Lean muscle mass

What is lean muscle mass?

Lean muscle mass, also known as skeletal muscle mass, refers to the weight of your muscles without including water weight or body fat. Having an optimal amount of lean muscle provides many health benefits:

• Improved metabolism and calorie burning: Muscle tissue burns more calories than fat tissue while at rest. More lean muscle = higher metabolism. This makes it easier to maintain a healthy body weight.


• Enhanced athletic performance: Lean muscle contributes to strength, power, and speed - all important physical attributes for sports and exercise.


• Injury resilience: The contraction and relaxation of muscles provides stability and shock absorption to connective tissue like ligaments and tendons. This may lower injury risk.


• Reduced risk of chronic disease: Increased muscle mass correlates to a lower likelihood of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis and more as we age.

So how do you build lean muscle? A combination of strength training and proper protein intake and diet is key. Lifting weights provides the right stimulus for muscle growth by causing small microtears in the muscle. Consuming enough protein gives your body the building blocks it needs to repair and reinforce those muscles.

Over time, continuously challenging your muscles will promote muscle hypertrophy - the enlargement of muscle cells themselves. That translates to a tighter, stronger, leaner physique!

It's also important to incorporate both heavy lifting days and lighter cardio days. Too much intense exercise can lead to overtraining and burnout. Mix up your regimen to maximize results.

The key takeaways on lean muscle mass:

• Comprised of metabolically active muscle tissue without fat or water weight


• Correlates to higher calorie burn, athleticism, injury resilience


• Built via progressive strength training and sufficient protein intake


• Augmented by strategic periodization of heavy and lighter days


• Hormone optimization can boost muscle gain results

Focusing on lean mass gains provides tremendous functional and health benefits. Partner with a trainer to create a customized training and nutrition plan suited to your individual needs and goals!