How much does it really take to build muscle?

If you’re entering your fitness era and wondering how long it will take to see changes in your muscles, here’s everything you need to know. When it comes to your body, lasting change won’t happen overnight. Many people expect quick results when they try it build muscle. It’s understandable, especially when you constantly see others showing off their progress on social media. However, the process can be slow and depends on more factors than just going to the gym or working out exercises at home regularly. Your diet, rest, and even genetics play a big role in how your body responds to training and how quickly you’ll see those muscle gains. You may be tempted to push harder to see faster results, but it’s best to be patient and trust the process. After all, you don’t want to overdo it and injure yourself.

If you are looking for bigger and more toned musclesit’s important to start your own a new exercise plan with the right expectations. Lifting weights is the best way to build muscle over time. Research supports it resistance trainingespecially weight lifting, as the best method for inducing hypertrophy (the scientific term for muscle growth).

Here you will learn how long it takes to build muscle and what factors affect your ability strengthen, thinner and fitter from weight training.

Read also: How to build muscle faster

How muscle growth happens

Building muscle involves repairing microtraumas in your muscle fibers. Here’s a breakdown of this extremely complex process:

1. Each muscle is made up of thousands of tiny muscle fibers.

2. When you lift weights (or do bodyweight exercises), your muscles suffer tiny injuries through their fibers.

3. Then, when you rest your muscles, your body begins to repair the damaged muscle cells.

4. The repair process involves joining the torn muscle fibers together as well as laying down new proteins within each muscle cell.

5. Your muscles become bigger and stronger as a result of the repair process.

Keep in mind that the above is an extremely simplified version of what actually happens in your body after weight training. In reality, the process involves more than just your muscles—your nervous system, circulatory system, and endocrine system contribute to muscle repair and growth.

How long does it take to build muscle?

There is no one time frame for building muscle, as several factors affect your ability to build muscle, including:

Your protein intake: While everyone macronutrients have their roles, protein is the king when it comes to building muscle. Your muscles need adequate protein to repair themselves after stress weight training. Without enough protein, muscle growth stagnates.

Your calorie intake: If you don’t eat enough calories on a daily basis, you will not build muscle even if you eat a lot of protein. To build muscle, your body has to create new tissue, and it can’t create something out of nothing. The extra fuel from the extra calories speeds recovery and muscle growth. This is one of the reasons why many people never reach their muscle growth goals – they are unwilling to deal with the extra body fat that comes along with the muscle building phase.

Your sleep schedule: Lifting weights while you sleep not a smart strategy. You may notice some gains, but you definitely can’t optimize muscle growth when you don’t give your body a chance to recover.

Your lifting routine: If you’re trying to build muscle, you should know about two key concepts in strength training: frequency and volume. Frequency refers to how often you train a muscle or muscle group, while scope refers to the total load you place on the muscle.

For example, if you perform three sets of 10 reps of squats using 100 pounds, your total volume is 3,000 pounds. Higher volume and higher frequency usually means more muscle, unless you hit a tipping point overtraining.

Your training age: The more advanced you are, the less muscle growth you’ll see (yes, that sounds backwards). Everyone has a maximum genetic potential for muscle growth, and the closer you are to yours, the harder it is to build more muscle.

Your real age: Like many other things, building muscle becomes more difficult as you get older. Sarcopeniaor loss of muscle mass and function, is actually a big problem in the elderly. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so important to stay active as you age.

Other major factors include your genetic potential for building muscle (which is impossible to quantify without lab testing, and even then, kind of tricky) and testosterone levels—which is why men tend to have more muscle than women. Other hormones, including human growth hormone and insulin growth factor, also play a role in muscle growth.

All that said, the process of building muscle begins the moment you challenge your muscles to do something. True beginners can notice muscle growth within six weeks of starting resistance training programand advanced lifters can see results within six to eight weeks of changing their usual strength training regimen.

Regardless of your fitness level, building muscle takes weeks, even when your diet, to sleep and the training regimen is chosen to optimize muscle growth.

Can you build muscle by doing cardio?

This depends on your definition cardio and your training years. Most people won’t build much muscle from traditional cardio, such as walking or running, and people who train for long periods of time definitely won’t build new muscle from traditional cardio. It doesn’t recruit your muscles in a way that signals your body to build muscle.

However, cardio that includes high-intensity exercises like plyometrics (think jump squats) or high-volume weight training can help you build muscle to a certain extent. Hill sprints, hiking, skiing, and other outdoor cardio can also add some muscle mass, especially for beginners. People with long training histories may not see as much success with cardio.

While cardio can improve your overall fitness and help build muscle in select scenarios, strength training remains the best way to build muscle mass.

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