4 Early Signs You’re Not Building Muscle (You Need To Know This!)

Hey everyone! Which of these 4 signs do you think is the most common? And what other mistakes do you believe keep people from building muscle?

I train to failure and push myself as hard as possible but I usually struggle to get extra reps on exercises, especially for back.

thanks!

As a well educated personal trainer, ive actually hit failure back to back without losing any reps after a 1.5 minute sets, utilizing proper form and increasing intensity. This is 6 years through consistent training and Alot of progress. This has occured alot throughout the years. I think if youre at your bodies limits physically, its far more easy to achieve sets like those.

Most of the video was good and then he got to talking about how your feelings are going to make your arms bigger. Then I looked at his arms.

First point is "No pain no gains", redundant to say to people lifting weights.
Second point is defied in the profile picture of the channel. Literally a self aggrandizing fitness picture rather than a logo.
Third point is your feewings have an impact on the mechanical process of tearing muscle and providing your body with the nutrients it needs to repair the damage (it doesn't).

Fourth point is related to nutrition and has some weight, but people in prison gain muscle mass with poor diets and it's not as required as some athlete on steroids competing to lift the heaviest weight in the world. You can make steady gains if you're just remotely self disciplined. Half of the point was; "If you stop lifting weights and just cut nonstop you wont gain muscle" and that was a bit of a "no shit" moment as well. I'm 90kg at 10% body fat and it's not even nearly impossible for me to calculate my calories to stay deficit while also meeting my protein goals. Cycling on and off being deficit is useless unless you're a professional bodybuilders. Just meet your protein goals while staying defecit. You'll hit 100kg (220lbs) of pure muscle before you need to cycle on and off if you rub 3 of your brain cells together and eat more lean protein.

What if you're training with higher weight and lower reps with near failure being at the end of the last set?

Also, the best advice I can give anyone here to study some Stuart McRobert, or Mike Mentzer. Learn how to train properly drug-free. Conventional bodybuilding routines are next to useless for building drug-free muscle in genetically average men.

Number one would be simple: you have to train to failure, or damn near it. If you don’t train with enough intensity to trigger the growth mechanism, then nothing else matters. What difference does it make how much protein you eat, or how much sleep you get or whatever, if you’re not triggering the growth mechanism?

Second of all, you must get stronger! The correlation between size and strength is self evident. Your goal as a weightlifter is poundage progression! You must get stronger, it really is just that simple. Focus on poundage progression over the years.

just look at the mirror

I don't even get newbie gains. I seem to lose strength. I went with a trainer, ate the right food but I found myself getting weaker. kinda concerned I might not be well seen as i barely have any muscle mass

This def applies to me, I wasn’t consuming enough protein and wasn’t doing progressive overload of any kind. I didn’t do enough free weights either and my body size was more or less the same I just lost body fat eating 1 meal a day. I have def corrected these errors after this past summer and I’m slowly starting to see different results

consistancy, food and sleep are way more important than full range of motion as long as you do the exercise properly and don't do baby reps
On incline bench, I don't go bar to chest anymore, not that I can't but can't do enough rep and my muscle don't get exhausted by strengh but by endurence. I still do the loading phase with bar to chest but once it's loaded, I stop the bar once my elbow are bellow my nipples. Same for squats, I do deep squats during loading but once loaded I go with normal squats.
I guess it depends on ppl but as a retired skinny guy, this is the way I found to build muscle and strengh start behing able to add weights

I like to do some reps with pause to really ensure the ROM and technique are proper.

If you cheat by not lifting properly, you're only cheating yourself. In order to make gains, you need to make changes to keep the muscle guessing. Different professional lifters will give you different ideas, which will provide that muscle confusion and cause your strength gains to happen quickly. It's filunny to hear you talk about lifters think in terms of day to day and eeek to week. I'm thinking by year to year and blocks of years as my lifetime program.

I know as a fact I never got any stronger than what I was after about 6 months of lifting 3x/week. But I've been able to maintain those strength gains for around 1.5 years off of training 1 - 2 times per week and often I go a whole week without even working out. It's much easier to maintain muscle than it is to build it and that becomes more and more true as you get stronger. I'm quite happy with my body where it is. I would like to be about 50% stronger on all of my lifts but realistically I have more important things / ambitions in life and I am already getting 80% of the aesthetic benefits at my current level. Main thing for me is to stay at 10-12% body fat and keep lifting 1-2 times per week to maintain muscle mass. I already have a better body than like 90%+ of other guys. And as I grow older and wiser, I realize that the vast majority of women (even the 8s and 9s) don't really expect too much. They just want you to look healthy and stronger / fitter than 90% of other guys. It's a pretty easy standard to achieve.

Pure fax

The first sign is... you wont see any muscle 🤦‍♂️

I can't even seem to get the newbie gains. I have gotten stronger but I barely see any muscle growth whatsoever.

Legend!!

Bro, hit your shoulders more…

I must REALLY be doing something wrong, then...to have done everything letter-perfect for over 30 years, and look the same at 51 as I did at 18(I didn't even have the "newbie gain phase")...as I watched this video I kept saying "It's not that...not that, either...nope...no again...". I can honestly say it's none of the above.

Maingaining is a thing.

Im currently at an impasse, been doing 60kg - 64kg this year, with the same amount of reps but to no avail to increase, and some days my max reps drop from 10 reps to 8 reps. Today I realized that my bench press never hit my chest, so the ROM is my problem right now, and maybe its my problem for most of my execises. I am an introvert, it's hard to make friends so I always have to do it solo.

With all due respect.. somebody squats 225pounds 12 reps.. and thinks about building muscle.. well thats really a sad thought ..

How do you progress with rep drop off?

not everyone is necessarily trying to build muscle but rather just maintain base fitness level and tone. just getting in the gym is a habit that will nurture and reinforce healthy lifestyles.

Im actually incredebly happy for the first point
I taught i have a problem since i couldnt keep up with the same reps and wight more than 2 or 3 sets

With calisthenics I'll wam up, then do whatever the next progression I can barely if at all do, then do something more in range for reps or time. Does anyone find this pattern to work for weights?

Well, the biggest reason I was not making progress was really listening to guys like you talking bs like this. It's not necessarily total bs, one could find a thing here and there that really works on them, but it's really easy to fall into a rabbit hole of believing all of this because you find one thing useful and then suddenly you feel yourself a failure for following all advices or not being able to follow them and not really seeing too much progress.

The thing we have coming out of ears is full range of motion. To every fitness freak out there, the word of the full range of motion is sanctity, with none of them describing clearly what is full the range of motion for some exercise, or why they consider that the full range of motion. And since no one wants to be a halfrepper, this leads to noobs, but also guys permastuck on same weight for years, doing something they call full range of motion because it's the way it should be and in the end many of them get hurt because the generally accepted full range of motion among the gym bros in many exercises is basically what they saw at powerlifting competitions and build some fake explanation that this is the only way to go. Well, no, firstly, while doing the full range of motion is something to strive for, half repping is not gonna kill your gains. Most compound lifts have different muscle groups taking most of the lift over during different phases of the lift, and if you want to prioritize some muscle, you really don't need to do the full range of motion. Secondly, if you're stuck doing some weight, it is ok to bring the weight up a bit (by the smallest amount of weight possible) even if you start halfrepping, just have in mind that you need to reduce your halfrep as the time progresses. Thirdly, some exercises like bench press, overhead press, squat, leg press (these currently come in mind) have wild ideas of what is a halfrep and what is FRM, influenced by power lifter competitions. So, no, bench press FRM is not till it hits your chest, it could actually even be dangerous for your shoulders because not all humans are built the same and a good amount of people out there can't really bring the bar till their chest without using their back muscles to bring it down, which would make damage to your shoulders if you let a barbell with a great amount of weight compressing them till the bar hits your chest. Gym freaks are gonna tell you that it's your fault because your shoulders have lack of mobility, but it's actually bs, because I know a lot of people with awesome shoulder mobility who are unable to bring the bar down less than 2.5 - 5 cm without using effort to bring it down. So, regarding Bench press, the lower you are able to bring the barbell is better, but half repping starts when your upper arms are over the parallel in the bottom position. It may even be wise to stop before you hit your chest even if you can do it to reduce the bouncing effect and to keep your muscles under tension the whole time. Shoulder press, and incline bench press have the same issue as the bench press, and the same idea is there, it's good but not necessary to go till the bar hits the chest, it may be wise to stop before the bar hits the chest, and it should be at least parallel to the floor not to become a halfrep. In Overhead press, that amounts to about as far as your chin. For squat FRM is not till your ass hits the floor, and for leg press it's not till your legs hit your chest, but till your upper legs are parallel to the floor/stepping pad. If one can go further, good, but if not, not really a problem, because most of the people out there have hips that aren't really built for doing that without rounding their backs, which the worst thing one can do while squatting, leg pressing or deadlifting. The biggest amount of muscle is lost if you get hurt, not if someone like Mario calls you a halfrepper while being so obsessed with the bar hitting his chest during bench press that he's developed a ridiculous bench press stance that makes him look like some kind of a contortionist. I mean, wtf is this, his chest is so high up, he's actually barely able to go under parallel with his upper arms at the point when the bar hits his chest.

The other thing is food, I've seen so many guys worrying about their anabolic windows, eating clean, shoving hundreds of grams of protein, using all kinds of supplements, preworkout, bcaa.. It actually just comes down to counting your calories and counting your protein intake. Eating burgers is just as good as eating chicken breast and rice, if it fits your calories and protein intake. And not, if you're not prepping for a competition, you don't need to use creatine, preworkout, bcaa, nothing other than protein powder, but even that can be skipped. You don't need to cut and bulk, and you don't need more than 130 grams of protein per day for a male, 90 for a female.

And in the end, if your progress stops, just shake your training regimen a bit, change a few exercises, or rearrange them, and it'll start working again,

No. It has little to do with training to failure or not. It's in the diet and genes. Most people do not have the ability to get huge because they are simply not made for it. But convincing everyone to believe the myth they too can be a big guy does make the fitness industry big.

I’m a callisthenic athlete, after I dropped some weights and do strict form I gain muscle more.
Also I focus both on mind muscle connection and form, before this I just go full range of motion with heavy weight but, after I drop 10-20 kilos of extra weight my muscle is more sculpted and thicker, also maybe stronger?

I’m not trying to go heavy now on my training, I’m just focusing on stricter form and mind muscle connection, it makes my body exhausting. Only 1-2 months in and getting results

This is so true, man. The subtle cheats.

Not getting enough sleep is also a huge one that is often overlooked.

Another way to get progress easier is note every good set you do full range of motion all the way through then do that for every exercise for example it will show your progress then you know your max for a workout. Also measure your body parts such as your arms for progression too it helps give you a feel for which arm may be more dominant during exercises some people such as myself have to hit the other arm a bit more often then the other due to having the same issue as most people so if you don't measure your arms you might be lopsided and you want to be aesthetically pleasing not someone looking like you had a stroke. Not picking on those whom did.

Great advice here one big point you make is people just don't train hard enough or they've never been pushed to know what hard training feels like. My strategy is to pick a weight that's heavy enough that I want to get 8 reps with. Unusually I fail at reps 5-7 I work over time to where I hit the 8th and as soon as i do I go up in weight. I would say the biggest thing that effects me is not getting enough protein. That has hindered more than anything. I'm 6'3 and 245lbs so for me I need 225 to 250 grams of protein it can be a challenge trying to get that every day.

I have a Problem tjat iam always mentally somewhere else😂

I do home Workout, no Gym. but i almost every month or 2, i increase or modified some of my workouts like adding static push ups. From push up fast to Slow push up like going down very slow is very tiring., adding books and backpack while push ups. modified Planks.

Do i have a sign of building muscles?

i don't for how is sign 2, i really don't. why would anyone cheat to get higher weight in the gym where the only purpose to go into gym is to be healthy and muscular. i would do 5pounds dumbbells if they give me muscle

I reflexively hit dislike when you said hit the like

I'm always saying to myself when at the gym that I already acheived much more than my colleagues on their office chair and much more than myself staying on a sofa !

thank you. i really needed this. :)

As for point number one, I was able to perform the same reps and weight with each set, but thats only because I rested 2-3 min, gives me lots of time to recover, I thought that was a good thing? Explain?

I do every set till failure.

I think you forgot the main sign: - you are not feeling the fatigue in the trained muscles the next day. Remember the fatigue you had in your muscles in your first half a year of training? I'm not talking about extreme sourness for days or even a week, I'm talking about that "wow damn, feeling the yesterdays trainig everywhere!"-fatigue. Once you start loosing that feeling -> it's time to change

Interest
Need base
Motivation
Learning by doing
Setting good example
Known to unknown

I hit the like button and gained an extra inch in my biceps measurement!

I have been lifting for 3months but no changes
In my body

I dont usually comment on videos but this has to be the best weight training advice I have seen yet. Especially about the mindset. This is very very important.