If you want more muscle, maybe training isn’t the cause of what's holding you back. Assuming you really try to train hard to make muscle gains, I would say why you fail has nothing to do with the training itself. Instead, poor recovery is holding you back.

I know you want a hardcore solution, and recovery talk doesn’t attract you the slightest. I'm here to say it should! I have never met any athlete who gains strength or muscles during training. Everyone makes their gains after the training is done. It is the recovery that brings you the gains. When I train my clients, I always start to see how we can maximize their recovery. When I know their recovery is optimal, I know that they will make good training progress. I also work as a kinesiologist/massage therapist alongside my work as a trainer and help many people who have different kinds of muscle pain.

Pain Loop

One of the biggest reasons people experience pain is because they overload their muscles/tendons. Poor posture will make your muscles tense and tense muscles become exhausted. An exhausted muscle that never gets to rest creates an inflamed state with pain that'll create a bad movement pattern that'll lead to compensation in your muscle system, muscle exhaustion, more pain, and less recovery. No wonder some people feel overtrained by training five times a week!

Training Frequency

One of my clients, a retired professional tennis player, once asked me how much a powerlifter needs to train each week to be at a high level. I answered that most powerlifters probably train four times a week. She looked surprised and told me that tennis players at her level trained four times a day! Can you even imagine how important recovery is for those training four times a day?

The Bulgarian weightlifters used to train two to three times a day. It worked well for them. I try to split my powerlifting sessions and train two times a day instead of one. It works very well. My idea of why it works so well is because my muscles get more time to recover and therefore, I can train harder through the exercises since I never get exhausted. I start with the main lifts at lunch and train the accessory movements in the evening after my workday. Read my earlier article Increase Maximum Strength with Low-Intensity Training to learn more.

Recovery Work

After a hard training session, everyone knows that you need to fill up with carbs and protein to build up your muscles. The muscle work will actually destroy your muscle to a certain point, and when you rest and add nutrition to your muscles, they will recover and heal to get bigger and stronger. Many of the supplements on the market that promise muscle growth will actually facilitate your body to recover and that’s why your muscles grow.

Since we now know that recovery is the key to getting bigger and stronger, ask yourself if you can do anything in the gym to increase recovery. It may sound contradictory to train to increase recovery since the training is what we need to recover from, but we can adapt our training to adjust recovery. You can adjust your training to strengthen your posture. When your posture is better, your recovery will also get better.

It's Science

So, if your training will unload your structure between the sessions, you'll immediately spur recovery and build muscles simultaneously. And this is not any stupid idea I made up—it’s plain science. You need to see science from a different perspective—you need to know how gravidity works and how physiology works. You also need to know how biomechanics from gravidity will affect your physiology. Many experts know their area and talk about it in a singular sense. They only focus on lever arms and biomechanical angles and forget about the physics that made it work. Or, they know all about physics and lever arms but don’t know or focus on how the muscles work that attach to the lever arms.

In a bigger perspective, this together will make your carrier or break your carrier as an athlete. How long does your glutes, quadriceps, hamstrings, lower back, abdominals, and upper back need to rest after a certain load in the deadlift or squat? Of course, it will depend on the muscles ability to recover! A better posture with less load at the muscles between your training sessions and better technique in your lifts with less load on the ligaments, joints, and tendons will speed up your recovery and increase your results.

Suggested Reading

I earlier wrote an article about how much volume you can take, depending on how you are built: How Much Volume Can You Take? Another article on the subject is: Solve the Progression Code with Axiomatic Strength Training where I explain how different lifters succeed differently with the same program. You have to find what works for you and made it work for you.

Conclusion

Damn, do you have to learn all of this? Please do, of course, but just the knowledge and understanding of the system's coexistence will help you see why your training isn't working as planned. When your results don’t occur, even you train your ass off, you don’t need to train harder. Maybe you need to train smarter and look over your recovery and why it doesn’t work properly.

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Stefan Waltersson is a professional strength coach certified by Westside Barbell, lecturer, physiotherapist, author, personal trainer, kinesiologist, sports massage therapist, nurse assistant, and founder of Seminoff Sport & Rehab in 2004. Stefan has previously worked in neurology (Sahlgrenska University Hospital) and with researching doctors in microbiology and clinical chemistry. Check out his website.