Muscle growth: 12 essential tips to build more muscle
By Martin Ebner
Updated Sept 2026
If knowing how to build muscle were enough, every gym would be full of Greek gods. Most people understand the basic idea. Lift weights, eat properly and keep going.
The wheels tend to come off in the detail. People change their program every fortnight, turn every set into a near-death experience, guess how much they’re eating and then blame their genetics when nothing happens.
These are the 12 things I’d sort out first. None is exciting enough to sell as a secret, which is probably why they work.
1. GIVE IT MORE THAN A FEW WEEKS
You’re not going to see meaningful muscle growth after three workouts. Your strength may improve quickly when you begin because you’re learning the exercises, but visible changes take longer.
Judge the process over months. Keep a record of your training, take photos in the same lighting every four to six weeks and measure the areas you’re trying to grow. The bathroom mirror, under whichever lighting makes you look least impressive that morning, isn’t a reliable progress report.
2. ORGANISE YOUR WEEK PROPERLY
There’s no perfect training split. Three full-body sessions, four upper and lower-body sessions or a well-designed five-day split can all build muscle.
Training a muscle twice a week is often practical because it lets you divide the work into two decent sessions instead of cramming everything into one enormous one. It isn’t a magic frequency, though. Recent research suggests that weekly volume matters more than frequency for muscle growth.
Choose a schedule that fits your actual week. Four planned sessions completed consistently will beat the six-day masterpiece you abandon before Thursday.
3. DO ENOUGH HARD SETS
Muscle growth responds to training volume, but more isn’t endlessly better. Eight to twelve challenging sets per muscle each week is a sensible starting range for many people, not a compulsory target carved into stone.
Count the sets that genuinely train the muscle. A controlled set of rows taken close to your limit counts for your back. Ten casual repetitions completed while watching somebody else’s workout probably don’t.
If you’re progressing and recovering well, you may not need more. If nothing is moving after several weeks, you’re sleeping properly and your food is in order, adding a small amount of work is worth trying.
4. RECORD YOUR TRAINING
Progressive overload sounds complicated because the fitness industry has done a tremendous job of making it sound complicated. It simply means that the work becomes more demanding as you get stronger.
If you benched 60 kilograms for eight good repetitions last month and can now complete ten with the same technique, that’s progress. So is using a little more weight, controlling the lowering phase better or moving through a fuller range.
Write down your exercises, weights and repetitions. Without a record, most people remember their best set, forget the poor ones and assume they’re improving.
5. GET CLOSE TO FAILURE
A set should eventually become difficult. If you finish ten repetitions knowing you could’ve completed another ten, you’ve done a warm-up.
For most working sets, stop when you think you’ve got another one or two clean repetitions available. You can take some safer exercises, such as curls, lateral raises or leg extensions, to failure occasionally, but you don’t need to do it with everything.
A systematic review found that training to failure isn’t required for gains in muscle or strength. Used selectively, it can help you judge your effort. Used on every set, it can leave you too exhausted to perform the rest of the session properly.
6. CHOOSE EXERCISES THAT SUIT YOU
Squats, presses, rows, pull-ups and deadlift variations train several muscles at once, so they’re an efficient foundation. They aren’t the only exercises capable of building muscle.
There’s no prize for forcing yourself through a movement that feels dreadful simply because somebody called it essential. If back squats become a test of your lower back rather than your legs, a hack squat or leg press may be the better choice. If an exercise consistently irritates a joint, find another way to train the same area.
Isolation exercises belong in a proper program too. Compound lifts cover a lot of ground, while curls, extensions, raises and machine work let you add targeted training without exhausting your entire body.
There’s nothing magical about eight to twelve repetitions either. Sets of six, ten or fifteen can all produce muscle growth when they’re controlled and sufficiently hard. Research comparing different loads supports muscle growth across a wide range of repetitions.
7. STOP CHANGING EVERYTHING
Your body doesn’t get bored with an exercise. If a movement is still comfortable, you’re performing it well and the numbers are improving, leave it alone.
Repeating your main exercises gives you time to improve your technique and find out whether the program works. Replace something when it causes problems, no longer suits the goal or has stopped progressing despite the rest of the plan being in order.
Planned changes can be useful as your training develops. That’s the point of periodisation. Changing everything whenever you fancy a new workout makes it almost impossible to judge what’s helping.
8. USE A SMALL CALORIE SURPLUS
A blanket 500-calorie surplus is a blunt instrument. It might suit one person and be far too much for another.
If you’re lean, already experienced and want to maximise muscle growth, begin around five to ten percent above your estimated maintenance intake. Watch your average weight across the week rather than reacting to a single morning, then adjust after two or three weeks.
Your weight should move gradually. If your waist is racing ahead while your performance barely changes, eating more isn’t producing better results. A study comparing different surpluses in trained lifters found that faster weight gain mainly produced more fat gain.
It’s also possible to gain muscle while losing fat, particularly if you’re new to resistance training, returning after time away or carrying more body fat. The leaner and more experienced you become, the harder that combination is to achieve.
My guide to clean bulking versus dirty bulking covers the food side in more detail.
9. EAT ENOUGH PROTEIN
A useful daily target is around 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. If you weigh 75 kilograms, that’s roughly 120 grams.
You can go higher, particularly during a calorie deficit or if much of your protein comes from plants, but more doesn’t guarantee more muscle. A major protein meta-analysis found that the additional benefit tended to level off around 1.6 grams per kilogram.
Divide your protein between three to five meals instead of hoping dinner can rescue everything you didn’t eat earlier. Each main meal should contain a proper source, whether that’s meat, fish, eggs, dairy, tofu, tempeh, beans or a shake when convenience wins.
If you eat little or no animal food, the guide to plant-based protein sources will help you build meals that add up properly.
10. KEEP CARBOHYDRATES IN PERSPECTIVE
Carbohydrates help fuel hard sessions and replace muscle glycogen afterwards. If your energy disappears halfway through training, increasing them may improve the quality of your workouts.
That doesn’t mean building muscle without carbohydrates is impossible. Protein, total energy and resistance training remain the main requirements. Eat enough carbohydrate to support how you train, include adequate dietary fat and don’t turn every meal into a mathematical emergency.
11. EAT AFTER TRAINING, BUT DON’T PANIC
Post-workout food matters, just not with the urgency it was once given. Missing a shake for an hour won’t waste the session.
If you ate a protein-containing meal a few hours before training, have another normal meal afterwards. If you trained without eating or won’t have another meal for several hours, getting some protein sooner is sensible. Carbohydrates become more important when you need to train again that day or have another demanding session coming soon.
Current research suggests that protein timing doesn’t meaningfully change gains in lean mass. Your daily totals still deserve more attention than whether the shake arrived at 12:15 or 12:45.
12. RECOVER FROM THE WORK
Training the same muscle again after exactly 48 hours isn’t a universal rule. Some sessions take more out of you than others, and people recover at different rates.
Watch what happens in the gym. If performance is improving, your joints feel good and you’re arriving ready to train, recovery is probably doing its job. Persistent soreness, falling numbers, poor sleep and a complete lack of enthusiasm usually mean something needs attention.
Aim for seven to nine hours of sleep and take full rest days when you need them. Walking or some light movement can feel good, but you don’t have to turn recovery into another workout. My article on sleep and athletic performance explains why sleep deserves to be treated as part of the plan.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Don’t try to fix all twelve things at once. Start with the obvious problem.
If your exercises aren’t progressing, look at the plan and the effort you’re putting into it. If your weight hasn’t moved for a month, look at your food. If everything feels terrible and you’re permanently exhausted, adding another workout probably isn’t the answer.
Build a week you can repeat, keep an honest record and adjust one thing at a time. Muscle takes patience, but it shouldn’t require guesswork.
If this was useful, Check It Oot is my wee letter about training, food and health. I send it once or twice a month, when I’ve got something worth sharing, and I promise not to turn twelve muscle-building tips into twelve emails.
Cheers,
Martin
