Newbies to the gym, you’re in luck. It turns out that beginner lifters build way more muscle mass than experienced lifters, and they build it quickly.

This phenomenon is known as newbie gains and is commonly seen in the first 6 months to a year of a lifter's time training. Unfortunately, after this the rate of muscle growth declines pretty quickly. 

This isn’t just the case for building muscle mass, but also stripping body fat too. Beginners might find that they will drop body fat much quicker when they start lifting weights in comparison to a few years down the line. 

What Causes Newbie Gains?

First of all, we should start by explaining how you build muscle mass. Muscle growth is known as hypertrophy. For muscle hypertrophy to occur you need to lift weights. This then causes damage to the muscle fibres (don’t worry it’s not a bad thing). When this happens, certain hormones such as testosterone are activated and muscle protein synthesis begins.

Muscle protein synthesis is the process of repairing muscles. When muscles are damaged during exercise, they are then fixed and return bigger and stronger as a result of protein synthesis. This is why you need an adequate amount of protein in your diet, to be able to recover properly from exercise.

When it comes to newbies, all of this happens on an extremely large scale which is why muscle growth (aka newbie gains) appears so quickly at the start of your gym journey.

Why Do Newbie Gains Stop?

Good things don’t last forever. During the first year of training consistently, men can potentially grow 20-25 pounds of muscle mass and women 10-12 pounds of muscle mass. But in the next year this is likely to be half. The main reason for this is something known as the repeated bout effect. A single bout of eccentric exercise will cause muscle soreness (DOMS) and damage to the muscle fibres. It’s this damage that when repaired causes muscle growth. However, when the bout of exercise is repeated over and over, the body puts a protective mechanism in place to reduce the amount of muscle damage.

Ultimately, your body sees this muscle damage as a danger and therefore learns to put a system in place to stop it from occurring, which is great, but it will diminish muscle growth. The main way to combat this is through progressive overload.

How to See Progress After the Newbie Gains End

Progressive overload is a method of gradually increasing the stress placed on the muscles so that you don’t plateau during training. You want to mix up your training every once in a while, for progressive overload to work. As you become more experienced in the gym, you’ll have developed your skills in resistance training. As a result, you will have to make smaller adjustments to your training to enhance these changes.

Some ways you can bring about progressive overload include -

• Increasing the volume of your training

• Increasing the intensity

• Reducing rest time between sets

• Including different variations of exercises

• Slow down movements so the muscles spend more time under tension

Although changing your training is essential for muscle growth, you should be careful not to change things too often and too quickly. If you’re constantly doing different workouts, you won’t be giving your body the chance to execute movements properly and adapt.

How to Stay Motivated After Newbie Gains End

It might be a little disheartening when your newbie gains slow down, but you should see it as progress! You’ve now developed from a beginner to an intermediate lifter, and that’s something to shout about. Hopefully over the course of the last 12 months you’ve developed your knowledge of resistance training and know more about technique and how to lift better than you did when you first started. It’s all about shifting your perspective. 

Maybe now it's time to look towards a specific style of lifting and hone in on your skills. You will have built the foundations and now it’s time to look further. You can choose a style of lifting, from bodybuilder to Powerlifting or Olympic lifting. Or maybe you take part in a sport and develop your lifting experience to support that.

Written by guest author Eryn Barber.

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Tags: Misc > Lifestyle