How to gain muscle: a guide for women

how to gain muscle

If you’re a woman wondering how to gain muscle, it’s important that you learn some of the fundamental secrets of what it takes to achieve success so that you can start an effective program from the start.

Unfortunately, a lot of women looking to learn how to build muscle do things the wrong way because they are simply too afraid of getting big and bulky doing it.

This is very far from being the case. If you want to build muscle effectively, you need to follow tried and true strategies so you can transform your body forever.

Let’s see what you need to know.

Requirement 1: An Overload Kick

The first thing to do if you hope to be successful in your muscle building goal is to make sure that an overload stimulus is present. This is basically subjecting the muscle to a force or stress that it has never experienced before.

But will a few dumbbell exercises really challenge them?

Chances are they won’t, and that’s why you won’t see the results you’re looking for.

If you want to learn how to gain muscle, you must be prepared to challenge yourself to the max. Lifting heavier weight is what will add more muscle tone, definition and shape.

Always keep in mind that as a woman, you simply don’t have the levels of testosterone present in your body to build significant amounts of lean muscle, so put that worry to rest.

Requirement 2: Rest

The second requirement for learning how to gain muscle is to make sure you are getting enough rest between training sessions.

Again, this is where many women fall short. They do their strength training routine, but then they think that every day in between they need to do a high volume of cardio training.

After all, cardio is what prevents fat gain, right?

It is not like this. Excessive cardio training can really undermine your ability to build lean muscle mass, so you need to keep it in check.

A few sessions a week is fine and should be done for overall health benefit, but if you’re doing cardio every day of the week for an hour at a time, that’s definitely overkill.

Remember that your body needs rest to recover from the tissue breakdown it has experienced during the training session and if you are doing cardio training, you are not giving it the rest it needs.

You should aim to get at least one full day of rest each week and you should also take at least 48 hours of rest between working a certain muscle group again after a training session.

If you skip the break, you’ll skip the results.

Requirement 3: Adequate Nutrition

The third requirement that you must take into account if you want to learn how to gain muscle is proper nutrition. Many women struggle with this, as well as being perpetually on a diet program.

They strongly believe that they are on a path to gaining body fat so they are aiming to eat as few calories as possible each day.

The end result of this is that they suffer from a slower-than-normal metabolism and are definitely not going to build lean muscle mass.

If anything, they will be burning lean muscle mass because they are not taking in enough or the right kind of calories.

To build more lean muscle mass, you must consume more energy than you burn throughout the day. If you don’t, you’re literally trying to build something out of nothing – it’s just not going to happen.

It will be essential to consume a slightly higher amount of calories and to ensure that you provide the body with both lean protein to provide the building blocks for building new muscle and carbohydrates to provide the energy to build that muscle.

If you’re not providing your body with these nutrients it needs, you’re not going to see any change.

Requirement 4: Specific concerns of women

Finally, the last point to keep in mind regarding how to gain muscle for women, are the woman-specific concerns you need to consider.

As a woman, you’re likely looking for a slightly leaner and longer musculature, so for this reason, you’ll want to go for slightly higher rep ranges than your male counterparts may be using.

There’s no reason to do more than 20 reps per set, as that will require you to use much less weight than you should, meaning you won’t feel challenged.

But, bringing your rep range to around 8-12 reps for most exercises will be a smart plan. This will allow you to still lift a heavy enough weight to see good results, but the metabolic boost benefits you’ll get will be slightly higher and you’ll be doing more to produce greater muscle tone than actual muscle size.

Women who are following their exercise program may also want to consider keeping the overall breaks they are using between exercises lower, as this can also help keep them leaner as they go through the muscle building process.

If you make sure you keep these points in mind and are not afraid to challenge yourself by lifting heavier weights than you were used to before, you will be able to see the results you are looking for.

Don’t be intimidated by this powerful form of exercise anymore. You’ll actually be much happier with your body if you resort to lifting weights instead of doing cardio session after cardio session.