Dr. Andy Galpin

While nutrition is an important consideration here, I need to make sure that it's completely clear here.

Resistance exercise is by far

the greater stimuli of muscle growth relative to nutrition.

Really, from this perspective, we need to make sure we have sufficient calories, which is to be said as hypercaloric.

So we need a little bit more calories than we're burning to stay alive.

And mostly we need to focus on protein here.

1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight is a great place to start.

Now, I personally prefer a little bit higher, 2.2 grams per kilogram, which is about one gram per pound.

But actually, I believe the science is pretty clear here suggesting that going from 1.6 to 2.2 is not really going to increase the amount of muscle you're growing.

And if it is, it's not going to be by much.

And so if you prefer to be at 1.6, that's fine.

Higher is absolutely okay as well.

and it may aid in some people in some circumstances, but going below 1.6 seems to reduce the amount of muscle you can grow.

So we want to be at least that number.

From a training perspective, you want to start by focusing on your big muscle groups.

Now, if you have a particular muscle or group of muscles that you want to increase for any number of reasons, say you've identified an asymmetry, have a personal preference, you enjoy that more, you just want to have a muscle group grow larger for some aesthetic reasons, that's absolutely fine.

Focus on those.

But you really shouldn't omit everything else either.

It's critically important to maintain posture and joint integrity by ensuring we have adequate muscle surrounding each joint, which basically means we need to address each muscle at some point throughout the week.

We can certainly emphasize some more than others.