I’m currently focusing on gaining strength. Been at it for about four months gained a lot of strength but i’m not satisfied. I’ve lost some fat and gained some muscle as well. It’s barely noticeable to the untrained eye though. So my question is will it be easier for me gain muscle once I’ve attained my desired strength because i’ll be pushing more weight? For example i’m benching a little less than 200 now but my goal is 250 by the end next November. Or is this just a myth?
I’m almost positive Chris Colucci had already told you this, but if your diet is not sufficient, you can lift all the weights you want & your appearance won’t change much.
Now, with that said; the likelihood is that you will get bigger and more muscular as you get stronger, but that’s not just going to “happen” - one doesn’t just decide “by November I’ll be benching 250 pounds” - this will require some attention to a good program and, as I said, a good diet with sufficient protein and clean carb sources. It’s unlikely that you’ll add 50 pounds to your bench without gaining a bit of muscle, so that’s a fine goal.
One other thing: THIS IS A SLOW PROCESS. Read Christian Thibadeau’s “The Truth About Bulking” article for a realistic understanding of how much muscle a natural trainer can build. 20 pounds of muscle doesn’t just appear overnight. If you do EVERYTHING right for a whole year, at the end of that year you’ll look back and see progress. But a few months is not enough time to have the radical transformation you see to be expecting. Commit to the process.
Pick a good program. Follow it (only making MINOR tweaks if you really feel something is short changed or needs extra work). Eat a lot of meat, fruit, and vegetables. Profit.
The answer to your question is No. It does not get easier.
It already is easy, just do it right and do it consistently.
It does not get easier to gain muscle just because you get stronger. If that were the case, elite bodybuilders and powerlifters would be getting exponentially larger because by the logic you presented it would be easier and easier. Yet, if you look at many top bodybuilders they don’t USUALLY make large scale improvements once they’re high up in the sport, though yes they can still improve. They’re just not likely to pack on 10 pounds of muscle in a year like a beginner could.
I think it was Stu who mentioned a while back how thrilled he would be if he could pack on 5 pounds of muscle in a year at his current level of development. Simply put, if a relative beginner only added 5 pounds most people would agree they short-changed themselves. But for someone like Stu, adding 5 pounds is much more difficult despite that fact that he is much stronger than most beginners.
[quote]Justliftbrah wrote:
I’m currently focusing on gaining strength. Been at it for about four months gained a lot of strength but i’m not satisfied. I’ve lost some fat and gained some muscle as well. It’s barely noticeable to the untrained eye though. So my question is will it be easier for me gain muscle once I’ve attained my desired strength because i’ll be pushing more weight?[/quote]
It will be easier for you to gain muscle once you eat three large meals a day, seven days a week, 12 weeks in a row. For increasing muscle mass, strength improvements are absolutely secondary to calorie intake. Like AG reminded you, I’ve explained this before. You (still) seem to think that lifting heavier automatically equates to more muscle.
I’d also suggest you re-examine your first sentence and see if that’s really your primary focus. Primary as in number one above all others. If it is, then based on your second sentence you’re going pretty awesome. Really though, it sounds like gaining size is your primary goal. You mention it a lot.
[quote]staystrong wrote:
But for someone like Stu, adding 5 pounds is much more difficult despite that fact that he is much stronger than most beginners.[/quote]
Just to tack onto this, and partly because Stu is also a prime example, he’s mentioned a few times how he saw better muscle gains once he stopped focusing on simply getting stronger and started focusing on stimulating the target muscles. In his experience, strength gains were almost entirely unrelated to muscle gains. Just to highlight the flipside of things for OP.
[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
Just to tack onto this, and partly because Stu is also a prime example, he’s mentioned a few times how he saw better muscle gains once he stopped focusing on simply getting stronger and started focusing on stimulating the target muscles. In his experience, strength gains were almost entirely unrelated to muscle gains. Just to highlight the flipside of things for OP.[/quote]
Unrelated to OP’s issues, but wouldn’t you agree that stimulation of the target muscle must increase through either
Progressive resistance with emphasis on the target mucle (eg, lowering the weight for back exercises while focuing on using the lats and not the arm and increasing the weight from there) or
Increased isolation of the target muscle with better mmc while using the same weight
for the target muscle to adapt and grow?
[quote]dt79 wrote:
Unrelated to OP’s issues, but wouldn’t you agree that stimulation of the target muscle must increase through either
Progressive resistance with emphasis on the target mucle (eg, lowering the weight for back exercises while focuing on using the lats and not the arm and increasing the weight from there) or
Increased isolation of the target muscle with better mmc while using the same weight
for the target muscle to adapt and grow?[/quote]
Those two scenarios sound pretty similar - variations of increased MMC and/or TUT- but, yep.
To stimulate muscle growth (meaning we’re focused on hypertrophy, not strength), the target muscle needs to be “overloaded” in some way - generally either with volume (more reps and/or sets) or intensity (in the case of muscle growth, this means how close to failure a set is taken, irrespective of load).
If my only piece of training equipment is a 35-pound kettlebell, I can still design a training plan to encourage muscle gains, even though the load is fixed. Granted, progress wouldn’t continue forever, but as the old saying goes, everything works for about six weeks.
Many of the methods best suited for increased MMC and improved muscle targeting (pre-exhaust, slower tempos, relatively-lighter loads, relatively-higher volume, etc.) are very inefficient for strength gains.
The impression I’ve gotten from several of the OP’s threads is that he seems to equate “eventually lifting more weight” with “building more muscle”, with very little respect given to the nutrition aspect of building muscle. If this were the case, powerlifters would be constantly outgrowing their weight classes, but we know that strength gains aren’t the guaranteed path to size.
[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
[quote]dt79 wrote:
Unrelated to OP’s issues, but wouldn’t you agree that stimulation of the target muscle must increase through either
Progressive resistance with emphasis on the target mucle (eg, lowering the weight for back exercises while focuing on using the lats and not the arm and increasing the weight from there) or
Increased isolation of the target muscle with better mmc while using the same weight
for the target muscle to adapt and grow?[/quote]
Those two scenarios sound pretty similar - variations of increased MMC and/or TUT- but, yep.
To stimulate muscle growth (meaning we’re focused on hypertrophy, not strength), the target muscle needs to be “overloaded” in some way - generally either with volume (more reps and/or sets) or intensity (in the case of muscle growth, this means how close to failure a set is taken, irrespective of load).
If my only piece of training equipment is a 35-pound kettlebell, I can still design a training plan to encourage muscle gains, even though the load is fixed. Granted, progress wouldn’t continue forever, but as the old saying goes, everything works for about six weeks.
Many of the methods best suited for increased MMC and improved muscle targeting (pre-exhaust, slower tempos, relatively-lighter loads, relatively-higher volume, etc.) are very inefficient for strength gains.
[/quote]
Thnks for the clarification. And I love your educated responses.
Just threw that out there cos I’ve seen beginners using these intenity techniques without bearing in mind that there must still be some form of progressive overload when using said techniques to give the target muscle a reason to grow.
Yup. He seems like the kind that will learn from more error than trial.
Read everything above. Also, if you are focusing largely on benching (a common beginner mistake) adjust your routine to include other compound movements. If you are trying to put on muscle, make sure to put in work (a lot of it) on your back and legs.