Weight GAIN techniques

[mighty hounds]

buys mens health mag. they have some great tips in there that have helped me

[JK]

i am in a similar situation to you, could always eat as much as I want without putting on weight. firstly i suggest protein powders. there are a lot out there so do some research on the internet. prob only take it after weights and dont take too much as your body cant usually handle the quick release of protein and just releases it which is just wasting money (espeacially if you have never taken protein powder before). protein powders dont provide you with all the protein requirements so you need to eat foods such as tuna, eggs and beans which are high in protein and in general a balance diet.

I know everyone will have their own theories (as we all have different bodies, metabolism etc) but if you're going to do the powders then I'd hit them up before a gym session too .. My ex-PT who is pretty huge for his height and age suggests taking them with milk pre-workout because they apparently take longer to digest than if taken with water.

[HH3]

i am in a similar situation to you, could always eat as much as I want without putting on weight. firstly i suggest protein powders. there are a lot out there so do some research on the internet. prob only take it after weights and dont take too much as your body cant usually handle the quick release of protein and just releases it which is just wasting money (espeacially if you have never taken protein powder before). protein powders dont provide you with all the protein requirements so you need to eat foods such as tuna, eggs and beans which are high in protein and in general a balance diet.

I know everyone will have their own theories (as we all have different bodies, metabolism etc) but if you're going to do the powders then I'd hit them up before a gym session too .. My ex-PT who is pretty huge for his height and age suggests taking them with milk pre-workout because they apparently take longer to digest than if taken with water.

I dont think milk before training would be a very good idea...i vomit during games from pushing myself as it is...usually its just Powerade and doesnt look too bad...not too keen to add milk to it...

[JK]

i am in a similar situation to you, could always eat as much as I want without putting on weight. firstly i suggest protein powders. there are a lot out there so do some research on the internet. prob only take it after weights and dont take too much as your body cant usually handle the quick release of protein and just releases it which is just wasting money (espeacially if you have never taken protein powder before). protein powders dont provide you with all the protein requirements so you need to eat foods such as tuna, eggs and beans which are high in protein and in general a balance diet.

I know everyone will have their own theories (as we all have different bodies, metabolism etc) but if you're going to do the powders then I'd hit them up before a gym session too .. My ex-PT who is pretty huge for his height and age suggests taking them with milk pre-workout because they apparently take longer to digest than if taken with water.

I dont think milk before training would be a very good idea...i vomit during games from pushing myself as it is...usually its just Powerade and doesnt look too bad...not too keen to add milk to it...

Yeah probably a personal call .. I started trying it this week, about half hour before workout and it's been no prob, but Im not doing any cardio (and I still have chicken wings lol)

[HH3]

I found a website that shows which exercises to do and what areas they build....after sifting through the "get ripped in 4 weeks" dodgy crap...

It looks ok...ill follow this and see how it goes...

http://www.gain-weight-muscle-fast.com/ ... cises.html

[HH3]

I just worked through a routine...and it already looks like its gonna do the job coz i puffed up massive until the muscles relaxed about 10 mins later. If i can get it to stay how it was ill be happy.

Heres the routine...i made it myself to target the muscles i want to build up..

1. Dumbell Pullovers - 12 reps (chest)

2. Dumbell Military Shoulder Press - 12 reps (Shoulders, back, triceps)

3. Push Ups - 12 slow reps (Chest, Delts, Triceps, Biceps)

4. Arnold Press - 12 reps (Delts, Triceps, Traps)

5. Upright Rows - 12 reps (Traps, Delts, Biceps, Forearms)

6. Push Ups - 12 slow reps (Chest, Delts, Triceps, Biceps)

7. Bent-over Lateral Raises - 12 reps (Shoulders)

8. Pull ins (i added this, not on site) - 20 reps (shoulders, chest, biceps, forearms)

9. Sit ups/crunches - 50 reps (abs)

...and do it all 3 times...takes about 25 - 30 mins...including rests...

[charlieslim]

Drink lots of beer!!

[BurraBoys]

buys mens health mag. they have some great tips in there that have helped me

LMAO. Fail.
Not having a go at you Hounds. I just think mens health is a fail in general. Tricep kickbacks??? I mean seriously.

OK Burraboys to the rescue regarding this topic.

Want to put on weight?? Eat a shitload. Then eat some more. With respect to protein, I would recommend 1.5 grams per pound of body weight per day. Keep your carbs higher on workout days when you will need them most and lower on days you don’t need them. Don’t ignore carbs, the insulin surge response play a huge role in muscle building. Research carb cycling

I'd recommend protein shakes. Easy way to get protein volume in. Drink them with water. I know milk is good but so many people are lactose intolerant and working out all the other nutritional influences and bioavailability when you add milk is a pain in the arse. I could get even more technical regarding the 'anabolic window' with respect to nutrition and when to take supplements either side of your workout but considering your 'newbness' to the game, just get your protein shake in as soon as you can after a workout. You body will be more receptive to it within this 'window'

Don’t count your green veg in your carb count. IMHO you can’t get enough green leafy veg. Take a multivitamin and fish oil tablets. Lots of fish oil. Excellent for decreasing the effects on inflammation. Eat as clean as possible. As a general rule (assuming some common sense applied); if it doesn’t fly, swim or run (or hop like a kangaroo) or isn’t a vegetable don’t eat it. Don’t assume fats are bad. There are some excellent calculators around the net that are free and can help you plan your caloric intake for the day including fats. For lean weight gain, expect to put on some extra fat as well. Not knowing you, try and keep fats to 30-45grams per day. Good fats. Not KFC fats.

With regards to working out, don’t ignore legs. Squats and deadlifts are king. Concentrate on big money lifts. Bench, O'head press, rows, squats, deadlift variations, dips, chin/pull-ups, power cleans. Don’t put to much time into direct arm work outside of heavy curling once a week. Pick a tried and tested program and stick with it. Jim Wendler and Dave Tates 5/3/1 is excellent as is Ripptoes. Both are easy to find.

Give yourself some rotator cuff prehab work, serratus and scap control work and remember to foam roll to keep yourself in check in problem areas for many people. I’m assuming you do more ab work than crunches et al. Core control is important but don’t lose sight of the fact you need to lift heavy to help get size. If your serious about getting bigger, don’t overdo the cardio to much as it will be catabolic to some extent. If you’re only looking for 3-5kgs though, cardio won’t mess with you to much.

Very long winded but better than answering lots of little questions across 15+ posts. It’s not as technical as I could be and there is probably someone who wants to rip into me for something I said. I wrote this very quickly. As a general rule, fell free to ask me any questions regarding exercise, sports science and strength and conditioning.

[Jimmy_041]

Drink Coopers Stout from 6.30pm to 9pm. Bottle of red wine to midnight. Bundy and Coke from midnight to 3am

Dont overdo it though - leave the red wine out on Tuesday nights

Dinners - pizza - curry - pizza - lasagna - curry - pizza - Hungry Jacks

For snacks, eat only Chapmans fritz except on Sunday when you should eat chorizo

and run 10kms every day

[dedja]

Drink Coopers Stout from 6.30pm to 9pm. Bottle of red wine to midnight. Bundy and Coke from midnight to 3am

Dont overdo it though - leave the red wine out on Tuesday nights

Dinners - pizza - curry - pizza - lasagna - curry - pizza - Hungry Jacks

For snacks, eat only Chapmans fritz except on Sunday when you should eat chorizo

and run 10kms every day

Damn, always forget that last step ...

[HH3]

Dinners - pizza - curry - pizza - lasagna - curry - pizza - Hungry Jacks

That actually does look like my diet...for some reason im starving tonight. Had 3 Italian sausages and chips for dinner, then a pie, then 2 more sausages with cheese, bbq relish and cheese on bread...

[Jimmy_041]

Dinners - pizza - curry - pizza - lasagna - curry - pizza - Hungry Jacks

That actually does look like my diet...for some reason im starving tonight. Had 3 Italian sausages and chips for dinner, then a pie, then 2 more sausages with cheese, bbq relish and cheese on bread...

You piss me off......

I just thought "sausage" and put on 1/2 kg

[HH3]

Might go get a big bowl of chocolate ice cream

[Jimmy_041]

mofo

[mypaddock]

buys mens health mag. they have some great tips in there that have helped me

LMAO. Fail.
Not having a go at you Hounds. I just think mens health is a fail in general. Tricep kickbacks??? I mean seriously.

OK Burraboys to the rescue regarding this topic.

Want to put on weight?? Eat a shitload. Then eat some more. With respect to protein, I would recommend 1.5 grams per pound of body weight per day. Keep your carbs higher on workout days when you will need them most and lower on days you don’t need them. Don’t ignore carbs, the insulin surge response play a huge role in muscle building. Research carb cycling

I'd recommend protein shakes. Easy way to get protein volume in. Drink them with water. I know milk is good but so many people are lactose intolerant and working out all the other nutritional influences and bioavailability when you add milk is a pain in the arse. I could get even more technical regarding the 'anabolic window' with respect to nutrition and when to take supplements either side of your workout but considering your 'newbness' to the game, just get your protein shake in as soon as you can after a workout. You body will be more receptive to it within this 'window'

Don’t count your green veg in your carb count. IMHO you can’t get enough green leafy veg. Take a multivitamin and fish oil tablets. Lots of fish oil. Excellent for decreasing the effects on inflammation. Eat as clean as possible. As a general rule (assuming some common sense applied); if it doesn’t fly, swim or run (or hop like a kangaroo) or isn’t a vegetable don’t eat it. Don’t assume fats are bad. There are some excellent calculators around the net that are free and can help you plan your caloric intake for the day including fats. For lean weight gain, expect to put on some extra fat as well. Not knowing you, try and keep fats to 30-45grams per day. Good fats. Not KFC fats.

With regards to working out, don’t ignore legs. Squats and deadlifts are king. Concentrate on big money lifts. Bench, O'head press, rows, squats, deadlift variations, dips, chin/pull-ups, power cleans. Don’t put to much time into direct arm work outside of heavy curling once a week. Pick a tried and tested program and stick with it. Jim Wendler and Dave Tates 5/3/1 is excellent as is Ripptoes. Both are easy to find.

Give yourself some rotator cuff prehab work, serratus and scap control work and remember to foam roll to keep yourself in check in problem areas for many people. I’m assuming you do more ab work than crunches et al. Core control is important but don’t lose sight of the fact you need to lift heavy to help get size. If your serious about getting bigger, don’t overdo the cardio to much as it will be catabolic to some extent. If you’re only looking for 3-5kgs though, cardio won’t mess with you to much.

Very long winded but better than answering lots of little questions across 15+ posts. It’s not as technical as I could be and there is probably someone who wants to rip into me for something I said. I wrote this very quickly. As a general rule, fell free to ask me any questions regarding exercise, sports science and strength and conditioning.

Are you talking about genuine muscle mass here- e.g. not creatine water weight or fat from carbs?? Because 3-5kg would take you at least 18 months of dedicated training- and that would be someone with great genetics. If you are training naturally and a full grown adult, muscle mass doesn't come as easy as the supplement advertising may tell you.

[King Kernas]

Try taking Creatine Monohydrate. Did this one off-season trying to gain weight. I also had my whey protein twice a day, usually with milk banana and a bit of ice-cream, was like drinking liquid cement it was that thick but was good. But, the creatine was awesome, not only for gaining weight and muscle mass, but the energy and the way it helped in workouts was good. You could go harder for longer and not fatigue out. I was doing weights three times a week, couple of muscle groups a day so i was training all musle groups. Eat shit loads of good food too, tuna, pasta, potatoes. but try the Creatine, makes a shit load of difference, but, you need to do alot more weights than what you have stated. Takes alot of hard work. Hope this helps you out HH3!

[BurraBoys]

Are you talking about genuine muscle mass here- e.g. not creatine water weight or fat from carbs?? Because 3-5kg would take you at least 18 months of dedicated training- and that would be someone with great genetics. If you are training naturally and a full grown adult, muscle mass doesn't come as easy as the supplement advertising may tell you.

Dedicated training?? I didnt no there was any other way to train?? When you mean dedicated do you mean a pure focus on size gain and not much attention paid to other elements? Because id argue that point.

A 5-6kg weight gain and a lean out would probably equate to about a 3 and a bit kg lean muscle gain. I dont no anything about the OP in terms of physiology, bone structure etc but i get the feeling from his post that he is a relativle newbie to resistance training. Outside newb gains, 3-5 kg can seem like alot but i could guarantee that most joe averages looking to get bigger and stronger would find that those sort of results would come quite quickly if you did everything right. When i mean everything right i mean balancing all of your supplements and nutrition around the anabolic window (pre and post workout) and around your sleep and daily biorythms, measuring precise quantaties of food for each meal, getting quality sleep, enough water and not cheating with the odd meal and there and busting your ass in the gym.

[Who's Ball?]

Ok, from someone who knows a bit about training (those who know me at PAC will agree), here's a few rules

1. Lean muscle mass takes a long time to gain
2. Diet is more important than training
3. Work out what you want to train, then ask an expert (like a personal trainer) to write a specialised program

Ok, so here's my take on your situation
Midfielder, who wants to play as a (presumably attacking) Half Back flanker. To me, this means that outright bulk and size probably isn't that important, what would be important is a strong core (for baulking/shrugging off tackles), powerful legs (explosive pace), and reasonable upper body strength. You probably want to keep some cardio as well, so you can run out games.
Here's a few ideas to think about, I'm not going to get too specific, because I'm tired and not getting paid for this but here goes

Leg weights - compound exercises are brilliant, BUT you need to do them properly. Squatting 50kg through a full range is better than squatting 80kg through a quarter of your range. Make sure someone shows you how to do all these exercised properly first, so you don't injure yourself, and the gains will eventually come. So, the great exercises are squats, lunges, deadlifts (also good for the back, but good technique is vital), calf raises, and hamstring/leg curls.

Chest - try to use free weights and dumbells as much as possible. It's harder to start with, but as Burra was saying, you'll want to strengthen your rotator cuff. Dumbell exercises do this for you, because you need to stabilise the weight yourself. If you can do decline bench, flat bench, incline bench, upright bench and then a cable type exercise (or pec deck) then you'll work all the regions of the chest, as well as your deltoids (shoulders) slightly. Vary between a straight press, and a wide-arm fly on the exercises, a straight press is good for power, a wide-fly is good for stability and control, and you'll lift a lot less on it

Shoulders - shoulder press, lateral raises, upright rows, arnold press, forward raises, rear flys - all work different areas of the shoulder complex, and all are good value

Back - Pulldowns, seated cable rows, chinups, deadlifts (like I said in legs) are all good. Vary between closegrips and widegrips

Arms - well, I don't do much in the way of bicep/tricep exercises, because I work them fairly hard in either back or chest days, but everyone loves preacher curls, just make sure you fully extend your arms, and tricep pushdowns/pulldowns or closegrip benchpress or dips work well for triceps.

You definitely DON'T want to do all this in one session, so you need to work out how much time you want to devote to weight training. I do weights 4 times a week as well as regular footy training, but most people don't have that amount of free time. So, if you can only do weights twice, pick a range of exercises from say chest/shoulders/triceps for one day, and legs/back/biceps for the other. You want to only be doing a maximum of 20-25 sets total in a workout, so pick the exercises and go for it

How many reps? Heavy sets with low reps = power. Light sets with high reps = stability. Work it out

Do some core stuff at the end of each workout, crunches/prone bridges/etc etc

And here's for the bit you don't want to know
For the first 6-8 weeks of training your body won't really do much in response to training other than to learn how to lift better. It creates new neural pathways and muscle firing patterns first, because it's easier for it to do. After that period, you will start to get some muscle hypertrophy - where muscle cells start getting bigger. You don't ever really grow more muscle cells, you can just get better at using them (neural programming) and get them better at working (hypertrophy). So, it's going to take at least 2 months before you start getting decent muscle gains. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar.

Diet - As Burra said, it is extremely important. Depending on who you talk to, you need between 1.5 and 2 grams of protein per kg of body weight to gain muscle mass. The vast majority of us get this in a normal diet of meat, dairy and legumes. Any more is potentially bad for your kidneys, or you'll just shit it out. So your range is 120-160 grams per day.

But

Timing of meals is important in weight training. 5 small meals is much better than 3 large meals, your body has a better chance to absorb all the nutrients for gains. The best advice I can give here is to have a good largish healthy breakfast, (Not a fryup) then a couple of small meals during the day, and then around half an hour before you do weights, you want to get protein and carbs into you. Protein because you want proteins to be available to repair any damage to muscle cells which occurs (which is a good thing in training), and carbs because that's what gives you the energy to train. Around half an hour after training do the same. Each meal should in an ideal world have around 30g of protein as well as good fruit/veggies/carb sources

Supplements - Some people use shakes (I do for the convenience), but I also have a sandwich or something else at the same time for the carbs. There's no evidence that multivitamine tablets, fishoil, glucosamine etc etc are needed, but a lot of people swear by them. As Burra said as well, eat healthy, don't obsess, because it's a pain in the arse to not eat the things you want to, but make healthy choices when you can. Lots of people swear by creatine as well. I've used it (and am at the moment), but it requires a lot of effort to use properly so you don't ruin your kidneys, and the initial "muscle gain" people get is only water retention. You need to use it for a long period of time on a proper cycle to get a good benefit. So don't waste your money until next preseason

Phew, that's a lot to get out, but I hope it's useful. Everyone has their own ideas about training and weight training, you'll hear a hundred different opinions going around, but pretty much everything I've put in here is proven fact, not what some dude heard from someone else who read something in Mens Health (what a rubbish magazine)

Enjoy, join a gym, see a personal trainer, and have a good year

[BenchedEagle]

Great Post there mate. U certainly know ur stuff. I have my mate here and he's a personal trainer, boot camp coordinator and he reckons ur spot on. Especially with the Creatine

Now..... if i wasnt so lazy to take in all this advice and do it! haha

[Who's Ball?]

Ta, been doing weight training fairly seriously for around 8 years, and I've been lucky enough to have some awesome personal trainers as friends along the way. Weights is fun and rewarding, but it takes a while....