By: Chris Gates

Building muscle doesn’t have to be complicated.

I know there are a million different exercises, workout routines, nutritional programs, and more you can choose from to “get jacked.”

And it probably feels nearly impossible to figure out which advice is legit, and which advice is a crock of…

Well… you know.

But have no fear! In this article I’m going to outline 10 insanely simple tips you can use to build muscle in 2025.

And the cool thing is, you don’t have to do ALL of them. Pick one, two, a few, or more.

Each one on its own will help you build muscle.

This is a topic I struggled with for nearly a decade before I figured everything out. I tried every program in the book.

• High-intensity interval training
• Supersets galore
• Drop sets galore
• Powerlifting 5-3-1
• High-volume bodybuilding style

The list goes on and on, and none of them had much of an impact until I started mastering the items I’m about to break down in this article.

Facts are facts: The most effective strategies are often the simplest.

So, here are 10 things you can implement into your daily routine to start making progress quickly.

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No. 1: Train Legitimately Hard

To build muscle, you need to push your body beyond its comfort zone.

And no, training hard isn’t necessarily “simple.” You have to invest your time and energy to do it.

But the concept is simple.

• Lift heavier weights
• Do more reps
• Add more sets
• Or do some combination of those things

And you’ll build muscle. Plain and simple.

Training is the stimulus that causes our body to react and adapt. So you need to continually introduce a bigger stimulus to reliably build muscle.

If you just go into the gym and do the same routine, with the same weight, for the same reps, day after day after day…

You’re not going to make any progress.

A simple way to conceptualize this process is to go into the gym and, on a scale of 1-10, aim for an effort level of 7 or more for every set of every exercise.

When you finish a set, you should feel like you could have only done 1-2 more reps before hitting failure.

Do that, and you’ll build TONS muscle.

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No. 2: Track Your Progress in the Gym

This one builds off tip No. 1, because the best way to know that you’re training hard enough to build muscle is to track your progress in the gym.

Those things I mentioned above — adding weight, adding reps, increasing sets — are all forms of progressive overload.

You need to progressively overload your muscles to cause them to grow, and tracking your progress is the easiest way to ensure your training aligns with your goals.

Let me explain with an example…

• Let’s say you do 3 sets of 8 reps with 100 pounds on the bench press in Week 1 of your program.
• In Week 2, you have a couple of options in order to progressively overload.
• First, you could stick with 100 pounds and try to do 3 sets of 9.
• Or, you could increase the weight to 105 pounds and try to hit 3 sets of 8 reps again.

Either way you slice it, you’re doing more. And the only way you can confirm that your training performance increases is to track what you do in the gym.

Use a notebook, the notes app on your phone… Whatever is easiest, do that. And during your rest periods in between sets, write down what you just did during the previous set.

Then, when next week rolls around and you’re planning to hit that same workout again, you can look back at what you did the previous week. Those numbers from last week — the sets, and reps, and weight — are all numbers you should try to improve on.

If you’re able to increase your performance week to week, there’s really no other way to explain it other than your body is adapting in all of the right ways.

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No. 3: Prioritize Compound Exercises

While you’re tracking your workouts, think about prioritizing compound exercises.

Compound exercises are movements where multiple muscle groups are involved in moving the weight. For example:

• A bench press trains your chest, shoulders, and triceps.
• Most rowing exercises train your back and biceps.
• Lunges will train your quads, hamstrings, and glutes.

These exercises give you the biggest bang for your buck — the highest return on investment — of anything you can do in the gym with lifting weights.

Since multiple muscle groups are involved in the exercise, you’ll have a higher potential to add weight to it over time. And thus, the more weight you can reliably add, the stronger you’ll get and the bigger of a stimulus you’ll send throughout your body.

I like to place compound exercises at the beginning of my client’s workouts, since they’ll be freshest and have the most energy to perform at a high level.

Make sure these are a staple in your program as well. Include 1-2 of them right at the start, and then you can move into isolation exercises to finish the workout.

No. 4: Eat in a Slight Calorie Surplus

To gain muscle, your body needs extra energy.

In order to grow new muscle, you need to give your body the resources necessary to build something new. Make sense?

The most efficient way to make that happen is by eating slightly MORE calories than your body burns each day. If you do that, you’ll give it everything it needs to maintain, plus a little bit extra to grow.

But be careful with this one.

It’s really easy to take the concept of a calorie surplus — where you get to eat a bit more than usual — and let things get out of control.

That’s why I want you to emphasize “slight” with your surplus.

• Don’t eat everything in sight.
• A little bit of extra breathing room isn’t an excuse to binge.
• Don’t fill your extra calories with cakes, cookies, ice cream, etc.

Continue to focus on the basics, like eating a high-protein diet full of whole, nutritious foods.

And just try to eat a little bit more of those foods every day.

A general rule of thumb is to eat 10-15 percent more than your maintenance calories, and no more.

No. 5: Eat Enough Protein

If calories are the extra resources your body needs to grow muscle, then protein provides the building blocks for growth.

Think of it this way…

• To build a house, you need lots of raw materials to build it from the ground up.
• Part of those raw materials are the screws, nails, and glue that holds everything together.
• In this example, protein is the screws, nails, and glue.

Protein is made up of amino acids, which are essential for muscle growth. They give your body exactly what it needs to build muscle.

So while you’re focused on eating in a slight calorie surplus, make sure you’re eating adequate protein as well.

A recommendation I like to give is to take your height in centimeters, and whatever that number is, that’s how many grams of protein you should eat a day.

No. 6: Download My Free Calorie Calculator

Calories and protein are the most important things to focus on with your diet to build muscle.

If you don’t know where to get started with figuring out how many calories, and how much protein to eat…

Don’t worry!

You’re in luck. I have a FREE calorie calculator that does all of the work for you.

Once you enter a few basic pieces of information about yourself into the calculator, it will tell you exactly how many…

• Calories
• Protein
• Carbs
• Fats

To eat in order to build muscle.

It will remove all of the guesswork with your diet, so you can just show up, hit your targets, and make progress!

No. 7: Prioritize Sleep

As odd as this might sound, muscle growth happens when you’re asleep.

It’s true.

We put in all kinds of effort into the gym, and focus our attention on crafting the perfect diet plan…

But for all of that stuff to be effective, you need to rest.

Your body goes through various sleep cycles at night:

1. REM Sleep: This is where your body does a lot of its mental recovery.
2. Deep Sleep: This is where the physical recovery comes into play for your muscles.

When you’re able to get 7-9 hours of high quality sleep a night, you’ll put your body in a perfect position to recovery efficiently.

On the flip side, consistent poor sleep can lead to plateaus in the gym, injuries, and suboptimal results.

I have a full article on how to create a sleep routine that works if you’d like to learn more about how to craft the perfect sleep routine for your goals.

No. 8: Incorporate Rest Days Into Your Week

Let’s continue to tear apart your previous impressions about building muscle, and talk about rest days.

Because similar to sleep, rest days are crucial for building muscle fast and efficiently.

The “more pain, more gain” philosophy of lifting weights is really outdated, and it’s flawed for a few reasons.

• Don’t get me wrong, you DO have to do an adequate amount of training volume at high intensities.
• But if you do that constantly, every day, with no end in sight, you’ll build up a massive amount of fatigue.
• You’ll get so sore and lethargic that you’ll quit.
• Or, if you don’t quit, you’ll hit a plateau.
• Or even worse… You’ll get bit by the injury bug.

Nobody on earth should strength train seven days a week. And I’d probably say the same for six days a week, too.

For most people, there’s a sweet spot somewhere in the 3-5 lifting days per week range.

And on the other days of the week, you should give your body time to rest and recover.

That doesn’t mean you need to sit on the couch all day. In fact, low- to moderate-intensity cardio can actually enhance muscle recovery and growth.

So going for walks, hikes, bike rides, or doing a light cardio session in the gym are all great options for your rest days.

If you have 2-3 days like that a week, you’ll see better progress. I promise.

No. 9: Monitor Your Training Volume

Training volume is the total amount of work you’re completing in the gym.

All of the…

• Sets
• Reps
• Weight lifted

Add up to the amount of training volume you complete.

A general guideline you can follow to experience the best results is to do somewhere in the range of 10-20 weekly sets for the muscle groups you want to grow. And make sure you’re taking each of those sets close to failure (within 1-2 reps).

For example, if you want to build a bigger chest, you could start by doing 10 weekly sets of chest exercises. Those sets can be done all at once (10 sets in one workout), or split up across multiple workouts (5 sets one day, and 5 sets another).

Over time, as your body responds and adapts, you can increase the volume for your chest to continue to stimulate muscle growth.

At the end of the day, too little volume won’t stimulate growth, and too much can lead to overtraining.

So try to get in that 10-20 set range per week, and make each set legitimately challenging.

No. 10: Hire a Coach

This one is my favorite 🙂

As you can see, there’s a lot that goes into building muscle. And personally, this is a goal and topic I struggled with for a decade.

I wanted to build muscle so badly, but was stubborn, refused the advice of others, and leaned into preconceived notions I had about “the right way to do things.”

I found myself wanting to build muscle, but at the same time…

• I wasn’t doing enough volume.
• My sets weren’t intense enough.
• I completely ignored a calorie surplus and under-ate calories and protein.
• I wasn’t tracking my workouts, so I had no idea if I was actually progressing.
• AND… My workout sucked anyway. I wasn’t doing the right exercises.

So if you want all of that guesswork (and more) eliminated for you, so that you can just show up, put in the work, and have confidence that you’ll build muscle fast and efficiently…

Hiring a coach is the most effective way to make progress. And I would love to help!

Check out my coaching page to learn more, and you can submit an application if you’d like to talk about your goals and how we can build a program to get you moving in the right direction!

Thanks for reading 🙂

~ Chris