Many people experience frustration when trying to build muscle. You might be hitting the gym regularly, eating enough protein, and even tracking your macros, yet you still don’t see the noticeable gains you expect. If this sounds familiar, you're not alone. Many people ask, 'Why am I not gaining muscle?' and "how to hit your macros" when they hit a plateau in their training. This article will help you answer that question by uncovering common mistakes that lead to muscle-building roadblocks. You’ll learn to build muscle consistently and efficiently to avoid wasted effort and see noticeable gains.
Cal AI's calorie tracker can help you reach your muscle-building goals by accurately tracking your calorie and macro intake. This will help you avoid common mistakes that slow progress.
Jumping from exercise to exercise without a plan won’t get you anywhere. “Random exercises get you random results,” says Tonal coach and certified personal trainer Joe Rodonis. Gaining strength and muscle results from progressive overload, or gradually increasing stress on your body through:
When you’re not planning your workouts, you’re likely not balancing out the time you spend on each muscle group or adding stress productively and progressively.
The easiest way to ensure you’re achieving progressive overload—in a way that’s also safe and gradual so you won’t get injured or burn out too soon, is to follow a well-balanced program that fits your goals, works all your major muscle groups each week, and gets progressively challenging.
Once you’ve picked your program, stick with it and be patient. “Stay consistent for at least two if not four weeks,” says Rodonis. That doesn’t mean your workouts will be boring, though. Programs can be varied without being random. From week to week, slight variations in exercise selection or rep range will keep you engaged while focusing on the larger goal.
The scientifically backed programs on Tonal check all the boxes, feature expert coaches guiding you every step of the way, and will safeguard you from lifting weights but not gaining muscle.
You might think you need to cut calories if you’re trying to get lean and see muscle definition. But eating too little isn’t the way to go, either. “You can’t drive intensity if you’ve got no gas in the tank,” says Rodonis. “How can you build muscle if you’re depleting it of energy sources?”
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Instead of restricting calories or following a strict diet, try to include a mix of food groups such as vegetables, complex carbohydrates (whole grains, beans, and legumes), and, most importantly, ample protein. Protein is essential for muscle growth and should be consumed on workout and rest days.
Even though the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) for protein is 0.8 to 1 gram per kilogram of body weight per day, you should increase that number to see significant gains. A meta-analysis of studies has shown that if you want to gain muscle mass and strength, you should eat closer to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day.
Big compound lifts such as squats, deadlifts, and bench presses get a lot of attention—and with good reason. These multi-joint exercises strengthen your body’s largest muscles, improve functional movement patterns, and boost metabolism by increasing lean muscle mass. But that doesn’t mean you can forget about strengthening smaller muscles.
You might not do enough accessory work if you lift weights but do not gain muscle. “When we’re talking about building muscles, specifically in hypertrophy, you really want to target more isolation exercises,” says Rodonis.
If you need more evidence, Tonal members who performed more tricep-isolation work saw more significant improvements in their bench press strength.
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Continue compound exercises, but add accessory moves to round out your training. Along with supercharging your gains in specific areas, accessory work also improves your performance in compound exercises by building supporting muscles. One way to do this is by incorporating isolation exercises to complement your primary lift in a workout.
For example, if my main lift is a deadlift, Rodonis suggests adding barbell hip thrusts to isolate the glutes.
You can't hurry through your workouts when you’re looking to see significant increases in muscle size. “Hypertrophy is about mechanical tension,” says Rodonis. “I’m more concerned about time under tension, meaning I feel the weight the entire way down and the entire way up.”
In one study, participants who performed leg extensions at a rate of six seconds up and six seconds down saw more significant increases in muscle protein synthesis than those who did their reps at a faster tempo of one second up and one second down.
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Slow down! It can be easy to feel like you’re doing more work by pushing hard and fast, but you'll see more hypertrophy gains by increasing your time under tension. Tonal measures this metric to compare how much time you spend under tension in each workout. Eccentric Mode on Tonal adds resistance in the lowering phase of an exercise, increasing tension and slowing down your pace.
Eccentric training has also been shown to increase muscle growth. Don’t rush your rest periods, either. In one study, participants who rested three minutes between sets saw a more significant increase in muscular strength and size than those who rested for just one minute.
According to Rodonis, if you’re trying to build muscle, you should be lifting heavy enough to feel like you could do no more than two additional reps (known as reps in reserve) when you finish your set. “It’s not hitting failure, but if you feel like you could rip out another 5, 8, or 10 reps, it’s way too light,” he says. “A lot of people underestimate what they can do and they lift a little bit too light.”
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Figuring out how much weight to use in a specific exercise to get close to failure can be confusing. One method is to figure out your 1-rep max for each exercise (the most you can lift for a single rep) and then work at 70 to 80 percent of that weight, the recommended range for hypertrophy training.
A 1-rep-max test can be very intense and may require a spotter, so you can also follow Rodonis’s guidelines and estimate how many additional reps you could do at the end of your set. Be honest with yourself—if your reps feel effortless and you think you could crank out a bunch more, you likely need to go heavier.
Tonal takes the guesswork out of the equation by giving you personalized weight recommendations for each exercise and set. As you strengthen and you estimated 1-rep max increases, Tonal will keep increasing your resistance to maintain the challenge.
When you break down your muscles during a challenging workout, you need enough sleep to recover and work out at full intensity. “People who consistently get less than six hours of sleep have an elevated heart rate and are more prone to injury,” says Josh Clay, a certified strength and conditioning specialist and Fitness Programming Specialist at Tonal.
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While you should be aiming for seven to nine hours of sleep, you must also get enough deep sleep. That’s where the recovery magic happens. “The only thing you can do is get more overall time in bed because deep sleep and REM sleep are a percentage of total sleep time,” says sleep specialist Dr. Meeta Singh, a physician and psychiatrist.
“You can’t control your stages of sleep, but you can ensure you set aside enough time for sleep.” To get the most out of your time spent in bed, Singh suggests keeping your bedroom temperature around 65 degrees and making your room as dark as possible, either with blackout shades or an eye mask.
Clay recommends turning off electronics at least one hour before bed and consuming your last meal at least two hours before bedtime. “If you’re eating super close to bedtime, your body is still trying to digest that food,” he says.
“That’s going to inhibit your ability to fall asleep and stay asleep.” If you’re having trouble getting enough sleep at night, Singh says there’s nothing wrong with napping during the day. “Bank sleep when you can, get well rested when you can, and use naps to play catch up when you can’t, because we all have limitations.”
Just going through the motions in your lifting and not focusing on your form can easily result in lifting weights but not building muscle. “I think of building muscle like a loaded stretch,” says Rodonis. “I want to feel the elongation of the muscle and then I want to pull through the entire range to complete [the lift].”
According to one study, lifting with proper form through your entire range of motion is more effective at building strength than working in a smaller range of motion.
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Rodonis says focusing on mobility before adding resistance can help with form. If you have limited mobility, try adding an extended warmup to your workouts, targeting the areas you plan on working (like the hips and hamstrings for deadlifts), or use your off days from lifting to focus on stretching.
Improving your range of motion will help you get the most out of your lifts. Just like an experienced personal trainer, Tonal offers real-time form corrections as you work out in two ways:
More isn’t always better when it comes to lifting. “If you do too much, you’re going to get diminishing returns,” says Rodonis. “Your body is under too much stress, so it can’t recover properly and you won’t see growth.”
Think of your muscles like batteries—if you work legs on a Monday, your legs won’t be 100 percent fully charged by Tuesday, so you won’t be able to go as hard on another leg workout.
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Build up to at least 10 sets per muscle group weekly for hypertrophy. “You can spread that out,” says Rodonis. “If I’m hitting chest, I can do 6 sets of chest on Monday and another 6 sets on Thursday and I’ve hit my hypertrophy goal for chest.” He adds that it’s best to give each muscle group 48 hours of rest in between workout days and keep hitting your protein targets.
That doesn’t mean you can’t work out more often—just make sure you’re splitting up the days you’re working on specific body parts or pushing and pulling muscles. In Rodonis’s program, Divide and Conquer: Level Up, you’ll work out five days per week, but the muscle group splits ensure you won’t overload one area.
Building muscle is simply the process of the body reacting to increased stress. When you put stress on your muscles in the gym, they grow more significant to cope with the stress. The body is quick to adapt to any changes, including your workout. Once your body adjusts to your workout routine, it will not need to build more muscle or get stronger.
You have to change. You should change your workout when you stop getting more substantial or heavier or after about 8-10 weeks. Don't change if you’ve been doing my workout for 12 weeks and you’re still growing. Everyone is different. If you’re still growing, stick to it. We have plenty of great workouts on this site for all experience levels.
Not to be a buzzkill, but those beers you had with your friends over the weekend or the two glasses of wine you “need” to relax at the end of a long day aren’t doing your gains any good. “It’s empty calories, for one,” says Rodonis, “and two, it messes with your sleep and deteriorates your performance.”
Along with adding calories without any nutritious value, alcohol inhibits muscle protein synthesis (even if you are strength training) and spikes the stress hormone cortisol.
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Eliminating alcohol is your best bet for optimizing your gains. Cutting your intake is a good place to start if that's not practical.
Avoid drinking before bed as alcohol can affect your sleep, and don’t drink on an empty stomach. Eating before drinking will also slow the absorption of alcohol.
When you don’t drink enough water and stay well hydrated, you starve your muscles of a critical nutrient. Water is key in transporting nutrients that form protein and glycogen for muscle growth. It is also needed by nerves that control muscles. Staying well-hydrated should be your priority when fine-tuning your health.
How much water should you drink to gain muscle? A good guideline is 50 mL or 1.7 fl. oz. per kilogram of body weight consumed throughout the day. Or aim for 16 cups or a gallon of water.
Pro tip
A gallon might seem like a lot, but it should be doable if you drink 2 cups with each meal and snack. Try to get your water intake done earlier in the day so you’re not waking up to pee at night. Also, keep in mind that alcohol is dehydrating and suppresses the central nervous and immune systems.
Studies have shown that when you drink alcohol, it interferes with protein synthesis pathways as well. This is all bad news if your goal is muscle building. Skip the drinking sesh with friends and opt for something healthier. If you have a few drinks, pay attention to your nutrition to make up for the damage.
Stay away from supplements with proprietary blends. These blends make it impossible to know precisely what you are ingesting and eliminate your ability to pinpoint how effective specific ingredients are within your body. Most, if not all, supplements with proprietary blends underdose the actual ingredients you need to improve your performance to save money.
They sprinkle ingredients proven to increase muscle mass and strength, such as Beta-Alanine, Citrulline Malate, and Creatine. So, instead of getting stronger, optimizing recovery, or improving endurance, you’re just wasting your money since you’re not getting enough ingredients to make a difference.
The bottom line is, don't be most people. You should care about what’s in the supplements you’re taking because you wouldn’t be looking at taking nutritional supplements in the first place if you didn’t genuinely care about yourself and your well-being. Take the extra time and research to ensure your products are transparent, clinically dosed, and made with proven ingredients with no blends. It’s worth it.
Your post-workout shake/meal is arguably the day's most important meal. When you finish your workout, your muscles cry out for nutrients lost during training. Your protein levels are down, creatine levels are down, and glycogen is depleted. Most people think a simple whey protein shake is all that's needed after your workout.
This is not true. While a protein shake is better than nothing, it still falls short of a good post-workout shake. Here’s what would be better: a Shake containing 30-40g of whey protein powder, 5g of creatine, 60-70g of dextrose. 1 hour later: A well-rounded meal containing protein, complex carbs, and fats.
You see above I’ve pimped out your post workout shake by adding dextrose and creatine. Dextrose is the simplest of simple carbohydrates. Studies have shown that taking dextrose in these doses creates a vast insulin spike in the body. Insulin is a highly anabolic hormone and helps move nutrients quickly throughout the body.
This means that the creatine, protein, and BCAAs are quickly absorbed into muscle cells, where they are needed for muscle repair.
The final and probably biggest thing preventing you from seeing results is a lack of planning. If you want success, plan your meals and workouts. Building a house without a blueprint and the right materials is challenging. The same thing goes for your body. Plan your meals and workouts for one to two weeks to ensure you’re getting adequate nutrition, that your workouts are enough to stimulate growth, and that you’re allowing for rest.
Recording your workouts and nutrition is key. Find workouts that you enjoy. I enjoy a blend of powerlifting and strength training assistance work. Find something you like that’s consistent with your training goals. Being “motivated” to go to the gym isn’t enough because it thrives on your emotions and the ups and downs in your life. Instead, focus on a plan, be disciplined with consistent workouts, eat a healthy diet, and get after it.
Tracking your calories is essential to gaining muscle. You need to eat more calories than you burn to fuel muscle-building. This is called a caloric surplus. Tracking your calories can help you find that surplus and ensure you eat enough to promote muscle growth. But tracking calories isn't always easy. It's tedious, time-consuming, and often inaccurate.
That's where Cal AI comes in. Cal AI is a revolutionary app that makes calorie tracking easy, accurate, and fast. The app can analyze your meals in seconds using the latest artificial intelligence to provide accurate nutritional information. With Cal AI, you can spend less time worrying about tracking your calories and more time focusing on your workouts and building muscle.
Tracking your calories helps you achieve better muscle gain. First, it can help you find a caloric surplus to promote muscle growth. Next, calorie tracking can help you ensure you're eating enough to support your training. Tracking your calories can help you make better dietary decisions as you work to build muscle.
