7 Proven Signs Your Strength Training is Building Muscle
Is your strength training working? Are you doing it right? There’s nothing worse than spending six months at the gym without seeing any results. And yes, it definitely happens! But don’t worry. I’m here to show you seven evidence-based signs that your strength training is on the right track to building muscle. You can use these indicators to evaluate each exercise to ensure its effective. No more wasted gym time!
Here are links to the different sections:
Credit: I studied under Menno Henselmans and am a huge fan of Mike Israetel. Much of this article is based on their methods, which I’ve applied with my clients and myself. Their YouTube channels offer some of the best evidence-based hypertrophy training content available.
1. Progressive Overload: Are You Getting Stronger?
If the goal is to build muscle, then consistent strength improvement is the single best sign your training is working. While increasing strength doesn’t directly indicate muscle growth, the two are closely linked. Where there’s increasing strength, there’s increasing muscle mass.
The goal is to increase either the weight or reps of an exercise most sessions–a process known as progressive overload. Take the bench press, for example. If every Monday–aka international bench press day–you lift the same weight for the same reps, you’re likely not building a bigger chest. On the other hand, if you’re steadily adding a little weight or a few reps most weeks, you can be sure that you’re building muscle, at least in the long term.
When It Works Best:
The big multi-joint compound lifts are great for measuring strength and implementing progressive overload. These include exercises like the bench press, squat, overhead press, barbell rows, Romanian deadlift, etc.
When It Doesn’t Work:
If the exercise is new to you, there’s a honeymoon period as your nervous system gains efficiency. You’ll see steady strength gains, but this is more about learning the exercise than building muscle. Constantly changing exercises can confuse “learning” with muscle building, which are not the same.
If you’re improving your technique, progressive overload isn’t a useful sign. For instance, learning to go deeper on your squat or slowing down the eccentric portion of your bench press might mean lifting less weight, but it doesn’t mean you’ve stopped building muscle. Often, lowering the weight to improve technique will actually increase growth.
Some isolation exercises, such as lateral raises, don’t lend themselves well to steady progressive overload. Small variations in technique can significantly affect the amount of weight you can lift. Fixating on progressive overload here often leads to poor technique. There are other signs that work better (see below).
So, while progressive overload is a key sign of muscle growth, it doesn’t apply to all exercises or circumstances. It’s crucial to combine it with other indicators to get a complete picture of your progress.
2. Intensity Matters: Are You Training Hard Enough?
The primary cause of muscle growth is intense, prolonged mechanical tension. When you lift weights, it puts biomechanical tension on your muscles, and when there’s enough tension, you get growth.
Thus, you need to train hard to build muscle. Your body doesn’t naturally want to build muscle; you need to force it! A sure sign that you’re training hard enough is when you train close to failure. Failure is the point where you can’t lift the weight again.
Pick any challenging exercise, and there will be a limit to how many reps you can do. For push-ups, it might be 20. You can’t keep doing push-ups forever!
This is because as you keep doing reps, your muscles start to get tired. As they fatigue, you begin recruiting more and more muscle fibers. For example, on your first few push-ups, you might only use 50% of your chest and tricep muscle fibers. But as you keep doing reps, you force your body to use more muscle fibers.
By the time you hit failure–the inability to do another push-up–you’re recruiting all your muscle fibers. This sends a strong signal that more muscle would be a good idea.
To train hard enough to build muscle, you want to end your sets within 1-4 reps of failing.
How do you know if you’re training close to failure? First, you start lifting the weight more slowly. For most people on most exercises, the speed at which you lift the weight slows down as you get close to failure.
Second, you can actually hit failure. It’s best to leave 1-2 reps in reserve, but on the last set of an exercise, it’s a good idea to hit actual failure once in a while. You don’t need to do this every session, but I’d recommend hitting failure once a month. (Use a spotter for exercises like squats and bench presses!)
3. Optimal Rep Ranges for Maximum Muscle Gain
To build muscle, you don’t want to lift too heavy or too light. If you can’t lift a weight more than 4 times, it’s too heavy. If you can lift a weight more than 30 times, it’s too light. So, the first rule here is to ensure your training uses weights that keep you within a 5-30 rep range.
Now, you can play within that rep range to find what works best for you. Use some of the signs below to gauge which rep range “feels” best. For instance, some people might feel tons of mind-muscle connection and muscle burn doing tricep extensions at a high rep range (20-30 reps) while others might feel the best connection at a medium or low rep range. It’s worth experimenting!
Having said that, here are some general guidelines that work well for most people:
Compound lifts (e.g., Bench Press, RDLs, Rows, Squat, etc.) lend themselves well to lower rep ranges (with higher weights). No one wants to do 30 loaded squats!
Isolation exercises lend themselves well to higher rep ranges. Try 25-30 reps of lateral raises and see how that fits with the seven signs in this article.
Higher reps work great on weak or injury-prone joints.
Medium to higher reps work great for people over 40, as there’s less wear and tear on your joints.
Pro Tip: Try hitting a muscle with both high and low rep ranges. For example, go heavy on bench (8-10 reps) but go lighter on chest flys (18-25 reps).
4. Sufficient Training Volume: Are You Doing Enough?
To grow muscle, you need intense, prolonged mechanical tension. So in addition to training hard, you need to train enough. Ideally, you're only just recovering between sessions. Just as your legs recover from the last session, you should be back in the gym hitting them again. This can be nearly impossible to feel, so you need to experiment using the other signs.
For maximum growth, you want to do as many sets per week as you can while still recovering. Progressive overload is a good sign of recovery. If you’re getting stronger, you are by definition recovering. Unless you're blessed with insane genetics or have been training for a long time, 15 sets per muscle group is a good maximum for most people, provided they can recover from it.
Now, you don’t have to aim for maximum growth. After the first few months of training, you probably need a bare minimum of 4-6 sets per muscle per week to make progress. If the other signs, especially strength gains, are present, then you are very likely building muscle.
These first four are by far the most important signs your training will produce more muscle. But there are three more that can be useful, even if a bit finicky.
5. Mind-Muscle Connection: Feel the Target Muscle Working
As you hone your technique, you’re likely to feel an increasing mind-muscle connection. You’ll notice the target muscle stretching at the bottom of the movement and working throughout the reps. This is especially true for isolation exercises, while compound lifts can be harder to feel. Here are some examples:
Lateral Raises: You can experiment with leaning forward slightly at the hips, pushing your chest up, and rotating your wrist. For most people, having their pinkies slightly up helps. When done correctly, you should feel your side delts working, not your front or rear delts.
Chest Fly: Lower the weight until you feel a nice stretch in your chest. This stretch induces stretch-mediated hypertrophy, which research shows can build more muscle. As you raise the weight, play with elbow bend and wrist rotation to find what really activates your chest muscles.
You can also experiment with different rep ranges to see if you can feel one rep range better than another.
6. Feel the Burn: The Importance of Muscle Burn and Pump
Another strong indicator that your training is going to build muscle is the sensation of muscle burn or pump. Can you feel the burn in your chest during the last reps of the final sets of the day? Can you see a pump? While not a definitive sign of growth, and not necessary for growth to occur, it’s another solid indicator that your training is effective.
7. Intra-Session Weakness: Are You Getting Weaker During Your Workout?
Do your muscles get weaker during your strength session? After a hard session, your muscles might feel crampy, shaky, or just plain weak. After a really tough shoulder workout, for example, it might feel weird—almost hard—to raise your hands over your head.
You should also experience weakness across sets of an individual exercise. If you do three sets of lat pulldowns, you should find it harder to complete the same number of reps in the last set compared to the first set. If you breeze through all sets with the same number of reps—say 18 reps per set—it’s possible that you’re not training hard enough.
Keep in mind that some muscles are more fatigue-resistant than others, and individual differences exist. Some exercises are also more fatigue-inducing than others. If you aren’t seeing a big change in reps (for example, I can do lateral raises for days!), that doesn’t necessarily mean the exercise isn’t building muscle. Check for other signs to confirm.
Putting It All Together: Your Path to Muscle Growth
So, how do you use all this information? The first four signs are the most crucial. You should see strength improvement on compound lifts, train hard with a rep range of 5-30 reps, and ensure you’re doing enough training–9 sets per muscle per week is a good initial goal for most people. With these four elements in place, you’re very likely to build muscle. If you’re not seeing growth, the issue is probably related to diet or lifestyle, not your training.
From there, use the last three signs to optimize your isolation exercises, find your ideal rep ranges, and refine your technique. Aim to find several signs of growth-stimulating training for every exercise you do.
Once you reach that point, you’re engaging in serious, elite-level lifting. If you consume enough protein, get enough rest, eat enough calories, and manage your stress, you’ll be unrecognizable in six months!
Thanks for reading!
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