When it comes to building muscle, people try to overcomplicate things. Yes, there's a science behind gaining muscle mass, but it isn't as difficult as you think. The more advanced you get, the more you need to do to see progress.
For beginners and relatively new lifters, you only need to worry about three crucial factors:
Here's a very brief and simple description of muscle building:
- Your muscles are worked
- Muscle fibers break down
- The muscle repairs itself and becomes stronger
That's basically what happens whenever you lift weights. So where does progressive overload fit in? Well, it refers to the way you challenge your muscles. A muscle will only get bigger and stronger when it is constantly put under strong demands. Simply put, you need to challenge your muscles to get them to grow back bigger and stronger.
The easiest example is increasing the weights you lift. If you're squatting 10kg for 12 reps - and you find it a breeze, you have to up the weight. Increase it until the 11th and 12th reps are a massive struggle. Then, when that weight becomes easy, you increase it again. This is the best starting point for progressive overload and it's fundamental for muscle growth. The best summary for it is this: push yourself harder in every workout!
Similarly, you need to eat enough calories to build muscle. If you're eating far fewer than you burn, you're going to burn too many calories and lose too much weight - some of which will come from muscle mass. There's a great article on this over at trifectanutrition.com that's worth reading. It goes into more detail than you get over here, and it's written by nutrition experts.
The final factor is your recovery time. If you go back to the first point on how muscle grows, you'll need to pay attention to the regrowth phase. The cells in your muscles work hard to repair themselves and come back stronger. If you don't have a good recovery routine, this won't happen very quickly. You'll know if this is the case as you'll be sore for days!
These three factors are all you need to worry about if you're just getting into lifting. It's not rocket science: challenge your muscles, eat well, and recover properly!