THE MUSCLE EVO MUSCLE 

BUILDING CHEAT SHEET 

TODAY, I am going to show you exactly how to go 
about building muscle. 

If what you’re doing at the moment isn’t working, 

please pay attention. What I have to say might be just what 
you need to get better, faster results. 

STEP 1: GET REAL 

The first step is to make sure you have realistic 
expectations about how much muscle can be built and how 
fast you can build it. 

In your first year of serious training you can realistically 

expect to build somewhere between 10 and 25 pounds of 
muscle. 

Under the right conditions, guys with a large bone 

structure and good genetics may see gains of up to 25 pounds, 
while smaller men with less favorable genetics will find that 10 
pounds is about the limit. 

In year two, we can cut those numbers in half, giving 

you a gain of 5-12 pounds. In year three, the gains will be 
halved again, giving you 3-6 pounds of muscle. 
 Claims that you can gain 18 pounds of muscle in two 
weeks, 34 pounds of muscle in 28 days, or whatever else, are 
total BS.  

Eat enough food, and it’s possible to gain a large 

amount of weight in a relatively short period of time. But 
most of that weight is going to be in the form of fat rather 
than muscle. 

STEP 2: TRAINING FREQUENCY 

One of the most important decisions you can make 
when you’re setting up your training program is how often 
each muscle group should be trained. 

Training a muscle once a week can and will make that 

muscle bigger. However, for most people at least, it’s probably 
the least effective way to train. 

Most of the research out there shows that the major 

muscle groups should be trained at least twice a week to 
maximize growth. Of all the training splits I’ve used over the 
years, the upper/lower split is one of my favorites. 

Monday: Upper Body 

Tuesday: Lower Body 
Wednesday: Off 
Thursday: Upper Body 
Friday: Lower Body 
 Saturday: Off 
Sunday: Off 

You hit the upper body on Monday, lower body on 

Tuesday, then take Wednesday off. Thursday is upper body, 
Friday is lower body and you have the weekend off. Each 
muscle group is trained twice a week.  

STEP 3: PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD 

According to popular legend, Milo of Crotona began 
carrying a young calf on his shoulders each day. 

The story goes that he would pick the calf up and walk 
around a large stadium. As the animal grew, Milo also grew 
stronger. Eventually, he was able to carry a fully-grown bull. 

And so, the concept of gradual progressive overload was 

born. It refers to the idea that you need to increase the 
demands you impose on your body if you want your muscles 
to grow.  

Do the same exercises, for the same number of sets and 

reps, while lifting the same amount of weight, for the next five 
years. Nothing much is going to happen. 

That’s because the training you're doing is below the 

threshold required to stimulate growth. It's a challenge your 
body has already adapted to. As a result, no new muscle will 
be gained. 
 Within certain limits, a muscle will grow in direct 
proportion to the amount of work it's required to do. And 
while there are many ways to increase muscular work over 
time, these are the three that I recommend to most people, 
most of the time. 

The most common method of progressive overload 

involves adding weight while keeping the number of 
repetitions per set the same. Example: 

Workout 1: 8 repetitions with 100 pounds 

Workout 2: 8 repetitions with 102.5 pounds 
Workout 3: 8 repetitions with 105 pounds 

Option two involves doing more repetitions with the 

same weight. Example: 

Workout 1: 6 repetitions with 100 pounds 

Workout 2: 7 repetitions with 100 pounds 
Workout 3: 8 repetitions with 100 pounds 

Let’s say that your current routine involves 3 sets of 

8-12 repetitions of a particular exercise. You start out doing 3 
sets of 8 reps. Over time, you keep on adding reps until you’re 
able to do 3 sets of 12.  

Then, you add weight, drop back to 3 sets of 8, and start 

the whole process all over again. 
 Doing 12 reps in all three sets serves as the trigger for 
adding weight. When you hit 12 reps, the weight goes up. If 
you can’t, carry on using the same weight until you do. 

The third option is to increase your training volume. 

The most popular way to do so is to perform more sets for 
each muscle group. Example: 

Week 1: 8 sets per muscle group per week 

Week 2: 10 sets per muscle group per week 
Week 3: 12 sets per muscle group per week 

For reasons I’ll explain in a moment, you can’t keep 

adding sets indefinitely and expect to keep growing. If your 
training volume is too high, you’ll end up hurting your gains. 

As time goes by, and you close in on the upper limit of 
muscle mass your body can add, the speed at which you 
improve will slow down.  

Progress will come not from workout to workout, but 

from week to week, and then from month to month.  

That doesn’t mean your days of gaining muscle have 

come to an end. You just need to go about things a little 
differently (which is exactly what I show you how to do in my 
MX4 training program – h ​ ttps://muscleevo.com/MX4​). 

You’re not going to make progress in every single 

workout. To do so indefinitely would be impossible, and 
there’ll be times when you end up lifting the same amount of 
weight, for the same number of sets and reps you did in the 
previous workout.  

What’s more, an effective training program will also 

involve a planned and deliberate r​ eduction​ in sets, reps and 
weight. Think of it like taking one step back to take two steps 
forward. 

However, your focus should always be on improving 

your workout performance over time. You need to give your 
muscles a reason to get bigger, or you’ll remain stuck at the 
same size you are right now. 

STEP 4: EXERCISE SELECTION 

Some say that certain exercises, such as the squat, 
deadlift, bench press and so on, are “essential” for building 
muscle. These exercises work large numbers of muscles, 
making them a very efficient use of your training time. I like 
them a lot.  

However, they’re not always the most “joint friendly” 

options out there. The last thing you want is to feel constantly 
nagged by various aches and pains in your knees, elbows, 
shoulders or back. 

If you find that a particular exercise makes your joints 

flare up, don’t be afraid to ditch it and find a similar one that 
doesn’t. There is no single “must do” exercise that can’t be 
replaced with something else.  
 Your muscles can be stimulated just as well with 
alternatives (many of which I show you in my M ​ X4 training 
program​) that don’t cause the same level of pain or 
discomfort. 

STEP 5: HOW MANY SETS? 

As far as sets go, there is a “dose-response” relationship 
between the number of sets you do for a muscle and the speed 
at which that muscle grows. 

In other words, the more sets you do – up to a point at 

least – the faster your muscles will grow. However, there is a 
point at which doing more sets becomes counterproductive. 

In other words, there’s a theoretical “optimal” number 

of sets per muscle group, above and below which gains in size 
will be slower than they otherwise would be. 

As a rough guide, 10-12 sets per muscle group per week 

is a good starting point. Then, you can adjust the number of 
sets upwards or downwards based on how your body 
responds. 

STEP 6: HOW MANY REPS? 

Conventional wisdom has it that training with light 
weights and high reps builds muscular endurance, but makes 
little contribution to gains in size. 
 Heavy weights and lower reps has long been the 
accepted “best way” to build muscle. 

That’s because lifting heavy weights places tension on a 

large number of muscle fibers, which in turn sends the “make 
me bigger” signal to those fibers. 

However, lifting heavy weights isn’t the only way to put 

a large number of muscle fibers under tension. 

Training with lighter weights and higher reps – where 

you “go for the burn” and your muscles feel like they’re 
pumped up and about to explode – generates a large amount 
of metabolic stress, which has also been shown to increase the 
activation of muscle fibers. 

In fact, there’s plenty of research out there to show that 

lighter weights and higher reps do a surprisingly good job at 
stimulating muscle growth. 

That gives you a lot more choice about the type of 
training you do. 

For example, joint issues or injuries may mean that 

lifting heavy weights causes pain in your shoulders, elbows, 
knees or wrists. 

The solution is very simple. If going heavy on certain 

exercises causes you pain, just go light instead. 
 You can make the switch from heavy weights and low 
reps to low weights and high reps without missing out on any 
gains. 

Maybe you just prefer using lighter weights on certain 

exercises, and heavier weights on others. Again, you can do so 
quite happily without worrying that you’re putting the brakes 
on muscle growth. 

As long as you train hard and push yourself, high reps 

(15-20), medium reps (12-15) and low reps (5-8) can all be 
used successfully to build muscle. 

STEP 7: DIET 
What you do in the gym is only part of the story when it 
comes to building muscle. Without enough food, much of 
your efforts in the gym will go to waste. 

However, there’s an upper limit on the amount of 

nutrients you can take in and use to fuel muscle growth. If 
you’re currently eating below this upper limit, then you’ll 
build muscle faster by increasing your nutrient intake. 

But once you’ve “maxed out” your rate of muscle gain, 

simply adding more calories won’t automatically lead to a 
faster rate of growth. 

Think of it like this. 

Imagine you own a factory that makes widgets. If you 

don’t give the workers enough of the raw materials (i.e. food) 
they need to make the widgets as fast as they could, the rate of 
widget production will drop. In that sense, an insufficient 
intake of nutrients will put the brakes on muscle growth. 

What happens if you start to send more raw materials to 

the workers? 

The rate of production will increase, but only up to a 

point. That’s because there’s a limit on the number of widgets 
the workers can crank out in a given amount of time. As soon 
as they’re working as fast as they can, sending more and more 
raw materials just becomes a waste. 

In much the same way, you can’t force your body to 
grow simply by eating more. Adding nutrients to your diet 
will have a positive effect on muscle growth only until you 
reach nutrient saturation point. 

Once you’ve moved past the beginner stages of training, 

the size of the calorie surplus required to maximize your rate 
of muscle growth while minimizing fat gain is somewhere in 
the region of 100-200 calories per day over and above your 
maintenance calorie requirements.  

I know that might not sound like much, especially when 

you compare it with some of the 5000 calorie “bulking” diets 
out there.  
 But you can’t force your muscles to grow faster simply 
by stuffing yourself with food. All that’ll happen is that you 
get fat. 

STEP 8: KEEP IT SIMPLE 

Once you have a decent training and nutrition program 
set up, the key to long-term success is to stick with it.  

Forget about the latest muscle-building bandwagon that 

everyone else is jumping on, no matter now tempting it might 
look. Don't worry about complicated training routines, exotic 
muscle-building supplements or fancy diets. 

Concentrate on training hard and eating right. Set 

challenging but realistic goals for yourself and work as hard as 
you can towards achieving them. Do that and the size will 
come. 

MORE: 

For a science-based training program that will give you more 

muscle than you have right now without beating up your 
joints, check out MX4 at the link below: 

https://muscleevo.com/MX4