Learning How To Add Pounds of Muscle Fast

This is for you poor souls that just can't seem to gain a pound. And on top of that, you get no sympathy from the scores of people that want to lose weight and have no idea why you'd complain about not being able to put weight on.

They think you're the lucky one, eating whatever you want without gaining weight. Little do they know that you are just as frustrated without gaining mass as they are with not being able to lose weight!

For those of you who desperately want to add muscle, you know how frustrating it can be to train hard and stay skinny. You wish your problem was losing weight instead of gaining mass.

You need to eat more calories than you burn off and use an effective trainig program designed to add pounds of muscle to your skinny frame.

Of course, there is more to it than that, but that is the bottom line. It does matter, however, what kind of calories you eat, and when you eat them.

Eating candy bars and drinking sugar laden sodas may help you in gaining mass but that mass will be fat, not muscle. And then you'll wish you were skinny again.

You need to not only take in enough calories but you need to take in the right calories that will help your body achieve an anabolic (muscle building) state, and minimize fat storage.

You need to constantly feed your body high quality protein at a minimum of 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight. Hard weight training causes your body to crave muscle building nutrients, protein being the primary nutrient that it needs.

As a naturally skinny guy myself I can tell you from experience that I have a very difficult time gaining mass unless I am taking in at least 1.5 grams of high quality protien every day.

Make sure you eat at least six meals a day. This will help your body utilize the nutrients more efficiently, including minimizing fat storage by avoiding excessively large meals that send your body signals that there might be a famine pending, causing body fat storage to accelerate.

Most people who have trouble gaining mass aren't taking in as many quality calories as they think. Consider keeping track of your calorie intake and make adjustments as you go, shooting for a gain of 1 to 2 pounds gained per week.

If you are gaining mass at a rate of 1 pound of quality muscle per week, you will transform your appearance in a matter of a few months.

Constantly monitoring your calorie intake, body weight, and skin fold caliper measurements will help you pinpoint the number of calories you need to consume to build muscle.

For Gaining Mass - Max Out Your Mass and Strength

Most of use were taugh to warm up over several sets while decreasing the number of repetitions.

For example, start with a set of 15-20 reps on the bench press, add weight, do another set of 10 - 12 reps and possibly even a third set of this number.

Finally, the work begins and you add weight for a fairly hard set of 8 - 10 reps. Increase the weight for a hard set of 6 - 8 reps and possibly one last hard set of 5 - 6 reps.

Here's the problem I have with routines like this (which is most routines).

You're working hard enough on the warm ups to begin wearing yourself out, yet not hard enough to have a positive impact on your progress, ie, strength and muscle mass gains.

Your warm up should be designed to do just enough to prevent injury and allow you to work out as hard as you can with the heaviest weight possible for your working sets.

If you workout in the manner I described and you switch to warming up just enough, you'll find yourself lifting heavier weights for more reps than you were previously using.

This will increase the intensity, signaling your body that it needs to increase its muscle mass to cope with the new stress.

This may take some experimenting but here are a couple of examples to give you an idea.

Let's say you want to use 225 pounds on your working set of bench presses.

Start out with a very light set of 8 - 10 reps with 100 pounds, then do 3 reps with 145 and another 2 reps with 190.

Rest a minute or 2 and then do your work set with 225.

Those 3 warm up sets are done without any rest, except the time it takes to change the weights on the bar.

Let's say you want to Squat with 300 lbs.

Do 8 - 10 reps with 135, followed by 3 reps with 205, 2 reps with 255 and maybe 1 rep with 275. Rest a minute or 2 and then do your work set with 300 lbs.

Again, you'll need to experiment with what it takes to get you physically and mentally prepared for your work set but try using this warm up method and see if your top end poundages don't improve.

Sure, there are ways to gain muscle without becoming much stronger and ways to become stronger without adding muscle but all things being equal you need to become stronger to succeed in gaining mass in the form of new muscle.

To sum up, do minimal reps on the warm up sets, don't rest between warm up sets, and then go to your top weight on your work sets.

Gregg Gillies is the founder of http://www.buildleanmuscle.com His articles have appeared in Ironman Magazine. He has written two books and is a regular contributor to Body Talk Magazine. He publishes a free fitness newsletter available at his site that includes lots of weight training tips, fat loss, nutrition and exercise program information to help you build your best body as quickly as possible. See how you can get a customized muscle building nutrition plan at http://www.mynutritionjournal.com

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