The casual gym goer is most likely focused on two goals: losing weight or gaining weight. Yet at the same time they’ll add on “but I don’t want to have too much muscle.” What? You let yourself go, becoming overweight AND you have a problem with being too muscular (a problem they’ve never actually had)? *Deep breath* Okay, I get it. The pictures you’ve seen of absolutely shredded units aka bodybuilders does look scary. But look around any gym, how many of those people actually look like bodybuilders? How many times have you looked like a bodybuilder? For the casual gym goer, being too muscular is not going to be an issue.

Gaining muscle is a very tough task to do. It depends on your genetics, training experience, food intake, basically almost everything you do in life. Your body is a reflection of your lifestyle and per the CDC as of 2017-2018, 42% of us in the United States are classified as obese. That’s almost a majority of the population not living a good lifestyle (thanks a lot junk food). It is so easy to become overweight in today’s modern society. Lockdown due to COVID hasn’t helped either. The best way to overcome inactivity and adapt to today’s world is to develop muscle.

Muscle is a functional tissue, meaning it can move. When you get up after sitting, your muscles propel you upward. Not only is it functional, but in all cases muscle will increase metabolism. It’s a very expensive tissue to have and we do not have the luxury of building it as fast as our fat storage. So we want to build muscle to increase metabolism and increase quality of life as we age. Beginners can realistically gain 1-3 pounds of muscle a month while advanced lifter’s will fight very every ounce they can gain. If you ever get too muscular, you can just not lift for a couple weeks and watch yourself shrink.

So the best tool to build muscle is to use resistance training. Your body needs a reason to become stronger, to adapt and increase muscle size. To be completely honest with you, bodybuilding training is the best way to focus on building mass. Yes you can do crossfit, circuits, etc. but ANYONE can do bodybuilding. It can be very simple or it can be very complicated, but at the end of the day you’re resistance training whether it’s with 2.5 pound dumbbells or a 500 lb barbell. It’s highly specific to the individual meaning anyone can do it. Some exercises to include in your own exercise program is the squat, deadlift, shoulder press, bench press, and row. If you can master those exercises then you’ve already taken a big step towards a healthier, better version of you.

TLDR – You can’t get too muscular even if you tried, but you can get fatter without trying. Healthy good, muscle good, obese not good.