You need to know if you things if you want to gain maximum muscle from the workouts you are doing. Simply following what other people are doing may not help you to achieve maximum muscle. There are a few things which can help you to gain more muscle with the same workouts within the same duration.

Tension

If you can increase the amount of tension while working out, it will help you to gain more muscle. Your muscle do not know how much weight you are lifting. Muscles cannot recognise whether you are lifting 10 lbs or 100 lbs. But muscles know about tension and that tension will help you to grow more muscle. You can reduce the amount of weight but can increase the tension. It is also possible for you to keep the same amount of tension even when you reduce the weight you are lifting. It is possible to selectively fatigue each and every muscle in your body and that fatigue will help your muscle to grow. It is also good for you because you are lifting very heavy it will cause problems for your body and your joints. By reducing the amount of weight lifting, it is possible for you to reduce the stress on your joints and body.

Changing movement patterns

Probably you are not gaining more muscle because you're doing it wrong. If your techniques are wrong and your movements are not what they should be, how can you expect them to benefit you? If the movement is are not right, you're not going to get the benefit of the movements. Many of the serious bodybuilders cannot grow beyond the point because they somehow learnt it wrong and have been doing it wrong. Many of them hit the plateau and cannot go beyond that. If you want to break that plateau, you will have to override old movement patterns with new ones. You need to know the optimal range of motion so that you know how to fully lengthen or extend and fully shorten or contract a muscle.

Your muscle is weakest at the extreme points of the range of motion, which means it is weakest when it is fully lengthened or fully shortened. You need to put your muscle into these full ranges to develop more muscle because it will develop untapped and untrained muscle fibre. If you can strengthen these weak points, it will strengthen the entire muscle.

How much you should do?

Whenever you are training your muscles, there will be a question-have I done enough or should I do more? If you want to grow your muscles, you need to work to the point of failure because that will help you to pass through the anabolic threshold. Point of failure is a condition when another rep is impossible despite your greatest effort.

If you learn neurological overload set training, it will help you with new growth spurts and overcome plateaus. It is possible to use drop sets with a set increment and perform at least 5-6 reps with each weight. That will help you to go beyond the threshold level and that will bring in more muscle growth for you in different parts of the body.

References

1. Ben Pakulksi’s Mi40
2. Improving muscle mass: response of muscle metabolism to exercise, nutrition and anabolic agents
3. Increasing Lean Mass and Strength: A Comparison of High Frequency Strength Training to Lower Frequency Strength Training