Many people want to build their muscles so that they can have a stronger, healthier body. Where do you start? Below are tips designed to give you the knowledge you need to successfully engage in changing and improving your life through building muscle. Check them out and learn how to get the body you have always dreamed about.

Anyone trying to bulk up will need to consume more daily calories, overall. You will want to focus on eating enough for you to gain roughly a pound each week. Research ways to bump up your calories, and if after about two weeks you have not gained any weight, you may want to raise the number of calories you are eating again.

An often overlooked part of a good exercise program is warming up. When your muscles get stronger, they will experience a lot of additional stress that can make them prone to injury. Warming the muscles up prior to exerting them is a key factor in avoiding injury. Prior to lifting, exercise lightly for about 10 minutes, and follow it up with about 4 light warm-up sets.

Mix up your routine. Like anything else, if your routine becomes boring, you will be less likely to make time for it. Try varying the order of your routine from day to day, or focus on a different set of muscles each day. A new workout will help you stay motivated and enjoy exercising.

Limit your workouts to no more than 60 minutes. The body begins to produce more cortisol, a stress hormone, after sixty minutes of working out. Cortisol may block testosterone, which hurts all your efforts that you have been putting in towards achieving more muscle mass. Keeping your workouts under an hour should provide optimal results.

One problem that can plague a person trying to maximize their muscle-building results is individual muscle groups that grow more slowly than others. To help speed up the slow-growing groups, try a fill set. This is a brief set (25-30 reps) of exercises targeting the group in question, performed two or three days after the group was last worked hard.

Keep in mind that any muscle-building routine you undertake is only effective if it makes you stronger. In practice, this translates to being able to handle heavier weights over the course of time. Beginners should see improvements of five percent more weight every two workouts. If you feel you are not progressing enough, find out what is wrong with your routines. Perhaps your muscles have not recovered from your previous sessions yet.

In order to see results, it is imperative that you have dedication and commitment. If you have these things, you will be prepared to stick with your routine and give everything you have to reach your goal. If you remain dedicated to your routine and take advantage of the things you’ve learned here, you’ll soon start seeing the results you are striving for.