Another rule

How to gain muscle 

As already discussed you want to gain muscle mass. it's going to make you stronger, more resistant, confident, aesthetic and it will increase your resting calorie expenditure and work as a long-term strategy to negate fat gain. If a biologist were to write a book on bodybuilding it would be 2 sentences long -

Consume more calories than your expenditure. Break you muscle by resistance training and repair it with a high protein diet and good rest. 

When the muscle is repaired it is made more resistant and fortified and bigger than it was before to make sure similar damage does not occur in the future. You increase the intensity of the resistance training, the muscle breaks again and is repaired again stronger than before. Repeat this cycle for endless loops for the killer bod.

Now all the muscle gaining techniques work towards these goals. imma list and explain em

• 1.     Eat constantly - so the body can exist in either a catabolic (body breaking) or anabolic (body making) state. To gain muscle you gotta get into the anabolic state and the way to get here is by providing the body with a surplus. Energy is mass, so you have to consume an excess of energy to gain mass hence make sure you consume more calories than you burn.
  
  
  2.     Eat proteins - everyone who successfully passed 5th grade knows that proteins are the body building foods. Our bodies are literally made up of proteins. All other foods like carbs and fats are mainly just energy sources. When the muscle is broken down and is repaired and reinforced protein is what does it. It is the thing that muscle is made of. Don't expect to gain muscle mass without protein in your diet. good rule of thumb - consume 1 gram of protein for 1 lb of body weight when exercising intensely and regularly.
  
  
  
  
  3.       Volume is what matters - The best predictor of the damage a muscle endures is the not the weight of the dumbbell or neither the number of reps; it's both. It's the volume that matters. 10 reps of 50 lb dumbbells will result in roughly amount to the same effect of 50 reps of a 10 lb dumbbell. volume can be calculated as reps x weight. The goal should be towards progressively increasing the volume of training. whether it's done by increasing the weight or the amount of reps or both is irrelevant. This information is necessary in understanding the next point which is –
  
  
  4.      Progressive overload - keep increasing the weight you move around in the gym. Your muscle will be repaired to get to a point where it can lift the load presented with ease. For example, if you train with 10lp dumbbells your muscles will break and the body will repair those muscles and fortify them so that they are capable of moving 10 lbs. If you keep exercising with the same weight the muscle will not break down any further and no gains would be made. You need to progressively overload your muscles ie to keep increasing the volume of your exercise every time you work out. Whether it be by increasing the weight or the number of repetitions of an exercise, but progressive overload is crucial and necessary to break muscle which in turn will be responsible for the repair and of course the sweet gains.
  
  
  
  
  5.      Sleep - muscles are not made in the gym; They are in fact broken in the gym. They are made as a process of repair and repair occurs in the rest time. If you don't give time to the muscle to recover it will not form and all the effort in the gym would not only be futile but also counterproductive. Sleep is the best form of rest and hence your best bet in maximizing gains.
  
  
  6.     Compound exercises over Isolation exercise - Compound exercises are exercises that utilize multiple major muscle groups at the same time whereas isolation exercises focus on a single muscle at a time. Examples of compound movements would be the squat, deadlift, bench press, pendlay row, pull ups etc. These exercises require you to stabilize and use multiple muscle groups in sync to complete one rep. These exercises are objectively better by being efficient as they save time by working multiple muscles at once. These compound lifts are great for joint health and overall mobility. The athlete also ends up burning more calories in these sorts of exercises than isolated ones. A physique made from compound exercises is more balanced and more functional as it prevents those ugly muscle imbalances and weak joints. Isolation exercises like bicep curls are great for shopping and targeting a single muscle group but these exercises do not burn a lot of calories, do not increase overall fitness and strength levels and are not that necessary for building a functional powerful body, especially in the earlier stages of bodybuilding.
  
  
  
  
  7.            Cardio after Weight training - Now this is something that may seem counter-intuitive to most people but performing cardio before lifting weights is an inefficient method of working out. Whether the goal of the workout session is geared towards fat loss or muscle gain cardio before lifting is a poor choice. I’ll explain. If you perform cardio after lifting weights you lose more calories in the same amount of time. We have 2 types of muscles. type 1 fibre muscles are more resistant and endurance suited muscles and are used in steady state cardio. These muscles recover faster whereas the type 2 muscles the ones used in explosive lifts do not recover as fast and require higher levels of glycogen to perform optimally. hence it is not a good idea to deplete your glycogen reserves by a long steady state cardio session before lifting weights.
  A long steady state cardio session will deplete glycogen reserves, fatigue the heart, other muscles and also the brain reducing focus and motivation. Running after a weightlifting session is not impacted as much as a steady state cardio session depends on the body’s fat stores and uses it for energy (the primary goal of a cardio session anyways). The type 1 muscles would be recovered by the time you step onto the treadmill and the cardio session would be more efficient at burning fat when done after a weightlifting session. Once again, the most efficient and hence optimal strategy is to lift weights first and then perform cardio. 

Extra Insight -

Legs - guys; legs.

you really wanna focus on legs. By that I mean give importance and precedence to leg day at the gym. You wanna look at it this way. In one workout session you are working out half of your body. That is exactly what the human body proportion is. Half of your body is legs. It contains most, if not all of the large muscle groups in your body. Using and building these muscle groups is essential for a proper function physique. leg day is the day where you will be burning more calories compared to any other workout session. pushing your body into the optimum metabolic state for muscle gain and fat loss.  But these aren't even the main reason why legs should be focused on regularly. 

It's because when you exercise large muscle groups by moving large amounts of weights, which you do in for example a squat or a leg press, you produce more testosterone in your body as a consequence and this testosterone is the muscle building hormone we need. This promotes faster repair and grow in the smaller muscle groups in the upper body as well. If you regularly workout legs with heavy weights and compound exercises, you will increase the release and amount of testosterone in your body which will benefit other muscle groups which you exercise on other days as well. You do not want to work out your legs simply for building legs but you want to exercise your legs to build and grow every single muscle in your body as quickly as possible. 

Want bigger biceps and traps? Squat heavier.