8. Your exercise technique is bad
You’re doing the right exercises, but are you doing them right? If you want to place the maximum amount of stress on the muscle, and prevent serious injuries, you have to execute every movement with good form. Don’t copy what others are doing in the gym, this is how bad habits spread. Here are a few general rules that apply to most exercises:

Keep your reps slow and controlled
Don’t use momentum to move weight (no swinging!)
Use a full range of motion
Don’t lock joints out at the top of movements
Check out the exercises section on this site for instructional videos on how to do all the muscle building exercises correctly.

9. You’re doing the wrong exercises
This goes hand in hand with a solid workout routine. Doing the wrong exercises is a common mistake made by new lifters. Usually, the lifter is either doing too many isolation exercises and not enough compounds, or only doing exercises they “like”.

Big compound movements recruit the most muscle fibers and place the most stress on the body. These are your big muscle builders. A good compound to isolation ratio is 2-1, or 3-1. So for every 2-3 compound exercises you do, you do 1 isolation. This of course does not apply to arms, forearms, and calves where most exercises are isolation movements. Here are some big mass builders that you should be including in your routine:

Squat
Deadlift
Wide grip pull up
Chin up
Rows
Bench press (dumbbell and/or barbell)
Dips
Shoulder press (dumbbell or barbell)
Check out the exercises section for instruction on these exercises.

10. You’re not training your legs
Want to increase your bench, increase your squat. Yeah, yeah, I know we all want big biceps and chests, but here’s 2 reasons why you should train your legs just as hard as the rest of your body.

Firstly, think long term here. Do you want to get the ostrich look?! A big upper body on thin legs does not look good, in fact I’ve seen it in extremes, and it’s laughable! Secondly, exercises like squats have an impact on your whole body. Not only does it use most of your upper body muscles in the movement, but this exercise is so stressful that the body releases growth hormone to try and cope with the load. This effects the entire body.

Leg training is hard, but essential for a well developed physique. See the leg exercises section for detailed instructions on how to do leg exercises using strict technique.

11. You’re not getting enough rest
This point kind of goes back to point #5, your workout routine does not allow for adequate rest. Rest is just as important as training. Many people believe that muscle building takes place in the gym, but it’s actually the opposite. Weight training is actually creating millions of tears in the muscle tissue. In effect, you’re actually damaging the muscle. Your muscles get “pumped up” because of the swelling caused and increased blood flow to the area. The actual muscle building (repair and growth of new muscle tissue) takes place out of the gym, when you’re resting and sleeping.

There are 2 ways you may not be getting enough rest. First, you are training too many days without taking as day off. Although you may not feel it, you body needs days of complete rest to recover from hard training sessions. It’s not just the muscles that need to recover, it’s your whole neurological system, tendons, joints, even your brain need rest.

Secondly, and this comes back to your workout routine again, you may not be allowing muscle groups to fully recover between training sessions. If you do not allow enough recovery time, your muscles will not grow. It’s that simple. If your muscle group is still sore from the previous workout, don’t train it. For most muscle groups, one training session per week is adequate. Some smaller muscle groups like calves and abs may be trained twice, but still need at least 2 days of rest between sessions.

12. You’re not getting enough sleep
Sleeping is you body’s time to recharge. For you, the weight trainer, it’s your body’s time to repair damaged muscle tissue, and grow more muscle. As I discussed in the previous point, no rest, no muscle. Aim to get around 7-8 hours of good quality sleep every night. Here’s some tips on how to get a good night’s rest:

Only sleep when you’re tired. There’s no point it trying to when you’re not.
Develop sleeping rituals, going to bed and getting up at the same time every day.
Refrain from stressful activities for 1-2 hours before bed
Don’t take stimulates within 4-6 hours before bed time
Have a light snack before bed
13. Your post workout nutrition sucks
Your post workout shake/meal is arguably the most important meal of the day. When you finish your workout, your muscles are crying out for nutrients that were lost during training. Your protein levels are down, creatine levels are down, and glycogen is depleted. Most people think that a simple whey protein shake is all that’s needed after your workout. This is not true. While a protein shake is better than nothing, it still falls well short of a good post workout shake. Here’s what would be better:

Shake containing the following:

30-40g of whey protein powder
5g of creatine
60-70g of dextrose
1 hour later:

A well rounded meal containing protein, complex carbs and fats.

You see above I’ve pimped out your post workout shake by adding dextrose and creatine. Dextrose is the simplest of simple carbohydrates. Studies have shown that taking dextrose in these doses creates a huge spike of insulin in the body. Insulin is an extremely anabolic hormone and helps move nutrients quickly throughout the body. This means that the creatine, protein and BCAAs are quickly absorbed into muscle cells where they’re needed for muscle repair to begin.

14. Your pre-workout nutrition sucks
Carbohydrates are the key to having adequate fuel in your tank for a hard workout. There are 2 types of carbohydrates, simple and complex. Simple carbohydrates (like dextrose mentioned above) are quickly converted into energy for use in the body. Complex carbohydrates take longer to digest and process, but provide you with long lasting energy. Complex carbohydrates are your primary fuel source for your workouts.

What you eat throughout the day, and 1.5-3 hours before your workout is going to affect how much energy you have. Like I mentioned at the start of this article, you need to space your meals out evenly throughout the day. If you eat a big breakfast, a big lunch, then train after work, you’re probably going to feel tired and sluggish. What would be better a better approach would be to eat a small breakfast, mid morning meal, smaller lunch, afternoon meal, then train after work. This gives you about 2 hours between your last meal and training, which is ideal.

So what should you have in your pre workout meal? This meal should be well rounded, containing protein, complex carbohydrate and fats. The amount of calories in the meal depends on your personal diet plan. Try and keep the protein/carbs/fats (PCF) ratio to around 30/50/20. Here is some examples of quality sources of complex carbohydrates:

Brown rice
Potatoes
Brown bread
Pasta
Oats
Pita bread
15. You’re not motivated
Finally, if you’re not gaining it may be due to lack of motivation. Can you honestly say you put in 100% every time you hit the gym? There are several ways you can help yourself stay motivated and focused on your goals.

Keep a training diary
Set small bi-weekly achievable goals (use your training diary to record results, good or bad)
Take before and after pictures
Get a picture of someone you want to look like and stick it someplace you’ll see it all the time.
Get involved with discussions about muscle building and learn more (check out our forum)
Watch training and workout videos from the pros before you train
Fire yourself up before a session with some music that gets you going
OK, let’s recap.
Let’s quickly recap what I’ve just talked about in this article. So if you want to build muscle and gain weight you need to…

Know how many calories your body needs, then eat 500 more than that every day.
Eat the right amount of protein, carbs and fats in your diet.
Eat 6-7 meals spread out evenly throughout the day.
Keep yourself hydrated all day, whether you’re working out or not.
Get a good workout routine to suit your goals.
If you’re not growing, change your routine.
Make sure you’re progressively adding more weight.
Always use correct exercise technique
Do the right exercises for your goal
Train your legs as hard as the rest of your body
Get enough rest between workouts and muscle groups
Get enough sleep
Have good post workout nutrition and supplementation
Have good pre workout nutrition
Keep motivated!
I hope this article has shown you the light, and you can see where you’ve been going wrong. If not, you can always head over to our muscle building forum and ask one of our experienced members for some advice on your training, workout, supplements or diet.

Good luck with reaching your goals!

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