Originally posted by ricksitterly
This is a follow up post to my original "lifting - a waste of time" thread.
I'm sorry sevenstar but your comment about how jiu jitsu is not the way to build mass is completely WRONG. I gained 15 pounds of muscle in a little over a year's time doing only grappling. Food and water intake is the MAIN component to gaining mass. NOT your weight training program.
Here's my take on that - you weren't in stellar shape to begin with. Take an obese, inactive person and put them in MA. What happens? they will lose weight, provided they don't increase they're caloric intake. On the same token, take a skinny person and put him in MA. The skinny guy eats alot and he is doing push ups, stancework, etc. What happens? he gains weight and develops more musculature. The body is adapting to the workout and his muscles are getting stronger. He's eating alot so he's gaining weight. What's gonna happen is after a while, that will stagnate. your body is used to the stress levels put on it and muscle development stops. your workout is then more endurance based. endurance work is not muscle building work. If you are burning more calories than you burn while grappling, then what will happen is you will gain weight, and it will be stored as fat. You won't continue gaining muscle mass from grappling alone.
As long as the muscles are being stressed in some way, shape, or form, they will take a high calorie diet and transform the calories into muscle ( provided you are eating the proper amount of carbs and proteins).
Calories aren't transformed into muscle....protein is what builds muscle. All calories aren't protein - if you are just haphazardly eating alot in an attempt to gain muscle, you will be in for a nice shell shock later... And, like I said before, that statement is wrong - the type of stress you put on the body does matter. that's why people weight train differently for different activities. Do you really think a marathon runner trains the same way as a football player? if so, why aren't the distance runners hyooge? it's not solely because of their diet - it's because of their training. The body can only be in one state at a time - anabolic or catabolic - it can't be in both.
I maintain that grappling is an excellent mass builder as it provides a full body strength training workout, as opposed to a weight training program which only tends to work specific groups of muscles- mainly just the larger muscle groups such as shoulders and pectorals.
And I maintain that you are WRONG. grappling is highly aerobic. it's a fat burner. see my above comments to understand why you have gained weight and a little muscle.
The more workouts you add to your weight training, the more muscles you can excercize.... BUT, the more workouts you add to your weight training the longer it takes, burning more calories which must be replaced afterwards in order to gain mass. Also, due to the larger span of time it takes to work the entire body with a weight training program, you are at a higher risk of suffering the catabolic effects of overtraining.
That one paragraph alone shows you don't know much at all about mass building...
Grappling gives you a more intense full body workout in a short period of time. This is key for building mass.
if you are grappling for short periods of time, either
1. you're half arse grappling, or
2. you're gettin tapped really quick and are having to restart.
Don't believe me? Try grappling a 200 lb man for ten minutes straight.
as I already stated, I grapple 15 - 20 hours a week - I know what it can do for me. My advice to you is to read some books about mass building and about the body in general.