For any other weightlifting women out there, I’m sure you, like many others, want to build muscle most effectively.
However, there are a lot of factors that go into muscle building for women.
Things you do both inside and outside of the gym play a significant role in your muscle growth.
That’s why if we take these significant factors and turn them into habits, we can maximize muscle growth for ourselves.
As a result, if you want to maximize your weightlifting results, then these habits are non-negotiable for you.
In this post, I want to talk about the most effective muscle building habits for women to maximize muscle growth.
Why are there so many factors that go into muscle building for women?
As I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of factors that go into building muscle. And, your muscles need all of these factors to grow most successfully.
Without the right conditions, you make it a lot harder for yourself to grow significant muscle.
For example, having effective workouts play a huge role in how much muscle growth you stimulate in the gym.
Then, the more effective your workouts are, the bigger the toll your training is going to take on your muscles.
Meaning your body also needs the right conditions outside of the gym for proper recovery and growth.
As a result, your body needs exactly the right conditions both inside and outside of the gym in order to grow back bigger and stronger than before.
Is it possible to build muscle without the right conditions?
To put it simply, yes, it’s still possible to grow muscle even in the wrong conditions.
However, you put yourself at an extreme disadvantage and dramatically decrease the amount of gains you can get.
Even though it’s still possible to see some growth, you’ll only see a tiny fraction of the potential gains you could be getting from all of your time and effort.
Not only would you not see all of your potential gains, the gains you do see will also come much much slower.
Muscle building is already a pretty slow process, so it doesn’t make sense to slow it down even more.
And why would you want to be putting in time and effort knowing you’re not doing what you need to do to actually see results from it?
Without the right conditions for muscle growth, you likely won’t feel like you’re making any changes at all.
Your strength will remain close to the same, your muscles might grow but might not, and any results you do see will be much longer and drawn out.
Essentially, after everything you do in the gym, you’ll never even give yourself the chance to see the results you should be seeing.
Essential habits you need to know to gain muscle and transform your body
By practicing these habits and implementing them into your routine, you’ll help give your body the absolute best conditions for muscle growth.
Then, you’ll have the highest chance to see significant changes and progress as quickly as possible.
Train intensely to maximize your workouts for muscle growth
The first thing you need to do to see the most progress in the gym is start training intensely.
Training intensely means that you train until your muscles are significantly fatigued.
Training intensely is extremely important for muscle building because it stimulates maximum muscle growth.
One way to increase the intensity of your training is by training to failure.
The main goal of training to failure is to overcome any mental block you have, and push until your muscles truly give out.
Mental blocks keep us from pushing to failure
Often times, our bodies aren’t very comfortable being uncomfortable.
Because of this, we might end up stopping our workouts before we’ve worked our muscles enough.
For example, we might end a set just because we’ve hit a certain number of reps, or because our muscles started burning a little.
Notice how we stop when we get uncomfortable?
Additionally, we might even try and make our workouts easier without even knowing it.
Usually just because we make excuses to avoid being uncomfortable.
We’ll drop a set here, do a couple less reps there, and so on, making excuses like we’re tired or have a busy day, just because we don’t feel like pushing ourselves.
Training to failure keeps us pushing ourselves
However, by training intensely and to failure, you make sure that you’re truly challenging your muscles during every single workout and exercise.
This is what will allow you to get the most out of your workouts and see the most growth.
To help yourself train more intensely in the gym, consider increasing the weight, number of reps, or number of sets you do for each of your lifts.
Train with proper form for efficient muscle gains
Proper form is another element of your workouts that’s crucial to seeing maximum progress.
If you’re lifting heavy and training intensely, but you still have poor form, then your workouts are almost pointless.
Well, I won’t say pointless.
But you will have significantly reduced the amount of gains you could be getting and dramatically increased your risks for injury.
Because of this, to get the most out of every exercise in the gym, you want to be practice slow and controlled reps with proper form.
By slowing down every exercise and focusing on your time under tension, you give yourself time to perfect your form.
A combination of ideal form and time under tension will give you more out of your workouts than ego lifting and flying through the motions ever could.
Eat enough food to fuel your body as a weightlifting woman
The amount of food you eat plays a huge role in your muscle growth.
That’s why eating enough food is critical for you to build muscle, especially as a women.
In order for your body to grow back bigger than it was before, it needs some extra calories available.
When you think about it, this makes total sense.
How else would your body be able to build additional body mass if it didn’t have any extra resources?
How many calories you should eat to maximize muscle growth
As a result, if you want to build maximum muscle, you’ll want to be eating in a calorie surplus.
I get it though, eating in a calorie surplus can be intimidating.
However, even just a slight surplus is sufficient to maximize muscle growth while also minimizing any fat gain.
Additionally, it’s even possible to build muscle eating at your maintenance calories or in a slight calorie deficit.
With these, you wouldn’t gain as much muscle as you might in a surplus, but you can still gain muscle.
As well as potentially lose fat at the same time.
If you’re eating at maintenance or in a deficit and trying to build muscle, it’s critical for you to be much more focused on eating the right foods to fuel muscle growth.
Doing this helps your body gets all the proper nutrients it needs to grow.
Choose the correct diet to support efficient muscle growth
Not only is the amount of food you eat important for muscle growth, so is what foods you eat.
This is because your diet has a huge impact on your gym results.
In order to grow, your body needs a lot of extra nutrients and energy to put towards building additional muscle mass.
Because of this, one of the best habits to build muscle is to focus on eating a diet high in whole, nutrient dense foods.
Two nutrients specifically you’ll want to focus on incorporating into your diet are carbs and protein.
Protein is essential for muscle growth, so you’ll want to be eating a high protein diet in order to build maximum muscle.
Additionally, if you’re eating at maintenance or in a deficit, then your protein intake is one of the most critical factors for you to build this muscle.
Carbs are your body’s best source of energy and play a huge role in muscle growth.
They give you energy to have intense workouts as well as energy afterwards to recover correctly.
Incorporate enough rest into your strength training routine to build muscle effectively
Rest is extremely important for women who weight train, and rightfully so.
When you workout and lift weights, you put your muscles under a ton of stress. Especially if you’re training intensely.
Additionally, you make tons of tiny little tears in your muscles during each weightlifting workout.
However, rest is when you’re body has the time to repair these tears, and grow back even bigger than before.
Because of this, it’s very important that your body has the correct amount of time to fully rest and recover from all the strenuous activity you do.
That’s why incorporating a sufficient number of rest days into your weightlifting routine is a critical habit to maximizing muscle growth.
How a lack of rest decreases your potential for muscle growth
Without enough rest days in your routine, you risk overtraining, increasing your risk of injuries, and decreasing your potential gains.
Significantly decreasing your potential gains that is, since rest is when your body recovers and your muscles grow and repair.
Again, it doesn’t really make sense to cancel out all your effort in the gym just because you’re not resting enough.
Rest is supposed to be the easy part!
Don’t allow yourself to be putting in so much effort in the gym, staying consistent, training intensely, etc, etc.
Then miss out on gains because you’re not allowing your body enough rest.
Stay hydrated to facilitate maximum muscle growth
The final essential habit to maximize your muscle growth is to stay hydrated.
Water is key for your muscles to function and grow properly.
Proper hydration will increase your performance in the gym, speed up recovery, and help your muscles grow, as well as appear fuller.
Because proper hydration improves your gym performance, you’ll also then be able to push yourself harder and lift heavier.
Therefore stimulating more muscle growth during your workouts.
So not only does water help your muscles grow on it’s own, it also helps you have better workouts that will also increase muscle growth.
Because of this, staying hydrated is a pretty crucial, yet often overlooked, part of gaining muscle in the gym.
I know, it can be hard to turn away from all the coffees and sodas out there.
But by upping your water intake even by just a few cups, you’ll start to see significant improvements in your workouts and your results.
Takeaways
Building muscle in the gym isn’t complicated, but there are a lot of factors that go into maximizing muscle growth.
Doing things like training intensely and correctly, correcting your diet, staying hydrated, and so on, can help you see huge improvements in your training and your results.
By practicing these six muscle building habits daily, you can maximize your muscle growth inside and outside of the gym.
Then, you’ll be on your way to maximum progress and maximum results.
More of my posts on women’s weightlifting and fitness
The importance of a calorie deficit for fat loss
How to start a weightlifting routine
How to actually start feeling glute exercises in your glutes