The Disadvantages of Building Muscle Mass

Muscle mass gives you strength and helps prevent injury. Increasing the amount of muscle on your body may be achieved by engaging in strength training. However, there are also disadvantages of resistance training, including injury.

These exercises, which enhance muscle size and definition encompass a wide range of activities including weight machines, resistance bands and exercises using body weight. Building muscle mass has both advantages and disadvantages.

​Read more:​ The Best Strength-Training Exercises for Weight Loss

An individual who is trying to lose weight and build muscle mass simultaneously may initially gain weight. This condition is temporary. When first starting your diet and strength-training program, your increase in muscle mass may outpace your loss of fat.

Using lighter weights and doing more repetitions can minimize the bulking effect causing your weight gain or plateau. Consulting with a fitness trainer gives you personalized and professional help to negate this disadvantage of building muscle mass.

Keep tabs on your diet to help manage the negatives of bodybuilding, such as weight gain. Focus on lean protein sources and choose fruits and vegetables as your carbohydrates. Include cardio exercise in your workout routine to help manage your weight, according to ExRx.net.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic exercise per week to maintain a healthy weight.

A stress fracture presents as a tiny crack in your bone, according to Mayo Clinic. Embarking on a workout program too intensely and too quickly, along with lifting more weight than you can handle, can cause this skeletal injury and represents one of the disadvantages of building muscle mass.

Additionally, the heavy loads and repetitions associated with weight lifting and strength training can cause stress fractures. To avoid stress fractures while building muscle mass, a woman who is out-of-shape must increase the intensity of her workouts incrementally.

​Read more:​ How to Get Started With Weightlifting

Other potential disadvantages of weight lifting include muscle aches and pains that result from the activities required to build muscle mass. You may know the saying "No pain, no gain," but overusing your muscles while engaging in strength training and sports results in varying degrees of pain that may persevere for several days.

Lifting too much weight or moving in an unusual manner in an effort to build muscles could result in a muscle tear as well as damage to ligaments and tendons as well as the surrounding soft tissue.

Bodybuilding and the drive to build muscle mass may lead to reverse anorexia. This health condition is characterized by the obsession to constantly increase the size of your muscles. While this drive provides motivation in the beginning, a bodybuilder begins to give up friends, shirk responsibilities and embark on unusual diets to attain his muscle mass goals.

An individual with reverse anorexia has an inaccurate perception of his body image, constantly feeling his physique is inadequate, despite bulging muscles.