How to Build Muscle With Testosterone & Training

While some people think that showing up at the gym and putting in a token effort is sufficient to elicit muscle gains, the truth of the matter is that maximizing gains requires a careful balance in both the gym and the kitchen to provide a proper level of stimulus without exceeding the body's capacity for recovery. Two important variables to building muscle are testosterone level and training routine -- optimizing both through natural means can increase the amount of muscle you can build.

Instructions

• 1

  Consume about 30 percent of your daily calories from a combination of saturated and unsaturated fat. According to information from the training website IFitandHealthy.com, intake of dietary fat can help to increase testosterone levels. Thus, be sure to eat both an animal-based and a plant-based source of fats with each meal to ensure that you meet this goal. Plant-based sources of mono-unsaturated fats include: nuts, seeds and oils.

• 2

  Consume plenty of cruciferous vegetables such as cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage -- at least one serving with every other meal. These vegetables can help the body to regulate estrogen levels, boosting testosterone by default and helping you to make the most of your time at the gym.

• 3

  Perform workouts consisting of compound, whole body movements such as squats, dips, bench presses, overhead presses, deadlifts, rows and pullups. According to information from Stronglifts.com, these challenging whole body exercises can help to increase your muscle mass more effectively than other isolation exercises such as bicep curls. This is because the loading potential is higher for compound exercises, placing your body under more stress and causing it to develop more muscle to compensate.

• 4

  Perform at least three whole body workouts per week. Each workout should contain an exercise for each major muscle group, with most of the exercises coming from the compound lifts mentioned in Step 3. Each workout should be followed with at least one day of full rest to provide your body with enough time to rebuild itself before the next training session begins.