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How is where trusted research and expert knowledge come together. Can Stretching Improve Your Ability to Gain Muscle? This article was co-authored by Danny Gordon. Certified Personal Trainer and Owner of The Body Studio for Fitness, a fitness studio based in the San Francisco Bay Area. With over 20 years of physical training and teaching experience, he has focused his studio on semi-private personal training. How marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback.

This article has been viewed 3,152,730 times. Gaining muscle fast is achievable with persistence and commitment. The key is to establish a diet and workout routine that are tailored toward bulking up quickly. Most workouts for your major body parts should start with basic, multi-joint strength training exercises that allow you to lift more weight overall, such as the bench presses for chest, overhead presses for deltoids, barbell rows for back and squats for legs. This will allow you to lift heavier on these exercises, while you’re still fresh and have enough energy to better stimulate muscle growth.

Doing high-intensity workouts is the key to building muscle. Light workouts, even if they’re long, don’t go nearly as far to produce the right conditions for your muscles to break down and rebuild. This may sound like a surprisingly manageable plan, but remember that during each session you have to make it as intense as possible. If you can do 10 or more reps without feeling a burn, add more weight. You simply will not get bigger unless you challenge yourself to go all in.

Lift the weight quickly but lower slowly. To develop precise technique, do every rep with good form. Beginners, strive to keep the rep target inside your strength capabilities. Find the right groove for each exercise.

Don’t train to failure when you’re just starting. You should be able to complete the full motion of an exercise without having to lean over or change position. If you can’t, you should be lifting less weight. In most cases you’ll start with your arms or legs extended. Work with a trainer for a few sessions so you’ll learn the right form for different exercises before continuing on your own. You don’t want to work out the same groups with every workout, or you’ll end up damaging your muscles. Rotate muscle groups so that each time you work out, you’re putting in an intense hour working on a different group.

Third workout: Do your abs and chest again. If you do the same thing over and over each time you work out, you’re not going to make progress. You need to be adding weight, and when you plateau with the new weight, switching up your exercises. For someone with a fast metabolism, the rest period is almost as important as the workouts.

Your body needs time to build muscle without burning a lot of calories doing other activities. Running and other cardio exercises can actually impede the growth of muscles. Take it easy in between workouts instead. Get a good night’s sleep so you’re fresh for the next workout. Research confirms that tuning in to the mind-muscle connection can optimize your results in the gym. Instead of focusing on your day, or the blonde next to you, strive to get into a muscle-building mindset to help increase gains. If you’re doing lifts with one hand, place your other hand on the muscle you’re hoping to improve.

Doing this can help you feel exactly where the muscle is straining, and help you refocus your efforts. This has a lot to do with how you’re thinking and what you’re focused on. You should be getting your calories from nutritious whole foods that will give your body the right kind of fuel to build up your muscles fast. Foods high in sugar, bleached white flour, trans fats, and additives are high in calories but low in nutrition, and they’re going to build fat instead of muscle. If you want your muscles to grow and look defined, you need to eat an array of whole foods from every food group. Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables of all kinds.