1. Eating in a caloric surplus and tracking my protein. Yes, bulking can be uncomfortable… but it is necessary for your body to make the proper adaptations when you’re trying to gain muscle. Your body will use all this extra energy to be able to get strong and crush new PRs. Adequate protein will help aid in protein synthesis, which is a part of the recovery process to help you get bigger and stronger.
2.Not only focusing on progressive overload, but also pushing myself to go until muscular failure at the last set of an exercise. Once your body becomes accustomed to a particular weight, it will adapt to better deal with it. Therefore, to keep challenging the body and to continue to grow, stressors need to increase to create an overload for the muscles. This is where progressive overload comes in. You must continue to challenge yourself. The human body will not change unless it’s forced to. Taking the last set to form failure is also important as it helps to create mechanical tension, which is one of the drivers of growth.
3. Controlling the speed of my reps- not just passively moving through it. One of the key principles of weightlifting is the concept of tempo or time under tension. Time under tension is a principle that focuses on putting the muscle under stress for longer amounts of time, resulting in greater breakdown in the muscle fiber which will eventually lead to them being built up bigger and stronger. In every lift, focus on going through the movement in a slow and controlled manner.
4. Exercise selection- if you are trying to grow your legs, you have to be deliberate in your exercise selection. For quads, you want to pick exercises that maximize knee flexion to lengthen the quad such as heel elevated split squats or sissy squats. To shorten and lengthen the quad, the leg extension is always a go to. You want to stick with about two-three exercises per muscle group in a session. Doing an excessive amount of exercises per session is redundant and can cause additional fatigue.