OT - weight gain

Hi guys, I'm trying to put on about a stone of lean muscle.
Currently 6,3 and 76kg.

I really struggle to know how much I need to be shooting for, and getting the calories without crap or crazy amounts of carbs.

Anyone have any ideas for a healthy weight gain shake?

The only way to put on lean muscle is to eat way more and exercise like a beast. There are no shortcuts. Take this from someone who has been into muscle building his whole life and has seen all sorts of scams.

Those weight gain shakes are no better than getting adequate dietary protein, try shooting for .8-1g per lb of bodyweight, and high intensity training. Also make sure to get complex carbs and enough quality fats in your diet. You want to make sure to consume more kcal than your basal metabolic rate, based on your level of activity.

Start with simple compound exercises like squats, deadlifts, bench presses and pullups. When you are able to chin up your own bodyweight at least twenty times with perfect form, for instance, you will likely be at your weight goal.

Good luck.

Try before each meal take apple cider vinegar with honey mixed into glass of water (150 ml) or less. Low HCL in your stomach let your food undigested and that's why some people can not put on weight. I think that it is must take ACV before meat, because with low HCL the meat causes extreme problems. Let us know if it works for you.

*the honey is not needed if you take it with meal, but it is better for electron flow. /it creates electrolyte

Depends on your goals man. There are very few people genetically blessed with the ability to add lean mass easily without much fat gain. For the vast majority, trying to bulk and add lead mass inevitably comes with some fat gain, if the muscle you're trying to add is above your body's natural set point. For example, my body naturally just "wants" to carry a lot of muscle. I'm just built that way. But I also add fat easily. I can start lifting and without doing much diet-wise, I'll add muscle. But that only goes so far. At some point I plateau, as everyone does, and adding more lean mass (not strength!) requires a bulking diet.

People approach bulking differently, but I'd do it conservatively. Establish what your maintenance caloric intake is (sometimes called your TDEI). This is the level at which you aren't gaining or losing more than a few lbs. from week to week (weight naturally fluctuates by a few pounds even from day to day).

Add 200 or 300 calories to this amount from quality sources. Proteins. Quality fats (think saturated). And carefully control your carbohydrate intake, aiming to get most of it after your training session (within 3-4 hrs. of it). Save all simple sugars for that post-workout period. Any pre-workout carbs should come from safe starches/complex carbs. Do not overdo carbohydrate even if your favorite bodybuilder does so. Eat for performance and energy requirements only.

Its physics. If you are eating at an energy level above your requirements you'll add weight. The type of weight depends on the stimulus you are giving your body. Intense training focused on large, multi-joint movements that stress as many muscle groups as possible. Lift heavy.

Eat for testosterone. Egg yolk/s before bed with plenty of vitamin D. And get your sleep. Don't neglect sleep.

If you do this and eat with a modicum of discipline as far as food choice and timing, stay at the caloric level you set for yourself, and train intensely, you'll add lean mass. The amount of fat your body adds at the same time depends on your individual genetics, your energy intake relative to your needs, and the kind of workouts you're doing. Some HIIT cardio every other day after training can help swing things in your favor. But don't overdo cardio if you're trying to add muscle (especially if your normal constitution makes it difficult to add muscle). No long, drawn-out distance runs or shit like that. If you're going to do cardio, stick with 15 minutes sessions of interval training.

Hey man, a couple other things I thought to mention.

I noticed you were asking about food sources for the additional calories. You mentioned a shake, but 4039 is absolutely right about the fact that a shake doesn't have any more inherent value than a whole food source of protein, and depending on the product could be worse.

Shoot for whole foods, and focus on protein intake. For bulking up, I'd get at least 1 gram of protein per lb of body weight. You can go higher if you'd like as well. No evidence its unhealthy unless you start getting into very high protein intake and have a pre-existing kidney condition. Try to eat good quality animal meats as much as you can.

But we both know that animal meats - and eating lots of them - isn't always in the budget, and its not always practical (unless you're able to devote a day to cooking all your meals for the week). So here is a list of foods that should become your new best friends:

Eggs
Cottage Cheese
Greek Yogurt
Tuna

For when you're on the go or need something quick, these are gonna be it. Check out the macros on these foods and you'll see what I'm saying. You can cram a shitload more protein into your diet by incorporating these into your meals/snacks.

I'm not against supplements either. I like them. I just don't like to see them replace food. Instead of weight gain shakes though (I tend not to like those products), just get a jug of whey protein concentrate. Depending on the product you can easily get 25-30 g of protein for a serving. Combine a few of these a day with some of those foods I mentioned (in addition to your regular meals) and you'll be on your way.

As far as the supplements you might choose to help add mass, I believe there are 4 tried-and-true, research-backed supplements out there that will help. Don't buy anything else and don't go for the fluff shit like you'll see Muscletech sell for 50 bucks a pop.

Here they are:

Whey Protein (already mentioned)

BCAA (branched chain amino acid powder, taken before [or during] and after a workout)

Creatine (will increase stamina and thus workout performance and the amount of stress you can put on your muscles in a given sessions; it also tends to
increase the intramuscular water content, and indirectly increases muscle size)

Pre-Workout (a wide variety of products, you can find one you like thats in your budget; this won't build muscle directly, but you may find they get you geeked for your work out and if they are able to help you up the volume or increase intensity then they are worth the increased performance)

And you don't have to get the designer forms of any of them. The "super micronized unicorn horn dust" bullshit. Its simple whey concentrate. BCAA powder. Creatine monohydrate. And a pre-workout that contains caffeine and maybe some arginine and beta alanine. You don't need to fork out 50 bucks for any of these products. Really.

Me? I like to take all of these together prior to a workout, and a whey protein/bcaa combo after the session. One thing to note is that your post-workout carbohydrate is highly important. In that post-workout shake, you want a 2:1 ratio of carb:protein. So if your shake has 30 g protein, you want 60 g carbohydrate. Remember, this window of a couple hours after your workout is where you should aim to get the majority of your entire day's carbohydrate so don't worry about consuming a large amount in one or two post-workout meals. That's the idea.

As far as your training routine, trying to give advice on this is difficult because everyone is different and many variables come into play: lifestyle, pre-existing conditions, stress state, style, goals, recovery ability, equipment availability, training age and experience, etc. etc.

But again, focus on big compound lifts like 4039 mentioned. The KISS (keep it simple stupid) method would just be to come up with a split and assign one or two compound lifts as your main movements for that day, and the selection of what lifts will depend on the muscle group/s worked that day.

Here's an example split for a beginning trainer. Push-pull splits are common here and I actually like these very much. Leg days usually get their own day. I'll put possible lifts you could select as your main lifts for that day. That doesn't mean do them all. I'd keep it to a maximum of two big compounds a day. If you're working at peak intensity, that will be enough. Do barbell work also, just my two cents. I'm not including the accessory work you'd do for groups like the tri's or bi's.

Mon - Chest/Shoulders/Triceps
        Main Lifts: flat bench press, incline bench press, decline bench press, military press, close-grip bench press, clean & jerk

Wed - Back/Traps/Biceps
        Main Lifts: deadlift, bent barbell row (or pendlay row), shrugs

Fri - Legs
      Main Lifts: barbell back squat, front squat, hack squat, weighted lunges

You get the idea. Incorporate ab workout as you see fit, if you train abs directly that is. Perform cardio as you see fit. I'd reserve cardio for "off-days" and just treat them as an active form of "rest".

Another possible split w/ your main lifts included (no accessory work included):

Mon - Chest/Triceps (do two variations of bench press here, incline and flat for example)
Tues - Legs (squats & lunges)
Wed- Rest
Thurs- Back/Biceps (deadlifts and bent rows)
Fri- Shoulders/Traps (military press and cleans)

In the scenario above, I'd reserve wednesday for an active rest day. You could also do this Saturday or use Saturday to do some accessory work on lagging areas.

Tips on training:
- If your goal is adding lean mass do not focus on keeping your rest periods really short. To add muscle you must be able to add strength in order to progressively overload. That means each work set must be peak effort and your highest performance is the goal for each work set. Short rest periods have their place when your goals are something else like fat loss (fuck this, lose fat with diet), but if you want size, take a reasonable time to rest between sets. Let yourself intuitively feel when you're ready. Don't sluff off, but don't feel in a rush. Approach your sets when you are recovered from the last set and use maximum effort.

- Program linearly (meaning add weight to your protocol in a linear fashion) until you plateau. There are a lot of theories out there for how to periodize, but for beginning lifters I say fuck that. Increase linearly until your gains start to wane. Beginners are able to grow at super human rates and more advanced periodization is not required for those who haven't trained long enough or aren't geared towards competition. That's not to say don't vary your rep schemes between workouts. You can and should do work in both the strength (3-6 rep range) and the hypertrophy range (8-12).

- Lift heavy. The relationship between strength building and hypertrophy (adding muscle) is blurry, but strength includes a nervous component which is why some very strong people are not very muscular. Technically, it is possible to add muscle without training specifically for gains in strength (because hypertrophy is based on both overload and time under tension, i.e. metabolic stress). But in principle progressive overload is the only way to consistently add muscle to the human frame, and in order to do that you must consistently increase the load and/or volume. There is a reasonable cap on volume/intensity so the variable we manipulate tends to be load. In order to progressively lift heavier and heavier, you must increase strength. Again strength training has a neural component, which requires recruitment of different motor units. To recruit both types of fast twitch units, you need to lift in the lower rep ranges using weights closer to your 1 rep max. For example, in the 3-6 rep range with weights 80-90% of your 1 rep max.

- Save your accessory work for last. For example, if its back and biceps day, don't do your biceps work before you do the back work and other larger pulling movements. Save your energy to go all out on your big compound lifts. Because biceps are assisting on most of these anyway, they'll get work. Any extra you are doing is just that, extra isolation shit. Not that it doesn't have a place, but it shouldn't steal effort from the big boys. By the same principle, don't do your cardio at the beginning of a workout either.

- A lot of people try to periodize training to avoid "plateaus". That's the great big fear of weight lifters. Paused gains. I don't believe I've ever reached a plateau that I haven't broken quickly by just stopping lifting. Every six weeks or so I'll take a whole week off from lifting. Well, sometimes I'll do some light work, "deload" if you will. Cardio. Sports. Stay busy but don't *train* train. I honestly couldn't tell you why this works from a scientific standpoint. It would be a guess that you are allowing the nervous system to recover by doing this, but I don't know that for sure. But I've found this goes for many other things. I play guitar as well. When I get to a point where I'm getting frustrated with the instrument or just getting bored, I'll stop playing for a week or even two weeks. I force myself to. When I come back to it, I'm consistently better than I was before. I'm able to break past what I was sticking on before. If it ain't broke don't fix it....learn to let yourself just stop doing it for a week at a time every 6-8 weeks. Come back and I'll bet you'll be stronger after that week off.

I approach training by trying to combine a mix of stimuli in one workout for a given muscle group. For example, consider chest day and I'm doing my big compound lift: bench press. This is how I'd approach my set and rep schemes to try to get a good cocktail of stimulus to all fiber types, while maintaining most of my energy for the heavy ass sets that I'm here for. First four sets are a warm-up. Let's assume a max bench of around 300 lbs. We'll shoot for worksets in the 4 rep range at around 85% of 300 lbs.

Set 1 - warmup - 150 lbs x 10 reps (50% of 1rm)
Set 2 - warmup - 180 lbs x 8 reps (60% of 1rm)
Set 3 - warmup - 210 lbs x 6 reps (70% of 1rm)
Set 4 - warmup - 240 lbs x 4 reps (80% of 1rm)
Set 5 - PTP set - 270 lbs x 1 rep (90% of 1rm)
Set 6,7,8 - work sets - 255 lbs x 4 reps (85% of 1rm)
Set 9 - TUT/metabolic work - 210 lbs x 10-12 reps (70% of 1 rm)
Set 10 - TUT/metabolic work - 180 lbs x 12-15 reps (60% of 1 rm)

Warmup sets are not maximum effort. PTP set is a ramping set for sets 6,7,8. For sets 9 and 10, perform concentric phase of the lift as explosively as possible, and try to make the eccentric aspect of the movement slow and controlled.

Thank you all for the reply!

Big thanks to you especially gates - that's one of the best summaries I've seen and I'm already excited about going to the gym

I tried to pm you actually to ask you something but it wouldn't send? Have you turned of private messaging?

RK

Gates wrote:There are very few people genetically blessed with the ability to add lean mass easily without much fat gain.  

It's not genetics but about keeping GH at youthful levels.

Good form is also imperative for packing on lean mass. I see seasoned lifters at the gym still making rookie mistakes, squats with toes, benches with butt raised etc. On Youtube, I can think of very few lifters with amazing form. Yeah at first you will lift less, but eventually that solid form foundation will allow monster weights. It's a thing of beauty to watch someone lift heavy with perfect form.

Also throw a lot of the conventional wisdom and myopia out the window too; I can lift way more with antioxidants (including alkaline water) during my workouts. Oxygenation is the key to massive weights. For instance, today I hit a PR on shoulder presses at the *end* of my workout.

It's not that difficult to gain lean mass if just as much effort is placed into knowledge, preparation and facilitating recuperation.