The good 'ol muscle building question again....

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Kung Fu Training and Health
1

It’s been asked and re-asked, but I really want good info driven deep into my head.

How can I bulk up? I have an amazingly stubborn body. It has a certain shape and It doesn’t change. I’ve even let myself go in the past and eat lots of junk and sit around all day and my body still didnt change. It wont get fat, it wont get muscle, it just wont change.
I have basically the exact same body as I did in the middle of high school years ago.

So what can I do? How effective are protein shakes and power bars?
Are there any types of exercises and foods I should avoid to grow larger muscles?

Is this goal just unreasonable? Will my body ever change?

:confused:

Success is a label made by the insecure.

2

And the reason you want to bulk up is? And when you are old and that bulk dissapears you will have spent your time doing what!?

  • Nexus

<font size=“1”>“Time, space, the whole universe - just an illusion! Often said, philosophically verifiable, even scientifically explainable. It’s the <font color=“blue”>‘just’</font> which makes the honest mind go crazy and the <font color=“blue”>ego</font> go berserk.” - Hans Taeger</font>

3

No…

you don’t seem to get it.

I don’t want to Superman myself.
I am not even averagly built. I work out and I don’t focus on changing my size but the effect. However, after some time, all people become more muscular, no matter how slightly.
I have even burned away that thin stubborn final layer of fat at times and as I continued to work out I have seen no change. This doesn’t make sense.

Perhaps another question I should have asked is “Is it even possible to enlarge ones muscles mass and at the same time, keep flexible and quick?”

Answers on my original questions are still very appreciated.

Success is a label made by the insecure.

4

hey

i wont answer your questions, because other more knowledgeable people will, but im interested in a few things (cuz ive kind of had the same problem)

how many years have you been working out?
how many reps do you do per set?
do you concentrate on machines or free weights?

lol, and u gotta be exaggerating when u say that u ate heaps of junkfood and didnt put on weight. were u eating sugary foods, or fattening foods?

5

If you sat around and ate food all day you probably lost muscle and gained some fat. Sometimes it is harder to gain weight than losing it. If you’re lucky, you might only gain 15 pounds of muscle a year. Eat more calories, about more than 17xyour body weight (in pounds). So if you’re around 160 lbs, eat more than 2720 calories a day. Make sure your protein intake should equal your body weight in grams. So if you weight 160 pounds, you should get around 160 grams of protein. You will gain muscle and fat during the bulking phase. Do some mass building exercies like squats and stuff.

Muscle slowing you down or making you inflexable is probably a myth. If you want to keep your flexiblity, just do the full range of motion and stretch after your work out. Muscles will probably make you even faster if you concentrate on explosive lifts like cleans, snatches, high pulls, pause squats, etc., One example is Mike Tyson, he is quite fast I must say.

6

Wrong!

Muscle mass WILL slow you down, and CAN make you less flexibile, thats a fact I mean anatomically if the muscle and Myelin get forced down and up the length of the tendons then it shortens them and provides less room to allow the joint and tendons to more sinewy, thus flexible.
Mike Tyson is not that fast at all. When he connects with a strike, sure!, it mya look impressive to some, but in reality, he has a limited arsenal of techniques to utilise. In fact for the sake of consistency and the amount of direct punches it takes for him, or in fact most pro’s, to get their opponent down, I think you have to say that ultimately they in fact quite sloppy.

7

http://www.drsquat.com/articles/1speed.htm

8

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!

Muscle mass in and of itself DOES NOT make one slow and stiff. What do you think causes your body to move in the first place? If you are lifting to an extent that you are getting stiff and slow, then fire your trainer, or burn your book. Period.

It always makes me laugh to hear the myths regarding weight lifting, especially “I don’t want to get too big.” GOOD LUCK! Even guys that do want to get “big” typically have a very hard time doing it…the human body was built for survival, not cosmetics. Bruce Lee trained with weights, Thai boxers train with weights, most modern athletes (including gymnasts who are pretty flexible I’d say, boxers, track and field) cross train with weights…good enough for Olympians, good enough for me!

So, Wu Wei, the question I’d have to ask is exactly what someone posted before…how are your training? What are you doing currently that isn’t working? What are you basing your success on? You said before that you had stripped off that ‘last layer of fat’…if your weight hasn’t changed, then you did something right. To progress beyond this, you may have reached a point in time where you need to change your program. Plateus happen to everyone, but there are ways to get around them.

Amitabha!

We are trained in wushu; we must protect the Temple!

9

Yeah, those old “slow and stiff” theories were disproven a long time ago. Before I even got into weight training.

LOL @ Mike Tyson not being “fast at all” I take it you’ve never been there in person watching him do bag and mitt work. I have, and I was absolutely amazed and frightened at how quick he is.

Anyway, to the main question… Getting Bigger

This is easy in itself if you approach it from a purely scientific point of view. Hardgainers (a club which I belong to) should first focus about 8 weeks on the basic exercises. No bicep curls or forearm curls or leg presses. Stick to the main guns. One way to approach such a task would be to do a split routine that looks like this:

Monday, Thursday:
Bench Press 5x5
Squat 5x5
Janda Sit-ups (or other intense ab exercise) 5x5

Tuesday, Friday:
Deadlift 5x5
Push Press 5x5
Weighted Pull-ups (forget machines!) 5x5

Principles to Follow

  1. Use the same weight for all 5 sets. When you can do all 5 reps of the 5 sets, then up the weight next workout.
  2. Rest 2 minutes between sets
  3. Find out your total daily calory needs and add an extra 500-1000. Don’t use “weight gainer” shakes. They are just sugar.
  4. Feel free to use protein shakes as you should injest 2g protein per pound of your weight.
  5. Feel free to get a glutamene/BCAA supplement to be taken immediately after your workout as this will prevent your body from going into catabolic shock.
  6. Eat right! It’s always funny to see people with complex training notebooks, but nothing with diet in them. This is the fuel your body will be building the extra mass with. Get premium! The normal body building diet would be 6 square meal per day as this keeps your body in an anabolic state. It makes your metabolism fly too though.
  7. Get a good amount of sleep. This is extremely important for recovery.
  8. Do minimal cardio as it will intefere with muscle growth.

Follow these simple guidlines and you’ll gain weight. I was 6’ 142 lbs when I started this and I ended up being 173 lbs after a few months. Be aware that you will lose mass when you stop working out like this. I’ve dropped back down to a steady 160’ish since I stopped focussing on weight gain. (a long, long time ago)

If you ask me, getting big is overrated. Getting strong is much more important.

10

a few points

#1-only you know how your body works best.#2-if i hear that muscle mass slows you down again i’m going to hurl.(see examples of Barry Sanders,Ben Johnson,etc.)After this being said,i have a few opinions of how to tune the machine for mass.I am a “hardgainer” due to a combination of factors including genetics,wrestling for 20 years,and a fair level of what would now be called overtraining.I used to work out 5 times a week,couple of hours a day.My lifts reached a sticking point and no amount of training would increase them any noticeable amount.My bodyweight was hard to keep at 160 from a starting point of 136(college wrestling weight).I now know this was due in part to training wrestling quite a bit(to near failure on a daily basis)and other added aerobic exercises.
Now for what i did to change things a bit.First of all,i changed my attitude a bit.I started hanging around the powerlifters to see if i could borrow a little of what was working for them,even if i was a skinny guy compared to most of them.From doing a little research and experimentation i came to realize i was doing a few things wrong.
First off…more is not always better,especially when it comes to volume(sets,reps).I changed my workouts from a more concentrated approach(workouts for specific bodyparts) to a compound approach.I got rid of bent over row,seated rows,curls,skull crushers,dumbbell laterals…etc.I started building a good base(imagine that,much like MA)with 3 exercises;deadlift,squat and bench.I borrowed a bench routine from Charles Polouqin that worked great,adding 115 pounds to my bench in the last 13 months.I gained much more shoulder and trap mass and added back/ab stability with deadlifts than i ever got from doing back,legs, and abs seperately.Squats…well they did what squats do,pack meat on your legs.
After getting my lifts to a decent strength level(all personal preference of course,everyone is different) i started adding things back in that i felt i was lacking.I added a few sets of abs a week(nowhere close to deadlift day),added 3 sets of curls and skullcrushers a week,calves and forearms when i wasn’t sore and didn’t need them for a lift the next day,and added military press and weighted pull-ups on squat day(the week i’m doing squats instead of deads).I think i’ve found the amount my body can take in a week without being overtrained.
Back to the guidelines i got from the powerlifting kind of ideas:1-take around 5 minutes rest between low rep work sets(lower than 5).2-keep reps low(no more than 5).3-use compound movements(squat,bench,etc.)4-If you hit it heavy and hard working out more than once a week on compound movements it is not as productive as getting more recovery and hitting it harder the next time.I found that at first i needed to hit each movement about every 5 days.Now that i am getting a bit closer to my frame’s limit of strength i could take about 8 days of rest from a workout session before hitting it again.That doesn’t mean you can’t do things to fill the gaps in your training time like accessory items(arms,calves,abs),but you shouldn’t have to bench 5 times in a week to get stronger.
As for your original question…how to get bigger…i think size follows power.What use is your size if you haven’t the power to back it up?I say get stronger and size will come.I’m not huge by any standards,but i have gone from a weight of 160 or so to a fairly lean 190 pounds just by taking taking a a bit slower pace and hammering it when i do work out.

-Devildog

11

I didn’t read any replies so if this is a repeat, sorry :slight_smile:

First of all, Wu Wei, go search through the old threads here. I’m pretty sure you can come up with a good routine if you do that (especially if you read my old posts, haha). No I’m serious. I wrote out a whole friggin’ routine for someone once, and even gave page numbers where the exercises could be found in the “Big Arnold Book.”

But listen dude, you sound naturally skinny like me. Welcome to the world of ectomorphs. We have some advantages, like we can eat whatever we want and not get fat. Also, in school we never got picked on for being the “fat kids.” However, there are some disadvantages, too. Like, um, it’s bloody hard to build substantial muscle mass :slight_smile:

Here’s how your body works. If you burn more calories than you consume, you will lose weight. If you consume more than you burn, you will gain weight. Simple, right? Being an ectomorph, your metabolism will go crazy and burn whatever you eat, so, the first rule for you to gain weight is:

EAT A LOT

What you think is a lot is not a lot. A lot of food is 5 or 6 1,000 calorie meals a day. A lot of food is having to take 2 or 3 crà ps a day. A lot of food is not being hungry and eating anyway.

Hehe, but listen, dude. You don’t want to put on too much mass, because it becomes unhealthy after a point. For example, look at pro bodybuilders. They LOOK big, but they are really, really unhealthy people for the most part. Many have colon problems from constantly eating thousands of calories a day for years. They have miles of extra blood vessels from drug use over the years. They can barely walk across the stage without getting severly winded.

Ok, you don’t want to get that big. Good. A BB who can’t even wipe his own arse wouldn’t make much of a fighter.

But, the principles for gaining muscle mass remain the same. You must have a caloric surpluss in your body.

You must also work out with more sets than if you were training purely for strength. You will be sore for 2 or 3 days after a workout. Make sure, as stated above, you eat about 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight. The workouts will, in essence, direct the protein to your muscles instead of being excreted or stored.

Listen, don’t start eating like a madman because you will get sick. I have no idea how much you eat now, but try just adding another meal each day for starters.

It’s very possible to add a healthy amount of muscle, the only drawback is you MUST eat more to add/maintain it. Being an ectomorph, this will be a bit difficult compared with other people. However, if you are a true ectomorph, your bodyfat is already low, and whatever muscle you add will look ripped.

You’ll be a stud.

Haha.

Good luck, dude.

Iron

12

Well…

I am quite impressed with the huge amount of information all of you have given me.
Let it be known that asking questions is certainly useful.

Ged: Sorry about not replying till today.
I will put my workout info in a post after this one. As for the statement about eating nothing but junk and my body not changing, it’s true. Its happened many times. My body seems strangely indifferent to what i give it. Except water. Since I’ve started drinking more water, my body sure notices when Its missing water. But thats okay cause I like the oxygen high after downing a litre.

I guess I could stand to eat more, that is if my crap is any indication. I only crap once per day.
But honestly, isnt crapping when we get our best ideas? Just look at all the poetry and philosophy in public stalls.

And why is it that when I ask questions, people seem to know what my body is like? Kumkuat used 160lbs as a hypothetical weight for me but thats how much I weigh right now. I did imply that i was an ectomorph, but it this has happened before where people here just happen to know what Im like… Creepy.

Success is a label made by the insecure.

[This message was edited by Wu Wei on 09-01-01 at 12:03 AM.]

13

(Ive posted this seperatly because its really boring, so anyone who is reading this thread to get answers but not give them should skip this post… very boring, trust me)

Im not usually one to talk about my attempts at being physical but since knowledgable people here are actually interested in helping me, here it is.

My work outs constantly change as i am always trying to cut down energy expendature on areas my body naturally has an easy time with. I tend to find new excercises that im not used to so i can stay as dynamic as possible.

I start work outs with running and leg raises and some overall stretching (legs, wrists, waist).

I don’t use weights anymore, since I noticed once that even though I got better and better at bench presses and then I would find pushups more difficult than I thought theyd be. I do various types of pushups.
For example I’ll do pushups with my hands pointed sideways away from me or pointed backwards to work different muscle areas. I also do solar plexus pushups(where you make a triangle with your hands and line your hands up with the middle of your torso). And I also sometimes do speed pushups on my knuckles.

I alternate between pushups and things like twisting crunches and leg raises.
I do about 50-70 twisting crunches and usually about 20-30 normal crunches immediatly following twists.
I do 40 side leg raises with each leg.
The amount of pushups I do always changes but I try to keep em low (15-20) since I always cycle between 2 or three different types each time.
When I did speed push ups(need to start again) I would do 90-100.

At the end of the work out I do curls(bisep) and then wrist curls. I use 5kg for this.
I do 40 curls per arm
then 20 wrist lifts per arm (i sit down with my forarm parallel to the ground and back of hand facing up)
then 40 wrist lifts per arm with back of hand facing down.

I do these things at least once and do a random amount more but my work outs are usually 45 minutes long. I used to do this twice a day but lately only once.

Am I critical or are my work outs infantile? :frowning:

Success is a label made by the insecure.

14

If I had a lot of time and a quicker internet connection, I’d answer this in more detail. But the factors you wanna cover are:
Workout
Nutrition
Rest/Schedule
Ironfist got a lot of this in his post.
I used to have a bunch of links to stuff on the t-mag.com site that gave basic introductions to each of these for beginners. I’ll get these 2 you when I get some more time/motivation, otherwise u can surf the site for past issues.
I still haven’t checked the sites IronFist recommends either, but I will someday- I’m sure he wouldn’t mind posting links to what they say on the subject. :wink:
.

Just some thoughts from an ignoramus.

15

Wu Wei, you would do bench a lot and get worse at pushups? This makes sense. Pushups train more or less endurance (once you can do more than 10 or so). Bench press is training strength, as the weight is much heavier and you are doing less reps. I’m not saying it has to be one or the other, but chances are you’re not going to increase pushup endurance AND raw strength at the same time. Why not cycle them?

2 months of hardcore bench pressing
2 months of hardcore pushups, or maybe only 1 month

Your body will retain most of what it gets during each 2 month period..

Btw, if you want to gain substantial mass, you need to be using weights. I say “substantial,” because there are exceptions. For example, if you are new to working out and are skinny as hell, then pushups will give a bit of mass, but you probably won’t get that “big” look without weights.

Damn, i should be studying now.

Iron