When learning how to gain muscle fast, many people fail to understand the importance of sticking to the basics. Sure there are thousands of fancy techniques and “cutting-edge” bodybuilding supplements that you can implement into your muscle building program, but at the end of the day, the only thing that actually helps you pack on muscle mass is applying the fundamental muscle gain principles.
Countless articles have been written touting the benefits of the K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid!) principle. Yet every night when I visit the gym I can’t help but notice the disproportionate ratio of impressive muscular bodies to the average overweight non-muscular bodies. If I stick around long enough, I inevitably notice that the vast majority of average body types are focused intensely on some type of strange new “cutting edge” training program.
What is going on here, certainly these people have seen some of the same information that I have?
There is no doubt that they had to do some serious studying to uncover the bizarre training routines that they so intently perform. Somewhere along the way, they had to run across at least a few of the timeless muscle building techniques that actually work…Right?
Well after many years of noticing the same trend in gym, after gym, after gym, I’m assuming that the vast majority of people have never been exposed to the truth about building lean muscle mass. In order to set the record straight I’m taking it upon myself to unlock the mystery surrounding the timeless goal of learning how to gain muscle mass fast!
So Exactly How Do I Gain Muscle Fast?
When it comes to building muscle, there is a very simple three-part process that you 
must always follow. There are absolutely no exceptions to this rule, so pay close attention!
#1 – In order to build muscle you must first stimulate muscle growth through some type of intense weight-training exercise.
While it’s true that everyone’s body responds differently to different types of training, it is universally accepted that intense weight training inflicts the type of muscle damage that is required to stimulate both bone density and muscle growth.
As a general rule of thumb, the more basic compound free weight exercises like squats, dead lifts, bench press and bent rows seem to stimulate muscle growth more effectively than the isolation style exercises like preacher curls, leg extensions, and smith machine bench press.
In my experiences lifting fairly heavy weights for lower repetitions is a surefire way to gain muscle fast. Yes it is uncomfortable. Yes it hurts. Yes it makes you sore for a few days after your workout. But let’s face it, if you never go outside of your comfort zone and lift progressively heavier weights, you’ll never stimulate serious muscle growth!
On the flip side, if you’ve been training with heavy weights for lower repetitions for an extended amount of time, you may benefit from switching gears and trying lower weights for more repetitions. The important thing to keep pin mind here is that as you train, your body adapts to your weight training workouts. If you want to keep building muscle mass, then you need to keep switching things up in order to keep your body guessing.
If your goal is to gain muscle fast, then I recommend limiting your workouts to a maximum of 1 hour. Anything longer will pull your body out of muscle building mode and into endurance mode. By limiting the length of your workout sessions, you can assure that your body is receiving the appropriate stimulation for muscle growth.
#2 – After you have put in the time to properly stimulate muscle growth, you then must fuel that muscle growth by consuming ample amounts of the proper nutrients in the proper combination’s at the right times. This allows your body the proper “fuel” to repair the damage inflicted by intense weight training exercises.
If your goal is to gain muscle fast, then you need to make sure and consume a minimum of 5 meals per day, evenly spaced every 2-3 hours. Each meal should include protein, carbohydrates, fat and some type of fruit or vegetable. When putting your nutrition plan together, it is important to realize that each gram of protein or carbohydrate contains 4 calories. Each gram of fat contains 9 calories.
Although, it is important for people wanting to gain muscle mass to consume enough protein, it is simply not necessary to consume absurd amounts. While it has been a popular recommendation over the last few years by many bodybuilders and self proclaimed fitness “gurus” to consume absurd amounts of protein, this is simply not necessary to support muscle growth.
The American College of Sports Medicine suggests in it’s position statement on protein consumption, that by consuming as little as 0.72 grams of protein per lb of body weight per day, you can effectively repair damaged muscle tissue, build lean muscle mass and limit the chances of negative side effects.
Fat does not just make people fat because it is bad for them, at 9 calories per gram, a small amount of fat can contain a staggering amount of calories. Following this logic, it is important to realize that in order to consume more calories, fat is essential to your muscle building diet. Certain types of fatty acids, (fat) when consumed properly, can not only increase your calories, but they have been scientifically proven to lower unwanted body fat levels, increase muscle building hormone levels, increase brain function and alertness and provide an additional energy source for the body.
As you can see, these are some pretty great side effects! By consuming between 40 and 60 grams of “heart healthy” fat per day, spread over 5 meals, you can ensure that you will be able to get the benefits that dietary fats have to offer, without consuming the excess of calories often associated with fat consumption.
Carbohydrates serve as the primary energy source for your body and are an important part of the nutritional spectrum required for muscle growth. There are two types of carbohydrates, complex and simple.
Simple carbohydrates break down into sugars in the body very quickly. Because of this, they provide a very unstable energy source and are of little nutritional value. Examples of simple carbohydrates are white flour, white bread and sugar.
While consuming some simple carbohydrates will not hinder your muscle building goals, you will want to consume the majority of your carbohydrates from nutritious complex sources such as oats, yams, whole-wheat pasta and whole-wheat breads. This will not only provide your body with ample amounts of nutrients for muscle growth, but also ensure that your energy levels and mood remain stable throughout the day.
#3 – Now that you have laid the foundation to gain muscle fast, it’s imperative that you 
do what is necessary to allow your body to repair, recover and grow. By making sure to get a minimum of 8 hours of sleep each night, you ensure that your body has ample time to recover from your workouts. It’s also critical for proper recovery, to consume a minimum of 1 gallon of water each day. Aside from simply being a healthy thing to do, consuming enough water helps to flush out toxins associated with weight bearing exercises.
Although not very fancy, the simple formula of stimulating muscle growth with intense weight training workouts, consuming a well balanced bodybuilding nutrition plan, and allowing for proper recovery works very well. By sticking to the basics and keeping things simple, you’re increasing your chance to gain muscle fast exponentially
Steps to Gaining Muscle Fast
So what are the action steps you need to take to gain muscle fast?
Good question.
That’s what we’re about to dig into here. But just before we do, it’s important to remember that knowledge is useless unless it’s backed up by action. So don’t just learn for the sake of learning. Take a step closer to the results you’re looking for by taking action on what you learn – massive action on a consistent basis, to achieve massive results.
Yes, it takes persistence. Yes, it takes determination sometimes. And yes, you do need to repeat simple, actionable steps over time, again and again, until you receive the results that you want.
And there are 3 key areas you need to understand when it comes to gaining muscle mass, if you are skinny and want to bulk up and increase your weight. And those 3 areas are:
1. Eat Right.
2. Train Right.
3. Rest And Recover Correctly.
And now that you’ve heard these, let’s dig deep into what they all mean:
1. EAT RIGHT
Very simply, your body needs fuel to grow and gain muscle. And ideally, you need to be eating between 5 and 7 meals every single day. This is really important. Because when you take the time to calculate your daily calorie needs to gain weight and size, and when you learn that you need to increase the amount of food you’re eating every single day, you’ll discover that 3 meals just won’t cut it.
You need a system of eating 5-7 meals, so that your daily calorie requirements become more manageable. This will enable you to get those calories inside of you in a way that your body can make use of (instead of them being excreted or stored as unhealthy fat if you try to eat too much in one sitting).
So part of gaining muscle quickly, is having an effective system to both monitor and stick to your daily calorie needs to gain mass every single day. (And to be honest, this is where most programs and advice falls short. They don’t give you a clear and direct method to both calculate how many calories you need, and then monitor your progress, and successfully stick to a plan on a consistent daily basis).
And one more thing. When you’re ‘Eating Right’ to gain muscle fast, you want to split your calorie consumption into proportions that actually support muscle growth too. And, just to mention them briefly here, that’s to keep to a diet that’s made up of: – 50% carbohydrates (primarily complex carbohydrates like wholegrain rice, sweet potatoes, and wholemeal pasta) – 20-25% proteins (healthy lean proteins like turkey, chicken, fish, eggs etc..) – 25-30% healthy fats (avocado, nuts, flaxseed oil, oily fish like mackerel etc…)
2. TRAIN RIGHT
What do we mean by ‘train right’ when your goal is to gain muscle fast?
Well, training in this sense means lifting weights (or weight training). And more often 
that not, this means becoming a member of a gym where you have all the necessary equipment (bench, free weights, barbells, dumbbells etc…) to stimulate your muscles to grow. Now, this doesn’t mean it’s impossible to gain muscle mass by working out from home, as long as you have the right equipment. But your motivation is likely to be much greater when you have a specific place that’s dedicated to increasing our size.
And then, once you have a suitable place to train (ideally a gym environment), the next step is to make sure you don’t just copy what the big guys in the gym are doing. Very often, these guys are doing ‘split body part’ routines that target just a couple of muscle groups per workout session. (For example, they might just be working on their shoulders and chest for an entire training session, or their biceps and triceps, or just their back, or maybe they have a ‘legs only’ day). And so they might be hitting the gym as many as 5 or 6 times a week to fit all this in. And sure, that might be fine for them. But however counterintuitive it seems to say this, you actually need to take a different approach at this stage to achieve gains in your muscle and size.
So, if you’re a beginner or naturally skinny, take this approach instead:
ONE: Focus on ‘Full Body Workouts’ every time you train. Why? Because you’re going to recruit the most amount of muscle fiber during these workouts. And if you recruit the most amount of muscle fiber, and as long as you have enough time to recover between sessions, you’ll encourage the most muscle growth. You’re going to gain muscle fast by doing this instead.
And the other thing to realize when people talk about doing a split body part routine, is that they neglect to consider a very important point. You see, when you’re positioning a weight, you end up using other muscles in your body that are not meant to be exercised in that workout session. For example, setting up a barbell rack with weights for a bench press, or carrying dumbbells to a bench for a shoulder pressing movement, you will be using more muscles than just the ones intended for that exercise. It’s inevitable. So it’s virtually impossible to ‘rest’ specific muscle groups fully on a day that you are training.
That’s why a Full Body Workout routine makes so much sense. Especially if you’re skinny or just starting out.
TWO: Perform ‘Major Muscle Movements’ This is something many guys are not even aware of: How the type of muscle building exercise you do affects the actual amount of muscle you build. Now, ‘Major Muscle Movements’ (sometimes referred to as ‘compound’ exercises) are movements that engage a number of your largest muscle groups all at the same time. Some examples of these are the squat, the deadlift, and the bench press. And you want to focus most of your attention on these, because they encourage some important hormonal releases in your body. And this release of hormones such as testosterone and human growth hormone will have a major impact on your ability to gain muscle fast.
3. REST AND RECOVERY
So, our third and final component when it comes to how to gain muscle fast is ‘Rest and Recovery’. You only want to train 3 or 4 times a week. Too much exercise actually hurts your ability to gain muscle mass. So it is vitally important that you give your body time to rest. That’s when muscle growth occurs. That’s when muscle adaptation takes place. That’s when your muscles actually repair themselves and grow back stronger. So, my recommendation is that you take at least 48 hours off between your weight training workouts. I call this the ’48-hour Spread’.
And on top of this, you also need to build in plenty of sleep into your muscle mass plan too. In fact, a minimum of 8 hours sleep per night is a good recommendation for most guys. Why? Well, when you sleep your body is even better at recovering, repairing and generating new muscle tissue. Your body also releases extra amounts of human growth hormone while you sleep too (which as we learned above, is an important ingredient for muscle growth and muscle mass).
So, to sum it up, those are the 3 main areas to pay attention to in your efforts to gain muscle fast:
1. Concentrate on Eating Right.
2. Train right with Full Body workouts that emphasize ‘Major Muscle Movements’.
3. Rest and Recover in a way that supports and encourages muscle growth.
Follow all three steps, and you’ll build up a steady supply of momentum to gain muscle fast in both a healthy and natural way.
Muscle Building Resources Online
http://stronglifts.com/how-to-build-muscle-mass-guide/
http://www.mensfitness.com/fitness/strength-training/10-ways-gain-muscle
http://www.muscleandstrength.com/
http://www.bodybuilding.com/store/musclegain.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodybuilding
http://www.muscleandfitness.com/nutrition/meal-plans/mfs-muscle-building-pyramid
http://www.musclebuildingtutor.com/