No Pain, No Gain: How To Grow Muscle Mass Without Hurting Your Body

It can be difficult to distinguish how hard you need to work out when you’re trying to build muscle. Although no pain, no gain can be a true statement, how much pain is too much? Below, you’ll find ways to grow your muscle mass without injuring your body in the process. 

Be Realistic About Your Progress

One of the biggest mistakes people make when trying to build muscle mass or when starting any type of workout routine is that they expect to see immediate improvements. This can either lead to the person getting frustrated and quitting or pushing themselves too hard and ending up with an injury. For this reason, it always helps to make sure that you set realistic short- and long-term goals for yourself. 

The short-term goals are especially important as they allow you to monitor how much progress you’re making without becoming discouraged or trying to do too much. If you’re doing weight training, you should also avoid trying to add too much additional weight in a short period as this will greatly increase your injury risk. 

Focus on Your Pre-Workout and Recovery Routines

What you do before and after your workout can be as important as the workout itself. One of the most common causes of many exercises and weight lifting injuries is neglecting to properly warm up and stretch before you get fully into your routine. You should also make sure that you’re eating the right foods and taking the right supplements before your workout to give you the energy and nutrients you need to get the most out of your routine. 

Your post-workout recovery is equally as important as this will help your body to heal and improve muscle growth. For the best results, you should definitely consider adding a post-workout supplement to your routine. By doing so, you can ensure that your body has the nutrients it needs to properly recover and build muscle mass. 

Make Sure to Alternate Muscle Groups

Your body needs time to properly heal in order to build increased muscle mass. This makes it important that you make sure to give your different muscle groups enough time to recover before working on them again. Weight lifting and other muscle-building exercises create microscopic tears in the muscle, and it is the healing of these tears that builds more muscle. 

If you don’t give your muscles enough time to heal in between workouts, all you’ll end up doing is tearing your muscles down instead of building them up. This is why you should never work on any muscle group more than three to five times a week as otherwise you will be risking injury and limiting your gains. 

 

Building up muscle mass doesn’t happen overnight, which is why it’s important that you’re realistic about what you want to achieve and how long it will take. You also need to make sure to take the appropriate steps to prevent damage as even a minor injury can drastically set back your progress and potentially make you start back at square one.