Mindset for Muscle Building

Welcome back to BETTER, the email series that provides tools, strategies, and knowledge to help you progress toward a healthier and fitter future.

This week, we are providing strategies to help your muscle-building efforts.

Today's installment covers mindset strategies to enhance your muscle mass!

1. Prepare for the long haul. It takes 2,000 to 2,500 calories to build a pound of muscle under the best conditions. If you are looking to make an appreciable amount of muscle, it's going to take time, so adopt a long-term approach 

2. Discipline: You will have to check the boxes in the areas of exercise, nutrition, sleep, and stress relief consistently to create the right conditions for growth. Without a strong exercise stimulus, your muscles won't have a reason to grow. Without enough calories or protein, your body won't have the resources to build new muscle. Without enough quality sleep, we won't have enough time for the muscle-building processes to take place. Finally, without reducing our daily stress, our body will divert energy to survival rather than building. These concepts need to take high priorirty if we want to see gains in our muscle mass.

3. Progress is never linear. Be prepared for ups and downs. Just like anything else in life, you'll have some weeks where you feel great and make excellent progress. You'll also have some weeks where you feel like your progress has stalled or even regressed. This undulating experience is to be expected. Progress is never linear, so focus on the process, not the outcome of every workout.

4. Enjoy the Process. Muscle building is much more fun and sustainable if you have some fun with it and do not agonize over every workout or if you're not seeing progress fast enough. Many veteran coaches have said it takes a career to build significant muscle, especially if you don't have great genetics. Genetics do matter, by the way. Enjoy yourself and remember all the fantastic benefits that building muscle mass can bring to your life.

When embarking on a muscle-building journey, understand that it's a long game and that consistent work and attention will be needed in exercise, nutrition, sleep, and mindset. Follow all the information presented in the newsletters this week, and you'll be set up to optimize your muscle mass gains for years to come!