You can’t overeat your way to building muscle fast. You can overeat your way to adding body weight, but a large percentage of that mass will be body fat. Don’t get fooled by numbers on the scale. Gaining weight quickly is easy and not impressive, gaining muscle fast is a whole different animal. Countless people add body weight to find out too late that much of that weight is fat. Let’s discuss what is takes to build muscle without adding on all of that unwanted body fat.
[The best approach is to build muscle but stay within range of being really lean. It is okay to add a tiny bit of body fat, but best to stay within 5-7 pounds of being ripped.]
So What Type of Training is Best for Building Muscle Fast?
If you were just after building muscle but didn’t really care about what the muscle looked like, I would recommend that you stick to 8-15 reps. I would tell you to keep the rest low and to “fatigue” the muscle as much as possible. Weight used wouldn’t be as critical as how fatigued the muscle got. This would cause sarcoplasmic muscle growth, which is simply increasing the fluid within the muscle cell. This is the fastest route to building muscle fast, but can create a slightly soft appearance if this is the only type of growth someone focuses on.
So You Need to Build Density and Not Just Size for The Best Look
So since most people don’t want that soft rounded “bodybuilder look”, you will want to focus on making the muscles hard and not just big. This will create an angular “GQ” look instead of just increasing muscle size. The way to do this is to increase the actual fibers in the muscle cell. This type of muscle growth is called Myofibrillar Hypertrophy and the way to achieve this growth is with lower reps in the 2-4 range. When training for Myofibrillar growth, maximum tension is more important than maximum fatigue. Since tension is the goal it is advised to keep rest periods longer. This way you will be able to rest enough to lift heavy for each set.
The 5X5 Method is a Way to Get Both Types of Muscle Growth Simultaneously
Doing 5 sets of 5 reps for each exercise is a great way to increase both muscle fibers and muscle fluid. This is an outstanding a simple way to insure larger muscles that look angular without taking on that “puffy” appearance. Another way of doing this is to alternate between 2-3 months doing 6-15 reps and 2-3 months of 2-4 reps. An advanced strategy that works well is to begin with pure sarcoplasmic growth for 2 months, followed by the “5×5 method”, and finally 2 months of pure myofibrillar growth for 2 months. This is an extremely efficient way to building muscle fast.
