Building Muscle "Actually" Explained!

We've all read the articles "How to build muscle" or at least did a quick YouTube search on it. How many walked away actually understanding it though? Ask yourself the question, do you really know how muscles grow? If you're reading this you probably have a general idea on "what to do" to build muscle, but maybe not the understanding of the "HOW" it works. That's what we are going to explore in this article today. Let's pump some fucking IRON!

So how do we build muscle? Well, that's simple, go pump some iron! Lift some weights! Do some exercises! Do a hundred push ups a day! Okay, but really, how does it all work? Let's start out by understanding the essentials. What do you really "NEED" to build muscle? The answer is you need Water, Protein, and Energy. Yes! That's correct! You don't need FATS or CARBOHYDRATES to build muscle! Kind of...let's dive a little deeper into this, shall we?

1. Water - Why is water essential to building muscle? Well, it does the most important job of all. Water transports essential nutrients to all parts of the body that are needed to function! Think of it like this. If you have a house with a bunch of electrical outlets, things plugged into them, and you have electricity but you have no wires to transport that electricity to the outlets then nothing will work, right? Your body is the same way! The wires that transport the electricity (nutrients) is your blood. Blood is mainly made of water. Therefore, water is ESSENTIAL to building muscle. Point blank, period! Need I say more? Moving on...

2. Protein - Ok, we all know protein is absolutely necessary to muscle growth. At least I hope so! If you don't know then yes, you need protein to build muscle! Why? Well, muscle is made up of 80% protein, so I would say that getting at least 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight is essential to muscle growth! There is another article that will be linked to the 1 gram per pound of body weight thing, but for now let's just keep it basic and know that muscle is mainly made of water and protein.

3. Energy - What do I mean by energy is needed for building muscle? It's quite simple actually. What do you need energy for? TO DO THE EXERCISES NECESSARY FOR MUSCLE GROWTH!! I don't mean to yell at you but yes, energy is a much needed part of muscle building. There are a great many factors that comes into play with having good energy for muscle building. Those factors include, sleep, food, hydration, daily routine, work environment, stress levels, and the list goes on and on. Point is, you need to have a high level of energy to create a stimulus for the muscle while exercising. In other words, you need to have energy to get a good workout in!

4. Carbohydrates - What role do carbs have to play in muscle building? They "technically" aren't a necessity for building muscle. HOWEVER, that's not to say they aren't important or optimal for muscle building. Carbohydrates provide a great source of energy for the body to use for exercising, which leads to a vital part of the process for building muscle. What else do carbs do? They also provides something called glycogen as an energy source for the body. This will help the body use up glycogen for energy and will spare the protein that you have in your body for muscle growth. I mean honestly, who wants to drink another protein shake to replenish the protein lost if the body decides to use it as a source of energy instead of repairing bigger and better muscles? Not me...

5. Fats - There is so much to say about fats, healthy and unhealthy fats, that I will soon create another article dedicated to just fats and it's vital functions to the body (if I haven't already by the time you've read this article). Long story short, fats again are "technically" not needed for muscle growth...but in reality they kind of are. Ingesting healthy fats (polysaturated and monosaturated, more on this later) are essential to hormone production. What are hormones? Well, they are basically what controls the chemical responses in your body that are in charge of mood, energy, motivation, bodily functions, general health, and much more. The important hormone in muscle growth is Testosterone! Again, more on Testosterone in another article, but this beautiful hormone increases muscle mass! Along with many other things, testosterone is the driving force to building muscle! A healthy level of fats in the body will increase the production of this hormone and therefore increases the level of muscle you have!

I suppose there is so much to understanding how muscle actually grows. There are tons of studies that touch this subject and we are still learning the exact science of how muscle grows. That being said, we definitely understand that at the very least, these are the essentials to building muscle. The 5 essentials that I have listed will boost your muscle mass and decrease your fat gain by a ton should you study up on these vital processes to building a better body!

I really hope this helped and if you have any suggestions or topics you'd like for me to discuss or get into more detail then please feel free to message me on any of my platforms, whether that is on here, Facebook, or Instagram! Let's make sure we are staying focused! Let's create goals together! Let's build some muscle! Let's lose some fat! Let's create the life and body we can be proud of and love our bodies together! This was the essentials on how muscle "actually" grows!