The Number One Thing You Can Do To Constantly Gain Muscle

Have your muscle or strength gains stagnated? Don’t seem to be getting anywhere despite seemingly putting in more and more effort? Advice in the vein of ‘stick with it and it’ll yield results’ can sometimes be taken too literally. In the context of weight training, it should take on the meaning of sticking with your training and your goal of improvement – but the very nature of training demands change… so sticking with a routine which has burned out won’t get you anywhere. Now, you came here looking for the number one thing to do to constantly gain muscle. It’s not a routine – those burn out – but a mindset. And the mindset you need to adopt is one of open-mindedness.

In bodybuilding and strength training, proponents and practitioners of certain styles of training (HIT, Volume Training, Low Volume Training, etc.) will follow them with religious zeal and attack anyone who dares to call into question their supposed superiority.

Don’t become one of these people.

Wherever you want to go – more strength, more muscle, or more of both – you will, with some basic research, find people using all kinds of very varied roads to get there.

I happen to believe that given changing routines regularly is the essence of making progress where building muscle and strength is concerned, the average person could greatly cut down the time it takes to get where they want to be by not following only one style of training, but by making use of the various distinct elements of many in conjunction with one another.

Those who doubt such varied training practices would yield good enough results in muscle mass or strength need look no further than Louie Simmons. Louie is the head of Westside Barbell, arguably the most successful powerlifting club in the world. The type of training Louie does and has his lifters doing is so varied it will literally shock your entire understanding of training.

I firmly believe Louie – and subsequently, his lifters – have become so successful because he is, and they are, very open minded!

For instance, Louie will often lift light weights for minutes on end – yet try suggesting this as being a beneficial part of gaining strength, and you will likely be flamed on most forums by people who don’t know a fraction about training that Louie does, nor haven’t achieved a fraction of what Louie has.

Louie wouldn’t waste a second doing this seemingly ‘pointless’ training unless he knew it was beneficial to his goals of gaining strength – and he always backs up his practices with studies and his own tests on himself and his lifters.

What I’m trying to say to you is, even approaches to training which may seem, by ‘average consensus’ to be a waste of time or strange, deserve looking into and will often deserve a trial. Don’t knock anything until you’ve tried something in its proper context. In the long run, you can gain far more by being open minded in your approach to training than you can ever gain by being rigid and set in your ways.

I thoroughly recommend reading what Louie Simmons writes as he knows how to gain serious muscle and strength in more ways than you can imagine. Check out his book The Westside Barbell Book of Methods.