Last week, a friend (and client) reached out to me with an idea he wanted to know more about: what things commonly prevent muscle growth?

So that’s what we’re covering today.

This is my favorite way to get topics for sunday coffee - to get them straight from you!

So if there’s anything you want covered in the coming weeks, please just reply to this email or leave a comment about it to let me know 🙂

Building muscle isn’t easy.

It takes a ton of time, effort and dedication.

Knowing what to do to build muscle is half the battle, but knowing what NOT to do is just as important.

So let’s cover 7 things that might be stopping you from building muscle.

Note: per usual, many of these overlap and influence each other.

For example…

Which is part of why we need to approach health holistically; everything is connected.

Now let’s get to it.

Alcohol hurts muscle growth by disrupting protein synthesis and recovery.

As we’ve discussed before, it messes with your sleep patterns, increases inflammation, and often contributes to nutritional deficiencies.

You could be crushing it in the gym, but if you’re drinking consistently, it’ll always feel like you’re running in place and not making much progress.

Sleep is where your body recovers, and recovery is where muscle synthesis happens.

Poor sleep disrupts the body's hormonal balance, including the release of growth hormone which is crucial for muscle growth.

It also hampers your recovery and can lead to increased cortisol levels, impeding the body's ability to build and repair muscle tissue.

This is probably 1 of the biggest issues people run into when trying to build muscle, and it’s not surprising.

Eating enough protein is hard! And there’s been tons of misleading information put out over the past century about eating protein and specifically, meat.

But protein is foundational for muscle repair and synthesis, so you have to make sure that you’re eating enough to grow if you want to build muscle.

Typically, I recommend 0.8-1.2 grams per pound of bodyweight to clients who want to grow - along with a slight calorie surplus.

Last week, we covered the 4 types of processed foods, with ultra-processed foods being the type that we recommended avoiding the most.

Why do we recommend that?

Because ultra-processed foods are often high-glycemic foods that rapidly spike your blood sugar. That leads to elevated insulin levels, which, over time, contributes to insulin resistance - hurting your body's ability to effectively absorb nutrients for muscle building.

A balanced diet with complex carbohydrates and proper nutrients (from non ultra-processed foods) supports stable blood sugar levels, promoting optimal conditions for muscle growth and insulin sensitivity.

ps: as I was writing this I realized it’s a pretty complex topic. We’ll cover the importance of blood sugar + insulin sensitivity here in the coming weeks.

This can happen due to a number of factors, but it’s usually some combination of too much exercise without enough time for recovery.

Muscles need adequate time to heal and grow, and overtraining leads to excessive fatigue, increased risk of injury, and poor progress.

ps: If you want to read more on how to prevent overtraining, check out volume 8 of sunday coffee where we covered this 🙂 .

Building muscle is a progressive process.

The biggest issue with random, unplanned workouts is that you aren’t being intentional and purposeful about that progression.

This is exactly why I put so much emphasis on writing out a yearly training plan - it helps you outline what that progression is going to look like.

You want to progressively challenge your muscles by either increasing volume (sets/reps) or intensity (weight).

Progressive overload stimulates muscle adaptation, and without it, the body may not perceive the need to build muscle - because you’re not giving it enough stimulus.

Regularly adjusting volume or intensity in a progressive manner is crucial for continued muscle growth.

Chronic stress elevates your cortisol levels, which can have catabolic effects on muscle tissue (aka it can destroy your muscle).

It also affects sleep quality, appetite, and overall well-being, creating an unfavorable environment for muscle growth.

Some stress is good, but to be experiencing it all the time is bad for us in a lot of ways. If you find yourself in this position - take a step back and reassess what’s causing it.

We’ve got an exciting week ahead! If you’re interested in the free 8-week plan I’ll be dropping, please just reply to this email and let me know.

Today, we covered 7 things that might be stopping you from building muscle.

They are:

TLDR: don’t do things that make it hard to recover or train. If you want to build muscle, you need to do 3 things extremely well:

Till next week!

Dane