As a natural heavyweight, I've never had to worry about gaining mass, indeed quite the opposite. Now that I coach fighters however, I realise that my knowledge of mass gaining is limited, so was hoping you guys could give me some tips or point me to some good resources.
Caloric intake Calories consumed < Calories expended = Lose Weight Calories consumed > (Calories expended)^big compound lifts = Weight Gain Lots of protein + varied diet + healthy food = Clean weight gained That's it in a nutshell. Who says you don't use math in real life?
i tried "a gallon of milk a day" with (3 to 5 days a week depending on skill training) daily singles on squats and 3x3 at 80 to 90% of that single with 5x3 high pulls and 5x3 another exercise. worked okay for a couple weeks (gained about 5kg and had a 90kg nipple high snatch pull for 5x3) but you burn out quick from singles. now i do a functional hypertrophy program i got from a rugby club while interning. i eat 4 to 5 full meals of meat and rice/noodles If i lift two days in a row and then do a skill session i take two days rest rather than one. http://forgeandiron.tumblr.com/tagged/programs I'm up to 86kg in a few weeks (+4kg) and at a lower body fat. its much less taxing on my recovery than singles were so this is my favourite program so far. best thing i did was cut out candy and eat more meals. screw IF and all this "keep low body fat while you bulk" nonsense.
I put on a stone in about 2 months doing GOMAD with lifts 3x a week 5x5 (BP/OHP/Sq/DL/BOR) and that seemed to be okay but since I am training KF and playing rugby (with the occasional BJJ class thrown in) I have dropped about 7 pounds in the last couple months. I guess the moral is that whatever your metabolic rate, if you want to get heavier you must eat beyond your normal requirements to add mass and do some sort of lifting program (could possibly be body weight I guess) regularly to maintain or progress further. I am not lifting much at the moment as it takes too long to recover after a match and I am too busy/not really hungry enough to maintain the caloric intake. Guess I will go back to serious training in the off season and try to put another stone on. I might be able to keep adding small increments that stay after my intensive training is put on hold. I'm 55 so the changes in my hormones with age might also be a factor as to how much mass I can naturally gain/keep on without higher level workouts. Not sure this helps but it is just my small experience. FWIW LFD
I've had a hard time trying to gain weight for years but then found it was because I wasn't eating as much as I thought I was, I tried GOMAD a few years back but had trouble holding down that much milk. I think it's just a case of really upping the calories, I train weights three times a week and MA twice a week and I consume around 4,000 cals a day, it's working for me so far.
Calories in vs Calories out is what it's ultimately all about. Hey that rhymed! Work out your fighter's daily calorie needs adjusted for exercise. Then add a surplus depending on how fast they can gain muscle. 200-500 calories extra per day combined with appropriate lifting should do it. Perhaps more if your fighter is young and/or is inexperienced with weights so can get gains quicker. Keep track of your fighter's bodyfat using whatever means you deem best and adjust the calories if they start putting on fat. GOMAD is fine in my opinion, but you will likely put some fat on with it. I followed GOMAD with stronglifts for 6 weeks and gained 4 pounds. Not all muscle though. If time isn't an issue, I'd suggest a leangains style slow-bulk to minimise the fat gains. Hope this helps.
There are plenty of resources available on the Internet these days. My favourite by far is Scooby's Workshop. Bulking Up and Gaining Muscle Nutrition Accurate Calorie Calculator
Always gain weight in shape of the muscles and never gain in shape of fat. Take protein based foods if you want to gain your weight in shape of the muscles. Protein foods burn the fat and help to turn the fat into muscles.
I dropped 4 pounds in 1 day. It turns out if you have a double hernia you get constipated and when you finally manage to use the bathroom - tadaa!! - instant weight loss
I could be wrong, as I'm mostly working on losing weight rather than gaining, but I thought to put on muscle mass you want to do lots of big lifting combined with consuming 1 gram of protein for every pound of body weight - so if your fighter weighs 170lbs have him eat/drink at least 170g of protein per day. This combined with a daily calorie intake above your fighters BMR + calorie expenditure should see a weight gain. As an example: Example Fighter - 5' 11" 185lbs 22years old therefore has a BMR of 1970kCal say he does 2 hour and a half long gym sessions a day according to my app that will burn about 875kCal So he'll want to eat more than 2845 Calories a day (on training days, will be - the workout calories on rest days), with at least 185g of that coming from protein. But I could be completely wrong - and it might be 1.5 times your weight in pounds, not 1 for one, so it might be 277.5g of protein for the example fighter
TMI :cry: It's definitely a calorie thing, recognizing where your calories are coming from helps too, ie, how much protein, carbs and fat you are eating. I used to eat like ~2000 a day and was perpetually skinny, and I wondered why, haha, but after reading up and crafting a balanced diet at 3300 calories I've been consistently gaining weight. If he struggles to eat, instead of him eating 3 meals a day, tell him to eat 6 smaller meals a day within 2.5-3.5 hours of each other: 7.00 breakfast, 10.00 snack, 12.30 lunch, 15.00 dinner #1, 18.00 dinner #2, 21.00 supper. I personally found that eating lots was a difficult transition to make, but splitting the calories up into more meals really helped.
The recommendation is 1.4 -1.8g/kilogram , not per pound, of bodyweight, and that's definitely an upper bound for what you can reasonably absorb. The massive amounts of protein you see recommended on the internet will just be excreted, or possibly even damage kidney function at the extreme end.
I knew there was some sort of ratio, and I will add to what PSB has said about kidneys processing the protein, if your fighter has to up his protein by a lot, it will be build up to it gradually. If you jump straight up to 150g a day, from having only ~30g a day your kidneys could go balistic and cause some very nasty kidney stones made of wasted protein - this happened to a friend of mine recently who went from being rather podgy, to losing 2.5 stone in a month pretty much through starvation and then joined the gym to "get hench" and started doing 3-5 protein shakes a day which resulted in a lot of hospital time =p
Bigmikey was of the view that workouts should be no longer than 1.5 hours, so I've been trying to keep to that. Most of mine do, and I only go over if I've had to wait to get to the bench or squat rack.
