Here’s an Answer to Your Question: “Why Am I Getting Stronger but Not Gaining Muscle?” and How You Can Fix It
So, you’re hitting the gym regularly and working out with dedication. You even started gaining strength, and you’ve even started lifting heavier weights compared to what you used to do initially. However, one question is bothering you “Why am I getting stronger but not gaining muscle?” If that’s you, then don’t overthink it; you’re not the only one. It’s one of the common issues many faces and you can even see in many fitness and bodybuilding forums people asking the same question.
Let’s find an answer to the question. Here, we’ll cover some key points that will help you understand why you’re getting stronger but not gaining muscle size.
6 Answers to Your Question, “Why Am I Getting Stronger but Not Gaining Muscle?”
1) No Change in the Rep Range
What should be the optimal rep range for the hypertrophy-oriented workout that helps build muscle mass is a never-ending debate. However, evidence indicates that a rep ranging between 6 to 12 per set is best for maximum growth of muscle size.
Most of the time, it’s referred to as a bodybuilding style workout as it gives the ideal combination of muscle damage, metabolic stress, and mechanical tension – the three important factors involved in gaining muscle size. However, sticking with this rep range forever and not trying other rep ranges can limit your overall muscle size development.
Building strength is also crucial for gaining muscle size. It means using different rep ranges that are ideal for strength, like 1 to 5 rep range per set, is also an essential part of training, as it helps lifters lift heavy weights and increase muscle tension. Using moderate rep range, you can enhance growth, as stronger muscles are capable of greater tension. Hence, strength training supports hypertrophy by maintaining metabolic stress and optimizing the amount of tension.
High repetitions like 15 to 20 reps per set also play a crucial role in a hypertrophy workout. It helps to increase capillary density & muscle endurance. A set of high repetitions trains your body to delay lactic acid build-up, which allows for more repetitions and muscle endurance. Structuring your workout with different rep ranges using periodization can help stimulate muscle growth from all angles. Similarly, the combination of low, moderate, and high rep sets keeps a balanced approach to muscle development.
2) Not Using Enough Volume
It’s no wonder many questions “Why am I getting stronger but not gaining muscle?” However, the main reason can be traced back to varying workout philosophies. For example, Arthur Jones’s high-intensity training (HIT) was focused on doing one set for each exercise till failure, believing it was more than enough to stimulate muscle growth. Similarly, old-school bodybuilders like Ellington Darden and Mike Mentzer even believed in it and even embraced the HIT philosophy, which made it quite popular. However, HIT might not provide the volume required for maximum hypertrophy. Hence, if you’re looking for muscle size, it’s better to go for higher training volumes instead of HIT.
Another reason that you may not be gaining muscle size and getting stronger could be due to the occurrence of strength gain due to neurological adaptations. Even if you don’t see any visible muscle growth, your body can become efficient in recruiting muscle fibers that result in enhanced strength.
Volume is essential for muscle growth, but it can differ from person to person. Other factors such as genetics, capacity to recover, and nutrition also play important roles in how much volume your muscle requires to gain muscle size. Large muscle groups may need higher volumes compared to smaller ones. For instance, your legs and back muscles may respond well to the higher number of sets, and smaller muscle groups like arms and calves may do the work with fewer sets. Hence, it’s best to reassess your training volume if you’re gaining strength and not muscle size.
Similarly, periodization is the best way to approach high-volume training and recovery effectively for muscle growth. By over the time increasing weekly sets and adding an unloading phase, you can allow your muscle to recover properly and fully adapt to the change. Following a workout properly planned with periodization helps prevent overtraining, which often results due to high volume workouts. It optimizes your muscle gains and strength, which further helps to advance from only getting stronger to building the muscle mass you want.
3) Prioritize Your Workout Goals With the Right Balance
Most of the time, gym lifters want to get bigger but also want to get leaner. However, in the initial phase it can be possible. Beginners may gain some good muscle size while losing body fat. It’s the same if the goal is to lose weight (more than 30 Pounds).
However, if it’s been a time and you’ve been lifting for, let’s say, more than a year, getting lean while gaining muscle size can become difficult after a certain time. It means you may be required to choose one in between. For instance, if you want to add muscle size, you should be training accordingly and make your main focus, or else you won’t get the desired results.
Though, it doesn’t mean that you should entirely cut cardio exercise from your routine. You should do that as well, but you have to make sure you keep the balance, like switching between strength training, cardio, and aerobic exercise, and none of it overlaps it.
4) Not Having Enough Calories
Knowing the mistake between muscle growth and strength often boils down to balancing training and consuming calories. “Why am I getting stronger but not gaining muscle?” is one of the common questions among lifters. For instance, the lifter makes mistakes like they’ll restricting their calorie intake to lose fat and lifting heavy to build muscles. Similarly, for a natural lifter who’s well-trained for them caloric surplus is essential to grow muscles. Your body will require energy to synthesize new muscle tissues, no matter how efficient the workout routine is.
Similarly, muscle growth is quite similar to thermodynamics law. For building new muscle tissues that lead to muscle growth, your energy intake must be higher compared to the energy you burn. Also, it doesn’t mean that you should do old school style dirty bulking and cutting cycle, which often leads to excessive fat gains, and when cut down, you even lose muscle during the cutting phase.
Instead, the better idea is to surplus calorie intake in a controlled manner based on your body type. It’s often recommended that for most people, 18 to 20 calories per pound of body weight is needed, and if someone is ectomorph, also called hard gainers, they can even go up to 25 calories per pound of body weight. Also, you must adjust it according to the progress, and if you’re gaining 1 to 2 pounds per pound of muscle in a month, then you’re doing it right. Also, monitoring and adjusting your diet is essential as you surplus your calorie needs; you should be fuelling muscles without unnecessary fat gains.
You must try to find out gaps in your nutrition and training. Strength gains often occur because of neural adaptations and improvement in lifting techniques, without any muscle growth. Hence, combining progressive overload, proper calorie management, and enough recovery time ensures you’ll see visible muscle growth. Also, by correcting such mistakes, you even break free from plateaus and stay in alignment with the muscle gains and strength improvements.
5) You’re Following the Same Workout for Too Long
Building muscles requires you to increase stress. It would be best if you put stress on your muscles in the gym for it to grow. However, the body gets adapted to it quickly, and after some time you’ll stop getting results. Though you might be getting stronger, you may not see any increase in muscle size.
Instead of asking why am I getting stronger but not gaining muscle, you should be wondering if it is the time to change your workout routine. As a rule, you should be changing your workout if you stop getting stronger, muscular or at least after 8 to 12 weeks. If you’re working out regularly and getting results even after 12 weeks, then you can continue the same workout. But if you don’t see any difference then it’s time that you should change the workout.
6) Insufficient Intake of Protein
Protein plays an essential part in muscle recovery, repair, and growth. When you train, you’re experiencing microscopic muscle damage, also called microtears. For muscle growth, you need to repair these microtears, and for that protein blocks are used.
So, without adequate protein intake according to your requirement it’s almost impossible that you’ll gain muscle mass. Though you can see strength gain due to proper lifting technique, but its highly possible you may not see any difference in muscle size.
Wrapping Up
Lifting heavier weights is satisfying, but it doesn’t guarantee an increase in muscle size. Yes, it can become frustrating that you’re stronger, your gym habits prove it, but you’re not able to see the muscle size.
Hence, if you’re facing the same issue and often keep on wondering why am I getting stronger but not gaining muscle, then don’t worry. Here, we’ve covered six common reasons behind it and if you follow it properly, we ensure you’ll get better results.
