Your Blueprint to Building Muscle
- Chris Roy
- 5 days ago
- 12 min read
Building muscle is a goal that used to be reserved for meatheads and bodybuilders. However, with all the research that has come out in the past 5-10 years on the overall health benefits of having more lean body mass, it seems that the goal once reserved for ‘gym-bros’ is now one we should all be sharing...
Gaining muscle mass enhances your metabolism. Since muscle is a metabolically active tissue, it requires energy for use and maintenance, leading to higher energy expenditure. Consequently, a person with more muscle will burn more calories than someone with less muscle while performing the same activity. This contributes to better overall body composition. Want to burn more fat? Increase your muscle mass!
Gaining muscle mass aids in effectively managing and maintaining blood sugar levels. With more muscle, you can absorb, store, and use more glycogen. This enhances insulin sensitivity, decreases inflammation, and lowers the risk of type II diabetes. Want to eat more carbs? Increase your muscle mass!
Increased muscle mass is also good for your heart. Don’t get me wrong – lifting does NOT replace cardio within a well-rounded training program. However, lifting within a program than emphasizes compound movements, utilizing progressive overload to build lean body tissue, can help lower blood pressure, improve cholesterol levels and reduce the overall risk of heart disease. Want to live longer??? Build more muscle!
These are some of the bigger, lesser-known benefits that result from building muscle. In addition, building and maintaining muscle overtime will work wonders for you as you age – increasing longevity, improving your bone health, improving and maintaining posture, as well as decreasing your risk for sustaining musculoskeletal injuries. Wanna be a bad ass for a lifetime??? Build more muscle!
Now that I gave you the hard sell on building muscle, how do we go about accomplishing it? Check out your new blueprint for building muscle and find out...
Step #1: LIFT
This may not come as a huge surprise, but we must stress our bodies in a way that promotes the building of muscle tissue. A resistance training program utilizing full-body, compound movements, as well as the utilization of progressive overload is the simplest way to achieve this. That’s not to say it’s the ONLY way – it’s not. Many gains can be made with other modalities – I am a HUGE fan of calisthenics. However, resistance training is the easiest to not only understand, but also the easiest to progress over time.
We must ensure the entire body is getting multiple exposures over the course of the week (sorry bros, no body part splits are going to be found here). This means for the sake of simplicity; we can break our training down to focus on the fundamental [strength training*] movement patterns:
Squat
Hinge
Upper Body Push – Horizontal & Vertical
Upper Body Pull – Horizontal & Vertical
Unilateral Lower Body – Squat & Hinge
Carry/Core
Rotation
(*To me, it’s debatable to call these fundamental movement patterns in general – as we created these ‘buckets’ to categorize exercise. Human movement is extremely dynamic in nature and a lot of the beauty and wonder of movement happens outside of these neatly structured weightroom activities.)
Great gains can be made off two training sessions a week – however, once you are an intermediate to advanced lifter, 3-4 days per week will be more effective.
If you are lifting twice a week, both sessions must be full body sessions. This ensures the entire body is getting two exposures over the course of the week. Likewise, if you are lifting three days per week, these sessions will also be full body sessions. Once you progress to four days per week, you then have the option of moving to an upper-lower body split.
How should you structure your resistance training program?
I just recently dedicated an entire article to that very topic. I give you my favorite splits utilizing the above recommendations and make it very easy for you to structure your training in a way that will yield maximum results!
Any of the options outlined in that article are a great way to structure your training. You must also ensure you are lifting with ample intensity and volume. For simplicity’s sake, if you stick with 3-4 sets per exercise for 6-15 reps, you will be covering most of your bases. Don’t shy away from heavier sets, and don’t completely shy away from pushing sets deep into the 20+ rep range. If the primary goal is building muscle, sets like this shouldn’t be the focal point, but when used moderately, they absolutely will be effective.
If you still aren’t quite sure what this looks like in practice, check out Team Valor – we are crushing right now and the feedback on our current training block has been awesome!
Here you will train with me every single day and I am available to coach you and help you with anything that could arise and keep you from success.
TIP #2: EAT FOR THE OBJECTIVE
The nutrition aspect of any fitness goal is an extremely loaded aspect of the process. There is a ton of context and really does require a fairly individualized approached. However, there are some general truths and guiding principles I can offer that will give you a starting point until you are savvy enough to start figuring out what works for your body.
If I had to boil the eating aspect down into two main guiding principles, they would be this:
Be consistent & BE PATIENT!
In order to build muscle and ADD mass to our body, it makes sense that we need to consume more energy and more raw materials in order for our body to do so. If we are just giving our body enough to ‘get by’ it’s not going to have the resources to add more horsepower to the machine. Therefore, we must be eating in a caloric surplus. This means eating more calories each day than we need to maintain our bodyweight.
There are many ways to find what your caloric intake should be in the form of multiple different calculators that can be found online. I always urge people to use 2-3 of these different calculators and take the average of them. This will give you the most accurate representation of where you should be starting. The only instance where this may fall short is for the “hard gainer.” The person who cannot gain weight to save their life no matter how much they eat. This isn’t true by the way; they just don’t eat enough. It’s that simple. You must eat A LOT.
However, for these people a simple way that I’ve come to find is just taking your goal weight, multiplying it by 2, and adding a zero. For example, if I am currently 190 lbs and want to get to 195, then:
195 x 2 = 390 Add a zero 3900 calories.
Regardless of the technique you use, these are merely numbers to get you a starting point or a general idea of something to shoot for. Where you are coming from also has a lot to do with how you should be proceeding. If you have been eating 2000 calories a day for the last 5 years and then jump to 3500 a day on day 1, you are going to be hurting and no one is going to want to hang out with you because of the toxic gas that you will be producing. Sorry. It’s the reality.
You need to gradually ramp up your diet the same way you would gradually ramp up weight in the gym. You need to build to these caloric numbers over the course of a few weeks and then maintain them for another few weeks. This will give you an idea on if it was an appropriate number for you.
If your weight isn’t moving at all, it wasn’t enough. If you’re gaining weight too fast and you’re starting to get ‘puffy’ it was too high. You can then make the necessary adjustments. But this can only happen if you remain CONSISTENT. You cannot hit your calories for 2-3 days and then miss 2-3 days. Things happen and you won’t be perfect – but you must be honest and consistent if you are to fairly judge the effectiveness of the calorie prescription.
Going hand in hand with this is the use of calorie tracking apps and a food scale. I understand it’s a pain, but if you don’t know macros and caloric breakdowns, it is an invaluable tool in the beginning. Once you do it enough and construct enough meals, you will not need to rely on them as much.
Speaking of macro’s (proteins, carbs, and fats), you must ensure your calories are coming from a ratio that promotes muscle building. This means prioritizing protein and carbs. Shoot for 1-1.25g of protein per pound of bodyweight and double that for carbs (I’ve always been an advocate of closer to 1.25g per pound of bodyweight for protein). Whatever is left, you can fill with your fat intake.
Continuing with our 190lb man example, taking the average of three calorie calculators online I got 3500 calories (3700, 3400, 3400).
190lbs x 1.25 = 240g protein (960 cals) 500g carbs (2000 cals, rounding up) 56g fat (504 cals) = 3,464 total calories.
Keep in mind - these are targets. You will rarely hit it to the exact calorie. Calorie counting is NEVER an exact science. Get close and stay consistent.
TIP #3: DON’T DO THE WORK IF YOU DON’T HAVE THE GUTS TO RECOVER
When it comes to building size – recovery is the name of the game. Yes, training is important. We need to be getting after it and pushing ourselves hard in the gym. However, the training merely creates the demand to grow – training is not what gets us bigger and stronger – not directly. In fact, training actually breaks us down. We may feel strong and empowered when we are at the gym, but in reality, we are depleting ourselves and breaking things down, making us weaker.
Temporarily…
There is nothing special about a dumbbell, or a barbell, or anything else you will encounter when you’re at the gym. They are merely tools. Our bodies are where the real magic happens. We utilize the tools we have at the gym to send signals to our body. These signals tell the body what to do and the message within these signals are dictated by the way in which we utilize these tools. Once these signals are received by the body and the brain, then the adaptation process can begin.
Adaptation is what we are after. EVERYTHING you do in training is done with the goal of adapting from it.
The important thing to keep in mind is this – adaptation takes time AND resources. If we do not give our body enough time and/or resources, our adaptation will be suboptimal, or in some cases, non-existent. Your best-case scenario in this instance is breaking even. Never getting bigger. Never getting stronger. Just stuck on the preverbal hamster wheel of showing up to burn energy with nothing to show for it. If we continue to break our body down with training sessions and don’t allow time for adaptation and rebuilding, what’s more likely is regression and eventually injury.
So, this begs the question – how much time? What kind of resources? How do I get them and supply them?
TIME: Impatience has robbed more people of gains than possibly any other variable. In a world where we can get anything and everything in the blink of an eye, the idea of waiting 16 weeks for results seems unreasonable. Not only that, 16 weeks of working your A$$ off! Everyone wants the shortcut or magic supplement. It doesn’t exist.
When we look at the time aspect of the equation, there are two levels in which we need to pay attention: the micro level and the macro level. The micro level can be looked at more of the short term. This is what will influence your day to day and weekly decisions. The macro level is taking more of a bird’s eye view to your current goal – typically looking at things 3-6 months at a time.
Within the micro level, our bodies need to recover from the stresses we place on it. These stresses come primarily from our training, in the form of 2-4 hard workouts per week. Typically, muscles need 48-72 hours of rest in between sessions. This goes for specific muscle groups. Therefore, if you blew your upper body up in a workout, wait 2-3 days before you do upper body again. No sooner, no later. Once its ready to go again... GO! The amount of volume within a workout will dictate whether you steer closer to the 48-hour mark or the 72-hour mark. Higher volumes need more time.
Within the macro level, you need to commit to a goal and see it through. The signaling to the body is crucial if we are do get the adaptations we're after. They need to be CONSISTENT. Not for a couple days. Not for a couple weeks. For MONTHS. Sometimes even years. The longer you’re at it and the stronger you get, the more resistant the body becomes to progress and change.
Program hopping and training A.D.D. are your kryptonite. People get bored and can’t make up their minds of what they want to do. They have no attention span and get distracted by every Instagram reel they come across. It changes their perceptions or desires of what they truly want. What results is someone who changes their training (and thus their signaling) every 2-3 weeks. What results is a modge podge of exercise.
You showed up to the gym and did a bunch of ‘stuff.’
Congrats.
Great if you’re a couch potato and you’re trying to get active.
But not if you’re striving to discover the limits of what your body is physically capable of.
I want to know how much muscle I can put on naturally. I want to know how strong I can get. I want to know how powerful and explosive I can be.
I want to know what I am truly capable of.
And if you’re reading this, chances are, so do you.
Commit. Put your head down. DO THE WORK. When you finally come up for air, you’ll see how far ahead of everyone else you’ve gotten.
RESOURCES: Now that we are going to give our bodies the time it needs to make things happen, we need to address what our bodies need within that given time to make it happen. The primary resources the body needs to build muscle are simple – energy, micronutrients, and anabolic hormones.
NOW SLOW DOWN – don’t get ahead of yourselves with seeing anabolic hormones on this list. I am NOT endorsing the use of exogenous hormones. Our bodies naturally produce anabolic hormones – things like testosterone, growth hormone, insulin, etc. We will focus on NATURALLY boosting our body’s ability to produce these.
First and foremost, our energy and micronutrients come from our diet and nutrition – which we already covered. Ensuring we are eating in a caloric surplus will give our body the energy it requires to make things happen. Furthermore, it is crucial that these calories are coming from high quality, natural, whole foods. I cannot stress this point enough. Go back and read it again.
Most lifters are always tempted to turn to calorically dense, nutrient void foods when trying to gain weight. They use the “bulking mentality” as an excuse to eat like garbage.
This is a loser’s mentality. Period.
Can you indulge here and there – sure. Go for it. But these types of meals should be few and far between.
High quality, whole foods are packed with micronutrition – vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients. These are pivotal to maintaining our health and vitality. Remember, our training during this time is going to be HARD. It is a massive stress on the body. Add in all the other stresses everyday life brings you. Our diet CANNOT be another form of stress – and that is precisely what it becomes when processed, inflammatory garbage is ingested for the sake of calories.
Our diet and nutrition program needs to be our weapon to fight off all the stress we are accruing. High quality foods give our body the weapons to combat against it, and eventually overcome, the stresses we put on it. Be sure to give it the reinforcements it needs.
If our nutrition is our weapon, then sleep is our shield. It is our first line of defense against stress and the most powerful tool we have at our disposal. Remember those anabolic hormones we need??? Yeah, this is how we get them. If you are making an honest effort to pack on size, you need to be getting 8-9 hours of sleep every night. This is non-negotiable. Not only will this increase and maximize our anabolic hormone production, but this is also the primary time the rebuilding of tissues takes place. The more time the body has to rebuild, the stronger and more secure the end-product will be.
Conclusion
Training is the easy part. For most of us, it’s fun and we enjoy it. What’s hard is going to bed at 8:30. Preparing your 4-5 meals the night before. Saying no to going out to the bar on a Friday night. The bad ass isn’t the guy who stays out until 3am and then still hits the gym the next day. To me, that’s the same guy that blows his paycheck and shows up to work on Monday. He works to offset his bad behavior.
The real bad ass is the guy who commits to a goal, turns down the Friday night party so he can be in bed by 8:30 and then up at 6 the next morning preparing his breakfast, so he’s properly fueled to go and crush his training. To me, that’s the same guy who lives below his means, saves money, and works because he wants to - because he's building an empire. He doesn’t live paycheck to paycheck – because he can control his desires. He doesn’t sacrifice what he wants long term for what he wants in the moment. That’s how progress is made. That’s how goals are achieved.
That is a Champion’s mentality.
Now get to building...
C-Roy
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