Why Muscle Building Might Stop: 7 Possible Reasons

Work­outs, loads… And the mus­cles don’t grow, even cry, even throw dumb­bells. What to do? Increase the load and train with­out sleep and rest for the sake of the appear­ance of beau­ti­ful, volu­mi­nous, relief mus­cles? But she still might nev­er show up…

Stop and exhale. And then read this Med­AboutMe arti­cle care­ful­ly. Per­haps you will find in your actions the most com­mon mis­takes due to which mus­cle build­ing does not go, or stops.

1. Incorrectly chosen muscle building technique

The fact is that there is no one pro­gram for all and can­not be. Every­one is dif­fer­ent, and for mus­cle growth, these indi­vid­ual char­ac­ter­is­tics must be tak­en into account when devel­op­ing a train­ing pro­gram and nutri­tion plan.

First you need to deter­mine your body type, and “dance” already from this.

For thin ecto­morphs, for exam­ple, for mus­cle growth, it is nec­es­sary to ensure a calo­rie sur­plus, includ­ing grad­u­al­ly increas­ing amounts of not only pro­teins, but also car­bo­hy­drates in the diet. Per­haps at first fat will also appear, but then you can get rid of it by dry­ing. But endo­morphs can build mus­cle even with a calo­rie deficit.

So the first step to cor­rect­ing mis­takes will be to cor­rect­ly deter­mine your body type, the sec­ond is to check how well the train­ing method­ol­o­gy and nutri­tion sys­tem cor­re­spond to it.

2. Wrong diet

Until now, many not very expe­ri­enced body­builders are sure that the main thing is train­ing, and you don’t have to think about nutri­tion too much. Sat — and good.

In fact, this is absolute­ly not true. Mus­cles need the right “build­ing mate­r­i­al” to grow, which the body gets from food. More­over, it is nec­es­sary to take care not only of the mus­cles, but also of the lig­a­men­tous appa­ra­tus, and of the bones to which all this is attached, cre­at­ing a sin­gle sys­tem.

Expert com­ment

Maria Sylvester Ter­ry, nutri­tion­ist

Mus­cles can­not grow “out of noth­ing”, the diet should not only be bal­anced, but also focused specif­i­cal­ly on pro­vid­ing the mus­cles with suf­fi­cient and nec­es­sary nutri­tion. And it’s not just pro­teins, as many mis­tak­en­ly believe.

Your menu should have enough car­bo­hy­drates, because it is from them that glyco­gen stores are cre­at­ed, which is con­sumed for ener­gy dur­ing train­ing. If these reserves are not enough, pro­teins will begin to be con­sumed, which could be used for mus­cle growth. In this case, train­ing, no mat­ter how intense they are, will not lead to an increase in mus­cle mass, because the body will spend all the resources on the process, and not on the result.​

3. Your workouts aren’t intense enough

Every­thing is sim­ple here: in order for the mus­cles to begin to grow, they must work with an over­load, and a sig­nif­i­cant one. It is in this case that the body turns on an emer­gency “com­ple­tion and mod­ern­iza­tion” pro­gram to match the pro­posed load. Nature is extreme­ly eco­nom­i­cal, and some­thing new will appear only if the avail­able resources are not enough. And this means that train­ing must occur with over­load. Yes, it’s hard, and no one likes it. But all body­build­ing is built on this. Do you want beau­ti­ful, sculpt­ed mus­cles? - you have to work hard, not spar­ing your­self.

Expert com­ment

Quian­na Camper, coach

If you work only with a com­fort­able weight, with mod­er­ate loads, you will undoubt­ed­ly receive ben­e­fits for your health. This way of doing things isn’t bad at all. But if your goal is not just to stretch your mus­cles and give them the nec­es­sary phys­i­o­log­i­cal load, but to increase their vol­ume and strength, then you will have to go beyond the usu­al com­fort and work to the lim­it of your capa­bil­i­ties. That’s when you exhaust the resource, mus­cle growth will begin. But only if you give them the oppor­tu­ni­ty, because mus­cles do not grow in the gym, but dur­ing the recov­ery peri­od.​

4. You don’t give your muscles time to recover and grow.

When mus­cles work, they don’t grow, they only expend ener­gy. Growth hap­pens when you rest, lit­er­al­ly, while you sleep. There­fore, if you want to build mus­cle, you will have to orga­nize your dai­ly rou­tine so that you sleep at least 8 hours. Although some­times the body may require a day’s rest. And if you have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to sleep at least an hour dur­ing the day, do not deny your body this.

Expert com­ment

Lane Good­win, body­builder

To achieve mus­cle growth, you need to give your mus­cles time to recov­er from exer­cise and grow. If you load them with intense work­outs every day, if you get lit­tle sleep, there will be no progress.​

5. Unsystematic training

There are many “pit­falls” that many begin­ners step on.

Do not try every day to per­form all pos­si­ble exer­cis­es with max­i­mum inten­si­ty. First­ly, it will take sev­er­al hours, and sec­ond­ly, it will deplete all mus­cle reserves. And if you man­age to get up the next day, then mak­ing the body repeat the feat will be prob­lem­at­ic, and cer­tain­ly point­less and even harm­ful. Because the goal is not to tor­ture your body, right?

There­fore, it is nec­es­sary to draw up an indi­vid­ual plan, accord­ing to which all mus­cle groups will be con­sis­tent­ly worked out in turn dur­ing the week. And every­one will have time to rest, recov­er and grow.

Expert com­ment

Lane Good­win, body­builder

Very often, begin­ners fail to achieve mus­cle growth just because they do not give them time to rest. It is impor­tant to do inter­vals of a day or two between inten­sive work­outs, it is impor­tant to work out dif­fer­ent mus­cle groups, oth­er­wise the body will form inhar­mo­nious­ly.

Expert com­ment

Rudy Mauer, sports nutri­tion­ist and train­er

Your class­es must be clear­ly planned. Unsys­tem­at­ic train­ing is the cause of so many fail­ures. Your plan should include every­thing from class sched­ules to dai­ly meals.

In this case, you can not only plan to increase the load, but also adjust every­thing depend­ing on the result.

It is impor­tant to con­sis­tent­ly change each of the para­me­ters: the num­ber of approach­es, weight, num­ber of rep­e­ti­tions. Exer­cis­es should also be changed from time to time, since the same move­ments cease to bring results over time — the body gets used to them and mus­cle growth no longer occurs. All this is eas­i­er to do with a clear plan with clear goals and fix­ing inter­me­di­ate results.​

6. Wrong exercise technique

Exer­cis­es per­formed incor­rect­ly will not give either mus­cle growth or even the desired inten­si­ty of exer­cise. Because the exe­cu­tion tech­nique allows you to give the max­i­mum load with min­i­mal risk. And it’s not just about the risk of drop­ping a heavy bar­bell on your­self: even squats per­formed incor­rect­ly, even the wrong plank, can lead to injury. And instead of pro­gres­sive move­ment towards the goal, you will have to deal with treat­ment and recov­ery.

7. Lack of water

If the body does not have enough mois­ture, it will not be able to effec­tive­ly absorb pro­teins from food, which means that there will be noth­ing to build new mus­cle fibers from.

You need to drink even­ly through­out the day, and best of all — just water. And cer­tain­ly — not alco­hol, in any form, even beer should be exclud­ed. The body spends a huge amount of ener­gy on the break­down and neu­tral­iza­tion of alco­hol, which could be used to build mus­cle mass.

Expert com­ment

Lane Good­win, body­builder

In addi­tion to every­thing that was said ear­li­er, I want to remind you that stress, espe­cial­ly con­stant stress, great­ly inter­feres with mus­cle growth. This should be remem­bered by those who work with max­i­mum load and all the stress­es attached to hard work, and grow mus­cles with the same inten­si­ty. The result may be dis­ap­point­ing.

I am not call­ing for aban­don­ing a career for the sake of body­build­ing, you just need to under­stand that not all things can be suc­cess­ful­ly com­bined. This is not a cause for dis­ap­point­ment, it is a fac­tor that should be tak­en into account. Per­haps you should work on your­self and learn to treat every­thing calm­ly, philo­soph­i­cal­ly, and deal with stress in this way. The main thing is your men­tal bal­ance. It is in this state that you will achieve max­i­mum results in body­build­ing, and in your career, too, prob­a­bly.

The arti­cle “Full rush: how to quick­ly deal with stress at work?” will help you learn use­ful tricks.