In this article I am going to show the correct and incorrect way on how to do lateral raises.
I will cover the correct form and technique, as well as point out the most common mistakes and how to fix them.
The side lateral raise is in my opinion one of the best exercises to develop that round, lean, aesthetic look to your shoulders.
Unfortunately so many people end up doing them incorrectly, which leads to you not seeing the result you want to see.
With a movement like the lateral raise, you must ensure you perform it correctly, or you won’t get the benefit.
Then, you are working out for nothing, and who wants to do that?
That’s why I am going to dive right in and teach you how to do lateral raises.
You ready? Perfect. Just be sure to keep your eyes glued to the screen because seriously, I don’t want you wasting time in your workouts.
I want you to be efficient as possible to get the best results as possible, so, let’s do this.
How To Do Lateral Raises
What Does This Exercise Do?
Before we dive into the exact form of this movement, I want to quickly recap what this exercise is used for.
There are 3 heads of your shoulder muscle. The anterior, the lateral, and the rear.
You can see that by this picture here below.
In this exercise you are going to be raising your arm up and slight out to the side of you.
This exercise works the lateral head of your shoulder muscles, hence why they are called lateral raises.
This exercise is phenomenal exercise for what was mentioned above. It helps you achieve that lean, “toned”, defined look to your shoulders that so many people chase.
Whether you are a bodybuilder looking to step on stage, or a girl just trying to look better in a tank top.
Lateral raises are going to help your shoulders and arms look more defined overall.
I am first going to cover exactly how to do lateral raises by outlining step by step the correct technique and form.
But be warned, I strongly encourage you to make sure you read the entire article because I am sure you will end up making one of the most common mistakes we touch on.
As well as at the end of the article, I even give you some exercise variations for the lateral raise that in my opinion, might be 10x more effective in getting you results.
Yet for now, let’s dive into exactly how to perform this movement.
Set Up Your Stance
When looking at how to do this movement correctly, it all starts with your stance before you perform the movement.
You want to have a split stance stance. This means you have one foot in front and one foot behind.
You want to have them wide enough apart to where you can balance, but not so wide you are doing the splits here.
Next, you want to make sure you want a slight lean forward in your torso.
** this is really important. **
You don’t want to lean too far forward or you are going to put strain on your lower back.
Yet a slight lean forward is important for making sure you can have proper mechanics for this exercise.
It will also put the greatest amount of tension on your lateral delt, the muscle you are actually trying to work in this exercise.
Finally, you want to make sure the dumbbells are slightly in front of your body.
You don’t want them directly down by your side, you want to set them placed just slightly in front of you.
2. Push The DB Out and Slightly In Front
The next step is going to be now performing the concentric part of the movement.
( The concentric means when you are moving the weight up. So think like curling a bicep curl or standing up from a squat ).
You are going to want to push the dumbbells out towards the corners of the walls in front of you.
Then lead with your elbows and pinkies as opposed to leading with your thumbs or index finger.
No need to go all the way above your head or past your chin / ear level. Go to about when your arms get parallel to the ground, then come right back down.
This is where so many people completely butcher this part of the movement so please make sure you read the “most common mistakes” section a little farther down.
It is very important.
3. Pause, Then Slowly Lower The Weight Back Down
After you have performed raising your arms out the corners of the walls in front of you, I challenge you to pause there for just a second.
You don’t have to stay and make a campfire, but just for a second pause at the top.
This is because when you think about the line of force and gravity in this movement, at the top it is the hardest right?
Gravity is pulling the dumbbell straight down, but your muscle is keeping your arm up at that top position.
This means your muscle is doing the MOST work at the top of the movement, therefore spending a little bit of extra time where your muscle does the most work can help you see the best results.
Then, once you have held it up there for a second, you can then slowly lower your arms back down at the same angle you came up.
Remember, I said slowly lower your arms. A sneak peek at a big mistake is people often times just let the weight drop down with gravity.
Well, if you do that, your muscle isn’t doing any of the work, gravity is.
Be sure to control the weight down and if you can’t you are probably using too much weight!
How To Do Lateral Raises : Most Common Mistakes
Okay so there is a 3 step process on how to do lateral raises, what could be so hard about it?!
Haha, oh man. This movement is by far one of the most butchered in exercises in all of the land.
Let’s take a look at how and make sure you don’t make any of these mistakes, leading to less results or even injury.
Twisting Pinkies At Top
One of the most common mistakes I see when performing lateral raises is someone telling you to pour a glass out at the top of the movement.
You may have heard that before, and so did I. In fact, I used to do just that!
The issue is, that is incorrect and is going to lead to less work of your lateral delt.
Aka, less results for you in the long run.
When you twist your pinky and rotate your shoulder inwards, you not only take the tension off of your side delt.
You also are girding away of your humerus ( your upper arm bone ) into your shoulder joint, creating for some nasty rubbing inside of the joint.
This is going to be sub optimal for changing the way your body looks but also from a health standpoint.
Twisting your pinky at the top will lead to more injury and less results more than any better results.
To correct this, just simply think about pushing your hands out to the corner of the walls in front of you.
No twisting or turning, keeping your hands how they are, and raising your shoulders slightly out and in front of you.
2. Going Straight Out To Sides & Staying Too Upright
Another common mistake I see is people trying to raise their arms directly out to the side of their body, rather than just slightly in front shown in the picture above.
Yet again this is going to lead to decreased performance and results, mixed with increased risk of injury.
When you raise your arms directly out to the side, you are not giving your humerus any room to move inside your shoulder joint.
You also do not have a lean forward, so once more, your humerus has a decreased range of motion to move around in.
So again, this is creating a lot of unnecessary rubbing and pain within your joint, causing inflammation, possibly some tears, etc.
To avoid this, once again, make sure you have a slight lean forward in your torso and you bring your hands slightly in front of you to start.
You then need to make sure you raise at almost somewhat of an angle as opposed to directly out to your sides.
You want to work in something called the scapular plane. I can attach a picture here of what the scapular plane is.
This is the plane of motion where your body can move freely, without injury, and put maximum tension on your muscle.
Which is you stay injury free and can put the most amount of tension on your muscle, how to do lateral raises becomes a whole lot more beneficial.
3. Shrugging Shoulders Up
One thing you do not want to do when performing lateral raises is shrug your shoulders up towards your ear.
This puts an unnecessary amount of stress and tension on your upper back / neck muscles.
This can lead to injuries and strains in those muscles because you are asking them to do things they technically aren’t meant to do.
As well as yet again it decreases the range of motion that your upper arm can move through the shoulder joint, leading to injury.
To avoid this, read the next mistake and perform the correction talked about in there.
4. Keeping Scapula Retracted / Taking Traps Out Of Movement
The mistake above on how to do lateral raises talked about how some people will shrug their shoulders up towards their ears.
That is not how you should be performing the movement, but some people take that and go the complete opposite end of the spectrum.
They then make a mistake of retracting their scapula through the entire range of motion ( retracting scapula = think pinching a pencil between your shoulder blades the entire time ).
As well as trying to take their upper back and neck muscles out of it completely by keeping their shoulders shoved down into their back pockets.
While you should intentionally squeeze your upper back muscles or shrug your shoulders up towards your ears, you should not completely take the upper back muscles out of it either.
Those muscles have an important role in stabilizing the movement and making sure you can move through that range of motion freely and safely.
So what should you do?
Well, once again, I would put all of your focus on starting with a slight lean forward in your torso.
Often times people are so upright that it causes them to shrug their shoulders.
Then from there do what we have been saying which is think about pushing your hands out to the corners of the walls in front of you.
Don’t shrug your shoulders up, but don’t try to keep them down either.
Let your shoulders do what they may as you simply focus on executing and performing the movement correctly.
I have often seen your shoulders will move freely how they are supposed to and you will perform the exercise properly.
5. Too Much Momentum
If you have ever been to a gym, you have surely seen someone doing lateral raises this way.
They are using their entire body, basically humping the air, throwing their weights up as hard as they can and as fast as they can.
This, my friends, is exactly not how to do lateral raises.
Most people think they need to use crazy heavy weight for this exercise and that simply is not the case.
The lateral head of your shoulder is a small muscle group, especially compared to something like your glutes or quads.
Therefore it is not going to need extremely heavy weight in order to work it!
Using too much weight is the number one reason why people use entirely too much momentum and don’t ever get the benefits of the exercise.
If you are using momentum, not muscles, then you aren’t going to see progress.
So, make sure you slow down, use an appropriate weight ( it is probably going to be lighter than you think ) and perform the movement slow and controlled.
More control > more weight.
6. Not Controlling Way Down
This goes right along with mistake number five but I wanted to give it its separate column for a few reasons.
I think it is important to distinguish there are 3 parts of any exercise.
The concentric, the isometric, and the eccentric.
The concentric we learned above is the raising portion, so when you are actually raising your arm out to the side.
The isometric is when you are at the peak contraction of that movement, so in this case the top of the lateral raise.
The eccentric is the lowering portion, so lowering your arm back down to the side.
All 3 have their part, but that is just it.
Just because you raised the weight up, doesn’t mean you are done your rep. You still have the other half of the rep to go!
You have to also control the weight down, that is a massive part of this equation.
If you just let gravity take the weight down, you are missing out on 50% of that movement in which your muscle could have worked and gotten results.
All because you just let the weight sling back down essentially using momentum once again.
Therefore just be sure to control the eccentric on the way down. Your muscle still works here and it still has an opportunity to create tension, which will create results!
How To Do Lateral Raises : Exercise Variations
Now that you have learned a ton on how to do lateral raises, I am going to let you in on some insight.
You ready?
This exercise isn’t necessarily the best exercise you could do for your side delt.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do them or that they are bad. I do them and I enjoy them.
There are just some variations that are a bit more effective and let me explain why.
Without getting into too much detail, there is something in every exercise called the resistance profile.
This essentially means how hard your muscle is working through the full range of motion.
Let’s use the dumbbell side lateral raise for example.
When your arm is down by your side and as you start to raise the weight up, it isn’t really that hard. There isn’t much stress or tension being placed there.
But as you get to the top of the raise, where your arm is parallel of the ground, there is a TON of work being done there. It is hard at the top.
Then as you start to go down, once again, it starts to lose tension and how hard the movement is.
Therefore this movement is easier at the beginning range, and harder at the end range.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but if we want to maximize this movement, we could look at choosing exercises that have a better resistance profile, meaning it is hard throughout a larger degree of the full range of motion.
As opposed to just being hard at the top of the movement.
This is because more tension would get placed on the muscle which would lean to more work being done. The more work a muscle has to do, the better results you are going to see.
Let’s look at a few examples here below that could be potentially better options.
Cross Cable Side Lateral Raise
The cross cable side lateral raise is a great variation because with the cable cross format, it creates a ton of resistance throughout the beginning until the end.
You are going to have more work being done by your side delt, meaning that you are going to see better results over the long term.
Since it is a cable, there is more tension the entire time, as opposed to a dumbbell which is only hard at the top of the movement.
1 Arm Cable Lateral Raise
The 1 arm cable lateral raise is another great variation that can really load the side delt throughout the entire range of motion.
It also can give you a bit more of a targeted approach by doing single arm to where you can isolate this specific muscle a tad bit more.
This can also be done with a dumbbell, but again, the resistance profile would be a bit different than a cable would be.
Cross Cable Y’s
Probably my favorite exercise for working the side delt through it’s entire full range of motion would be the cross cable y’s.
In this movement, you can get the side delt muscle fully shortened at the top.
This means it is going to contract even harder, leading to more results for you!
In any other variation, this will not be the case because your arm stops when it is parallel to the ground.
In a cross cable Y, you actually go slight above the head and make sure to get that side delt fully shortened.
This is a great exercise that if you have access to, I would highly recommend.
** you can also do this movement or any of these variations with resistance bands if you have them!
How Many Sets & Reps
When it comes to how to do lateral raises, no matter which exercise variations you pick, all of the sets and reps will generally be similar.
Since it is a smaller muscle group, generally speaking the best rep range you are going to fall within are going to 8-12, maybe pushing to 15-20 at times.
The only issue when you push to 15-20, that is going to be more of a cardio stimulus and adaptation, as opposed to a muscle growth adaptation.
If you are looking to see change in your body, you want a muscle growth adaptation.
You can perform anywhere from 2-4 sets, depending on your goal and the current program you are on.
Or at least, hopefully you are following a program! I have a great article on how many sets and reps you should be doing HERE if you want to check it out.
How To Do Lateral Raises : Final Word
Well there you have it.
Hopefully one of the most in depth articles you have read on how to do lateral raises.
Although such a simple move, you can really shoot yourself in the foot if you do not execute the movement properly.
I hope this article helped, but if you want any extra help, you can check out my membership site HERE to get all of the programs I have ever written.
I mentioned earlier I hope you are following a program. If you want it done for you so you don’t have to think about it, definitely check it out.
Other than that, hope this helped, and look to chat soon.
You are probably here because you are wondering ( aka, freaking out ) on how to tell if weight gain is muscle or fat.
Whether your goal is actually weight loss and that dreaded scale is going up, but you heard someone say “Ah you are probably just gaining muscle!”.
Or whether your goal is to build muscle but you want to make sure you don’t put on too much body fat in the process.
This article is going to clearly and concisely lay out exact how to tell if weight gain is muscle or fat, so stick around.
You can be rest assured that you can be feel confident knowing that you are in fact gaining muscle, or maybe you need to lay off some of the calories a bit.
Either way you will know, and that is the most important part.
Let’s get into it.
How To Tell If Weight Gain Is Muscle or Fat
Weight Loss / Gain vs Fat Loss / Gain
Before we get into specifics, I want to quickly touch on the difference between gaining or losing weight vs gaining or losing fat.
Yes, they can be two different things.
Our body weight is made up of so much more than just muscle and fat. Our weight on the scale holds our muscle, fat, internal organs, bone density, water weight, waste ( using the restroom! ), and more.
Therefore first you have to realize “weight gain” has so much more to do than just gaining or losing muscle vs fat.
You can lose 2lbs in like 5-15 minutes after you go #2 ( depending how long you like to poop for ).
Does that mean you lost fat? Absolutely not, you just removed some excess waste, so you have less content inside your body.
You could step on the scale and weight 200lbs.
If you step off the scale, drink 16oz of water, then immediately step back on, you are going to weigh 201lbs.
Did you gain fat OR muscle?
No, you now just have 16oz of water inside your body that your body did not have before.
You can gain and lose weight on the scale for a variety of reasons.
I did an entire video on exactly why your weight might fluctuate for any one of these reasons, you can check that out HERE if you want to learn more.
It is important you understand this because it will set us up for what we are going to hit on next.
It Takes Time
When it comes to how to tell if weight gain is muscle or fat, the unpopular truth it, it takes time to know.
I know, people don’t like that now a days. Not sure when you will read this, but as of right now Amazon basically makes it so you click two buttons and Jeff Bezos himself air drops your package through your roof.
We want things right meow.
The reality is when it comes to how to tell if you are gaining muscle or fat, you won’t know in a day.
Or a week.
Or even a month really! ( Okay, you will kind of know in a month, and we will touch on that soon ).
The point being is it takes time. This is because like we talked about above, your weight is going to fluctuate up and down for various reasons throughout the course of a week, two weeks, three weeks.
If you aren’t weighing yourself everyday ( which I believe you should be and HERE is why ) then you simply just won’t have enough data gathered in order to make the appropriate decision.
For example, one reason your weight might spike up the next day is because you had a meal that was higher in sodium the night before.
This would cause your body to store some extra water weight waking up the next morning.
Did you gain fat overnight? Absolutely not. Did you gain muscle overnight? Hell no, though I do wish it was that fast.
Point being, you can’t look at your weight on a day by day basis and make conclusions because it fluctuates so much.
This is why you get all of the data points for the month ( daily weigh ins ) and look at the trends.
This is a weight loss chart of one of my online coaching clients, but you will see what I mean here.
Notice how she weighs herself everyday and there are fluctuations right?
But, look at the overall trend line, where is it going? Down, this means she is losing weight despite the fluctuations up at times.
Gaining muscle or fat is no different, one or two days doesn’t mean you gained muscle or fat.
You have to look at things from at least a 4 week perspective, otherwise you simply do not have enough data to make the proper conclusion we will talk about now.
How To Tell If Weight Gain Is Muscle or Fat : Track Your Data
You just heard me talk about above you need to give at least a 4 week time frame of tracking data in order to see if you are gaining fat or muscle.
But what does that data look like? What exactly do you track?
Well first off, I did an entire video on this, I can link it here if you want to watch.
Yet I am going to cover each thing you need to track for how to tell if weight gain is muscle or fat in detail here below.
There are four main things, bodyweight, measurements, progress pictures, and your workouts.
Let’s first start with bodyweight.
Bodyweight
I mentioned earlier that I was a fan of tracking your bodyweight everyday for 4 weeks straight.
Why do I suggest this?
I talk more in depth about it HERE, and I also mentioned it above so I won’t go too in depth on it right this very second.
Essentially what you need is the most data you possibly can.
The more data you have, the better, and that is all your bodyweight is, data.
If you have 31 data points in a month from weighing yourself every single day, that is more data than say if you weighed yourself once a week for 4 data points a month.
Don’t you think you will be able to tell the overall trend better if you have 31 data points in a month instead of 4?
Yes, I agree! I believe so as well!
Therefore weighing yourself everyday, not looking at the day to day fluctuations, rather gathering the data and looking at it from a 4 week view is the most beneficial to tell if you are gaining muscle or fat.
So, How do you know if it is muscle or fat?
Great question. An average rate of muscle gain is going to be anywhere from .5-2lb per month.
Now let’s break this down and actually use it in context here.
This is where you can look at your data over the course of the last 31 days and analyze your trend.
If you started at 150, and 4 days in your weight spiked up to 154.
Yet, if you just stayed the course, kept going, and by the end of the 31 days you are averaging about a weight of 151-152, you would know that you are probably gaining mostly lean muscle mass. ( Provided you are strength training, which we will touch on here in a second! ).
Despite your weight having spikes or drops throughout the 4 week span, you gather the data and look at the overall trend of where you are heading.
If you are on pace to gain 4, 5, 6lbs per month, okay well there is no way you can gain muscle that quickly ( even with anabolic drugs ).
Therefore you are probably putting on a bit too much body fat and may want to decrease calories a bit.
Now, I will say this. I have had a lot of people come to me who were deliberately looking to go into a muscle definition phase. This means you typically want to up your calories into at the very least maintenance calories if not a calorie surplus.
Thus meaning when you initially bump up your calories, you very well could gain 4lbs in a month due to extra food in your stomach as well as extra carbohydrates storing some water.
In this scenario, if you are someone reading this who recently bumped your calories up, I would say you need to track your data for 8 weeks before knowing exactly if you are gaining muscle or fat.
This is because your weight is going to go up a bit initially but that does not mean you gained fat. You need to get that second months worth of data to see.
If you gained 4lbs in the first month and then 1.5 the second, well then you know you are gaining almost all lean muscle mass and minimal fat gain.
You just need to be sure to give it the time it needs to truly tell what is going on!
Measurements
Now that you know what an average rate of weight gain would look like for muscle mass vs fat mass, let’s talk about measurements.
Yes, you should be tracking other things than just the scale, this is very critical.
I recommend you do what all of my online coaching clients do and that is track your measurements every two weeks.
What measurements should you track?
I would track your
waist ( You can even track above the belly button, below the belly button, and at the belly button )
Quads / thighs
Hips / glutes
Then, any other measurements you want to take whether it be arms, chest, back, etc if you have specific areas you want to focus here.
Here is the thing, and stick with me here because I am going to try and explain this the best I can.
Let’s say your goal is weight loss, but you see that scale isn’t going down or even going up.
You may think you aren’t losing fat. Well, hold on champ, this is why you take measurements.
If your goal is weight loss and you are taking your measurements, if they are going down but the scale is not, you are losing fat and building muscle at the same time.
Which, is really hard to do, so huge congrats.
The reason is because muscle is more dense than fat, which means it takes up less space on your body.
If it takes up less space, then your measurements are going to go down and your body will look different ( we will talk about this more in progress pics ).
This is a good thing! So the next time you get discouraged over the scale, remember this.
If Your Goal Is Muscle Gain
Then when it comes to measurements your measurements may very well increase, and that would be okay because you are looking to build muscle in certain areas.
Here is what I would say though, even if your goal is muscle gain, you want to make sure you are not putting on too much body fat.
How do you make sure of this? This is why you track your waist measurements.
It is one thing for your glute measurement to increase or your thigh, but throughout the process your waist measurement should be either staying about the same or increasing at a very slight rate.
Meaning if you are gaining 2-3 inches per month on your waist, you are probably over doing it and putting on a bit too much body fat.
While if you are either maintaining or gaining say .25-.5 per month, that would be an average rate of gain for muscle gain progress.
Again, more so because there is more food and carbs in your system rather than gaining fat.
Waist measurements are one of if not the best indicator of fat loss / gain progress, so taking your measurements every 2 weeks and keeping an eye on them can help make sure you are not over doing it.
Progress Pics
The third, and my favorite way of how to tell if weight gain is muscle or fat is progress pictures.
Simply because, the pictures don’t lie baby.
Numbers like bodyweight and measurements are cool and I believe important to have data on, but nothing is going to trump side by side progress pics.
Take one of my clients Bremer here below.
I don’t need numbers to know this dude completely changed his physique.
One of the toughest things about changing your body is that you see yourself everyday so you can’t tell these small changes happening.
But, if you take progress pics and put them side by side very 4 weeks, you are going to see changes that you did not know were there.
This is why no matter what the data says if you look at your progress pics and you are looking better, you are gaining muscle and not fat sweetie.
It is just important to actually take them. I’m being serious.
The amount of people who will read this and be like “oh yea for sure!” Then not go and do it is astounding.
Don’t be one of those because that means you are more than likely going to become a slave to the scale.
Which, we both know, is not fun at all. Nor is it smart at all.
Strength Training Workouts
Let’s say you still aren’t 100% sure of whether you are gaining muscle or fat.
Perfect, here is where we look at your workouts.
First off, just so we are clear, the only way to gain muscle is through following a proper workout program.
Unlike losing fat for example where all you havve to do is eat in a calorie deficit, if you are not working out, there is physiologically no way your body is going to build muscle.
So if you aren’t working out and you are gaining weight over an extended period of time.. Yea, probably fat.
Second, yes, you should be tracking the workouts you are doing. One of the most underrated things to look at by far when it comes to changing your body.
Why? Let’s talk about it.
The way your body build muscle is through something called progressive overload.
I wrote an entire article on that HERE if you want to check it out. It is very in depth so I will keep it short and sweet here.
Progressive overload basically just means you are doing more over a period of time.
Therefore if you are tracking your workouts and you are doing more reps, more weight, getting a bigger range of motion, literally anything positive in the right direction.
You can bet your bottom dollar you are building muscle.
This is the first thing I look at when looking at clients, before I look at bodyweight, measurements, or even progress pictures, I look at their workouts to see if they are doing more reps, lifting more weight, etc.
If 4 weeks ago you were lifting 40lbs for 8 reps, then now you are lifting 50lbs off 8 reps, your body had to overcome a stress and get better to lift more weight.
Aka it had to build some muscle!
If you gained say 1lb over that 4 week span, I can now be 100% sure that lb is muscle because your workouts prove to me you are getting stronger and doing more.
But if you are lifting the same weight, for the same reps, with the same form, and nothing is improving while gaining 4lbs per month?
Yea, that is more than likely fat gain as well.
Therefore tracking your workouts is a great tool for you to use to have data in order to tell if you are gaining muscle or fat.
How To Tell If Weight Gain Is Muscle or Fat? Q&A
Now that we laid out exactly how to tell if weight gain is muscle or fat, let’s look at some most common questions.
If I Am Gaining Body Fat, What Do I Do?!
Well, it is hard for me to tell you 100% for sure without knowing your exact situation.
But, typically speaking, if you are gaining too much body fat you would need to decrease your calorie intake.
You could also play around with your macro intake specifically, meaning protein, carbs, and fats.
I did an entire video on how to optimize muscle building and minimal fat gaining HERE if you want to check that out for yourself.
But long story short, you will have to cut back on your food intake.
What If I Am Trying To Lose Weight?!
As we mentioned previously in this article, you can lose fat without losing weight on the scale.
This is called body recomposition and it is actually really hard to do.
What this essentially means is you are losing fat and building muscle at the same time.
No you are not replacing muscle with fat, and no muscle does not weight more than fat, you are simply losing fat and building muscle.
For example, if you lose 3lbs of fat but gain 3lbs of muscle, the scale isn’t going to move.
Yet like we said, since muscle is more dense than fat, it will take up less space on your body, you will look different, and you will feel so much better.
This is why you need to be tracking all four of the forms of progress we talked about, not just your bodyweight, because that thing will lie more than I did when I was 12 years old telling my mom the dishes were done.
Who Should Be Looking To Build Muscle?
Everyone.
Plain and simple, I believe everyone should be looking to build muscle.
From the person looking to be a bodybuilder to the 70 year old looking to keep the quality of their life.
Now, not everyone has to go the extreme of being a bodybuilder ( and trust me, it is hard as hell, so you won’t unless you really dedicate your life to it ).
Yet I do believe everyone should be training to build lean muscle mass whether your goal is longevity, health, an aesthetic, lean, defined physique.
You can’t just build a ton of lean muscle mass by accident and look like Arnold the next morning.
Again, trust me, I wish it was that easy.
Therefore training for lean muscle mass gains is something that is going to positively benefit you now with a more lean, defined physique.
As well as later on with a higher metabolism, more bone density, improved insulin sensitivity, to name a few.
How To Tell If Weight Gain Is Muscle Or Fat : That’s A Wrap!
I hope you enjoyed this article on how to tell if weight gain is muscle or fat.
There are a few distinct markers you can and should look to in order to truly know the answer.
But remember, it takes time. You won’t know in a week or two. Track your data, do it over time, then look at trends and be able to tell.
