If you want to learn the fastest way to gain muscle, you need to learn how to methodically increase your overall training volume without overdoing it. The idea is to fatigue the muscles with a high volume of sets and reps, but not so much that your body can’t recover. There is a fine line between just enough training and overtraining. Over training does you no good because your body will still be repairing yourself while you work it hard again. It can be harder than most people think to push your body the right amount, most people will say your body will tell you when you have gone too far. When you train to build muscle you are forcing your body to change when it just wants to stay at an even, comfortable level. Despite what many people tell you, you can expect to feel slightly fatigued when adding muscle. What are the signals you need to learn that will tell you that you’re overdoing it?

Pushing The Limit

The fastest way to gain muscle means pushing your body hard. At the same time you need to be careful not to over-train your body at each session or it will cause your efforts to break down. The goal then is to train on the edge. Here are some tips to help you avoid over-training and stay “on the edge”:

The Right Amount Of Cumulative Fatigue

Lifting to failure is a guaranteed way to eventually reach an overtrained state. This works extremely well for steroid users, but is a recipe for disaster for a natural athlete. Your body will burnout much quicker and your muscles will not be as strong as they could be. Lifting to failure means that you have failed on the lift. It sends negative feedback to your nervous system that you aren’t strong enough to lift that weight. These negative messages will ultimately affect the signals that are given to the target muscle that you are training, making it weaker. Rule of thumb: never lift to failure and never do forced reps!

Spend 2-3 Months Aiming for Fatigue Alternated With 2-3 Months of Gaining Strength

Muscles that have become fatigued get broken down a little bit, however during your recovery period they will increase in size eventually. But if your plan involves just training to fatigue over and over again you will never effectively gain muscle strength. The good thing about gaining strength is that it builds actual muscle tissue. This is called myofibrillar hypertrophy. Although strength training isn’t as good as building large muscles, it increases muscle density and makes for better looking firm muscles. So the fastest way to gain muscle is to alternate between fatigue training to make them bigger and strength training to make them stronger.

* Don’t increase your calories - use a Creatine supplement instead.

Since the goal is to gain fat free mass, it doesn’t make sense to increase your calories when training to gain muscle. A better approach is to eat at a maintenance level and then you will add muscle without body fat. To insure that you add muscle mass simply supplement with creatine. Guaranteed - this method is the fastest way to add muscle and avoid gaining body fat.