5 top tips for building muscle

With so much information across the Internet, social media and more it can feel confusing to know where to start or what to focus on when it comes to building muscle. At WeGLOW, we like to keep it simple, so you can focus on reaching your goals and feel your best doing it. Let’s break down our 5 top tips for building muscle:

Tip 1. Stay focused on form

Paying attention to your form is so key when it comes to building muscles. Take your time to understand the movement, what muscles it’s aimed at working and don’t feel pressured into lifting heavier than you feel comfortable with. Remember you can always add more weight as you go! With all exercises, focus on moving with control and be mindful of using momentum to move through an exercise, particularly when you start to increase the weights on different exercises.

When performing new exercises, where possible, we recommend standing sideways onto a mirror so you can check your form throughout, or even setting up your phone somewhere so you can film yourself doing the exercise and play it back to see where you might need to make adjustments.

Tip 2. Have a program in place & stick to it

It’s easy to come across all manner of weird & wonderful exercises across social media. Our advice if you want to build muscle? Follow a structured plan and stick to it! Our guides are made up of foundational movements that you can progressively work on, challenging your muscles to grow. By sticking to the same workouts for at least 2-4 weeks, you allow yourself to build confidence and improve your performance in movements, enabling you to lift heavier and gradually build muscle.

Tip 3. Consistency is king

Like anything, in order to improve at it, we need to be consistent. Building muscle won’t be an overnight process, it will take consistency over time. We recommend aiming to do at least 3-4 strength-based sessions a week in order to ensure you’re working your muscles with enough frequency to build & grow. Again, this is where following a structured guide is so useful; your workouts for each week are planned and mapped out for you, specifically with the goal of helping you to progress.

Tip 4. Progressive overload is key

You’ve probably heard the term ‘progressive overload’ before when it comes to building strength & muscle - to put it simply, progressive overload means lifting more over time. You can do this in a variety of ways: from lifting heavier for an exercise, to doing more reps of an exercise with the same weight, to reducing rest time between exercises.

Progressive overload is key when it comes to building muscle - in order for your muscles to grow & develop, you need to keep challenging your body. A simple way to apply this is, once you feel comfortable doing 12 reps of an exercise, whilst maintaining proper form, try to increase the weight very slightly and perform another set but aiming for 10 reps this time.

Tip 5. Make sure you’re eating in calorie surplus

Key to helping you build muscle, is giving your body the fuel it needs to perform, recover & grow. This is where nutrition comes in. In order to build muscle you generally need to be eating in a slight calorie surplus, this means eating more calories than you are burning. As women, a calorie surplus often isn’t very much - ideally about 200-250 kcals above your maintenance will be sufficient! Focus on a decent portion of protein with each of your meals (20-30g), carbohydrates to energize your workouts & help you refuel, some healthy fats to keep you feeling full and some variety in your fruit & vegetables.