If you want to gain the maximum muscle possible for you, you will need to do so by building strength. First you need to spend some time to build your strength and then you can come back to muscle building routines. In that condition, you will be stronger than before. When you have more strength, you will be able to use more weights during different exercises. Similarly, you will be able to increase your reps and you will have a better form even when using more weights. The increased load that you are using will lead to more muscle.

Cycling your training will help you to create more muscles. Besides that, you need to follow a few important principles while training for strength. This principles will help you to increase your strength and thereby maximise the muscle gain.

Trained specifically for strength

When you are exercising in the gym, it is very important for you to trained specifically for strength. The same tools in the gym can be used for both strength and hypertrophy training and you need to choose strength training. Even though the movements may be same, but exercise combinations, arrangements and variables are different. The specific program variables include choice of exercises, order of exercises, and number of sets, resistance and rest between sets. First, understand those references and then use them accordingly because you are training for more muscle gain

Arrange the workouts around core lifts

you need to focus on total body development and so you will need the basic powerlifting moves such as bans press, squat and that lift along with a multi-joint upperbody exercise. The multi-joint movements are very important for you and you need to perform them early in your workout. Since they use multiple muscle groups during the exercise, such moves will help you to maximise strength in different muscles. At the same time, they will also help you by releasing testosterone and growth hormone, both of which will help you to build more strength and mass.

If you are working out each body part individually, then probably you need to change that. Focus on a strength focused workout and increase the weight you are using. Use more weight while doing squat, bench press, overhead press and dead lift.

Increase the weight

If you are training for more muscle, moderate rep sets are very important for you because it will pump up training volume. If you want to build strength, you will need heavier weights and that means you may probably do lesser reps. That is okay. You need to pyramid up in weight but never go to muscle failure. After warmup, the first exercise that you do in any training day is your main lift.

While choosing the weight, you should choose one that falls within 80 to 90% of your 1 rep max. So you may be able to do just 4 to 8 reps with that type of weight. The total number of reps for that exercise should be within 10 to 20 range.

Don’t be too worried about failure

You don’t have to fret over failure. It is not necessary that in every training and every exercise, you have to go till muscle failure. That is not true when you are training for strength. It will have to push yourself to failure each and every time because if you do that for some time, after some time lighter weights may begin to feel much heavier for you. If you training for strength, you need to keep an extra rep or two and not go for failure.

References

1. 2 X 4: Maximum Strength
2. Weight and muscle gain
3. Ways to strengthen muscles