It's safe to say that building muscle is an obsession for quite a few men and women, but many approach it with preconceived notions about "no pain, no gain." It's true that building muscle requires a lot of hard work and a lot of pain, but only in strategic doses. A far too common reason for not maximizing the mass you want to put on is not giving your muscles time to "prepare and repair," the focus of this article.

Prepare Your Muscles for Load

To begin each workout, it is important that you learn to properly warm up your muscles prior to putting them under load. Doing so enables you to have higher muscle output and it will also add to your efficiency. Of course, the most important reason is to safeguard yourself from injuries like strains and pulls.

So to sum: warm up to prevent injury and enable your muscles to work hard.

Repair Your Muscles After Load

Another important tip with regard to building muscle fast is to allow your muscles to recuperate properly, which, when overlooked, can result in poor development of the muscles. With each workout, your muscles tear, and the recovery process is where your body builds those muscles backup stronger than before to protect against the same stresses.

To sum: rest between workouts to allow your muscles time to build back stronger.

It's an easy trap to get into, to head to the gym, immediately hit the weights, and then move one. Maybe you don't get the results that you want, and instead of realizing the root cause, you assume you need to work harder, coming back to the gym to work the same muscle groups in a day or two. This is a very disheartening cycle to get into, as you see fewer results as you work harder.

So remember: warm-up and recovery are two very important aspects of your mass gaining routine.