What is the best product to gain muscles naturally?

What if I told you the best product to gain muscles naturally is not edible?

“Well do not delay, please tell me what it is?”

A small, plastic device, costing about $20 called a stopwatch.

A stopwatch is quite simply, the single best product you can own to help gain muscles naturally.

Why?

Because the amount of rest you take in-between sets is most likely too much.

And this is a big problem.

When your goal is to gain muscle mass, your training must focus on recruiting as much muscle fiber as possible. Recruiting muscle fibers means that you have used them, and they will need to repair themselves, adapt, and then get bigger.

Your muscles have a natural hierarchy of fibers they want to recruit first. During your first set of bicep curls, you will naturally recruit that first tier of fibers.

If you rest 2-3 minutes, your first tier of fibers will have ample time to recover, and you will recruit them again for the 2nd, 3rd and 4th sets.

If this is you, that means you are only ever giving a small portion of your muscles a chance to grow. You are only recruiting the first tier of fibers.

How do you recruit the other tiers?

LIMIT YOUR REST.

People who are trying to build muscle mass should perform most of their working sets between 70-85% of 1RM for maximal effort (usually between 6 and 12 reps, 8-12 is most commonly cited).

However, there is new(er) research to suggest that training at various loads relative to your one rep max are all capable of inducing significant hypertrophy as long as the sets are maximal.

No matter which training protocol you use for hypertrophy, limiting your rest is extremely important.

If you are performing between 6-8 reps to failure, rest no more than 120 seconds, and closer to 90 seconds between sets.

If you are performing between 8-10 reps to failure, rest 45-75 seconds.

10-12 reps = 30-45 seconds rest.

12+ reps = <30 seconds rest.

Harder movements can warrant more rest since they recruit more muscle mass. For example, if I was performing 4 sets of 6 heavy front squats, I would rest 120 seconds. If I was performing 4 sets of 6 heavy military press, I would rest 90 seconds. 4 sets of 6 bicep curls, closer to 75 seconds recovery.

Shorter rest periods ensures you will recruit more muscle fiber… giving your body a chance to grow them back bigger and better.

Quite simply, if you are not using a stop watch when you train, you are significantly reducing your training efficacy.

Obviously anabolic and androgenic steroids work really fucking well too… but you might not want the health or legal side-effects.