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One of the great things about working out is that when we first start there are results right away. Your training hard, your feel great and your muscles are growing. Then all of a sudden you just stop growing. All this hard work week after week and your muscles are not getting any bigger. What’s the deal? I am going to discuss 7 reasons why your muscles may have stopped growing and how to get them to start growing again.
You are training too much. This is a mistake that a lot of people make. When you first start out your muscles will grow no matter how you workout. So they naturally think that they are doing things right. The thing is when you lift weight you are breaking your muscles down and if you don’t give them adequate time to heal they will not grow. You should only work out a muscle group once a week. Two at the very most.
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You are training too long. Spending 3 hours in the gym is actually bad for muscle growth. Most people fall victim to the mindset the longer and harder I work out the bigger and stronger I will get. When in fact after about 45 min of working out your cortisol levels will increase. This is a hormone that is know to break down muscle tissue. If you continue to workout with cortisol racing through your blood you are doing more harm than good. So while your workouts need to be intense they should not last any longer than an hour.
You are not getting enough sleep. When tying to build muscle the more sleep the better. This is the time that the most muscle growth takes place. If you can find time for more that 8 hours you will see your muscle growth increase. Never get less than 8 hours.
You are abusing alcohol. Alcohol is the enemy when it comes to building muscle. It is disruptive to all the functions in your body and will cause you to lose muscle mass.
You are not switching up your routine. If you don’t change up your routine every 6-8 weeks your muscle will adapt to the exercises that you are doing and they will no longer trigger the growth response.
You are not progressively overloading your muscles. This truly is the key to muscle growth and if you are not doing it you will not get bigger. There are 2 things you must do each and every week if you want to grow. You must either lift more weight than you did last week or do more reps. This is the only way trigger the growth response in you muscles.
You are not eating enough protein. Your body cannot store excess protein that you consume. In order to keep your protein level adequate for muscle growth you must consume complete proteins every 2 hours or so. Never go more than 4 hours without eating protein. If you do your body will start to break down your muscles to get the proteins it need for it to function.
If you are doing any one of these it can cause your muscle to stop growing. Even if you are training hard any one of these can cause you to hit a plateau.
