No one wants to waste time. You are in the gym 3 to 5 days a week, training hard, eating right, getting adequate rest, but you are not getting the results you want. Could your expectations be a bit too high? Certainly. Gains don’t come overnight, but you can probably get faster muscle growth following these 5 shortcuts.

1. Start performing drop sets. Continue an exercise with a lower weight once muscle fatigue starts with the original weight. So if you are performing a set of barbell squats with 150 lbs and you complete 10 reps, immediately strip off 10 lbs from each side of the barbell and crank out as many reps as you can. Then strip down another 10 lbs from each side and repeat. When you are struggling to get stronger, this is a great way to break through a plateau. It is extremely challenging and very hard on the nervous system, but it works. I don’t recommend doing this for every exercise you perform in a session. The body will adapt to any stimulus you place upon it over time. Start by performing this protocol on the last set of a chest exercise (bench press) and then the next session you might try it with a leg exercise (squat). Make a point of rotating exercises, so you are always hitting a different set of muscle fibres.

2. Make sure you are getting the best muscle fuel. Not all protein sources are the same. Some are higher quality than others. Whey protein that is found in dairy has a higher biological value (over 100) than any other source, while beans only list at a 58. Biological value is a measure of the amount of protein absorbed from a food which becomes incorporated into the proteins of one’s body. It captures how readily the digested protein can be used in protein synthesis in the cells. Look to get the vast majority of your protein from sources such as dairy, eggs, beef, fish and poultry. They are all at the top of the list.

3. Stop performing so much cardio. Pick your poison. After 20 minutes on a stationary bike, treadmill or elliptical trainer, your body starts to break down muscle for fuel, reversing all your hard work. Next time the Olympics are on, take a look at the sprinters, both the way they look and the way they train. They do their cardio in short, explosive bursts of 100 m or less, then they rest/recover and do it again. They have more muscle and less body fat than a marathon runner because of the way they train. More muscle means a faster metabolism. Place 80 to 90% of your effort on lifting weights and save the cardio for the end of your workout and keep it short and sweet, 20 minutes or less.

4. Increase your time under tension. This is one of the most important variables you can manipulate to achieve rapid muscle growth.  The longer you can keep your muscles under tension, the more muscle fibres you will break down. To do this, start focusing on the lowering phase of your lifts. This is referred to as the “eccentric phase” which is often ignored. The lowering phase is when your muscles undergo the most damage. Whether you are pushing, pulling or squatting, take a full 4 seconds to lower the weight and then explode back up through the lifting portion or the “concentric phase” as fast as you can. Try about a 4:1 tempo. If you are performing a set of 10 repetitions, that is a full 50 seconds that your muscles will be under tension which is more than enough time to get the job done.

5.  Take a full week off. I’m not advocating that you sit on the couch and do nothing for an entire week. Do some low grade activity like walking, bike riding, or swimming, all at a leisurely pace. I recommend you do this 4 or 5 times a year. Your tendons and joints can take quite a beating over time. After 8 to 12 weeks of straight training you will start to feel stale, lacking focus and motivation. By taking a step back, you give your nervous system an opportunity to repair and recover. By the time the week is up, you will be itching to get back into the gym. This will lead to more focused training sessions and better results.