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Summary
On episode 220 of 40+ Fitness, Coach Allan breaks down the essentials of building muscle mass, organized around three phases: work, food, and rest.
He walks through rep ranges, time under tension, and volume for the work phase, then covers how much protein and glycogen you actually need to support growth, and finally how much rest between sets, between workouts, and in sleep is required for muscle to actually repair and grow.
Allan closes with a note on how age and sex affect the pace of muscle building, and why that’s normal rather than a sign something is wrong.
Links
- https://40plusfitness.com
Key Takeaways
- Mass building requires all three phases: work, food, and rest. Doing two out of three isn’t enough. Skip proper eating, proper rest, or proper training intensity and you won’t build mass, no matter how well you handle the other two.
- Mass-building work favors isolation movements in the 6 to 10 rep range. Unlike strength training, mass work leans more on single-joint, single-muscle movements (like curls) done for 3 to 4 sets, with weight in roughly the 60 to 70 percent range of what you could lift for one rep.
- Time under tension and volume are what actually create the growth stimulus. Slow, controlled reps rather than fast or jerky ones keep the muscle under tension longer, and the combination of tension and total volume (reps times sets) is what signals the muscle to grow.
- Rest 60 to 90 seconds between sets, not longer. That window lets the muscle partially recover and clear waste products before the next set, while keeping intensity and focus high enough to keep driving the stimulus.
- You need protein, but not a massive calorie surplus. Lifting weights doesn’t burn as many calories as people assume. Allan’s rule of thumb is roughly 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per kilogram of lean body mass per day, adjusted up on harder training days and down on rest days.
- Glycogen replacement only needs to be modest. A little bit of carbohydrate, ideally from vegetables or a modest starch like a sweet potato, with your evening meal is enough to restore what you used during a workout. No sugary post-workout drinks required.
- Muscle repair happens between workouts, not during them. Most muscle groups need roughly 48 to 72 hours to recover, with lower body generally needing more time than upper body. Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) alone shouldn’t be used as an excuse to skip a workout once that window has passed.
- Sleep is where the actual muscle-building work gets done. Hormone reset and repair happen primarily during sleep, so aim for 7 to 9 hours of good quality sleep, not just time in bed.
- Age and sex change the pace, not the possibility, of building muscle. Older lifters dealing with sarcopenia and women without the testosterone levels of men will build muscle more slowly than a younger man might, but the process still works; women in particular tend to build lean, non-bulky muscle rather than large mass.
