Muscle Gain Over Days, Weeks and Months Depending on your workout, muscle cells can grow back bigger and stronger anywhere from one to seven days later. While they grow back, you should work on different muscle groups to stay on a consistent schedule.
Aim for a surplus of 250-500 calories per day. Lift weights regularly. Aim for 3-4 weight training sessions per week. Focus on compound exercises that work for multiple muscle groups at once, such as squats, deadlifts, bench press, and pull-ups. Eat enough protein. Protein is essential for muscle growth.
Nutrition: The Foundation of Bulking
Caloric Surplus: You want to eat in a caloric surplus to bulk up in 7 days. This means consuming more calories than your body burns. Calculate your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) and add 500-1000 calories per day to it. This extra energy will fuel muscle growth.
The actual growth occurs when you rest your muscles. You then need the rate of protein synthesis to be higher than the protein breakdown. This allows your muscles to heal and grow. But be aware, the average man can only add between 0.25lbs and 0.75lbs a week.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to gain significant muscle mass in just one week. Building muscle requires consistent and progressive resistance training, proper nutrition, and sufficient recovery time. It takes time, effort, and dedication to see significant changes in muscle size and strength.
“You can lift lighter weights, and as long as you lift them with a high degree of effort, they're as good as heavier weights in making you bigger,” he says. Using a home gym machine or even just your own body weight, like with push-ups or lunges, works.
Most beginners will see noticeable muscle growth within eight weeks, while more experienced lifters will see changes in three to four weeks. Most individuals gain one to two pounds of lean muscle per month with the right strength training and nutrition plan.
There are other terms for this, such as build mode, but bulking is a common term for this caloric surplus. Dirty bulking is when an individual is in a caloric surplus to build muscle (build mode). However, the individual is eating foods that are carb dense, unhealthy, and ultra-processed out of convenience.
Extreme exercise requires eating plenty of carbs. It is recommended athletes consume 60g/h of carbohydrates for prolonged exercise lasting more than two hours. White rice is considered a safe starch to consume prior to exercise, easy on the stomach, and has been shown to meet sports nutrition recommendations.
Downtime between workouts (whether you're lifting, doing cardio or training for a sport) is when our bodies have a chance to actually build muscle. Strenuous workouts cause muscle breakdown, while rest allows our bodies to build it back up.
"We already know only one eccentric muscle contraction a day can increase muscle strength if it is performed five days a week -- even if it's only three seconds a day -- but concentric (lifting a weight) or isometric muscle contraction (holding a weight) does not provide such an effect," Professor Nosaka said.
You don't need to spend hours a day lifting weights to benefit from strength training. You can see significant improvement in your strength with just two or three 20- or 30-minute strength training sessions a week.
So even though you may be losing fat, you're gaining muscle. You might feel slimmer, even as the number on the scale rises. “The scale doesn't tell the entire story,” said exercise physiologist Christopher Mohr, PhD, RD. “Since muscle and fat take up different volume, they look very different on the body.”