7 Reasons Your Muscles Stop Growing
One of the great things about
working out is that when we first start there are results right away.
Your training hard, your feel great and your muscles are growing. Then
all of a sudden you just stop growing. All this hard work week after
week and your muscles are not getting any bigger. What's the deal? I am
going to discuss 7 reasons why your muscles may have stopped growing and
how to get them to start growing again.
You are training too much.
This is a mistake that a lot of people make. When you first start out
your muscles will grow no matter how you workout. So they naturally
think that they are doing things right. The thing is when you lift
weight you are breaking your muscles down and if you don't give them
adequate time to heal they will not grow. You should only work out a
muscle group once a week. Two at the very most.
You are training too long.
Spending 3 hours in the gym is actually bad for muscle growth. Most
people fall victim to the mindset the longer and harder I work out the
bigger and stronger I will get. When in fact after about 45 min of
working out your cortisol levels will increase. This is a hormone that
is know to break down muscle tissue. If you continue to workout with
cortisol racing through your blood you are doing more harm than good. So
while your workouts need to be intense they should not last any longer
than an hour.
You are not getting enough sleep.
When tying to build muscle the more sleep the better. This is the time
that the most muscle growth takes place. If you can find time for more
that 8 hours you will see your muscle growth increase. Never get less
than 8 hours.
You are abusing alcohol.
Alcohol is the enemy when it comes to building muscle. It is disruptive
to all the functions in your body and will cause you to lose muscle
mass.
You are not switching up your routine.
If you don't change up your routine every 6-8 weeks your muscle will
adapt to the exercises that you are doing and they will no longer
trigger the growth response.
You are not progressively overloading your muscles.
This truly is the key to muscle growth and if you are not doing it you
will not get bigger. There are 2 things you must do each and every week
if you want to grow. You must either lift more weight than you did last
week or do more reps. This is the only way trigger the growth response
in you muscles.
You are not eating enough protein.
Your body cannot store excess protein that you consume. In order to
keep your protein level adequate for muscle growth you must consume
complete proteins every 2 hours or so. Never go more than 4 hours
without eating protein. If you do your body will start to break down
your muscles to get the proteins it need for it to function.
If you are doing any one of these
it can cause your muscle to stop growing. Even if you are training hard
any one of these can cause you to hit a plateau.
