If you walk into any gym and ask somebody how to build muscle the chances are you will hear a different answer for every person you ask. There is such confusion surrounding the muscle building process. As any trainer will know, there are three fundamental rules to building a more powerful physique.

Before you begin reaping the results your hard earned efforts in the gym deserve, you must first understand what each of these principles means.

* The old classic compound exercises remain the key movements for building lean mass.

* Understand the importance of rest days to growth.

* Your eating habits will be just as important to your goals being achieved.

By following these three principles you will be able to experience a new realm in strength and size. If you have been training for a while and have perhaps hit a plateau, these principles will help you to overcome it. Starting with the first rule, which talks about multi-joint exercises, we are going to run through what each point means in a little bit more depth for you.

If you are unsure what a compound movement is just think about how many joints are involved in a movement. If it's more than one then it is a compound exercise. A good example of this is a barbell squat. Any exercise which only involves one joint is called an isolation exercise and while it is designed to specifically make that muscle stronger it will not give you the double benefits associated with compounds. A good example of an isolation movement is a wrist curl.

That's not to say you should not perform isolation exercises, of course, they are still very useful. Just be sure to build your workout routine around your biggest lifts. By that we mean don't exhaust your chest before you have performed your bench press and don't wipe out your quadriceps before you attempt squats.

Even those who have spent years struggling to put on size find that the task becomes easier when you have a well structured workout laid out ahead of you which allows you to hit the big moves while at full strength and rack up some new personal best records. Be sure not to get carried away with your success though, you don't want to train every single day otherwise you'll only make it more difficult for yourself.

Rest is incredibly important. Think of it as a day of growth. Your body isn't actually building when you are inside the gym, remember that. You may look pumped up in the mirror but that will fade. The real job of building begins when you are at home resting. If you want to get the most from a certain body part you cannot train it every single day.

Finally we need to speak about your overall diet plan. Try not to make the common mistake of presuming diets are only for those trying to figure out how to lose weight. The food you eat consists of your diet, so regardless of your overall goal, you still have a diet.

You can work out how many calories per day you should eat by simply taking your current body weight in kilo's and multiplying it by twenty five. That's your basal metabolic rate and you should add a further 50% to that target to allow you to get a good building plan established.

However, it's one thing eating the right number of calories in a day. You also have to ensure you are getting a good balance of the 3 main macro nutrients. That's protein, carbohydrates and fat to you and I. A split of 30%, 50% and 20% is enough to make the most of those calories.

Thousands of gym members tend to use over complicated theories on how to lose weight or how to build muscle when in truth it's actually very straightforward. That being said, of course, you cannot expect to get results without putting in the work.