Building muscle is important to our overall health, especially as we age. Not only does having more muscle make us stronger and better at doing every day activities, it also improves our overall health and decreases our chances of chronic illness. 

Building muscle, whether for muscle strength or size, doesn’t just happen on its own. Three of the most important factors to pay attention to when trying to build muscle are resistance training, protein intake, and recovery. 

In order to build muscle strength and size, we must put our muscles to work. Resistance training is a type of exercise that requires your muscles to work against weights or force, causing microtears in the muscle fibers which allows them to rebuild bigger and stronger. 

Incorporating resistance training into our workouts at least two to three times per week is required to see changes in our muscles. 

There are many different ways you can approach resistance training, and each approach is tailored to give you different results. If you’re more interested in increasing the size of your muscles rather than your strength, aim for higher volume and lower intensity and weight. 

If you’d rather see increases in your strength than muscle size, aim for lower volume with higher weight and intensity in your workouts. 

Putting our muscles to work means they are going to need support in the rebuilding process. Protein is required for our muscles to heal and grow, and it’s very important we pay attention to and prioritize our protein intake. 

In order to get the best results, aim to add in more protein through lean sources that don’t contain high volumes of carbohydrates or fat, such as chicken breast and other lean meats. 

Keeping track of the macronutrients in your meals is not required, but is a great way to become aware of your current eating patterns and gives you the data necessary to make accurate adjustments to reach your goals. To best support muscle growth, aim for 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day. 

Lastly, we must take our recovery as seriously as our training. In order for our muscles to get the best results from all of the work they’re doing and the food we’re eating, we need to give them time to rest and rebuild. This time happens during our recovery. 

Prioritizing recovery could look like ensuring you get at least eight hours of sleep per night, staying hydrated through water intake, supporting your body with appropriate supplements, stretching or foam rolling, and keeping our stress levels managed. 

It’s easy to let recovery become something that happens when we have time for it. Unfortunately, we will not see anywhere near the best possible results if we do this. 

We must take our recovery process as seriously as all of the work we are putting in. Some practices to help prioritize recovery include adding your recovery activities to your calendar, having a reward system in place, or having an accountability partner with similar goals to you. 

Building muscle doesn’t have to be overly challenging or take over all of your free time. Know that while you can see results by resistance training five to six days a week, you also can see results through intentionally planned workouts two to three times per week. 

The options are endless and there is a way that will work well for you.