There’s a holy trinity of exercise:

• Better performance
• More muscle
• Less fat

These are the primary goals of most exercise programs. So why are we covering muscle gain and exercise performance together and separately from fat loss?

There’s a simple answer — because the latter (fat loss) is merely associated with exercise. More precisely, the issue with fat loss is one of fuel: how do you convince your body to burn its precious energy stores? Exercise does help, but not as much, in itself, as a hypocaloric diet (i.e., eating less than you burn).^[1]

To lose fat, exercise is a plus. To build muscle, exercise is a necessity. Any supplement that helps you exercise harder and longer can also help you build stronger muscles. And because stronger muscles allow you to exercise harder and longer, any supplement that promotes muscle growth can also benefit exercise performance.

Note that we said it can benefit exercise performance, but it not always does. The upper-body muscles of a wrestler would be a literal burden to a marathoner. The type of exercise that you undertake will influence the kind of muscle you grow, and the kind of muscle that you grow will make you fitter for some sports than for others.

Even similar sports can lead to very different musculatures. Running marathons is an aerobic activity and builds more “slow twitch” muscle fibers (more endurance than strength). Running sprints is an anaerobic activity and builds more “fast twitch” muscle fibers (more strength than endurance).

Still, the basics of muscle building stay the same, whichever type of exercise you choose to focus on.

1. Take it slow. Exercise hard enough to stimulate muscle growth, but not so hard as to injure yourself or impair recovery. Muscle growth takes time and patience; it can only happen so fast.

How fast (or how slow) depends on many factors, starting with genetics. In a 12-week trial, untrained women gained an average of 1.2 kg (2.6 lb) of muscle;^[2] in a 10-week trial, men with some lifting experience also gained an average 1.2 kg (4.4 lb) of muscle.^[3] However, in both trials, interpersonal variability was very high, so those numbers may not apply to you — don’t let them either constrain or daunt you.

2. Don’t give up. At some point, you’ll probably experience a plateau, either in strength or muscle mass. Few people — few lifters, in particular — deal with plateaus appropriately.

Because they are scared of fat gains, many people refuse to increase their caloric intake as their muscle mass increases.

Because they are scared of muscle loss, many lifters refuse to ever reduce their lifting volume or intensity (a deload period). Yet muscle and strength are largely maintained even when total lifting volume is reduced by two-thirds,^[4] and deloads increase the body’s sensitivity to anabolic signals.^[5] So, take advantage of those temporary breaks when you seem to hit a wall.

3. Don’t go crazy with cardio. Some cardio can increase blood flow to the muscles, thus speeding nutrient delivery and thus speeding recovery. Some cardio can reduce fat gains in people on a hypercaloric diet by keeping fat-burning pathways active. Too much cardio can hinder progress by burning up calories, which cuts into recovery and interferes with anabolic signaling pathways.^[8]

4. Eat enough, but not too much. Most people only need a couple of hundred kilocalories per day above maintenance to maximize muscle growth.^[9] If you eat too much above maintenance, you risk accumulating too much fat, which you’ll later struggle to shed. But if you eat below maintenance — if your primary goal is to lose fat — keep in mind that you won’t be able to exercise as hard or build as much muscle.

5. Eat meals, don’t graze. Meal frequency is a topic of much debate. For decades, “6 meals per day” has been a bodybuilding mantra, but now the intermittent-fasting crowd claims we can be awake for hours, even a whole day, without eating a bite — and be healthier for it!

The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.

Skeletal muscle protein synthesis changes with amino acid concentrations in the blood; our bodies become desensitized to the anabolic stimulus of protein after about 3 hours.^[11] Therefore, eating too frequently can impede muscle protein synthesis.

In contrast, you don’t want to deprive your muscles of the amino acids they need to grow. Because a moderate-sized meal might take up to 5 hours to digest, it seems prudent to eat something every 4–6 hours, which translates to 3–4 meals per day.

6. Eat enough protein. Protein is aggressively pushed both on athletes and on the general population, and with good reason — it’s essential for many biological functions, including muscle gain or preservation. In this guide, we’ll tell you how much you need and when.

7. Eat enough fat. Eating a diet that is too low in fat (less than 15% of your daily caloric intake) can reduce testosterone levels to the point of impairing muscle gains.^[14]

8. Time your carbs. You can gain strength and build muscle without much carbs, as shown in ketogenic diet studies involving gymnasts^[15] or college-aged weightlifters.^[16] But if you do eat carbs, we’ll tell you how much you need and when — there are ways to time your carbohydrate intake to maximize exercise performance and recovery.

As you can infer from those 8 points, the “food factor” is as crucial to muscle gain as the “exercise factor”. Before you turn to supplements to give you an edge, make sure that you’re eating a healthy, balanced diet that is rich in micronutrients. Vitamins and minerals support many of the functions that promote muscle gain, such as immune function, hormonal regulation, fuel use, and so on.

As you read this guide and learn about different supplements, remember that the most effective (e.g., protein, creatine, etc.) were originally food components.

The influence of resistance training on chronic disease risk

Adapted from Mcleod et al. Front Physiol. 2019.^[17]

Kamal Patel, Co-founder and Director
MBA, MPH, PhD(c) in Nutrition