Building Muscle And Weight Gain Through Weights And Adequate Nutrition

Building Muscle And Weight Gain
The Right Techniques And Strategies

Building muscle and weight gain aren't my area of specialty but I know these - do enough weights and eat the right nutrition are the golden rules.....

Out of the seas of requests I've received from my visitors, I rarely come across requests wanting to gain muscle and put on weight.

But really, 1 or 2 such requests do pop up here and there.

And I can sense the frustration and desperation in those requests - hard time going through all the works of building muscle and weight gain and yet not yielding results.

May be we should deal with this hot, burning question first: " Why are you skinny and hard to put on weight?"

No rocket science here. This s because your body burns off energy so quickly, there's none left over to add some bulk to your frame. You've the so called "high metabolism" syndrome.

Or genetically you're skinny......

What's the best way to overcome this?

In my opinion, you got to eat more than your body burns. This way, you get to gain weight and build some muscle.

Eat, eat and eat some more, is that what you're thinking?

No.....eating an entire cow in the next few days won't do you any good.

Then how much should you eat?

Well, it depends on your body. If you consume 2,000 calories per day and still don't put on weight, go ahead, increase your daily caloric intake to around 3,000 calories per day. Or until you see weight gain.

Find it hard to eat this much?

Try break it into 6 meals per day - which means 500 calories a meal; not so hard to digest then, huh?

My thinking purely - if you just want to gain weight, it isn't hard to do by eating more.

The harder stuff comes when you wanna go for two - building muscle and weight gain.

But it's do-able; doesn't matter if you're built like a rake.... so don't feel down now.

What does matter - your motivation and determination plus some grains of hard work and smart techniques.

How do you build muscle?

Do weights.

Weights are one of the best things you can do to gain lean muscle weight quickly, not to mention they improve your overall health, body strength and relieve stress as well.

However, don't take this to the extreme and train so much and so often per week that you end up overtraining your body and don't get the results you want.

The best way to go?

Do weights 3-4 times per week, 1 � 1.5 hours per session and aim for 8-12 sets, 8-15 repetitions (reps) in each set, for each muscle group.

Note: A set is the number of reps for an exercise routine

Get your body to acclimatize to the fact that it needs to build muscle. To get this, continuously push the envelope!

But doing 50 push-ups a day for a year isn't getting your body to build muscle. Instead, you're getting your body to condition the muscle it already has in place.

To gain muscle growth, you've to progressively increase the weights and increase the demands placed on your muscles.

You do this by increasing the amount of weight lifted or by increasing the number of reps in the set.

An excellent way to train for building muscle and weight gain is to go for high intensity training (HIT) - short but very intense workouts, basically 8-12 reps per set or until you feel fatigue in the muscle.

The beauty of this is that each training session produces an increase in strength so that in the next workout, you're able to do more reps with same weight or same number of reps with heavier weights.

Now when you do weights, really, nutrition becomes very important to feed your body. You simply can't put on weight until you consistently supply your body with calories in excess of what it uses to burn for energy.

When you take in more calories than you expend, your body uses the surplus to build tissue. This can be fat tissue or muscle tissue, hence you gain weight.

How much you need to eat to start the process of buidling muscle and weight gain?

To know this, track the number of calories you consume for a couple of weeks. Write down everything you eat for that time period and then average out the total calories you've consumed to get a daily number.

Add 300-500 calories to your daily caloric intake. If no improvement after a couple of weeks, add another 300-500 calories. Continue adding until you start to gain.

However, I would say don't bank on an absolute formula to determine the exact number of calories you need to experience weight and muscle gain.

The number of calories differs for everyone based on factors like metabolism and activity level.

What types of food to take for muscle and weight gains?

Well, foods that increase your weight and this weight materializes as the muscle you want and not as body fat you don't want, are the ones on the list.

According to experts, protein, carbohydrates and fat put into these recommended ratios, will get you to the point of building muscle and weight gain:

Protein 20-50%

Carbohydrates 30-60%

Fat (EFAs) 20-30%

Water 8 oz. for every 10 - 12.5 lbs bodyweight per day

Now, how and when you eat the food is important as well, to help you in the process of building muscle and weight gain

The way to go is to eat 5 or 6 meals daily instead of the regular 3 big meals as it helps your body to stay in an anabolic state (i.e.building tissue).

It also discourages excessive body fat gains.

When to eat the food?

There're specific times when your body is most in need of quality nutrition:

In the morning when you wake up - your body has gone without food for more than 7 or 8 hours while you sleep. In the morning, it likely has entered a catabolic state (i.e. breaking down tissue to use for energy). So, it's best you quickly eat a nutritious meal once waking up, to get your body back into an anabolic state