Geschatte leestijd: 6 minutenI regularly receive the same kind of questions from readers about nutrition and training to build muscle mass. Questions for which I know the answers are provided in one or more of the many comprehensive articles on this site. For the average reader, but especially for beginners, it can be difficult to filter out the most important information from all these articles needed to make a good start or finally achieve more results.
Therefore, here are the three most important steps for building muscle mass, or the basics of bodybuilding.
Nutrition plan for muscle mass
In most cases where people fail to achieve their goals from muscle mass training, this is due to incorrect (amount of) nutrition. Either the knowledge is lacking to create a good nutrition plan, or the discipline and motivation are lacking to follow it. Nutrition basically provides the fuel needed to function normally, but also to train. In addition, nutrition provides the building blocks to build muscle mass. However, muscle mass is continuously built and broken down. Whether you ultimately produce or break down more muscle mass depends on whether there is enough fuel available for the main functions such as the brain and heart and enough building blocks to build new mass. If this is not the case, your body will not build new muscle mass or even break down to provide energy. Skeletal muscle mass (which is responsible for motor skills, the muscles we train to grow bigger) has a relatively low priority in the body. Only when enough resources are available (nutrition) and the necessity is present (stimulus through training), resources will be allocated for this purpose.
Download the FITsociety App!
A good plan is difficult to put together because many variables need to be considered, such as: Your current lean mass and body fat percentage, your training goals, how often you train and how active you are, and your body type. Based on these variables and a certain formula, you can (as a starting point) calculate how many calories you need and which nutrients these should be distributed over. Then this needs to be divided over the various meals, so products need to be found for each meal that deliver these values per meal.
The FITsociety App makes this easier by performing all calculations based on the variables you enter. In addition, there are almost 15,000 products with corresponding verified nutritional values in the list from which you can choose to compose the meals.
If you eat too little or too much every day or in the wrong proportion of nutrients, you will leave most of your potential behind. It is possible that you make gains in the first few months (the so-called “newbie gains”), but you will quickly reach a plateau. Therefore, take the trouble once to set up your nutrition plan properly.
As for the motivation to stick to the plan, I refer you to an article about motivation, but also to the pages with motivating photos and films, and finally an article with tips on easy nutrition for muscle mass. You can also follow us on our Facebook page where we regularly post motivating films and photos that give you the desire to go all out that day.
Training plan for muscle mass
You can write whole books about training, but the main points are: Adjust your training to your goal, use a corresponding good training plan, use the right techniques, apply the right intensity.
The first step is a good training plan. A good training plan provides:
- The right amount of exercises, sets, and repetitions per muscle group
- The right distribution of muscle groups over the week and thus the rest between those workouts
- The right intensity
- Sufficient variation
On the page with fitness schedules for muscle mass, you can choose from a schedule for 3, 4, or 5 days a week. The schedules themselves are built up from several periods of four weeks to ensure sufficient variation. By clicking on the name of the exercise, you will be linked to an instructional video demonstrating the exercise. Just like with the nutrition plan, there is also an explanation that explains why the schedule is set up like this.
Just fucking do it!
Knowing what to do and actually doing it are two different things. If you can’t stick to your training plan, bodybuilding (unfortunately nowadays a dirty word for building muscle mass and having a fantastic body) is not for you. If you can’t manage to spend one to two hours in the gym a few days a week, you certainly won’t be able to pay attention to your nutrition all day every day. Because professional bodybuilders are unbelievably large nowadays, many people think that less dedication is needed for a less absurdly muscular physique than the dedication shown by the professionals. Nothing could be further from the truth. The same, almost obsessive dedication is required for achieving the more “humanly muscular” bodies. Waking up and going to bed with muscle mass in mind, thinking about your nutrition every two hours, and torturing yourself in the gym several times a week. If you think you can’t handle that, give it up right away. I don’t want to discourage you, but this is realistic. After all, you wouldn’t expect to become a lawyer with a three-month course, would you?
As Ronnie Coleman (8-time Mr. Olympia) sometimes says: “Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but no one wants to lift these heavy ass weights!” You simply won’t get that dream figure, and more importantly, keep it, with a boot camp of a few months. It’s a lifestyle!! Bodybuilding is probably the only sport (aside from the discussion of whether it’s really a sport) where as many amateurs work just as hard as professional athletes in other sports.
Again, I don’t want to discourage you. The good news is that once you’ve made a good start, the initial results can make you even more motivated to stick with it for a little longer, that motivation leads to discipline that ultimately turns into habit, and then you won’t know any better. Then you are infected with the bodybuilding virus and you have to explain to other people that creatine (see further) is something different from steroids and it’s not crazy to sleep and wake up with protein or eat your container of chicken, rice, and broccoli three times a day.
And what about muscle mass supplements?
Supplements, as the name suggests, complement your normal diet. The main reason to use these for muscle mass is to still get the nutrients where you find it difficult to get them in the right amounts from normal food. Protein and creatine are the best examples of these nutrients. The added value of these nutrients has been repeatedly and convincingly demonstrated. However, for creatine, it is difficult to get the desired amount from food (especially meat) because it occurs in such small amounts. For protein, it can be obtained in larger quantities from food, but much more is needed, making one or more protein shakes simply make it easier to get the right amounts (and therefore easier to stick to your nutrition plan). Moreover, there are different types of protein with different absorption rates that make it easier to ensure the right timing. For example, right after training you want the fastest protein to immediately make new muscle mass possible and slow proteins to prevent breakdown. In the FITsociety App, you can fill in these shakes to include them in your daily needs.
Personally, I always have protein and often creatine as part of my nutrition plan and I recommend these. For the other supplements, you should always consider how much value they are worth and inform yourself (with the help of scientific research) about their effectiveness. A large part of this site therefore deals with supplements and the research done on them.
What about steroids then?
When talking about bodybuilding and building muscle mass, anabolic steroids are always “the elephant in the room”. Everyone knows it’s there, but no one wants to talk about it.
You can write a lot about steroids. As a natural bodybuilder (someone who doesn’t use steroids), I have always been an advocate of training with the help of natural nutrition and supplements, but I have never been naive about the value of steroids. When anabolic androgenic steroids or growth hormone are used, that is one of the variables in determining muscle mass just like natural talent, good nutrition, and training are. Some have so little talent (low natural testosterone levels, for example, “wrong” body type, etc.) that good nutrition, training, and steroid use still produce less results than someone who has a lot of natural talent, doesn’t use, and sometimes cuts corners. The men we see at the top of the bodybuilding world have both enormous talent and enormous dedication and they use enormous amounts of anabolic steroids and growth hormone.
Using steroids simply increases your potential by a certain percentage just like dedication and talent do. My advice is therefore always to get as much as possible out of your natural potential before even considering using steroids. And I really mean tried. So no nonsense stories like: “I’ve been training for a year and I don’t see any progress anymore.” First of all, a year means nothing. Secondly, that first period is such a big stimulus that you have to mess up a lot not to see results. So if that’s the case, steroids won’t add much. I have been seriously focused on bodybuilding for over 15 years and I know that there is still room for improvement in terms of nutrition and training before I should even consider using steroids.
Also consider: You only consider this when there is a negative difference between your results and your goals. This can of course also be due to your goals if they were not realistic. You may want to look like Ronnie Coleman shown above, but without his talent and enormous dedication, you will never achieve this despite all the steroids and growth hormones in the world.
Summary
- Determine your nutritional needs and create a good nutrition plan, possibly with the FITsociety App
- Create a training plan with the right distribution of muscle groups and rest.
- Just do it! Ensure the right motivation, discipline, and perseverance to achieve your goals
- Use supplements whose effectiveness has been demonstrated multiple times, such as protein and creatine
- If you are already considering steroids, do so only after years of experience and if you (rightly) feel you have fully utilized your natural potential without reaching your goal.
