Here are the two most important things you need to do to grow, which I have found out after years of trial-and-error:
1. If you want big muscles, you need to increase your strength - Whatever you do in the gym, try to increase your strength without sacrificing form. This is the single most important thing for growth. Froget the number of reps or the exercises: focus on increasing your strength no matter what. 10 reps with 300 lbs on the deadlift is not as good as a single rep with 400 lbs! The explanation is very simple: the basic contractile unit of the muscle, the sarcomere, does not increase in strength per volume, so the only way for a muscle to become stronger is for it to become bigger! There is no other way. It is simple deductive logic. Now, a lot of the strength you gain in an exercise is due to superior neuromuscular efficiency. The more you do an exercise, the better you become at it. But there are limits. Consider a powerlifter. A powerlifter gains in strength by becoming better over the years at performring the exercises and because they have short arms. A lot of the strength gains are due to better technique at performing the exercise. But no matter how good he is at performing the bench press, he will need to have huge pecs, triceps and front delts to bench 600+ lbs! In fact, bench pressers who bench 600+ for a single rep have bigger pecs than bodybuilders who bench 300 lbs for 3 sets of 10 reps! Weights, weights, weight! This is all that matters! Forget about the number of reps and sets. Just focus on becoming stronger and your muscles will become bigger. Remeber that the only thing that matter to increase the cross-sectional area of muscles is the amount of weight you can move with that muscle and not the amount of sets and reps you can do with the weight. Also, the body has a very limited recovery ability. Forget barbell curls and lateral raises. You will get much bigger delsts from front military presses than from lateral raises while at the same time stimulating your traps, chest and even back muscle. Do only the following exercises: deadlift, squat, bench, military presses and barbell row. You cannot recover without drugs from more than a few exercises. If you have REALLY shitty genetics for size, then do nothing but deadlifts and squats. Believe it or not, increasing your strength with good form in the dealift and squat will put 20 lbs of lean muscle on your frame in 6 months. Strength, strength! Froget everything else. Sacrfice reps for strength and do whatever you can to increase your strength. The key is to increase strength with good form. If you increase your strength withy shitty form, it just measn you are using momentum or have learned how to use ancilliary muscles to help your target muscles.
2. When you feel hunger pains, eat! - This is the single most importan thing for growth and the reason why most guys can't gain weight. The top priority of the body is not to build muslce, but to feed sugar to the brain. Your body will break down(catabolize) your muscle tissue to provide sugar for the brain before it even starts using the glycogen stores in the liver. Many guys don't grwo because they are obssed with eating clean or only eating protein-rich foods. What matters is not protein, but calories. As long as your body is getting the calories it needs to feed sugar to your brain, the protein in your muscles will be spared. It doesen't matter whether the calories come from burgers or turkey breast with brown rice. The bottom line is getting sugar from food to feed your brains o your body won't chew up your muscles tvia gluconeogenesis to prove the sugar your brain needs. It also makes no difference whether you eat 3 big meals a day or 6 small meals, and here is why: 3as huge meal takes longer to digest, so will provide sugar for your body for a longer span of time, meaning that you won't go catabolic for longer. A small meal takes 2-4 hours to process adn then your blood sugar starts to plummet; a huge meal will take 8 hours to process meaning that you won't ned to feed your body for it to get the glucose it needs withyout chewing up your muscles for another 8 hours. The downside of big meals is the drowsiness that follows it, but for growth 3 big meals or 6 small meals makes no difference. I prefer small meals. If you wordk and can't prepare several small meals a day, here is what you do: eat bananas. They are perfect for growth. Eat 3 solid mleala a day and get the other 3 from bananas. Each banana hasa 70 calories so if you eat half a dozen, that adds up to 420 calories a day. Three times a day, that is 1,260 calories to keep your body from chewing your muscles for the glucose the brain needs. So when should you eat? No, not every three hours like the muscle magazines recommend, but wehn you feel hunger pains. When your stom,ach starts curling, you have less than an hour to feed your body comething before it starts chewing up your muscles. Feed it whatever you want; makes no difference. Of course, if you do it always with ice cream or burgers, you will get fat, but every once in a while it makes no difference and it will spare your muscles. Take apples and banaas with you everywhere. They are the perfect meal replacement, made by Nature without any of the junk tha tman-made MRS have, like hydrogenated fats, artificial colors and other trash. Bananas even have an almost complete protein, even thoughh, like I said, it mkes no difference for growth if your calories come from proteins or carbs as long as you eat enlgh protein to maintain a positive nitrogen balance. As long as you eat 2 or 3 meals that are rich in protein a day, you will grow just fine by eating nothing but bananas and apples for your other meals. It makes no difference to spare the protein in your musles.
Let's call these the Suckmymuscle principles. Down-to-earth and a lotmore empirical and logical than the retarded Adonis principles.
SUCKMYMUSCLE
