If You Don’t DO These 4 Things, You WON’T Add 5kg Of Lean Muscle In 2025

2025 is upon us. New Year, New You (or me), and all that. Tremndous.

Whist 2024 seems to have been considered an annus horibillis for many, myself included, one thing I did figure out, finally, at the not especially youthful age of 40+, was how to manage my diet & workouts to the extent that I could bolster my naturally puny frame (with a tendency if left untended to drift into skinny-fat territory) with some additional lean muscle.

Having topped out at an unhealthy, depressed and addicted 94kg (which is, bizarrely, almost an impressive feat given how small I actually was growing up), I think trained and dieted my way back down to 85kg, before making some additional tweaks, through an odd mix of study and trial & error, to push back up to 90kg at a body fat level of 16%.

I’ve taken a common-sense and data-driven approach to this because a) I’m not a qualified scientist, and b) when I delve into the science, I just find it overwhelming and confusing.

Here are 5 of the simplest and easiest to implement “hacks” or shortcuts to building lean muscle in the shortest possible time-frame and the least amount of time-commitment.

1. Protein, Protein, Protein

If you’re like me, you hear the start of some discussion about protein and whether you should have 1g of protein per pound of body-weight per day, or 2g per kilo of body-weight per day, and your eyes glaze over and you switch off.

Then some bright spark interjects with “the body can’t process excess protein so you don’t need too much of it,” and you want to punch them in the face, and give up on the whole idea of eating any extra protein.

The sad facts are these: protein is the building blocks for muscle. You simply need enough protein synthesis occurring in your body to recover from training and to grow musculature.

If you weigh 80kg and are wanting to stack on some lean muscle, you should be consuming (at least) around 160g of protein per day. Ideally, it will be closer to 200g per day.

Yep, that’s right – 200g of protein per day is where you need to be if you want to build meaningful muscle.

This sounds easy but it’s actually very difficult. Protein is hard to chow down once you get past a certain point. It becomes a war of attrition. You WILL be eating a LOT of:

• chicken & rice
• steak & rice
• salmon & rice
• between 3-6 eggs plus meat for breakfast
• “good” yogurt with blueberries for desserts

You will also often feel like you’re “forcing” food down and eating when you’re not hungry. Try and limit this by spreading your meals out well throughout the day.

The rewards are worth it though, both in terms of muscle growth and also the satiated feeling you get from consuming protein means you’re less likely to gorge on inefficient carbs with high calorie counts and not much to offer in terms of muscle building properties.

Supplementing with a couple of protein shakes per day is a great way of ensuring you can easily onboard the “building blocks of muscle.”

2. Lift Weights 3-4 Times Per Week

If you’re an older (say 40+) Dad, you are losing muscle mass with each passing year. Same applies to the density & healthiness of your bones.

It’s called sarcopenia apparently.

You counter this through exercise, but not just crappy ‘Dad cardio’ – you have to get under the iron and push some weight (at home or in a gym).

You also have to push progressively heavier weights – this is called “progressive overload.”

The exact number of sets & reps is entirely up to you – I wrote this post on the best strength training ‘split’ for busy Dads.

If you can’t be bothered to read my post or go down the rabbit-hole of strength training on the internet, then consider this very simple approach to getting started with weights at a gym.

Monday – go on 3-5 machines at the gym and perform 3 sets of 10 reps on each machine.

Wednesday – grab dumbbells / a barbell and perform 3 sets of 10 reps for 3-5 exercises using these.

Friday – find a space on the gym floor or matted area. Do 4 sets of 12-15 reps of 4-6 different bodyweight exercises.

Saturday – find an outdoor space (the beach, the park, a football field). Do 6 – 8 40 – 60m sprints

This is your program for the first couple of weeks as you’re finding out what sort of weight you should be moving and how hard you should be sprinting.

Is it scientific? Not really.

Will it work for virtually anyone who isn’t an elite or competitive athlete? I think so.

Would I do it? Absolutely.

H/T to Mark Bell for this. His Instagram page is a treasure trove of common sense when it comes to training. It featured in this post from last year.

The other thing to really emphasise 

3. Train Like Dorian Yates 

Dorian Yates is a six time Mr Olympia bodybuilder. From Birmingham in England, no less. His nickname was “the shadow” because he trained in a dungeon, was rarely seen before competitions, and then would rock-up at the competition the size of medium-size warehouse (with definition).

He allegedly trained for 45 minutes a day, four times per week, which seems light, but he’s f*cking huge so I’m not going to argue with him about it.\

When he did train, he trained like an absolute savage – each rep and set pretty much to failure-ish with a visceral mix of blood, sweat and tears that you can feel. 

Watch him in action here – below:

Now, you or I aren’t going to train with that intensity, but I’ve seen exponential and significant gains lately by adopting a “leave it all on the floor” approach when I’m lifting weights.

I see lots of folks in the gym going through the motions, doing 3 x 10 on a few different machines at 60% of their max weight (or that’s what it looks like).

That’s great for newcomers finding their feet and their level, but I’m currently striving for a little bit more.

So when I’m training and trying to build strength and size, I’m working towards a weight that is seriously challenging me and pushing me to failure.

I’m that guy in the gym who is (safely) clanking the weights around, grunting loudly through my last few reps, completely covered in sweat and out of breath on a weight machine or bench like I would normally be on the Assault bike.

It’s weird and new and not how I’ve always trained, but, by jingo, it feels good and, more importantly, the results are coming far faster now than they ever did before.

If you’re worried about looking like a twat in the gym, grunting and stuff, a great “hack” here is to simply go to the gym late at night. It’s usually empty and you can be as loud as you like.

The key, of course, is to remember that you’re training for you, and not anybody else in the gym. And they’re also only focusing on what they’re doing, not you. 

So be as loud as you want, bang the iron (safely) as much as you want, grunt like a horny wild boar.

4. Sprint (Or Other “Cardio”) 1-2 Times Per Week

It doesn’t have to be sprinting.

It could be football. Maybe 6-a-side. 

Could be a run-club, although the pace of some of these isn’t really conducive to high efficiency fat-burning. The scenery might more than make up for this (if you know what I mean.)

But, if you can manage sprints – they are super-efficient on the ‘bang for your buck’ scale and the entire workout is over in 30 minutes (or less).

As long as you’re burning calories and keeping the ole ticker, erm, ticking over, then it’s a big thumbs up.

5. Supplement with Creatine

I feel like I say this in every single post about fitness, health, recovery, strength training….

If you’re training with any regularity or intensity (or both), you simply HAVE to be taking creatine.

Back on creatine monohydrate after a brief dabble with creatine HCF, I chuck a heaped teaspoon into my hydration drink – Staminade, because it’s cheap, tasty and, whilst not the best in terms of electrolyte balance, it’s not the worst.

I’d be astonished of there’s a professional athlete out there who isn’t taking creatine.

Summary

I could go on with a few others but these are really the minimum viable requirements if you want to bulk up with some solid lean muscle mass gains this year.