I am 6 foot 2, 155 pounds. So needless to say I am a toothpick. I work out routinely, and I load up on carbs yet I stay the same weight and I only get toned. Does anyone know of a workout program that will help me gain muscle mass and weight?
Before your workout, eat lots of carbs, calories, and fat. During the workout, you must lift until muscle failure. You need to find the right amount of weight to lift. Find something heavy enough that by the time you get to 8 reps, you feel like you cannot do one more. Force yourself to do one more, to get to 9 reps, force yourself with all of your might to reach 10. If you can't, rest for about 5 seconds and try again. If you absolutely cannot do 10, this is muscle failure. This is what you want to achieve. lifting lower amount of weights 15, 20, or 30 times will not increase muscle mass, only muscle tone. Try do to about 3 sets of lifting something very heavy about 8 - 10 times. Do not do more than 2 muscle groups in one day. And try to do muscle groups that are in slightly different parts of the body. For example: On day 1, do your biceps and stomach. Rest on day 2, or just do light cardio. day 3 do your triceps and chest. Rest on day 4 or do light cardio. day 5 do your upper back and one leg muscle. Rest on day 6 or do light cardio. Day 7 do your lower back and the remaining leg muscles. Always go to muscle failure with the arms, upper back, and chest. Do slightly lower weights for the lower back, and not to total muscle failure. Your legs will benefit from either low weight with muscle failure or high weight with total muscle failure. Post workout get tons of protein! I can't stress this enough. Buy some protein powder and have 2 - 3 shakes per day. Drink them between meals. Your body can only absorb 30 - 40 g of protein in one sitting, so it is a waste to drink a protein shake and eat a piece of meat. Also try to have a large serving of meat or some kind of protein with each meal, and something relatively high in carbs. You will also need to increase your fiber intake to compensate for the extra protein. You will want to shoot for a minimum of .88 g of protein per lb of body weight. If you are 155 lbs, then you will need a bare minimum of 136 grams of protein throughout the day. You also need to get this much protein on your days of rest. Try to get the max of 1.0 grams of protein for each lb of body weight. 155 lbs, get 155 grams of protein. Protein powders can be spendy. Only buy the high quality stuff. You will get much better results from whey protein. (Whey comes from milk). Keep an eye on the amount of cholesterol in your choice of protein powder. Some of them are very high in it and this can be bad for you, especially if high cholesterol runs in your family. You can use soy protein. It is better for you but it is harder for your body to absorb, so you may need to get even more than 1.0 g/lb. You only want to do one or two muscle groups per day because anything more than that is just too hard on your body, and no matter how much protein you supplement, it wont be enough and your muscles wont grow, just get more toned. And you run the risk of your body taking protein away from muscles that already exist and giving it to the muscles that you just worked. This can be very damaging, and cause weakness in other parts of the body. You need to go to muscle failure, because that is how you tear the muscle fibers. Your body needs carbs and protein to rebuild those muscles. Keep in mind that your muscles ARE NOT growing while you are working out. They may swell from being used, but this is temporary. Your muscles grow while you rest. This is why it is important to have a day, or even two to three days of rest between workouts. If you are still very soar after one day of resting, rest another day. If your muscles are soar, that means they are not done healing yet, and if you work another muscle group, you run the risk mentioned above of your muscles not growing, just toning, and your body dipping into its protein reserves. Its ok to do cardio on your rest days, but not to the max. Find your target heart rate and dont go above 60% or 70% for more than a half hour. Spend the rest of the time doing stretches. To find your target heart rate. Take the number 220, and subtract your age. So if you are 20 years old, subtract 20 from 220 = 200. 200 beats per minute is 100% of your target heart rate NEVER exceed 90% of your target heart rate. The older you are, the harder it will be for you to grow muscle mass. Judging from your height and weight, you have a high metabolism, and it is harder for someone like you to grow muscle mass than it is for someone who is short and squat. It will take a long time. Be patient and stick to it. I imagine it will take about 3 to 6 months before you notice any growth. But once the growth starts, it will come on relatively fast. Like I said above, you will need to increase your fiber intake. All that protein may bind you up some. You can drink a glass of metamucel in the morning as soon as you wake up. Try to eat a few more fruits and veggies. After a while, your body will adjust to getting all this added protein and it wont be a problem anymore. If all of this fails, you can use creatine. BUT, educate yourself highly before use! Creatine can be dangerous and cause serious stomach and digestive problems. Creatine does work to build muscle mass, but it has no effect on tendons. As a result, your muscles grow faster than your tendons can keep up with and this can cause the tendons to disconnect from your bones and ligaments. If this happens... your fucked! There are some other supplements you may want to consider. Fish oil is a big help. It helps lubricate muscle fibers, and joints. This will decrease the amount of soarness you will feel post workout. Fish oil is very healthy, relatively cheap, and everyone should take it whether they work out or not! Your body uses up massive amounts of magnesium when you work out. Magnesium is a natural muscle relaxer, and your body needs it to send communication signals through your nervous system and to your muscles. Take it in the morning on an empty stomach, but eat about 15 minutes later. It can give you diarrhea. It also helps your heart rate stay low and normal during a workout. And as always, a multivitamin is highly recommended. Especially something high in b vitamins. Your body needs b vitamins to metabolize food, and if you don't have enough b vitamins, you may as well forget about taking all that protein, cause your body can't metabolize most of it without b vitamins. Do not take a solid pill form of a multivitamin. Get something that is either liquid or powder. Thats about all. To summarize: Pre workout: Eat a meal high in carbs and calories. These are the fuel you need to lift. Not having enough, and you wont have enough energy. Medium protein and medium fats (to help stave of hunger, and for added energy. Try to get healthy fats like olive oil, butter, and you can count the fish oil pills) Wait a good hour after meals to begin workout. Workout: 1 - 2 muscle groups to complete muscle failure. (some people think you need to spend massive amounts of time in the gym, but this can often be easily achieved in 30 - 60 minutes) Don't be shy about taking little rests between sets. Post workout: Rest. Get massive protein (minimum: 0.88 grams per lb of body weight, max: 1.0 grams per lb of body wieht. and medium amounts of carbs.) Get lots of sleep. That is when the real muscle growth happens. Don't be shy about taking a nap after your workout. Just drink a protein shake beforehand. Get PLENTY of water. Minimum: 8, 8oz glasses per day. Sip it throughout your workout. Go into the workout fully hydrated Get some fish oil, and a multivitamin that is high in b vitamins. Magnesium is totally optional. Chances are you will be getting enough of that from your diet anyway. Hope this helps. Feel free to send me any questions you may have.
As we age we seem to gradually gain more and more weight naturally. That's why I asked your age. Then as we get older we lose weight over the years. I mean over 65 years of age.
*runs off to weigh himself to see if that has started yet* Been dead on about 200 pounds for 35 years now...gonna hit 60 this year. Have been losing bulk and gaining cuts with a 7 mile per day running program for the last few years.
I think Skaught's advice is generally good but 8, 8 oz glasses of water a day?? That seems like complete overkill - give your kidneys a break!
When you work out, how many time do you normally lift a given weight? Normally to build muscles you want to use enough weight that you can only lift it around 6-12 times before your muscles are completely exhausted and you absolutely can't life any more without taking a break. If you're able to lift it more times than that, you are building muscles endurance and tone more than strength/muscle size.
8 8 oz glasses seems like a lot. And it is for someone who isn't active. But working out causes you to loose water through sweat. Those fluids need to be replaced. Working out also causes your metabolism to increase, so for the rest of the day, you loose water at a faster rate than normal. Your kidneys and digestive tract will also need the added help to deal with all the extra protein.
If you were to work out as I suggested, you probably will be thirsty enough to drink that amount of water. Plus a guy like the OP obviously has a high metabolism. Working out like this will cause his body temerature to rise, and his metabolism to increase even more so; causeing excess water loss. Chances are that if you feel thirsty, you are already getting close to dehydration. Its best to prevent it rather than treat it.
I agree that your water intake would no doubt go up if one followed that workout regiment but I don't think anyone should take preventative measures against dehydration other than making sure that there's easy access to water. If your workout area was a 5 mile walk into a desert then maybe it would be a good idea to do what you're talking about but cmon... people know when they're thirsty and the body only causes thirst when it needs water so why complicate things?
That's the standard advice, but it sounds like he has a metabolism that's far out at the extreme end of the curve. I wonder if he would do better with even more? Or perhaps more frequent intakes of smaller amounts? I don't know enough about it to give any advice, but given his metabolism I'm not sure the standard advice is the best thing for him. It might be a good idea to consult a nutritionalist or something.
Skaught's advice is pretty good. There are a few things I'd add to that. First, don't eat too much before you work out. Eating too much will divert blood to your stomach and you'll have less blood for your skeletal muscles. Eat a lot, yes, but give yourself around 3-4 hours without eating before you work out. You'll be able to work out harder and max out your muscles better. Second, and I can't stress this enough, compound exercises. Squats and deadlifts are some of the most important exercises you can do. Learn how to do them properly and then do them because you can fuck yourself up if you do them wrong. The point isn't to do a ton of weight, the point is to do them. And of course, bench press is great and so are pullups. I used to do the so-called "vanity" exercises--isolated exercises, like concentration curls. They did make my arms big, but it's not worth it, imo. They cause unnecessary stress on the joints, they're painful and they only get one muscle group. Squats is the ultimate exercise because it gets nearly everything. And it also increases your HGH levels, so strangely, it can improve your overall ability to build muscle. I found that squats made my arms a lot stronger and I found that it made me able to run very fast. It also caused me to gain 10lbs when I had plateaued at 190lbs for years. Squats will cut you up and give you a real man's body, genetics permitting, of course. Supplements. I did supplements and then I stopped and didn't notice a real difference. I'm sure they're indispensable if you're doing this stuff competitively, but if you're just a normal dude trying to get buff, I wouldn't bother, or if you do, don't give it too much attention. Just focus on routine, and yeah, eat a lot.
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! That's a concentration curl--it's a curl, but I think the "concentration" has to do with the way you're seated and positioned. If you're one of those dudes who does curls standing up with dumbells in each hand, those are just curls. That's a shitty way to do it, imo, because it's easy to cheat. In fact, I get irritated when I see people do standing curls. With concentration curls, if you're doing them right, the only muscle that's doing the moving is the bicep.
Thanks for picture Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I usually do those with my hand behind my elbow, so I can't cheat by simply moving my elbow backwards.
Right at the beginning of Arnold's first book on bodybuilding he states that guys with a *light bone structure* will never gain any significant muscle mass no matter how much they work out with weights. So although you may get stronger and toned (highly desirable objectives imo) you will probably always look underweight.
