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How to Build Muscle—Full Guide
To build muscle, you need to do 3 things: challenge your muscles enough to stimulate growth, eat enough food to fuel that growth, and then recover.
We’ve helped over 10,000 people bulk up over the past 10 years, ranging from everyday people all the way up to college, professional, and Olympic athletes. This is what we live and breathe, all day, every day. It works every time, guaranteed.
But there’s nuance here. Some types of resistance training are better for stimulating muscle growth than others. Some types of food can help you make faster, leaner gains. And you don’t want to eat so much that you get fat.
So, how should you train, eat, and rest to build muscle?
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The Best Leg Extension Alternatives
You can do leg extensions at home with just your body weight. It’s a variation called the reverse Nordics (pictured above). They’re hard, though, so I recommend getting good at squatting first. Squats will bulk up your quads just as effectively as leg extensions, and you’ll build the strength you need for reverse Nordics.
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The Best Leg Press Alternatives
The leg press is great for your quads and glutes, and it makes a good calf-raise machine. Some at-home alternatives are even better, especially if you have dumbbells or a barbell. If you don’t, we’ll give you some bodyweight exercises, too.
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The Best Deadlift Alternatives
Conventional barbell deadlifts are one of the best compound exercises for gaining muscle and strength, but you don’t need them in your workout routine. There are plenty of great deadlift alternatives that use barbells, dumbbells, exercise machines, or your own body weight. Some of them are easier, safer, or gentler on bad backs. We’ll cover all of them.
If you want to explain your situation and get a personal recommendation, we’ll answer all the comments. We’re both certified coaches, and we have over a decade of experience working with clients ranging from desk workers to college, professional, and Olympic athletes.
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How Long Does it Take to Build Muscle?
It takes most men about a year to gain their first 20 pounds of muscle. Those first 20 pounds are enough to add 1–2 inches to your arms and bump you up a clothing size. That’s when most guys start getting compliments.
If you succeed at gaining 20 pounds in your first year, then you can gain another 10 pounds in your second year, 5 more in your third, and smaller amounts afterward.
If you fall behind schedule, your muscles will still be ready to grow. You won’t “waste” your newbie gains. When you start building muscle again, you’ll be able to build it quickly.
Let’s go over some research, examples, and exceptions. We can also debunk some common claims.
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How Much Can the Average Man Lift?
How much can the average man lift? We can look at a few studies, and I also surveyed 600 of our newsletter subscribers, asking them how much they could squat, bench press, deadlift, and overhead press.
Then, I broke down their answers based on how long they’d been lifting, seeing how long it takes people to reach a given level of strength and noting where they plateau forever.
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The Best Dumbbell Lat Exercises
Your lats pull your elbows in closer to your body, meaning that the best dumbbell lat exercises are some variation of dumbbell row. And dumbbell rows are fantastic. That’s all your lats need. Still, it’s better if you have at least a couple of exercises, especially if you can find exercises that challenge your lats at longer muscle lengths.
If you have a pull-up bar or some gymnastic rings, you can do chin-ups and pull-ups, working your lats just like a lat pulldown machine would. Otherwise, you can do dumbbell pullovers, sort of. They’re surprisingly controversial.
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How Much Muscle Can You Gain in a Year Naturally?
The common rule of thumb is that a natural male lifter can gain about 20 pounds of muscle in his first year, 10 pounds in his second, 5 in his third, and gradually less after that.
Women build muscle just as easily as men do. However, they’re usually smaller, so their average rate of muscle growth is proportionally slower. For example, if the average woman’s frame holds 2/3rds as much muscle as the average man’s, she might expect to gain 14 pounds of muscle in her first year, 7 in her second, and 3 in her third.
More controversially, you can expect to build muscle faster if you’re starting off skinny (full explanation). If you have an athletic background, you might start off more muscular, but future growth might be slower.
Perhaps most of all, your rate of muscle growth depends on how well you train and how much food you eat.
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What is a Recomp? Body Recomposition Explained
Recomp is short for body recomposition, which is when you build muscle and lose fat at the same time. It’s the holy grail of the fitness industry. It’s actually pretty common, though, especially among people who are out of shape or new to lifting weights.
Let’s go over some examples and some research, and explain how to do it.
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The Best Biceps Workout (Dumbbell, Barbell, or Full Gym)
I recommend training your biceps with 3–5 sets of vertical pulls (like chin-ups and lat pulldowns) followed by 2–5 sets of biceps curls (like preacher curls and lying biceps curls). That gives you 5–10 sets of biceps work per workout, and it trains both the short and long head. I recommend doing that twice per week, bringing you up to 10–20 sets per week.
In the rest of the article, we’ll go into more depth, talk about the best biceps exercises, and give you examples of good biceps workouts you can do with dumbbells, barbells, cables, or at a full gym.
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Are Chin-Ups/Pull-Ups Good for Your Biceps?
Chin-ups and pull-ups are heavy compound lifts, allowing you to heavily load your biceps while working them through a full range of motion. But they also train your back muscles, and some of those back muscles might fail before your biceps get worked hard enough. In that case, biceps curls might be the better biceps exercise.
Fortunately, a study comparing pull-downs with biceps curls found that they both stimulate about the same amount of biceps growth (study). Pull-downs work your biceps in the same way as chin-ups and pull-ups, so I suspect they’re similarly effective.
But there’s some nuance here. The short head of your biceps can work just fine during pulling exercises, but the long head can’t. The long head stabilizes the shoulder joint, so it can’t engage properly during pulling movements. It will grow faster if you do biceps curls.
Then, we need to consider that the distal portions of your biceps (closer to the elbow) grow faster when you challenge them at long muscle lengths (full explanation). Some types of biceps curls are better for that.
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