How to Increase Muscle Density

Removing the fat embedded in between the fibers of your muscle tissue will increase your ​muscle density​. Many effective methods can help you safely reach this goal. Learning more about these ways improves your overall health as well as your body composition.

​Read more:​ 6 Rules of Gaining Muscle Mass

Doing aerobic exercise gives you an excellent way to increase your muscle density. The writers of a September 2015 paper in the ​American Journal of Physiology​ tested 18 overweight adults and showed that doing regular exercise for 13 weeks decreased their body fat. Interestingly, doing aerobic exercise 30 minutes a day had the same effect as doing 60 minutes a day. Both protocols decreased body fat an average of 9 pounds.

The authors of an August 2013 report in the ​International Journal of Preventive Medicine​ found similar effects in 30 postmenopausal adults tested for 12 weeks. These researchers had the subjects lightly work out three times a day, five days a week. They lost about 8 pounds by the end of the study.

Amazingly, doing intermittent exercise caused more weight loss than doing continuous exercise. These two studies show how doing a ​moderate​ amount of exercise produces better results than doing an ​excessive​ amount.

​Read more:​ Is There a Difference Between Cardio and Aerobic Exercise?

Doing resistance exercises like sprinting also gives you a way to increase your muscle density. The authors of an August 2014 paper in ​Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism​ tested 15 premenopausal adults and found that doing six weeks of ​sprint interval training​ three times a week caused an 8 percent loss in body fat and a 1.3 percent increase in muscle mass. It also increased the participants' running speed and aerobic capacity.

Older adults can reap the benefits of resistance training as well. The writers of a June 2013 report in the ​Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness​ tested 23 postmenopausal adults and showed that doing twice weekly workouts for a year improved their body composition.

The subjects lost 2.6 percent of their total body fat during the study. Interestingly, the whole-body resistance training had a different effect on their upper and lower body areas. The upper body showed a 5.4 percent loss, and the lower body showed a 1.4 percent loss.

​Read more:​ Can You Get Bigger Muscles With Resistance Bands?

You can also increase your muscle density by changing your diet, according to a June 2016 article in ​Obesity Reviews​. These researchers assessed the data of studies tracking more than 1,000 overweight subjects over the course of a year. Eating less than 50 grams of carbohydrate each day was considered a ​very low-carbohydrate diet,​ and eating less than 200 grams of carbohydrate was considered a ​low-carbohydrate diet​.

Participants adhering to either of one these low-carbohydrate diets improved their body composition. The low-carbohydrate diet caused a 1.3-pound loss of body fat, and the very low-carbohydrate diet caused a 2.1-pound loss. Eating more than 200 carbohydrates a day had no effect on their body weight.

You can ​combine​ these diet and exercise to get better results. The authors of a March 2017 report in the ​International Journal of Sports and Exercise Medicine​ tested 27 recreational athletes for six weeks and found that combining a low-carbohydrate diet with regular Crossfit workouts caused a 2.6 percent decrease in body fat. Doing only the Crossfit workouts had no effect on body fat. Importantly, the combination had no effect on athletic performance.