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Muscle building for beginners: How to get started
With muscle building your body reacts when the corresponding muscle is irritated by training. If you challenge your body beyond its previous performance limits, it will build up more muscle mass. And that has some health benefits: A balanced strength training improves posture and balance and it prevents back pain, injuries and tension. You can build up muscles with the help of a structured training and a balanced diet. Find out here everything about building muscle for beginners, for example, how you can best promote muscle building.
How does muscle growth work?
The good news: As a beginner, you can make significant progress relatively quickly in strength training. In most cases, muscle growth is already visible after about six weeks. However, this requires you to challenge the muscles beyond the usual level of performance. If you put enough strain on your muscles, small micro-fissures will appear in them during strength training – you will usually feel this as sore muscles. In the recovery phase after the strength training, your body repairs and thickens these fibres, making them more resilient. This way more muscle mass is formed. For a successful muscle build-up it is therefore important to find the optimal combination of strength training and recovery phases.
What is the best way to start?
Before the actual strength training you should ask yourself some basic questions. What exactly do you want to achieve with strength training? Do you want to boost fat burning , improve your general fitness or visibly build up muscles? Would you like to train at home, in the gym or in the fresh air? How many days a week would you like to exercise – and what is realistic? If your training fits your lifestyle, you will find it much easier to achieve your goals.
A training diary can help you to understand the signals your body sends you and to optimize your training over time. Make a regular note of the type of exercises you do, the number of repetitions and the duration of your training. After all, everyone needs different exercises, different training stimuli and a different number of repetitions to achieve their goals.
Muscle build-up for beginners: How to train successfully
For the muscle build-up of beginners we recommend two training days per week with a duration of 30 to 60 minutes per training unit. In between there should be three rest days. During the training units it is important that you make sufficient demands on your body: at the beginning you should strain your muscles to just under the maximum load.
Recovery periods of 24 to 48 hours between training sessions are as important as the muscle training itself. During this time the muscles regenerate, nutrient depots are replenished and the muscle can grow. After two to three days you can train again. If the training stimuli are absent for a longer period of time, your body adapts to this decreasing load: Unfortunately, this means that your muscles will start to deteriorate. So exercise regularly and increase the difficulty of your exercises every six to eight weeks so that your muscles are always sufficiently challenged. Make sure you have a balanced mixture of different exercises. Variety also increases your motivation.
For the muscle build-up of beginners a full body training, is especially suitable, where you demand all muscle groups equally. The best way to train is to use your own body weight. The risk of injury is lower than when training with free weights, and there is no risk of incorrect loading due to improper handling of the weights. With some simple but very effective exercises you can strengthen your whole body and prepare it for further training. Good deadweight exercises are for example push-ups, knee bends or sit-ups.
Muscle building: Beginners need a balanced diet
Also a balanced diet promotes muscle building. The most important nutrients for this are proteins. Especially beginners, who want to build muscle mass quickly, need a high protein intake. An optimal combination is a combination of animal proteins from lean meat, fish or low-fat dairy products and vegetable proteins from soya, cereals, legumes and nuts. However, protein alone does not make up a balanced diet. You should also eat unprocessed, high-quality foods that provide your body with fibre, vitamins and minerals: Because they are important for your general health and performance. Whole grain products and vegetables are rich in complex carbohydrates. Your metabolism, your immune system, your digestion and your general well-being benefit from such a complete diet.
With INTEST.pro from BIOMES, a self-test for home use, you can get an overview of the nutrient supply of your body. Just send a small stool sample to our laboratory. In addition to the analysis results you will receive a personal nutrition plan. This will help you to achieve your training goals with a balanced diet tailored to the needs of your body.