to understand that just going to the gym isn’t enough if you want to see serious gains. To get those you will need to fuel your body properly, which is why the training only makes up for 30% of your gains while the other 70% come from the right nutrition.
Useful and free tools to improve your nutrition
Now let me move on and show you some free tools (apps, websites, …) you can use to perfect your nutrition.
MyFitnessPal
MyFitnessPal is the most popular calorie tracker I know. It is used by millions all around the world. While the app might be more known for helping people lose weight, it is a universal tool for keeping, gaining, or losing weight. A lot of bodybuilders also use it to keep track of their macros (like for example how much protein they consumed on a given day). The app is free (in its standard version) and easy to use. To start tracking your calories, you just need to download the app (available for both android and IOS), sign up, and scan the barcodes of the foods you consume.
Bodybuilding.com’s Macro Calculator
To find out how many calories and macros overall you should consume every day, bodybuilding.com has a very useful tool: their free macro calculator (find it here). It tells you everything you need to know to eat well, depending on your goal, weight, height, and age.
Adapting your nutrition can accelerate how much progress you make extremely. That’s why every beginner in the gym should at least try it. However, please don’t forget one thing: keeping it simple at the beginning and focusing on building a routine you stick to is always the highest priority.
