Thanks for the comments last week, another mobility device we could all try to use less of is our car!
The question this week is how can I put on some muscle weight? Simple answer, eat and train heavy!
A broad rule of thumb is, don’t spend time hungry. Say you’re a slim body type trying to ‘bulk up’. It can be hard to eat enough to gain any weight. Start with your main three meals, get a good mix of your protein, fat and carbs.
Some fats are good to have so don’t take skin off chicken or separate egg whites, eat nuts and avocados. Coconut oil is great, it’s good heat stable oil for cooking too.
Use real butter when you cook and put some cheese in your omelette with full fat milk. Protein is found in animal and dairy type foods.
You need to get enough protein for the body to repair from the training and research generally suggests having about a gram of protein per kg of bodyweight.
However there are different quality protein sources so allow a bit more, even double it, but overloading with massive protein meals like a protein shake to wash down an omelette and half a kilo of chicken breast won’t make you grow any quicker.
Then you will still need even more calories – carbs like vegies, oats and brown rice, some wholemeal pasta. It’s not the time to worry about low carb diets, you’re going to need lots of energy to let your body get comfortable putting extra muscle on. Muscle takes energy to even keep on the body and it’s easy to lose if you’re calorie deficient.
Then you need to get some food in between the main meals. Have snacks like a handful of nuts, make a healthy shake – you can put anything into shakes, fruit, eggs, avocado, oats, lecithin and things like peanut butter, yogurt or LSA mix from a health shop. If you can eat it, you can put it in a shake.
As for training, you want to get the most growth for least calorie output so no endurance work. Hit the weights, but for less than 60 minutes.
Try big, heavy, compound movements like squats and deadlifts. Keep it under 15 reps per set, at three to five sets. If you can get more reps put the weight up again.
And finally, get plenty of sleep. That should get some muscle on anybody!
