Everyone knows that bulking up and building strong muscles doesn’t happen overnight. But if after weeks of working hard in the weight room, you flex in the mirror and see only a little bump, you might get frustrated and lose motivation.
Earlier during your workout, you might have thought you were starting to see some muscle definition. “Called transient hypertrophy, or a muscle pump, this physiological phenomenon occurs when blood rushes to your muscles to supply them with workout-powering fuel and even jump-start the recovery process,” explains certified strength and conditioning specialist Samuel Simpson, co-owner and vice president of B-Fit Training Studio in Miami. He notes that this muscle pump often starts mid-workout and subsides within a few hours after leaving the gym. And as the muscle pump deflates, it’s easy to lose determination.
There’s good news, though: These temporary muscle pumps are critical to improving muscle hypertrophy, or muscle growth, according to 2014 research in the Strength and Conditioning Journal. So you can think of your weight-room pump as a preview of the muscle results that are to come. Speaking of which, here’s an expert-endorsed timeline to reach your muscle-building goals.
[See: The 10 Best Exercise You Can Do for the Rest of Your Life.]
Muscle Results in Days, Weeks and Months
The process of building muscle begins the second that you challenge your muscles to do something challenging and unfamiliar, whether that’s picking up a dumbbell, performing a pushup or sprinting on a treadmill. “These actions all stress and, thus, create microscopic damage within your body’s muscle cells, also called muscle fibers,” Simpson says.
Each of these cells are tiny — about the size of a human hair — according to the fourth edition of “Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning,” published in 2016.
“It’s as your body repairs the cells, taking in and laying down new structural and contractile proteins, that each muscle cell becomes bigger than it was before,” explains certified strength and conditioning specialist and registered dietitian Albert Matheny, co-founder of SoHo Strength Lab in New York City and adviser to ProMix Nutrition.
Depending on the amount of microscopic muscle damage from any given workout, your muscle cells can take anywhere from one to several days to grow back bigger and stronger than before, which is why most experts don’t recommend working the same muscle group on back-to-back days, he says.
However, in the beginning weeks of starting a new workout routine, the majority of strength gains aren’t actually a result of this muscle protein synthesis and hypertrophy. Rather, they are a result of the body’s neurological system learning when and how to fire the needed muscle cells, explains Abbie E. Smith-Ryan, associate professor of exercise physiology at the department of exercise and sport science at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. Think of it this way: The first time you perform a new exercise, say a bench press, you likely feel pretty shaky. Your arms aren’t totally in sync and the weights may sway a bit from side to side. But by the time you perform your second or third set of that same exercise, the practice gets a little smoother. That’s your neurological system at work.
For the average person starting a new strength training routine, neurological adaptations will be responsible for the majority of strength benefits for roughly the first four to six weeks of that routine. “These improvements are generally pretty remarkable or large because the neuromuscular system is rapidly adapting,” Smith-Ryan says.
However, muscle-building adaptations are still occurring, and as the weeks go on, they account for more and more progress, Simpson says, noting that the longer and more consistently you have been strength training, the more of your initial strength gains will come from actual muscle growth.
Most beginners can expect to see noticeable muscle growth within eight weeks of starting a new strength training routine, and more experienced lifters within three to four weeks, Smith-Ryan says. Any muscle growth will be more noticeable in areas like the arms that tend to carry less fat, which can block the muscles from view, Matheny says.
Over the course of weeks, months and years, this process ebbs and flows, but with the right exercise and nutrition plan, most people can gain anywhere from one to two pounds of lean muscle per month, Simpson says.
Competitive and professional bodybuilders, however, can often build up to two to three pounds of muscle per month during dedicated bulking periods. “But they are living and breathing muscle growth. They aren’t just in and out of the gym like most people,” Simpson says, noting that under extreme conditions, hyperplasia, or the growth in the number of muscle cells in a given muscle tissue, may actually occur, further adding to muscle growth results.
Still, it’s important to realize that for everyone, at a certain point, building muscle becomes more difficult. “We all have an endpoint to our genetic potential,” Matheny says. “Someone who is starting strength training for the first time can build muscle with a lower percentage of their 1RM [the maximum amount of weight they can lift one time] than a more tenured athlete. The longer you train and the closer you to get to your natural potential, the more specific you need to get with your training and nutrition to keep making progress. And that week-by-week progress will likely be much smaller than it once was.”
Fortunately for impatient muscle builders, no matter how long you have been training, you can gain muscle faster with these four expert- and research-backed strategies.
1. Train each muscle group twice per week. To maximize muscle growth, plan to train every major muscle group at least twice per week. According to a 2016 Sports Medicine review, even if you don’t work that muscle any harder or longer, by simply dividing your chest, leg or back workout into two days, you’ll spur more muscle growth. While the jury is still out on whether training each muscle group three days per week is better than two at spurring hypertrophy, it is likely better suited toward experienced lifters than beginners, Matheny says.
To work a given muscle group two to three times per week without working the same muscle groups for two consecutive days, try splitting your weekly routine based on muscle groups or body parts.
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2. Eat a gram of protein per your ideal body weight. The protein you eat becomes the protein in your muscles, and is vital to muscle recovery and growth. As an easy rule of thumb, Matheny recommends muscle builders eat one gram of protein of their ideal body weight per day, and space that protein intake throughout the day.
For example, a 2015 review published in the peer-reviewed journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism suggests that, for maximal muscle growth, people consume 25 to 35 grams of protein at breakfast, lunch and dinner. You’ll find that amount of protein in a chicken breast, a cup of Greek yogurt with slivered almonds or about a three-quarter block of tofu.
3. Lift three to six sets with six to 12 reps. “Your training stimulus has the largest impact on your degree of muscle growth,” Smith-Ryan explains. “It must be large enough with enough volume.” Training volume denotes the amount of weight lifted multiplied by the number of reps and sets for which you lift that weight.
Sound complicated? Fortunately, there’s an easy rule of thumb for increasing your training volume: For each exercise, perform three to six sets of six to 12 reps, resting for 30 to 90 seconds between each set, she says. The weight used should be enough that you can get out your last reps with proper form but wouldn’t be able to perform any additional reps.
She also notes performing three or more exercises per muscle group will increase that muscle group’s training volume and size gains.
4. Focus on a full range of motion. Moving as far as anatomically possible — for example, in a squat, lowering as low as you can without breaking form — is critical to maximize muscle adaptation, rather than partials or cutting the range of motion short, according to a 2017 study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. And while partials do have their time and place, and can be part of a muscle-building plan, the majority of your exercises should still prioritize a full range of motion, Matheny says.
[See: 5 Strength Machines You Should Start Using ASAP.]
To lift this way, you might need to reduce the amount of weight you use during some or all exercises. That’s OK, he says, and for hypertrophy it’s more important to lift and lower the weight you use slowly, under control and through a full range of motion than it is to lift a certain number of pounds.
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