If you’re the ambitious guy who respects the gut feeling and dreams of building those stronger muscles, getting in shape and having an attractive body; you’ve landed on the right page. Building muscles start with the desire to get a gym membership, the willingness to get out of the comfort zone and the intention to eat right and healthy. Below is a cheat-sheet to building the strong muscles you’ve always wanted. Read on then purpose to put it into practice and your future-self will thank you for the efforts.
- Know what you want
What this means is that you should have a goal of doing what you want to do. If you want to build strong muscles, maybe you’re not happy with your current energy levels and you hope that lifting weights will change this entirely. Maybe you feel you have the energy, but you’re more into the shredded body type. By specifying your goals and being deliberate about them, you’ll know what you have to do, so as to get what you want.
- Formulate the perfect workout routine
More often, the perfect workout routine that will work for you, depends on your goals, taste, and preferences. For beginners, it’s advisable to spend the first week or two activating the various muscle groups using free weight exercises. This way, you get used to the proper ways of doing various exercises without risking injuries. To come up with the best routine, your instructor should first introduce you to the different types of workouts and their benefits before picking the most effective ones. 
- Eat right
The one misconception that many people have about building muscles is that you should hit the gym every day, not bothering about the eating habits. The truth is, working out three to four times a week and eating up to four meals a day are all you need. When it comes to eating right, nutrition is still important, but you want to focus on those foods that build muscles and deliver results in the gym. Healthy carbs and protein should be a priority. To ensure that your body is working just right, consider a balanced diet throughout the day. Eating up to 0.8 grams of lean protein per pound of bodyweight is a recommended intake for serious people looking forward to building strong muscles.
- Invest in compound workouts
Not all the workouts you’ll see people doing in the gym is worth your time. There are, however, those compound workouts that works nearly all the muscle groups in the body. These include; barbell squats, deadlifts, barbell/ dumbbell bent over rows, and wide grip pull ups. Such exercises help build more muscles, improves posture and boosts overall body strength. Incorporating compound exercises into your workout routine is the best way to maximize your limited energy during a gym session.
- Know when to Supplement
Whether to go all natural or to boost testosterone levels for better results depends, entirely on each individual. What is important, however, is to make sure your health and well-being are kept a priority so you don’t compromise it in the process of gaining those killer muscles. According to Midsizeinsider, building muscles isn’t as complicated as it sounds. It takes a few steps to identify your ideal body shape and size before setting a goal of achieving it. Many times, supplementing at the course of the body transformation process proves very necessary. This is because the body will be in need of different nutrients, high calories and a balance of the essential muscle building elements. 
Certain supplements are naturally manufactured in the body, only that they are needed in high quantities and ingesting them is the only way to satisfy the high demand. When starting over with bodybuilding, for example, you’ll definitely need to increase your muscle-energy capabilities with pure supplements such as Creatine and Protein powder. That said, before picking any supplement, make it your responsibility to first consult your fitness/ bodybuilding instructor or doctor for better usage and results.
- Track your progress
The best way to track your progress in the gym is to keep an up-to-date record of body weight, performance (number of successful sets and reps) and even pictures. This will enable you to gauge and sort out those exercises that guaranteed better results. Once you know what works and what doesn’t, you’ll be in a better form to drop those mediocre exercises and adopt the promising ones. 7. Shift your workout routines
Just because your instructor gave a list of exercises and commanded a strict adherence, doesn’t necessarily mean you should live by them. Sometimes, what works for someone doesn’t work well for you. So, if you don’t see results or don’t feel comfortable doing certain exercises, you should feel free to seek the other replacement exercises- provided they target the same parts of the body. By traversing comfortably between the various workouts, your body gets used to the various forms of stress and tension, hence better muscle growth.
- Find the perfect mentor
This sounds like another by-the-way advice, but it’s not. It’s as crucial as the know-what-you-want decision you need to make when hitting the gym for the first time. The reason as to why finding the perfect mentor when trying to build your dream body is because the body-building industry, is nowadays, very misleading. If you have several heroes you’re looking up to, it’s easier to get confused or even give up due to the contradicting stories, experiences and biased advice. You don’t want to source your workout motivation from a pro bodybuilder who advocates for steroid use when you aren’t in for the same. This will not only kill your motivation but also set unrealistic targets you won’t achieve while building your muscles naturally.
Building muscles can be a dream come true for people who are really passionate about transforming their bodies. By loving the process, you get to enjoy the slow-but-sure progress of shedding off those extra fats while building lean, strong muscles. For most people, the decision on whether to go for the full body or split workout routines remain a job of the gym instructor. While this shouldn’t be the case, always pick what is flexible with your unique schedule.
