Building muscle, testosterone, growth hormone?

I lack in upper body and calf muscles, i want to build muscle, started weight lifting a couple weeks ago and am seeing results, I would like to speed things or optemize my efforts.

What can i do to get the most muscle?  

how can i raise Testosterone levels?

how can i raise growth hormones?

what foods, supplements, and exercise should i follow

.... the caveat,   to do this without negatively impacting my mpb

I currently make shakes consisting of:  whey protein (grass fed unsweetened), silica, gelatin, kefir, mag citrate, brewers yeast, curcumin, dates, greens, concentrace minerals.

thanks

check out HIIT

Tea, check out athlean-x on youtube, a bit too mainstream nutritional wise, but knows his exercises.

A low volume strength workout would be best. Starting strength is a good one. If you can split the workouts into morning/afternoon sessions this will work even better to optimise hormone levels.

If we're talking about "best" for the shortest amount of time possible, check out Body by Science. All bodybuilding type workouts are pretty much broscience for the fitness industry to stay gigantic in terms of gym memberships etc...

teacup wrote:I lack in upper body and calf muscles, i want to build muscle, started weight lifting a couple weeks ago and am seeing results, I would like to speed things or optemize my efforts.

What can i do to get the most muscle?  

how can i raise Testosterone levels?

how can i raise growth hormones?

what foods, supplements, and exercise should i follow

.... the caveat,   to do this without negatively impacting my mpb

I currently make shakes consisting of:  whey protein (grass fed unsweetened), silica, gelatin, kefir, mag citrate, brewers yeast, curcumin, dates, greens, concentrace minerals.

thanks

Muscle growth is a function of muscular overload. You can achieve this either with a weight which produces fatigue in a low rep range or weight which produces fatigue in a higher rep range. Each form of training tends to cause a different form of physical trauma in the muscle, which causes the adaptive response by the body to build more muscle. It really depends on your genetics whether higher rep or lower rep training will produce more muscle growth for you. For most people, there is a spectrum that is not totally discrete. Training at rep ranges of 3-6 is usually deemed strength training, while 6-10 or 12 is considered "hypertrophy" training. The truth is there is overlap and training for strength can also produce muscle growth. You've got to experiment and find what produces results for you. One way to find out would be to do a basic periodization program where you lift in the low range for 3-5 weeks and then lift in a mid-range rep scheme for a few weeks, then a high rep range for a few weeks.

Training with heavy loads will boost testosterone. The jury is out on how long the effect lasts. Some of the research shows that shortly after the boost, testosterone levels actually drop below basal levels. But others theorize this is because the testosterone is being taken up by muscle tissue, thus not registering in the serum or saliva.

In terms of protein intake for muscle building, shoot for 1 gram per pound of body weight. Using a combination of quality meats and supplementing with whey where its necessary makes this pretty easy to achieve. Aim to get the majority of your daily carbohydrate intake after your workout where it will drive muscular anabolism and not fat tissue anabolism. Do not skimp on carbs post workout. Get at least 1 gram of carbohydrate for each gram of protein you are getting after a workout.

Besides training, diet and sleep and social factors are the other key factors to boosting testosterone. Diet: get adequate dietary fat and cholesterol, and fat soluble vitamins (particularly vitamin D). Eat liver. Eat grass fed butter and fatty animal meats. Get plenty of zinc. Sleep: make sure you are getting adequate and quality sleep, particularly in the early morning hours.

Social factors effect testosterone also. Try to be competitive and get yourself out of your comfort zone in terms of social aggression. Success with women boosts your T as does any display of social dominance. Winning a game will boost it. Even just standing with dominant posture will increase your testosterone. Your body doesn't know whether you are actually dominant. It just responds to the signals its perceiving internally.

While testosterone is more of a social hormone, growth hormone is a stress hormone. You'll get growth hormone responses from things which stress the body's energy systems. Fasting is a big one. But anything that quickly depletes your ATP will have that effect. One strategy some people use is to go for 30-60 minutes after a workout without eating anything. Its like an acute fast. Other people opt for intermittent fasting, which is something you could research. Some people do the eat-stop-eat program where you take entire days to fast. You can also gear your workouts toward a growth hormone response. Whereas strength training uses heavy loads and requires long rest periods, a workout that raises growth hormone is more about speed, low rest times, and explosiveness. Do explosive movements and go from movement to movement with little rest. Aside from this, certain amino acids have shown the ability to raise growth hormone levels if taken before sleep: arginine, ornithine, glutamine for example.

Yeah this is what I was talking about. Your metabolism and cells sense and respond to the amount of intensity your muscles are under not how much reps or sets you are doing and how much load you are under, body doesn't know this, whether it's 6x5 or 4x12. What this coincide with is, that the amount of time under intensity in strength training corresponds to the specific amount of to the hypertrophy response and "hypertrophy" training corresponds to other timing. This is why these sets and reps count are not the most accurate and it will produce different results from guy to guy. Hypertrophy happens anywhere from 30-90 seconds or so, of muscle work. And coincidentally, when you lift heavier weights under certain periods, with fewer reps and more sets it will result to total amount of X. When you do lighter weights and more reps and less sets it will amount to Y time under intensity. But you can get this any of these right away without doing any imaginery amount of sets and reps.