Five Simple Lifestyle Changes to Build Muscle Up Fast

If your goal is to get twice as good at something, what would be the best way to go about it? I can think of two ends of the continuum. The approach you select will be somewhere along this continuum: performing one activity twice as well (or 100 percent better), or performing 100 activities 1 percent better. I think that most people attempt the first approach, but the second is much easier to implement.

Taken a step further, to make each of these 1 percent building blocks more effective, you could also change things that occur outside of your workouts. So you focus on modifying your habits and making small improvements in many areas that will stack on top of each other to give you massive benefits.

So here are five easy lifestyle changes you can make to help you build muscle up.

1) Replace Traditional Cardio with High Intensity Interval Trainign

Aerobic activities have a negative impact on muscle gaining because it burns branched chain amino acids (BCAA) and glycogen. Instead, focus on HIIT sessions for fat burning, for example a 400-meter sprint followed by a 400-meter recovery jog, repeated for a total of four times.

2) Increase Total Time Under Load

Rather than focusing on the quantity of repetitions, focus on the total time your muscles are under load. Try spending 2 seconds on the negative contraction, 1 second at neutral (bottom of the exercise), and 1 second on the positive contraction. Emphasizing the negative is a simple method to overload muscles and promote muscle weight gain.

3) Increase your Sodium Intake

Sodium increases carbohydrate storage and amino acid absorption while also improving the muscle's receptiveness to insulin. Just do in it moderation!

4) Recovery

Your body will only build muscle up by repairing it in response to your workouts. When your muscles are repaired, they are made stronger than before to respond to the higher stress levels put on them. If you don’t allow your muscles time to recover, they can never rebuild.

5) Cheat on your Diet

If you haven’t yet read the Cheat to Lose Diet, you should. It’s a pretty interesting theory into how the body metabolizes food. The short story is that your body burns fat in response to the presence of a hormone in your body, and that hormone appears as the result of overeating! So once a week, cheat, and follow your cheat day with two very low-carbohydrate, high protein days. You’ll enjoy the cheat day and burn more fat to boot.