3) Your training should not exceed 35 minutes, and you should only train three times per week with at least one rest day between workouts. Muscles develop and grow during rest, not during training. You must allow time for your body to recover. 5) Always eat a big breakfast. If you compromise your first meal of the day, you will shortchange yourself for the entire day. It should be the largest meal of the day. Certainly, there is much to learn if you want to know how to build muscle and weight train. However, like almost every other subject, there are certain principles that form the foundation of all there is to learn. Think of it like a huge tree. There are the leaves, twigs, branches, trunk, and roots. The whole tree depends on the roots. It is like its foundation. The leaves certainly serve their purpose, but they can hardly be said to be the most important part of the tree. We believe that if you can get the foundational principles in place regarding your muscle-building efforts, you will never have a problem growing again. What we want to give you in this short article are the roots and much of the trunk of the tree. 2) 3 - 4 grams of carbohydrates per day per pound of body weight. Contrary to the low-carb hype and fad that is popular today, ensuring a healthy amount of carbohydrates in your diet is necessary for maximizing results. Carbohydrates not only provide your body with the energy needed to perform well in the gym, but they also allow your body to better utilize the protein in your diet for muscle repair and development. Try consuming simple carbs from whole grains. Oatmeal and whole grain breads should become staples in your daily diet. 4) To help get in, get done, and get out of the gym faster, we like to use supersets. Try combining exercises that work different muscle groups in your supersets (e.g., squats and chin-ups). Do three supersets with very little rest between sets. After a superset is complete, take a couple of minutes to recover and then start your next superset. Three or four superset exercise combinations are all you need to do, especially if you are more of a novice to muscle building. 1) High weight and low reps. You should find out what your maximum lift ability is for each exercise that you bring into your workout routine and then take 80% of that amount for your reps (e.g., 200lbs max = 160lbs for reps). This should put you in a zone where you can do 4 - 6 reps of each exercise. Nutrition is so necessary; we cannot stress this point enough. Let us tell you, if you want to stack on massive amounts of lean muscle, you are going to have to get a second job—eating like a horse. Let us give you some point-form rules to obey if you want to stack it on. Let's talk about training for a minute. Depending on how you train, you will achieve different results. The level of intensity, the amount of weight you lift, the number of reps you do, how long your training sessions last, and the kinds of exercises you do all impact the kind of results you get from your training efforts. Following the outline we began above, let’s go through some basic rules that will help you create a training program that will force your body to respond with tremendous gains. 1) 16 times your body weight in calories per day (e.g., 200lb man = 3200 calories per day). If you find you are gaining more than 2 lbs per week, dial it back by 200 - 250 calories per day until you are gaining 1 - 2 lbs per week. Any more than this, and you're stacking on some fat along with the muscle you're building. If you are gaining less than 1 lb per week, increase your calories by 200 - 250 per day until you are gaining 1 - 2 lbs per week. Contrary to many supposed muscle-building "know-it-alls" out there today, your body is quite capable of building and developing 15 - 25 lbs of muscle in about 16 weeks naturally. This is especially true for the more novice gym warrior. It is mistakes made or false direction given regarding these foundational areas that compromise people's ability to hit these kinds of numbers. 6) Never go more than 3 hours without eating a meal. You'll need to eat when you're not hungry yet. You'll need to eat when you don't feel like it. You'll need to eat when it is very inconvenient to do so. You need to turn your body into a nutrient-absorbing machine. Well, what you do with this now is your choice. It really is a simple plan. With a little bit of hard work and dedication added to it, you will achieve more than you ever thought possible in a lot less time than you ever imagined. Eat like a horse, train hard, and get your rest. You'll grow; we promise. There are three primary aspects to the root of the tree, and all of them are absolutely necessary for bodybuilding muscles. Miss out on one of these, and you will significantly decrease your results. Sometimes we feel like a broken record when we talk about this, but because so many people are making their biggest and most consistent mistakes at this foundational level, we are compelled to keep preaching the same sermon. We'll start, as usual, by just giving them to you straight and simple and then taking a little bit of time to expound. They are 1) Nutrition, 2) Training, 3) Rest. Sound too simple to be true? Simple, maybe, but not necessarily easy. If you find training easy, in our opinion, you're not training like you should be. Eating properly is not always the easiest task in the processed age in which we live either. Let’s expound a bit more and start getting you pointed in a direction that will definitely lead you to build muscle quickly. Lastly, there is rest. Let me communicate its importance with a short story. There was a trainer who put out a challenge to pro bodybuilders. He told them that if they flew to his gym and stayed in a hotel, he would help them grow their arms by 1 full inch in one week (an incredible claim). If he couldn't help them do this, he would fund their entire trip. The gym was in a pretty nice area of the U.S., so either you were gonna get a free vacation or an extra inch on your arms out of the deal. There weren't a ton, but a good number of pro bodybuilders took the trainer up on his offer and flew to his gym. When they landed, he met them at his gym, measured their arms, and sent them back to their hotels. One day, two days, three days went by, and the trainer didn't have these guys do a thing in the gym. They, of course, became super anxious because they were missing their precious gym time. If I remember correctly, it was 5 or 6 days of waiting for this crazy trainer to get back in touch with them. Finally, the trainer brought all the guys into the gym, not for a workout but to measure their arms. A whole week of sitting around their hotel rooms had gone by, but guess what? Every one of their arms had grown an inch. This wise and not to mention witty trainer knew that these guys were probably not getting near the amount of rest time they needed to maximize the benefits of all their time in the gym. He simply forced them to rest and allowed their bodies to do the rest. 7) Lastly, you should try downing a fast-absorbing protein shake 20 minutes before you train and then eat a meal immediately after you train. Like we said, simple but not necessarily easy. Chances are your biggest challenges will be in the area of proper nutrition. This is where most people fail and where most people make the biggest and most consistent mistakes. 3) 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight is all that is necessary. This probably seems low compared to many of the claims of supposed "know-it-alls," but any more is simply unnecessary. Your body is incapable of processing and utilizing more protein than this, so you are just wasting your money on expensive lean protein to go beyond this point. Egg whites are a highly beneficial source from which to get your protein. We also recommend cottage cheese. Not only are its protein levels high, but it is a slow-digesting and absorbing protein, making it a great choice for a bedtime snack. Its benefits will last throughout the night while your body is repairing and growing as you sleep. 4) Eat plenty of essential fats. It is not common knowledge that eating the right kinds of fat is very necessary for building massive amounts of lean muscle. Extra virgin cold-pressed olive oil, flaxseed oil, hemp oil, extra virgin cold-pressed coconut oil, and fish oils are incredible sources of essential fats your body needs for proper health and developing muscle. 2) Multi-muscle group exercises. Squats, deadlifts, clean and presses, clean and jerks, dips, rows, bench presses, military presses, and chin/pull-ups are the kinds of exercises we mean. Exercises that incorporate multiple muscle groups into one movement. This does some very important things. First, it trains your muscles to work together. This makes for a much more functional strength. That is the benefits of your training are much more usable in everyday life from work to play. It also builds a more explosive strength. It is the kinds of exercises that gymnasts and Olympic and competition weightlifters use to train. Finally, this will get your workouts done quicker. Now we wouldn’t recommend that you take a week off because you’re probably not a pro bodybuilder and therefore did not spend nearly the time in the gym that these guys did before this happened. It does prove, however, how important rest time is if you want to maximize the benefits of your hard work in the gym. These guys' bodies were just waiting to explode with growth. They just needed the recovery time to do so.