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Whether you're looking to look good in the mirror, or you're trying to improve your performance on the pitch (or if you're like me, it's a combination of both), building a lean, strong, athletic physique is a goal many of us have.
We all want to be shredded as Ronaldo and be able to impress all of the muchachas/muchachos at the beach, all while still performing to the top of our athletic capacity on the pitch.
However, if you're an athlete, and you're looking to put on a few extra pounds of muscle, I'd recommend staying away from training as a body builder.
Why? Because the training routine for a bodybuilder, is purely for aesthetic goals, while as athletes, we should be looking to train in the gym to improve function, strength, and performance on the field.
If you're interested on learning how to train more like an athlete in the gym, and be able to maximize your athletic potential (all while still looking aesthetically pleasing), then check out this blog post.
The reason why building muscle is important for athletics, is because the more lean muscle fibers you have, the more potential energy you are able to store in your muscles, thus, being able to reproduce more force and power into the ground to make you more powerful and explosive.
As you go higher up in the football ladder, the competition around you is going to have a higher lean muscle mass percentage, and will generally be a lot more powerful and explosive than the division below it.
In order to be able to compete physically with your teammates and your opponents, you must get stronger, fitter, and more explosive.
All of this comes as a result of putting in the work in the gym, and gaining more muscle overtime.
So How Can I Build An "Athletic Physique?"
Here are some step-by-step tips to help you build more muscle as an athlete:
1) Stay in a Slight Calorie Surplus (100 to 400 Calories)
A big part of building muscle is eating more calories than what you burn through training. The reason for this is because as we work out and bring tension and stress onto our muscle fibers, we cause microscopic tears in our muscle tissue.
This is completely normal and it's what we're looking for when trying to build muscle. These microscopic tears are what cause post-workout soreness the day after a workout, and are, at times, a good indicator that you've been progressing well in the gym and have pushed your body past it's limit.
There are times when soreness isn't good, like when it lasts for more than a day or two, but that's an article for another day.
Your body detects the damage to the muscle tissue, and it's immune system begins to work in order to repair that damaged muscle, and add more muscle cells onto that damaged tissue in order to make it stronger, larger, and more resilient to tension.
Your body's internal processes, such as Muscle Protein Synthesis, work in order to repair these microscopic tears in your muscles. However, a good nutrition and diet plays a BIG role onto how effectively your body is able to repair the muscle tissue.
You must provide your body with the calories it needs in order for it to be able to have the energy it requires to more efficiently repair the broken muscle tissue.
The extra calories you take in from eating in slight calorie surplus, mostly go directly to the damaged muscle tissues, minimizing the amount stored as excess bodyfat.
The reason why it's important to stay in a SLIGHT calorie surplus, as opposed to a large surplus, is because we are trying to minimize the amount of fat gain as much as possible, while maximizing muscle growth.
By staying in a slight calorie surplus, our bodies will only store a small amount of those calories as fat, while the majority of the extra calories goes straight into your muscles to fuel the reconstruction process.
Make sure that your calories are kept CLEAN.
You do not want to 'dirty bulk' as an athlete, as this will accelerate fat gain, decrease recovery and performance, and increase unwanted inflammation.
For more information on how to make healthier diet choices, feel free to download our free guide on Nutrition!
If you would like to learn how to calculate your calories and make sure that you're eating enough to gain muscle, then check out this blog post.
2) Follow A Good Strength Training Routine
Nutrition is extremely important for building lean, athletic muscle, but the MOST important part of muscle-building, is to follow a good strength training routine.
In order to grow muscles, you must put them through metabolic stress and tension, so they can tear, and repair, as mentioned in the previous point.
It's important that you are in the gym and you're challenging your body consistently in order for them to grow.
A "good" strength training routine is one that implements progressive overload, which means that overtime, you are making your workouts more difficult by adding more volume, resistance, or fatigue.
Every single time we work out, we are pushing our muscle past their breaking point. As a result, your muscles adapt to the difficulty of the workout, which is why lifting the same weight becomes easier over time.
A few months, or even weeks ago, you were struggling to lift a twenty-pound weight for reps, but now the weight feels a lot lighter and you're able to pump out a lot of reps.
The weight didn't get "lighter" though. It's still the twenty-pound weight that has the same amount of gravitational pull as it did before when you struggled with it.
What made the weight feel lighter was your muscles growing stronger as a result of constantly lifting the twenty-pounds, which made them adapt to the resistance over time.
Now that lifting that twenty-pound weight is easier, you're gonna want to progress by going up higher in weight in order to make sure you're still challenging your muscles.
You want them to now force themselves to adapt to the next, heavier weight, so that they can grow stronger and you can continue to go heavier, and heavier in weight.
As a result of this progressive overload, your muscles are continuously tearing, rebuilding, and become larger and stronger overtime, which ultimately leads to more muscle growth.
Make sure that the majority of your strength workouts are focused on compound exercises to improve your athletic function, as well as developing power.
For a full upper body workout to help you build muscle, and strength, check out this YouTube video on the GoGrind Soccer YouTube Channel:
3) 1 Gram of Protein Per Pound of Bodyweight
The next thing you should focus on when trying to build muscle, is making sure to keep your protein intake high.
Not only is consuming enough calories important for muscle growth, consuming enough protein is also essential for optimal recovery.
Consuming around 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight ensures that you are getting enough protein in to aid your body's internal process of muscle protein synthesis, and to allow your body to recover adequately.
Protein is vital to the MPS process because it serves as a building block for your new muscle cells that will be used to repair/replace the damaged muscle tissue.
For information on protein, why it's important for athletics, and how much you should consume, check out this blog post.
4) Take Muscle Building Slowly
Many people want to rush building muscle and try and get as big as possible, in the shortest time they can.
This leads to overtraining and more muscle recovery on top of that, which delays the muscle building process instead of accelerating it.
Too many people want to go to the gym every single day to work out their muscles, and avoid rest days because they think that it'll make them lose their gains.
Recovery is the key to muscle building. You can work out as much as you want, but constantly pushing a muscle group too far past it's breaking point, and not giving it proper rest, will make the muscle fail to rebuild, which mean you won't be building any muscle.
Make sure that you are giving your body and muscles the proper rest they need so that they can restore themselves before your next workout.
Generally, you should look to be training each muscle group at least 2 times a week, but no more than 3-4 times a week.
If you need a workout split to help you build athletic muscle, check out this blog post.
It takes time to build muscle, so don't feel like you need to rush it, and just remember that muscle building is a process.
Muscle Damage --> Muscle Protein Synthesis --> Muscle Repair ---> Repeat
5) Focus on Compound Exercises
I've made this point time and time again on all my content. You are training as AN ATHLETE, which means most of the work you will be doing in the gym should be focused on exercises that will help you perform better on the field.
Compound exercises are the most important exercises for you to perform as an athlete in order to develop strength, power, and force production.
Compound exercises are also great for building muscle because they focus on many different muscle groups at once instead of one specific muscle group. This means that you are activating several different chains of muscles in the body which will help you build functional strength, build muscle, and reduce the risk of injury.
Great examples of Compound exercises for athletes include Squats, Hip Hinge Exercises such as the Deadlift, the Split Squat or Lunge, Hip Thrusts, Bench Press, Pushups, Pull Ups, and Rows.
All of these exercises focus on MOVEMENT instead of isolating muscle groups. As a result from progressively overloading and improving these movements, you will build more lean athletic muscle that will allow you to generate more strength and explosive power on the pitch.
This doesn't mean you should completely abandon isolation exercises, in fact, some isolation exercises are essential to rehab an injury or strengthen a specific muscle group to avoid injury/imbalances.
However, isolation exercises that are purely for aesthetic goals, such as bicep curls or machines you typically find in the gym, should be limited and only used as EXTRAS. Isolation exercises like those should never be a priority in your workouts as an athlete.
6) Get 7-9 Hours of Sleep A Night
Like I mentioned above earlier, Recovery is essential for muscle growth.
It's a good thing if you're giving your muscles the rest they need from the gym, however, if you want to make sure your muscles are recovering adequately, you have to make sure that you are focusing in on a good nutrition, and proper sleep.
Sleep is vital for recovery since it is when your body releases the most hormones that stimulate the internal processes of muscle growth and repair.
During the 7-9 hours you sleep a night, your body uses these elevated levels of hormone to generate new muscle cells and repair damaged ones at a much quicker rate. Your body uses the protein and the calories you've been storing up over the day to fuel the MPS process, and it resynthesizes proteins in order to create new muscle cells and repair the damaged muscle tissue caused by exercise.
If you fail to get enough sleep at night, you won't be giving your body the time it needs in order to see this spike in MPS and allow it use the proteins and calories effectively to help you recover.
Many people train right and follow a proper diet, but heavily neglect sleep and only get 4-6 hours a night at most. This lack of sleep prevents their body from being able to fully regenerate the damaged tissue, which means you will be sore for longer, and you won't be building as much muscle as you could build if you were to go to bed on time.
Make sure that when following a muscle building routine, you're training properly in the gym, eating a balanced diet and tracking your calories, and getting at least 7 hours of sleep a night.
By using the tips given above on a consistent basis, over time, you will build more lean athletic muscle, and reach the desired physique you'd like, while also enhancing your performance on the pitch.
I hope this helped, if you have any other questions, feel free to leave a comment down below, or shoot me a message through my Instagram, and I'll try mybest to get to your question! 👍
Thanks for Reading! Alex from GoGrind Soccer signing off...
Get Up. Go GRIND.
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