For many strength trainers, the purpose of hitting the weights day after day is to induce muscle hypertrophy. The conventional wisdom is that slow and steady wins the race. Train hard for a couple of years straight, and the gains will come.

But is the conventional wisdom to be believed? Is there nothing that we can do to speed up the process and get the muscles that we want quicker?

It turns out that the answer isn’t as straightforward as you might think. While there is a limit to how rapidly the human body can add muscle, very few people bump up against it. For the most part, there are gains left on the table.

In this post, we’re going to take a look at some of the science-backed methods you can adopt to build new muscle faster. Take a look at the following:

Start Foam Rolling

To many, the practice of foam rolling is a strange fad that started a couple of years ago but hasn’t gone anywhere since. Rolling out your muscles, however, isn’t just an activity for hyper-trendy gym-goers: it’s something with proven therapeutic effect.

A study in the Journal of Medicine and Science in Sport found that foam rolling sped up recovery times, allowing people to hit the same muscle groups faster than otherwise. By reducing recovery time, people who foam roll can put in a couple of extra weight sessions per month, dramatically increasing the stimulation of the muscle.

Get Pumped Up With The Right Music

If you’re a regular trainer, you may have found that you have some of your best workouts when you listen to particular types of music. That’s not by chance. Research published in the Journal of Sports Sciences shows that when people listen to music, they feel as if they can push themselves harder.

This feature of listening to music is important. Our bodies only grow and adapt when we put them under a level of strain that they haven’t experienced before. Music is a great way to get your mind into workout mode, finding the extra neural reserves that you need to push through your existing plateaus.

The researchers found that it wasn’t the type of music that matters so much as whether you enjoy it or not. Some people, therefore, will benefit most from hip-hop while others are best pounding out the reps with eighties cheese.

Incorporate Yoga Into Your Regime

Strength trainers and bodybuilders are increasingly coming to realise that there’s more to building muscle than hitting the weights. Other activities can also have a beneficial impact, priming your body for growth.

Yoga for strength training, for instance, is becoming increasingly popular. People who do lots of resistance training have discovered that it helps them stay more flexible and injury-free. It also helps with things like balance and targeting many of the smaller muscle groups that are harder to hit with regular weight training.

Combine Strength And Aerobic Training

Historically, trainers separated aerobic and anaerobic training. If you wanted to get jacked, you hit the weights. If you wanted to get fit, you went on the treadmill.

This conventional wisdom, however, is coming under increasing challenge. Many researchers now believe that you can’t compartmentalise the body so neatly. While aerobic training is intense for the cardiovascular system and anaerobic for the muscles, there’s an overlap. What’s more, when you combine multiple forms of exercise, it generates results that are greater than the sum of their parts.

People looking to build muscle now see the benefits of resistance training that makes them feel puffed out. Targeting both of the body’s energy generation systems produces an enormous adaptive response that the trainer can then use to build new muscle faster.

Research by the American Council on Exercise, for instance, found that people who swung kettlebells burned more calories and improved their fitness much more than controls.

Have A Mantra

When it comes to going big on the weights, vocalising your inner conversation can have a profound impact on the total weight you wind up pulling. While you might want to censor some of the language, using a mantra or catchphrase to get yourself pumped can help motivate you to achieve new personal bests.

People who vocalise their “feelings” towards the weight have been shown to lift an impressive 8 per cent more than they could if they don’t. So next time you’re feeling angry in the gym, let it out. It could help you build that muscle you want faster.