No muscle growth despite strength training? Avoid these 7 mistakes!

If you see no muscle growth despite strength training, these 7 mistakes could be the cause. Try to avoid them during your personal strength training.

1. Mistake: You do the strength exercise without correct anatomical form.

The main goal in muscle training is to apply as much external resistance as possible to the target muscle.
The more isolated the training resistance acts on the target muscle, the greater the muscular load. To achieve this, a functionally and anatomically clean execution of the exercise is absolutely necessary. High movement quality should therefore have the highest priority.

Above all, make sure you perform the exercise correctly.

2. Mistake: Your movements during muscle training are too fast.

If the training resistance is accelerated with momentum at the start of the movement, it moves to a certain extent on its own. This means a smaller relative force expenditure by the muscle. Fast movements therefore do not allow a constant load on the muscles. Holding tension, i.e. the duration of muscle fiber tension until exhaustion, is however an important criterion for muscle hypertrophy. Ideally, you should therefore perform the exercise in the following rhythm:

• 3 seconds concentric (overcoming the weight)
• 2 seconds isometric shortened (no movement in the shortened position)
• 3 seconds eccentric (giving way to the weight)
• 2 seconds isometric stretched (no movement in the stretched position)

Train slowly to reach your goal faster.

3. Mistake: The tension duration is too short or too long.

Forget the number of repetitions, only the tension duration is decisive! The individually required tension duration until exhaustion is not precisely known. It is estimated at 60-120 seconds. So choose your resistance so that you can move it for at least 60 seconds and at most 120 seconds.

Your strength exercise should each last 60 to 120 seconds until complete exhaustion.

4. Mistake: Your training is not progressively increased.

If a tension duration of 60 seconds was reached in the first training session, you should try to exceed this tension duration in the next training session. If you have reached a tension duration of 120 seconds, you can increase the training resistance in the next step, and continue alternating in this way. However, neither tension duration nor training resistance should ever be increased at the expense of movement quality.

Increase the resistance as soon as you can move it slowly and anatomically correctly for 120 seconds.

5. Mistake: Your muscle is not exhausted enough.

Muscle growth requires a supramaximal stimulus, that is, performing the exercise until exhaustion. This means you should perform an exercise until the muscle is maximally exhausted. If your muscles do not grow despite strength training, it may be because your strength exercises are not performed intensively enough.

Let it really burn. Also make sure you do not put the weight down until the muscle is completely exhausted.

6. Mistake: You train too little or too often.

During training, anabolic as well as catabolic processes are stimulated. This can be seen simply from the fact that after strength training, not only the protein synthesis rate but also the protein breakdown rate is increased. If the breakdown processes predominate, no protein is stored on a net basis. In the worst case, protein breakdown can even occur. The risk of this increases with too high training frequency and intensity. Since muscle protein synthesis rate is elevated for 48-72 hours after a training session, an interval of at least 48 hours between training sessions appears to be a sensible approach.

Set the time intervals between training sessions so that in each session either the tension duration or the training weight can be increased.

7. Mistake: You consume too much or too little protein.

The metabolic foundation must be in place for muscle growth. The net protein balance must therefore be positive. Hence the rate of muscle building must be greater than the rate of muscle breakdown. Only then is protein stored in the muscle and the muscle grows. However, it is not enough to consume a sufficiently large amount of protein daily (approx. 1.3-1.7 g/kg body mass); the timing pattern of intake must also be right. No muscle growth despite strength training will occur if protein dosage and timing are not right.

Make sure you consume approx. 20 g of high-quality protein every 3-4 hours, 4 to 6 times a day. This can be done through normal nutrition or, if necessary, supplemented with a high-quality whey protein powder.

If you follow all these points, there is unfortunately still the possibility that no muscle growth takes place due to your genetic predispositions. Your genetics determine about 70% of the extent of muscle growth after strength training.

For everyone the rule applies: be patient and show commitment. On average, you can expect about 20% muscle growth in the first 12 training weeks.