What are you and your life lacking? Is this something that plagues you while you are in bed or looking into a mirror? Now is a great time to improve your outlook, and your body is a good place to start. If you want to quickly grow your muscles, continue reading.

When you are formulating a diet to aid in your muscle-building efforts, do not neglect carbohydrates. Carbs are absolutely critical to provide you the energy you require for working out, and if you are short on them, you will waste your protein on energy instead of building muscle. Having enough carbs will help your body function better and help get you through your workouts.

If you’re planning to engage in extreme cardiovascular exercise, leave your weight training on hold for a while. If your goal is a well-balanced fitness program, then cardio is essential. However, if you are trying to increase your muscle size, excess cardio could undo your hard work. Make sure to use strength training the most when building muscle.

Unless you include carbohydrates in your daily diet, you will not get the best results from your routine. Carbohydrates serve as the energy source the body needs to complete workouts. If your training is extensive, you may need to increase your daily consumption of carbs to 2-3 grams for every pound you weigh.

Compound exercises will help you develop your muscle mass. These exercises use multiple muscle groups in a single lift exercise. A great example of a compound move is a shoulder press from a squat position, which works the legs and shoulders simultaneously.

Don’t work out for longer than an hour. After more than an hour of intense exercise, your body will start producing unwanted levels of the stress hormone, cortisol. Cortisol will block the production of testosterone and will make your efforts wasted and not build muscle. You will optimize your efforts by keeping your workouts short and intense.

Protein Intake

You should not increase your protein intake the minute you begin working out. This can cause excess calories to accumulate. If those calories aren’t burned while working out, fat gain may result. Up your protein intake over time, 100-200 calories every three to four days, to ensure your body can keep up.

Staying hydrated is vital to muscle building. If you are not drinking enough water, then you can injure your muscles. Furthermore, hydration is vital to the process of building and keeping muscle mass, and therefore plays multiple roles.

Make sure you are eating enough calories in a day. There are online calculators available for determining how many calories you need to eat in order to gain a given amount of muscle in a certain time frame. Use a calculator, and then adjust your diet accordingly.

It’s important to limit working out to three or four times weekly. By limiting your weekly workouts, you give your muscles time to recover from the intense exercises. If you overwork your body you have a greater chance of getting an injury and then needing to take time off to let it heal.

Now that you have the knowledge to change your body, it’s up to you to focus on what you actually do like about yourself. You will love your new look, the improvement to your health and the self-esteem which comes with feeling great. What better time than now to implement positive changes to your life?