Women how long does it take to build muscle

J Physiol, Variability in muscle size and strength gain after unilateral resistance training. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 37, — Muscle size responses to strength training in young and older men and women. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 49 11 , — Response to resistance training in young women and men. International Journal of Sports Medicine, 16 5 , — A minute workout is enough to build muscle and maintain functional strength.

If you want to focus on powerlifting and bodybuilding, you may opt for a minute workout or longer. However, the duration of the workout doesn't matter as much as the number of sets per week and the mechanical stress that occurs in a given session. To induce muscle growth, aim for 10 to 20 sets per week, per body part. Cardio can help build muscle, too, but it will be slower than strength training. Don't forget about progressive overload. Gradually add sets, weight, or reps to increase stress on the body and to keep building muscle.

For example, if you're lifting pound dumbbells, you might find it difficult at first. After a time, lifting those dumbbells will start to get easier because you're building muscle and getting stronger. If you continue to lift those pound dumbbells you're not going to build muscle. You'll stay the same. You have to make your regimen more strenuous again. Several factors contribute to muscle gain — and sometimes loss — including age, gender, and protein intake.

Age: Building muscle and strength becomes more challenging starting at age 40 when your body naturally starts to lose muscle mass. Regular resistance training can fight this decline, says Haroldsdottir. Gender : Males and females differ in their metabolism, types of muscle fibers, and speed of muscle contractions. While men are thought to grow muscle faster, women's muscles may recover faster and are slower to fatigue after workouts. Here's how long you can expect it to take, and how to speed up the process.

Building muscle takes much longer than most people realize. It's a slow -- almost excruciatingly slow -- process that can feel discouraging when you don't see the muscle definition you want. But if you're on a quest for bigger muscles, it's important to start your new workout plan with the right expectations. Lifting weights is the best way to build muscle over time.

Research supports resistance training, especially weightlifting, as the best method for inducing hypertrophy the scientific term for muscle growth. Here you'll learn how long it takes to build muscle and what factors influence your ability to get stronger , leaner and fitter from weight training. Read more: Does lifting weights make women bulky? Each muscle is made up of muscle fibers, which are cylindrical cells.

Weight training breaks them down and recovery helps them grow. Building muscle involves the repair of microtraumas in your muscle fibers. Here's a breakdown of this extremely complex process:. When you lift weights or do body weight exercises , your muscles endure tiny injuries throughout their fibers.

Then, when you rest your muscles, your body begins repairing your damaged muscle cells. The repair process involves fusing torn muscle fibers back together, as well as laying down new proteins within each muscle cell.

The amount of muscle you can actually gain and how quickly is determined by many factors including genetics, diet, training, and hormones. And your starting body composition may also be an important factor to consider. In reality, there is only so much food your body can process and turn into muscle mass. And gaining multiple pounds of muscle a week is not realistic for a lot of us. Similar to losing weight, gaining weight takes time and consistency - and patience.

Also, the type of weight you are looking to increase is important to consider - you probably want to gain muscle, not fat or excess fluids. And the faster you are gaining, the more likely you are going to see the scale creep up from water retention and fat, not just muscle. Not to mention, rapid weight gain also causes stretch marks. And for some, especially women the rate of muscle gain may be even slower 1. At this rate, the average person can gain roughly 25 pounds of muscle in a year.

Of course, this isn't necessarily feasible long term. A more realistic pace is around 5 pounds of solid mass every six months. Many will need to take breaks from their bulk and cycle through cutting phases as needed.

Plus as your muscles grow in size, the rate at which you can gain steadily decreases. Traditional muscle gain is achieved by gaining weight. Yes, you can gain a little bit of muscle while losing fat, but this process is fairly slow and not as efficient as building muscle during a true bulk. If you want to gain some serious muscle mass, this requires weight gain. The thing about weight gain and weight loss is that it is always a combination of lean tissue and fatty tissue - never one exclusively.

Which means you will always gain some additional body fat when trying to gain muscle and lose some muscle when trying to lose body fat. Depending on a number of factors, for each pound you gain, anywhere from one-third to two-thirds will result in fat, with the remaining being lean tissue 3. Your rate of weight gain, genetics, training schedule, and type of food you choose are all important factors for promoting healthy weight gain in the form of more muscle over body fat.

But the biggest determining factor might be your starting body composition. Studies suggest that naturally lean individuals are more likely to put on weight in the form of muscle over fat. And similarly, those with a higher starting body fat percentage were more likely to add more body fat than muscle 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9.

But this has really only been evidenced in people who are naturally lean, not necessarily those that have dieted down to a lower body fat percentage.