Gain muscle mass

Sometimes your body will not put on mass until it's ready, but you need to train like an animal and eat a ton of protein. Protein is the key, you need to consume one-gram of protein for each pound of muscle mass that you want to gain - EVERY Day. If you want to weigh 200 LBS, you need to eat 200 grams of protein. I did this buy buying protein powder and consuming it before, after workouts and when ever I was hungry. This eliminated the desire for snacks and beefed up my muscles.
You need to work out with heavy weights at least 3-5 times per week. It's not easy, but that's how it's done.

 

Coming from a guy who was 102lbs at 5'10, 9 years ago and is 202lbs currently, with a six pack, you aren't eating enough. Get the myfitnesspal app on your phone, set up your macros, and consistently eat 4000 calories a day. You'll gain 20lbs in at least 6 months.

 

One winter I gained 25 lbs by eating tons of eggs, chicken, rice, peanut butter sandwiches, and protein powder. It is kind of a strange feeling, but I would eat until I was full and then some for breakfast and dinner, which feels slightly uncomfortable at first. When you are lifting a lot though I think this becomes easier

 

Hey, bro.

The thing that gets me is that I don't have a big enough appetite sometimes. Try buying mass gainers. Drinking those will really help you get a ton of calories in. Whole milk will help too if you want cheap ways to gain mass.

 

I've been doing this for couple of months, got a 6 pack and great chest. But I really want to have big arms so I think lifting wieghts is better for that.

 

You got to eat above your maintenance calories per day. Lift weights too, either do like a 4-5 day split training different body parts per day. Or do full body workouts 2-3 times a week. I train for ice hockey but try to find a workout plan that will help you put on mass. Congrats on making it to 129 days though, that's awesome! Keep it up!

 

I'll throw out some advice because you seem interested. Most of the time I don't put effort into advising people on how to gain weight/build muscle anymore, especially over the internet, because very few people are willing to become disciplined enough to actually do this. The thing is, you have to brainwash yourself and change your lifestyle to revolve around 3 things:

1. Food.
2. Weight lifting.
3. Rest.

Food. What to eat, how much to eat, when to eat? First off, only eat real food. I know, I know, we live in the age of protein powder and creatine. The supplement industry is made up of a bunch of people on steroids who sell protein powder and "test" boosters. That is why I hate it and will never advocate for people to buy supplements. The second reason is because if we look at athletes from before the 90's, we can see that they got big and strong without any protein powder or creatine; just good old food. Finally, what nobody ever talks about it your poop. Yes, if you're like me you'll find that most supplements will make you bloat, give you gas, and give you inconsistent, unhealthy, stinky stool. That means your digestive track is taking damage and we don't want that to happen.

So what do I think about when it comes to diet? The Real Food Diet. It's great. And it works. So how do you get a s***load of calories from nutrient dense food? The best method I've found for consuming around 4,000 calories is to have two kinds of meals - high fat meals and high carb meals. For breakfast I'll eat a lot of fat. I'll eat eggs with heavy whipping cream and fried potatoes. After I eat that I'll drink a cup of keto coffee which is my own 500 calorie coffee that contains heavy whipping cream and coconut oil. Learn how to make high fat drinks that taste good. Then I'll do lunch, which is going to be lean, meaning low fat, high carb and high protein. The reason for this is because fat digests slowly and carbs, even complex carbs and lean protein digest quickly. This is going to be your usual chicken and rice or pasta or fish and rice if I'm sick of chicken. I'll follow that with another lean high carb meal that is my pre-workout meal. This is when I eat fruit, about 30 minutes before I'll workout. After I lift, I'll eat dinner, which consists of another high fat meal. Why lots of fat then? Because the right combination of fat and carbs can make me sleepy so I'll eat and within 1-2 hours I'm knocked out.

My macros around around 220 protein + 120 fat + (remaining calories/4.2) carbs = 3,500 - 4,000.

How to lift weights:

There are 2 things that a good lifting program has:
1. It contains the 6 primal movement patterns. These are:

• Pushing horizontally (push ups/bench pressing)
• Pushing vertically (overhead pressing)
• Pulling horizontally (rows)
• Pulling vertically (pull ups)
• Sitting down/standing up (squats)
• Picking things up (dead lifts)

2. It contains a deload and is built of progressive overload principles.

• A deload is a period of time where you lift at half your intensity and allow your nervous system to recover.

Here is the lifting routine I put anyone on who is beginning to lift weights. It is meant to be run 12 times, over a year, and will likely double or triple your overall strength and provide even muscular development across your entire body. First find your one rep max on bench press, overhead press, squats, and dead lifts. Find out the max pull ups you can do. Find the weight you can do on rows with clean form for 10 reps (10 reps = 75% of your 1 rep max).

Week 1. 3 sets of 10 reps at 70%.
Day 1: Bench Press, Pull ups, Squats.
Day 2: Overhead Press, Rows, Dead lifts.
Day 3: Bench Press, Pull ups, Squats.

Week 2. 4 sets of 6 reps at 80%.
Repeat order of week 1.

Week 3. 5 sets of 3 reps at 90%.
Repeat order of week 1.

Week 4. DELOAD. 2 sets of 5 reps at 50%.
Repeat order of week 1.

Congratulations, you completely your first lifting cycle. Now we increment your strength. Add 5lbs to your bench, overhead press, and rows. Add 1 rep to your pull ups. Add 10 lbs to your squats and dead lifts.

If you do this program for a year you will do the following:
gain 120lbs on your bench press.
gain 80+ lbs on your ohp.
gain 200+ lbs on your squat.
gain 200+ lbs on your dead lift.
Increase your number of pull ups by at least 10 reps.

Sleep. As for sleep, you want to get a lot. The more the better. I suggest taking an entire day off from school and work and allowing yourself to relax. You want to sleep during normal hours, like 10 PM to 6 AM. That's the time period when you get the healthiest sleep.

If you're interested in any of this, let me know. You can send me messages and I'll do my best to answer any of these questions/expand on any topics I've covered in this post.

 

Wow @Mr. Sir that is some great information! I'm 145lbs 5'9 and lean. At one point I got to 165 and was pretty ripped eating like a maniac but as soon as I went back to a normal diet poof it was all gone. The kind of food you are suggesting would probably work for me because I hated all that supplement crap. I especially like this idea of using heavy whipping cream to crank up the calories!

Is there a book that you recommend that talks about real food bodybuilding?

 

@RyanRVA

I've read one book on bodybuilding and did not find it very educational. The best places to learn about diet and weight lifting are YouTube. There are some very educational channels out there. StrengthCamp is a good starter resource. Just go to playlists and watch enough videos and you'll learn about lifting and eating. A little known channel is Stephanie Keto Person. She talks about nutritional ketosis but you can learn a lot about how to consume high fat food and how to eat to maintain the health of your digestive tract, which is very important because high calorie diets can be hard on the gut. Flexforall2 is going to be a great resource on learning about macro nutrients, how to cut, diet, reverse diet. The thing is a lot of youtubes "vlog" so you have to figure out how to navigate their channels to find the informational videos and they aren't always organized.

 

I find the most useful thing to put on lean muscle is to take a protein shake within 30 mins of weight training. and upping the protein on non training days

 

Also there are a lot of extreme things you can do to put on mass, but they can lead to ill health

 

1. Eat lots
2. Sleep lots
3. lift heavy

Honestly man that's it.

As @Mr. Sir said ALOT of people do not have the discipline to buckle down and really make it a lifestyle change, which is what you need to do after a certain point if you want to see drastic results. I also agree with him in the fact that you should really stay away from most supplements. The only thing I have sitting in cupboard is a tub of protein powder to round out some days when I don’t get enough.

As I'm sure any modern fitness crusader knows you’ll find a SHITLOAD of material on the web, especially in the beginning before you develop a bullshit filter. Supplements, how many grams of X?, routines, macros, bodypart splits, proper form, cutting/ bulking, reps, testosterone this and that and blah blah blah man the list just goes on and on. The most important thing in the beginning is that you just get out there and LIFT! Eat plenty of calories and get your rest. And honestly man I'm not sure about HIIT for gaining mass. Don't get me wrong it's great for cutting and maintenance, but you gotta have some muscle to cut down to (if that's what you're going for). Mr. Sir gave an excellent example of a good routine, but don't be afraid to customize a routine to your own agenda (safely).

On a different note here I will confess that one thing I do for putting on mass quickly when I'm feeling stalled is the dangerous dirty bulk. Eating enough to put on mass can be difficult, especially when you have the willpower of a soda can like me. So dirty bulking is when you eat WHATEVER you effing want in order to hit your calorie goal. This makes hitting it fairly easy since the whole pizza and bucket of chicken you just ate totals out at a couple thousand calories. Then for your next meal you go down to the local china garden or something and eat as many plates as you can. The cons to this method are fairly obvious and for many make it not a viable option. You HAVE to lift hard on this and I would also recommend doing alot of traditional cardio or HIIT on rest days. You also shouldn't do this for an extended period of time, maybe a month or two. I have to emphasize that this works for ME and may not for you. I can pull it off because I already have a high metabolism and supplement it as much as I can. I get plenty of cardio and LIFT HARD. Don't get me wrong at the end of a dirty bulk I look a bit puffy but with the right LIFE ROUTINES (as Mr. sir said) and dedication the fat can be burned off in no time at all. Then BAM your left with all that muscle you just built and look like you never have before. But honestly it would probably be safer to do a nice clean bulk and and get a good routine. Really man just ignore this paragraph. You'll get faaaaaat.

Good luck brother and congrats on day 129! I'm on day 3 and feel the need to hump everything.

 

Yeah, high intensity interval training is going to be counter-intuitive for building muscle because it will elevate your cortisol, a catabolic hormone.

My issue with dirty bulking is all of the side effects that come along with it. Some people tolerate the side effects better than others but in my case, over-consumption of sugar will lead to acne and poor stole quality. Toxic processed food can leave you with a foul body odor. Consuming too much gluten for too long will destroy your intestine. You can also lower your stomach acid levels. And in the big picture, how much muscle do you really build? I mean, you'll experience strength increases because your glycogen stores are always full from the carbs and you'll be able to press and squat more from your body weight increase but an increase on the scale does not correlate to an increase in muscle mass.

That being said, if you can handle a dirty builk/See food diet (eat everything you see) I'd suggest a lifting routine with at least 4 squat sessions. Lot's of squatting will keep your bodyfat in check far better than any cardio. When bulking, unless you're playing a sport, I'd say just don't do cardio. Just stretch and keep yourself mobile. In more cases than not, people who I have trained always injure themselves with cardio but never with lifting even when I have them squatting 4-5 days a week. Look up the fat loss results from Smolov's or the Bulgarian Method for proof.

 

ooooohhhhh yeaahhh. Very true.

Haha I guess I really don't recommend dirty bulking. You'll feel like crap, smell like crap, and stool quality will indeed be poor. It's just super easy mode for me since it makes me superfocus on lifting hard because I know I'm eating garbage. It's like having a gun pointed at my head. So many calories going in means if I don't push it 100% with the steel I'll just get real fat real fast. Squatz n' Oatz baby.

 

15 minutes of exercise then rest for 5 days? Uuuuuuuhhhh I don't know man. HIT is kind of an old school training thing. All about fiber recruitment and whatnot right? Not many people do it any more though, and a lot of people dispute that it's really even effective.

But hey if it works for you then cool

I tried 10x3 for a while and it worked pretty well. I didn't notice that much of a difference from similar programs though. Honestly if you're looking to cut fat the best thing that ever worked for me is HIIT with a clean diet and plenty of protein. Make sure you're lifting in between days though to retain muscle. And really just diet in general is the most important factor when trying to lose weight

 

False.

Diet + Exercise = Results