It’s easy to see why people become so frustrated so quickly with the time they spend lifting weights or struggling with resistance machines at their local gyms. They spend long hours only to find that their muscle mass isn’t increasing. All they have to show for their hard work are sore bodies.

The problem isn’t that these people aren’t dedicated to improving their fitness. It’s that they’re not maximizing their workouts.

You don’t want to follow this path. Fortunately, you don’t have to. There are five tips you can follow to build your muscle faster and more efficiently.

Trainers will tell you that free weights are the best tool for building muscle mass quickly. This is true. But your first step to building muscle efficiently is to always keep your fitness level in mind when you begin lifting these weights. If you haven’t lifted a free weight in months, don’t immediately grab that 100 pound barbell. Instead, start slowly. If you don’t, you run the risk of injuring yourself, and you certainly can’t build your muscles if you’re too hurt to exercise.

The key to building muscle mass is to do it steadily but gradually. When you’re first working on muscle-building exercises, it’s best to start with lighter weights. As you get stronger, you can gradually increase both the size of the weights and the number of repetitions you perform of each exercise.

This leads directly to the second important step; to build muscle mass, work constantly toward increasing both the frequency and intensity of your routines. If you perform three sets of 12 hammer curls with 15-pound free weights one week, try to up that to three sets of 15 hammer curls with 20-pound weights the next. This is the best way to build muscle mass without injuring yourself.

Our third tip is another important one: Remember that not all exercises are created equal when it comes to building muscle mass. The best exercises focus on more than one muscle group at a time. These are known as compound exercises, and they provide more muscle-building benefits than do isolation exercise, which, as their name suggests only build one set of muscles at a time.

Some of the best muscle-building compound exercises include the military press, lunges, dips, push-ups and chin-ups.

Next, resist the temptation to train too often. This may sound counterintuitive, but muscles actually need adequate rest to grow. If you’re lifting free weights every day, they don’t get this needed rest. Training too often leads to tired muscles. And this can eventually lead to serious injury, which will prevent you from making it to the gym at all.

Finally, eat a healthy diet. Your muscles won’t grow if you hit the local fast-food restaurant on the way home from your weight-lifting session. Good nutrition is just as important as is establishing a regular workout routine. Your diet should be high in fruits, vegetables and protein. It’s best to eat several smaller meals, say five to seven, daily. This prevents hunger pains from leading you to unhealthy eating choices.

There are no shortcuts to building muscle mass. But you can do it more quickly by following these five suggestions. By sticking to a common-sense exercise routine, and by eating a healthy diet, you’ll see positive results a surprisingly fast rate.