Words: Holly
If you are skinny and aiming to get bigger or have been a gym user for a while and you’re stuck on a plateau then this article is for you! Getting big or putting on bulk can simply be boiled down to three simple rules….
1. Make your Calories Count
2. Sleep like a hibernating bear
3. Lift big consistently
Now let’s take a quick look at each rule…
In order to pack on the pounds, you need to create nutritional excess in your body
Now this doesn’t mean buckets of high calorie ice cream are ok. Instead this means pounding down a couple chicken breasts with clean carbs and nutrient dense veg every couple hours.
1. Mark Roussell, Ph.D., recommends you get 30 percent of your daily energy intake from protein, and the rest from fats and carbs if you want to pack on size. A CNN report found that most men looking to add muscle will need 1.2 to 1.5 grams of protein per kilo of body weight to achieve this. Once you know how much protein you need, you can work out the remaining 70 percent of your daily intake from carbs (about 30 percent) and fats (about 40 percent) and then split it into manageable meal servings.
2. Remember how much you slept when you were a lazy student … well now its mandatory!, Without adequate rest, your body just won’t cope with the immense pressure you are putting on it, and your gains will happen much more slowly than you would like. There are a few reasons for this: Sleep is when your body goes to work repairing the muscle fibers that get torn during your workout and resetting all your hormonal levels. If you don’t get enough sleep (at least seven hours a night), your testosterone levels drop, your growth hormone levels drop, your cortisol levels go up and your insulin sensitivity goes up. All these factors combined mean you won’t be able to lift as much, won’t recover as quickly, will gain more fat than you want to and won’t add as much muscle as fast. So make sure you prioritise your rest if you’re serious about getting big quickly.
3. Go heavy, gym regularly, think big, Lifting big weights four or five times a week is the only type of physical activity you should focus on. The most important thing to focus on is that the lifts must be heavy. There is no point going into the gym and slinging around weights that you can do 50 reps with. To trigger real muscle growth, you should be performing six to 12 reps of each exercise per set, and you shouldn’t be able to do anymore without taking a rest. This intensity is what stimulates muscle growth and the necessary hormonal responses for growth.
Focus on these three rules and stay the course because Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither were the best gladiators!
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