Then you might have said the hundredth time that ‘ I WANT A BODY LIKE THAT”. So you hit your nearest gym. Or maybe a gym with all the lavish interiors, international standard gym equipment, or where your friend circle is in.. Then you meet some on duty trainer and tell him how you wanna look or how you want your abs and arms like…

He’ll give you some exercises to do. You’ll feel the pump and burns and get the vibes that you are doing it all right. Then after months of training your patience runs out as you look nowhere close to your idol. And finally, the worst thing happens. You open the World Wide Web! Youtube! Google! Yahoo Search Engine! Lets take a quick look on what all crap is there on the search engines… How to lose weight in 21 days. Bodybuilding tips from XYZ athlete/ Bodybuilder Monster Mass Building Workout 10 Best Muscle Building Exercises…and I can go on and on…. Still, your quest for building that physique is not achieved. Its because you don't know the science behind How to build muscle!

We’ll take a look... First, let's take a scenario... A house owner finds cracks on his wall. A smart house owner will refortify the whole wall so that more cracks won't occur. This house owner calls a contractor. The contractor chalks out the area of the wall to be fortified and gives the house owner a quotation of the list of raw materials ( cement, water, bricks, paint etc..) he will be needing and its costing. The house owner replies ” Nah, I don't want all these things, you go and fix my wall without them…”

Now any lay person can tell that this house owner has more cracks in his brain than the wall! But consider your MUSCLES as the damaged wall after an intense workout and PROTEINS as the raw materials and ask yourself whether you are following the same attitude as the house owner or not…. The scientific word for an increase in the size of each and individual muscle cell is HYPERTROPHY. Hypertrophy will only take place if the skeletal muscles are put under a challenging load via resistance training/weight training exercises. The intensity should be such that you should not be able to move those weights for more than 6-8 times. Once the load is placed and failure is achieved in the last few reps of each and every set, wear and tear of muscle fibers take place. This is one kind of harm to the body at microscopic levels and the body supercompensates the muscles by making them larger, stronger and bigger so that the same load won't affect the bigger muscle. To break the bigger muscle, we have to increase the load further. This is called Progressive Overload. Example: I did Bench Press with a pair of 40 lbs dumbbells a few months back and achieved 10 reps to failure. Over the period of time progressed to 60 lbs and achieved 10 reps to failure.

Having said all this, the physiological change in the muscle tissue to grow bigger will only occur if correct NUTRITION is provided. Our 3rd std science textbook says ”Proteins are the building blocks our bodies”. If the optimum amount of first-class proteins are not there in your diets, forget about packing more muscles. And finally, Rest & Recovery, the most neglected factor of hypertrophy. If your muscles are not given adequate rest, they simply won't grow. Doing biceps everyday ain’t gonna make em big! Understand that you just give a stimulus to your muscles while you workout. They won't grow on the gym floor. They will grow in the night when you are fast asleep with your gut full of proteins. An adequate amount of sleep is absolutely necessary for building that dream physique.

Therefore, Progressive Overload, Correct Nutrition and Rest are the 3 legs of the Tripod of HYPERTROPHY. If any one leg is compromised, the tripod will fall FACE FIRST and your goals for building the desired body lost!