Building muscle takes time. But what if you could press the “fast forward button” on muscle growth? Scientifically, there are only 4 strategies you can use to build muscle fast. Most people only take advantage of 1 or 2 of them. Or, they do them all, but incorrectly, which stops them in their quest to gain muscle fast. In today’s video, I’ll reveal what the 4 strategies are and how to properly use them to build muscle faster.

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Improving your recovery is one of the easiest yet most overlooked ways to build muscle fast. And there are 3 main areas you should focus on. The first is your diet. Calorie-wise, the research is clear that eating enough to at least maintain your weight or even slowly gain about 1-3 lbs a month, is what’s ideal. To get a very rough idea of how many calories you’ll need daily, multiply your current body weight by anywhere between 16-18 depending on how active you are. 

Also, since the building block of your muscles is protein, you need to make sure you’re eating enough of it. As for how much to aim for, based on research, I personally take my body weight in lbs and multiply it by 0.8. That number is the minimum target I aim for every day. That said, as important as nutrition is, it’s not going to do much if you’re screwing this next thing up. Sleep. One study published back in 2010 found that dieters sleeping 5 hours lost 55% less fat and 60% more muscle compared to those getting 8 hours.

But sleep quality seems to be just as important. A 2020 study had two groups do the same full body workout routine with the only difference being one of the groups also got lessons on how to sleep better. After 10 weeks, the sleep group gained muscle about 30% faster. So for me personally, even if this means sacrificing some of my workouts or cutting out my late night TV binges, I always prioritize getting at least 7-9 hours of quality, uninterrupted sleep per night. Finally, manage your stress levels.

While you might be recovering well, you still need to work out to give your muscles a reason to grow. But instead of simply “working out more”, a much easier way to gain muscle fast is to work smarter. First, be mindful of how you perform reps. You should control the weight, taking around 2-8 seconds to perform each rep, and use a full range of motion, specifically during the stretch part of each exercise. For example, it’s fine not to go all the way up during a dumbbell press, but you should go as far down as you can to fully stretch your chest. The same applies to things like squats and bicep curls. On top of this, you can pick exercises that challenge your muscles more in their stretched position.

The third way to force muscle growth is with brute force. By working harder. First, you can increase volume. Highlighting the effectiveness of this method to build muscle faster is a 2017 meta-analysis by Dr. Brad Schonefeld. He found there was about 30% faster growth when doing more than 10 weekly sets per muscle compared to doing only 5-9 weekly sets. So, for example, if you’re currently only doing about 10 sets or less for your chest per week, then consider slowly working your way up to 16 sets per week. 

However, this only seems to work up to a certain point. So, what I’d recommend is to start out with around 10 sets per muscle per week and see how your body responds. Then, if certain muscles aren’t growing as quickly, you can bump the number of sets up. You could also go closer to failure. Based on a recent meta-analysis, stopping your sets around five reps short of failure gets you about 75% of your maximum growth potential. But if you pushed past that, every additional rep you do would get you about 5% more growth. 

But now you might be wondering, what if I increase both my training volume and intensity? Surely that would lead to the most growth, right? Well, theoretically, yes. But it depends on how much you can recover from. So experiment with both options of increasing volume and/or increasing your intensity and see what works best for you to build muscle. Just don’t overdo it. 

Taking steroids is truly the quickest and most effective way of building muscle fast. For example, one study found individuals taking steroids and NOT exercising gained more muscle than those who were exercising but didn’t take any steroids. However, they come with plenty of health risks and side effects especially at higher doses. In my honest opinion, the risks don’t outweigh the benefits for most people. Building muscle naturally will be slower, but it’s extremely rewarding and you can drastically speed up the process by using the 3 methods we talked about earlier.