Protein For Muscle Growth – How Much Is Needed?

If you are starting out at the gym and you want to complement your training regime with a course of healthy protein supplements, you might be thinking, “How much protein do I need to grow muscle?” Your body needs protein for muscle growth, that’s for sure, but how many grams is enough? And which protein shake should you use? This is an important question to ask as you do not want to be wasting time in the gym or spending money on the wrong protein supplements.

The answer is this: it depends on your goals and how quickly you want to reach them. For someone training every day they will obviously need to consume more protein than someone who is only training 3 times a week. It also depends on your body weight. The standard guideline for how much protein is needed for someone training regularly is 1/500 of your body weight. This means if you weigh 75kg then an optimum amount of protein for muscle growth is 150g per day.

However, I would see this as for someone who is on an average routine of 3 to 4 days a week with 4 to 5 sets of heavy lifting with low reps per gym session. If you really want to build muscle fast then more protein is needed. For example, I train 5 times a week and do 5 to 6 sets per session of heavy lifting. I also take creatine, hormone enhancers and pre-workout energy drinks. Taking these supplements makes the muscles work harder and so they need more protein for muscle recovery. I take 400g of protein per day and seem to be gaining muscle pretty fast.

Not all the protein for muscle growth in your diet must come from protein shakes. You can have plenty of natural protein as well. In fact, natural protein is recommended as you get more muscle repairing amino acids from food than you do from protein shakes, although many protein shakes these days have them added in. Chicken, turkey, beef and fish all have high protein content and are equally as good at providing protein for muscles as protein shakes.

So, back to the original question: How much protein for muscle growth? The answer is as much as you want between 1/500 and 1/200 of your body weight per day. The harder you train, the more you need and the more performance enhancing supplements you take, the more you need. If you want to build lean muscle without the addition of extra fat then you want a whey protein shake so you don’t have the excess carbohydrates. However the process will be slower since you won’t have the calorie surplus that will provide extra energy for workouts and muscle recovery. If you just want to pack on mass as fast as you can then a high carbohydrate protein shake will be best. This will provide the protein for muscle growth and recovery and the carbohydrates for the energy you need.