Your Evidence Based Guide to Building Muscle (Part 8 - Final)

How do I know If I am Making Progress?

Important in this process is that we have metrics that we are consistently checking to understand if we are making progress or not, because there is no one perfect metric to tell us if we are building muscle. Generally I like clients focused on gaining muscle to track three things: performance in the gym, weight on the scale, and to take a progress photo each week. Tracking all three is important, because any of these variables independently could lead us astray. We could get stronger in our lifts but not gain muscle because of the neurological adaptations that take place due to resistance training. We tend to see performance in beginners improve dramatically because we learn the movements and get better at executing them, not necessarily because we are gaining muscle. Only looking at the number on the scale only tells us how much weight we are gaining, not the relative proportion of body fat and muscle. Progress photos are great, but fluctuations in hydration or stress can lead to us looking very different depending on the day. But, if we find that our performance in the gym is increasing week after week, the number on the scale is going up, and we are taking progress photos that show we are not gaining too much body fat too quickly, we can be absolutely certain we are gaining muscle.