How To Build Muscle Without Looking Bulky
Difficult, maybe. Impossible never.
Why Is Building Muscle Important?
If you’re not interested in building muscle for aesthetic purposes, then why does it even matter? Besides helping you look more buff in the mirror, building muscle helps you:
Develop strong bones by reducing the risk of osteoporosis.
Manage your weight. More muscle = higher metabolism. Estimates suggest that every pound of muscle burns roughly six calories per day at rest, which is about three times as many calories as a pound of fat, which burns roughly two calories per day. 7
Improves balance and mobility. As your muscle mass improves, your balance improves as well, which reduces your risk of injury. 8
Lowers blood sugar levels. Increasing muscle mass allows your body to store more glycogen in your muscles, which helps regulate your blood sugar levels. 8
Ok this last reason is aesthetic, but you can’t achieve that “toned” look without muscle. Although you can’t technically tone a muscle (either it grows or it doesn’t), being toned is generally referred to as having a low amount of body fat coupled with muscle definition.
How To Build Muscle
I’m going to get straight to the point. The most effective way to build muscle is through strength training (or resistance training), which means increasing muscle strength by making muscles work against a weight or force. 1 There are many ways you could adequately strength train – it is not just about lifting dumbbells or barbells. Strength training could also be accomplished by using your own body weight, weight machines, resistance bands, or plyometrics. No matter which equipment you use, one principle should remain supreme in your training: progressive overload, which essentially means making your workouts harder each time. The Principle of Progression states that increases in time, weight or intensity should be minimal, meaning they are kept within 10% or less each week to allow for a gradual adaptation while minimizing risk of injury.2 Strength training with progressive overload will ultimately lead to hypertrophy, which means increasing the size of your muscles.
Let’s break down why this works:
Your body will eventually adapt to your resistance training program. Let’s say you perform 3 sets of goblet squats with a ten-pound dumbbell for ten reps each set.* This might be challenging on week one but as the weeks progress, it becomes a lot easier. Without making this exercise more challenging or varying up your workouts, you will not be able to increase strength or muscle size.
Contradictory to everything I just wrote, although it is important to progressively overload and vary your workouts every about month **, it is equally important to recognize that you will not be able to increase the weight for every exercise every time you work out. This is particularly true for isolated movements, like bicep curls, that recruit a singular muscle.
Not to mention, progressive overload is not just about increasing weight. There are other ways this principle may be accomplished, which includes but is not limited to:
Increasing number of reps (repetitions) within reason. See section: How Many Sets and Reps Do I Need To Build Muscle?
Increasing number of sets within reason. See section: How Many Sets and Reps Do I Need To Build Muscle?
Increasing training frequency
*Sets – Sets are how many reps you do in a row between periods of rest. Reps - Reps, short for repetitions, are the action of one complete strength training exercise.
**When beginning an exercise program, there is an initial alarm phase of one to three weeks, where the body recognizes that a new stimulus is being applied.10 The reaction to this stimulus will be your body building strength and muscle mass. However, this becomes stagnate as the body adapts to the program. Switching up your workout routine allows for your body to be continuously challenged. It’s also important to note that you don’t need to change out every exercise for a new one – leaving major compound lifts, like squats, deadlifts, and barbell bench presses, in your program could be beneficial as you are trying to increase strength while improving form.
How Many Sets and Reps Do I Need To Build Muscle?
Foundations for muscle growth consist of around 3-6 sets of 6 to 12 repetitions per exercise with short rest intervals (60 seconds) and moderate intensity of effort with subsequent increases in training volume (12–28 sets/muscle/week)3 As stated above, hypertrophy suggested ranges are “foundations” or guidance rather than a rule.
See The Beginner’s Guide To Creating An Effective Strength Training Program here.
How Do I Know Which Weight Is Right for Me?
I routinely ask my clients “On a scale of 1-10, how hard was set?” Despite seeming simple, this is exactly how I tell if my clients are using the “right” weight for them, meaning the exercise set is not impossible but the last few reps were challenging. On the number scale, I would say what I’m describing is about a 7 or 8. And before you think I made this up arbitrarily, this scale has a name –the Rate of Perceived Exertion or RPE scale – which is used by many strength training coaches to ensure their trainees are placing the right amount of stress on their body, which forces clients to work harder and recruit as much muscle fiber as possible to complete the exercise.2
Anything Else I Need to Build Muscle?
Proper rest. This means at least 7-8 hours of quality sleep. You probably have already experienced the mental benefits of quality sleep – reducing stress, improving your mood, and increasing your focus. And when it comes to strength training and building muscle, there are physical benefits too. Muscles do not grow when you are lifting weights- they grow in recovery. Exercise creates microscopic tears in your muscle tissues, which are repaired during rest. 5 It is the rest/recovery phase that helps the tissue heal and grow, resulting in stronger and bigger muscles. 5
The Nutrition Side to Building Muscle Without Gaining Fat
You may have heard that you can only build muscle by eating more calories than you normally do, otherwise known as being in a calorie surplus. This makes sense because your body needs the extra energy to build and repair your muscles. You may have also heard that the way you gain weight is by being in a calorie surplus. This is also true as your body stores the additional energy as fat. Therefore, to build muscle without gaining fat, it is best to be in a slight calorie surplus, approximately around 10-15% higher than your maintenance.6 It is also equally important to focus on the mix of your macros:
Protein: Eating at least 0.8 – 1 grams of protein per pound of body weight each day is helpful in maximizing muscle growth. This will be around 10% to 35% of calories. Prioritizing protein not only allows you to stay fuller longer, thus lowering the risk of overeating, but it also helps build and repair muscle.
Carbs: Eating protein is often synonymous with building muscle. However, when it comes to building muscle, protein has an important partner in crime that comes in handy: carbohydrates. Besides fueling your body for exercise, carbs help prevent muscle loss and enhance muscle recovery.9 Consuming enough carbohydrates, around 45-60%, will provide the energy required to optimize physical performance for resistance training, allowing you to maximize muscle growth. 9
Fat: Eat around 20 to 30% of your calories from fat, which is enough to optimize health and add flavor to your meals.6
If you would like a quick way to figure out your maintenance calories so that you could plan your surplus, see this free calorie calculator here.
There are some exceptions in which you can be a calorie deficit to build muscle:
You are new to strength training entirely. See section: Newbie Gains
You may have done workout classes (e.g., Orange Theory) have not followed a with a legitimate and intelligently designed strength training program. See section: Newbie Gains
You have a large amount of fat to lose. It is suggested that if you’re a male and you’re over 15% body fat, reduce this to about 10% before bulking. 6 If you’re a female and over 25% body fat, diet down to ~20% before bulking. 6
Newbie Gains
Newbie gains refer to the rapid increase in muscle mass that occurs when people with little to no previous weightlifting experience (or those who are newer to compound exercises and progressive overload) start lifting weights.4 This happens in the initial stages of training because your muscles are more sensitive and responsive to the new stimulus of strength training. On average, it has been estimated that men can gain up to 20 to 25 pounds of muscle in their first year, and women can gain about half that. 4 Therefore, it is much easier to gain muscle and strength at the beginning of your fitness journey, even if your nutrition or workout plan isn’t ideal. What’s more is that newbie gains make it easier to build muscle and lose fat (as long as you’re in a calorie deficit) at the same time. See: How To Stay Full On Your Weight Loss Journey for some additional insight.
Unfortunately, newbie gains don’t last forever or really very long for that matter with progress slowing down in 6 months to a year. This is because as you spend more time in the gym, your body begins to adapt. One of the more significant adaptations is that muscle protein synthesis doesn’t remain elevated for as long after a workout, resulting in less muscle gain (it drops from two to three days, on average, to 12 to 24 hours).4
As you get farther and farther away from your newbie gains, it becomes harder to build muscle in a calorie deficit.
