My workouts are building strength, but I'm not getting swole. How can I build the mass I want?
Do you wonder what the best way is to count sets and reps? Why you shouldn't skip leg day? We have answers. This is #Gains, Explained, a space for you to ask any and every question about fitness. The Men's Health team (and other experts) are here for you. To submit a question for a future column, fill out this form. My strength is increasing, but I don't see a big difference in muscles getting larger. Why? -Strong as a Horse, Small as a Mouse WHEN I WAS in college, I felt like I could squat a house. I was training for football, and my focus was to get as strong and athletic as possible so I could turn all those reps into touchdown runs. Since I was strong, I figured I would also build up the tree trunk thighs I was hoping to grow. Thing is, my legs didn't look bigger. Even more noticeably, my calves looked downright skimpy. My main objective wasn't to get swole, but the lack of growth still bummed me out. All those hours in the gym were supposed to pay off for my physique somehow, right? Not exactly. My issue—and it sounds like part of your problem, too—is that I was training for one very specific outcome while expecting another. Unfortunately, those two outcomes aren't as compatible as we might hope. "Fundamentally, building muscle strength and building muscle size just are not the same thing," says Men's Health fitness director Ebenezer Samuel, C.S.C.S. My legs weren't growing at the rate I was hoping for in part because I was tackling a program filled with sport-specific rep schemes designed to build strength and power. Since you've experienced strength gains, we can reasonably assume that you're probably following a training program designed for that purpose , and that you're progressively adding more of a challenge from session to session, too. You may be missing the mark on two key factors when it comes to building mass. One has less to do with what you're doing and more to do with what you're eating. "When it comes to wanting to build more muscle, it…