Building up...

[iron thread]

I have a question about building up muscle mass...how much does diet effect it's progress? same question for intervals and repititions? Maybe, specifically, I'd want to know which way is more preferred? To have bigger repititions, and longer intervals or vice versa? Thanks for your time.

[SevenStar]

Diet is mucho importante. It is THE most important thing if youare trying to gain mass. How can you get bigger, if you aren't eating. Also, if you are lifting heavy and aren't taking in adequate amounts of protein, you will not be able to build muscle. You oughtta be able to find info on lifting for mas by searching this forum (maybe...dunno how much was lost during the move, I haven't checked) It's late now, and I have presents to wrap, but I'll follow up later. I probably won't have to, as Ironfist and El Pietro will see this thread and be compelled to reply.

[ElPietro]

Diet is everything. Well about 80% anyway...you can lift all you want but if your body isn't adequately fueled you aren't going to go anywhere...this is for bulking/maintaining or cutting so whatever your goals you don't need to change your routine as much as you should focus on diet.

If you want to list more detailed goals please post some stats of yourself and what your routine and diet is or post what you can and ask more specific questions.

Basically if you're a skinny mofo and you want to bulk up some...eat as much as you can and try to keep your rep range between 8-12. Try to make the weight heavy enough that you struggle a bit on the last two repetitions. There's quite a bit of good information in here already if you are ready to do a bit of reading. I've made some rather long-winded posts on weight lifting and Ironfist is a great resource along with quite a few others in here. If you are bulking you can pretty much eat anything but if you are going to cut one thing out I'd make it sugar. Sugar sucks and basically has no value to your body whatsoever and will just get stored as fat. Your body will convert carbs to sugar so you don't need any added sugar from other sources. So if you can, cut pop, candy, all those processed fruit juices, and even juice in general you can cut down on...just switching from crap to water can help you a lot.

Anyway it's late and i'm going to bed...post more questions if you will and we'll try and respond...

[IronFist]

IronFist's Brief Layperson's Guide to Adding Muscle Mass
© 2001


Here are your constants. There are no exceptions to these rules:

To add weight, you must consume more calories than you burn.

Conversely, to lose weight, you must burn more calories than you consume.

Fat = 9 calories per gram
Carbs = 4 calories per gram
Protein = 4 calories per gram

3500 calories = one pound of bodyweight.


Ok. So you want to add muscle. Well, traditionally they say when adding muscle mass, try to consume at least one gram of protein per pound of bodyweight. So, if you weight 150lbs, eat 150g of protein per day, spread out through the day, obviously. If you are bigger, with a high percentage of bodyfat, you don't need one gram per pound. In fact, if you're fat at the moment, do not even attempt to add muscle until you've reduced your bodyfat percentage to around 15% at least.

Before I can give more diet advice I need to know your stats. Height? Weight? Age? Bodyfat percentage?

As for reps and repitions, ElPietro was right about the 8-12 repitition thing. One thing, you do NOT always need to go to failure. A lot of people think so, but this isn't the case. The pro bodybuilder Lee Priest never trains to failure, and proportionally speaking, he's one of the biggest BB'ers ever (I say "proportionally" because he's a bit short in height, but huge none the less).

As for intervals, less is generally better. Try to keep it to about a minute and a half or LESS between sets.

Iron

[hkphooey]

it would be pointless to say "diet" at this point, because it has been demonstrated as the obvious answer.

i will add, however, that one thing you might try (IN ADDITION to, not INSTEAD OF diet) is some anti-catabolizing supps. i'm about 150, 9% bf, and last summer i was interested in seeing if i could increase size (just for fun). i also wanted to see if i could do it without proteining myself to death (i'm also a vegtarian). i used a miniture version of Colgan's protocol, which primarily uses alpha-keta-gluterate (glutamine precursor), as well as a few other aminos. my shirts definitely got tighter. no question.

i no longer do it (as i said, i was just experimenting), and i don't know what the long-term use of aminos might be (if any). i can say though that for that 2-3 months i definitely had more size.

but this is all gravy stuff. without getting the diet part down it's meaningless (or harmful).

[SevenStar]

see, told ya ;)

[iron thread]

"Height? Weight? Age? Bodyfat percentage? "

I'm about 5 ft. 6 in. (66 in.) in pounds i'm 125, don't really know how to convert lb. to kg but I think that's about 60kg or so... I'm 14 going on 15 in bout half a yr. Dont' know bodyfat percentage, but I know that my BMI (body mass index) is about 20.2.

I can't really work with weights cause I aint got none, right now my program is pretty much (not in any specific order): push-ups, situps and crunches, pull ups, running laps.....my diet right now is pretty much based on what I get to eat, I can't really decide cause my mom does everything......um....usually after exercise my first answer is water, is there something wrong with that? If there is, why? why not?

[ElPietro]

Hmmm...almost 15 years old...if you are going to train don't train heavy or to failure. You will have difficulty gaining weight because you are still growing up. In another couple years your growth will slow down some and you will be more able to add mass to your frame. For now I would just say stick to what you are doing...maybe add a set or two of chasing high school girls and don't worry about the rest until you stop getting taller. If you do start to weight train keep your reps high and your weight somewhat light.

The problem is that right now you don't know what your maintainence level of calories is, so as your growth spurt starts to slow down you could start packing on some bad weight because you are taking in too many cals. Just have some patience and do your studying now so you'll know what you have to do when you are truly ready to train.

[iron thread]

"...maybe add a set or two of chasing high school girls " - hehe, no problem

I guess I'll just stick with my skinny self for now.....as for not going to failure, it's a little late, but it's not too late to stop is it?

It's not that I don't like weight training, and I definitely will start, it's just that I heard it stunts growth for "young people" like me.

[IronFist]

Somewhere I wrote a big long thing about my thoughts on weight training when you're under 17 or 18, but it probably got erased with the old board.

Anyway, if you're 14 or 15 and you use weights, stick to light weights... don't even go near your 3 or 4 rep max, and don't go to failure.

I guess failure with bodyweight stuff is ok, but don't do it all the time cuz there's no benefit to be gained there :)

I can't really advise you how to "bulk up" at your age, because you're still growing and you don't want to be messing with putting on an unnatural amount of weight when your hormones and stuff are still changing on their own.

But, use this time to develop a good base with bodyweight exercises, and martial arts.

Iron