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So I want to gain weight...

A

allies

Platinum Member
... not because my uncle wants me to 😉, but I want to get stronger and a little bigger.

I currently (as of an hour ago) weigh 158.4 lbs. I'm 6'. I would like to get to 175 pounds by mid-Septemeber.

I take it that I should follow SL 5x5 and eat big? I did SL 5x5 last summer and didn't gain that much mass. My bench did go up from 5x5 @ 115 to 5x5 @ 160 in the span of 2-3 months (weighed around 160). After the summer, school was hectic and by November I cut back to just running. I started doing pullups/pushups/abs while training for my marathon and raced at about 155 lbs 2 weeks ago.

I'm very much into endurance sports too, and I don't want to get TOO big (I think another 15 pounds or so, if lean, would still be a healthy weight to log ~20-30 miles of running a week). I will be biking ~50-75 miles on top of my running.

I would also not like to add much body fat, obviously 🙂

Thanks everyone.

Pic for ref:
IMG_0245.JPG
 
When you tried 5x5 and didn't gain much muscle, how were you eating? For most guys the bottleneck is in the kitchen, not the gym.
 
allies said:
I want to get stronger and a little bigger
...
I take it that I should follow SL 5x5 and eat big?
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Yup.

allies said:
I did SL 5x5 last summer and didn't gain that much mass. My bench did go up from 5x5 @ 115 to 5x5 @ 160 in the span of 2-3 months (weighed around 160).
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What about your squat & deadlift? How was your diet? BTW, if you do a routine like SL 5x5 - or, better yet, the Starting Strength routine it's based on - and do it properly, then you should make much more rapid gains. If you didn't, you either didn't follow the routine, the diet, or didn't recover enough (too much endurance exercise, not enough sleep, etc).

allies said:
I'm very much into endurance sports too, and I don't want to get TOO big (I think another 15 pounds or so, if lean, would still be a healthy weight to log ~20-30 miles of running a week). I will be biking ~50-75 miles on top of my running.
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With that much endurance exercise each week, you are going to need to eat a TON to gain weight. GOMAD is a very simple/cheap/effective strategy that'll add weight quickly. Combined with lots of squatting, it is incredibly effective for beginners. The other option is to start tracking calories on fitday.com or thedailyplate.com and get yourself in a nice caloric surplus eating whatever foods you like.

allies said:
I would also not like to add much body fat, obviously 🙂
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If you really want to gain weight, you'll have to put aside your fears of fat for a short time. Gaining muscle mass without gaining fat is a VERY VERY slow process. It is MUCH more efficient to do a bulk cycle where you gain muscle and fat followed by a cut cycle where you burn away the excess fat. You'll save yourself lots of frustration & time that way.
 
birkis - since I only want to gain 15 pounds or so, should I follow starting strength? it seems to me like the "demographic" he's alluding to are powerlifters or football players. If I throw on 15 pounds of weight in 2 months it's more than likely going to be <50&#37; FFM. I honestly would prefer cleaner weight - it's nonsensical to gain a pound of fat for every pound of muscle if I'm going to be carrying that dead weight during my runs and bikes.

My squat went from 115x5x5 to 175x5x5 in the 2~3 months that I did SL. Deadlift was the same.

My diet was probably a little low for weight gain last summer. I'm now making a switch to using more beans in my diet in place of rice. I currently get ~3250-3750 cals/day, I'm gonna start H.GOMAD when I really want to start gaining (after graduation, June 10th)
 
Starting Strength is a great beginner routine regardless of your ultimate goals. Every beginner should use a program similar to build a foundation to build off of with more specific training later on. However, SL 5x5 is pretty much the same routine with only a few small differences and you'd be fine following either one. It won't really matter much as long as 1) You're getting stronger and 2) You're going to stick to it. Regardless of which routine you go with, I would suggest reading Starting Strength though. You'll learn a lot from it.

As far as weight gain is concerned, GOMAD will definitely make you gain weight and for people who have a very hard time gaining weight, it'll definitely help. However, I feel that in most cases adding that many extra calories on top of a maintenance diet is going to result in far more fat gain than wanted. Assuming your maintenance is around 2500 calories, that's a gallon of whole milk right there, not even including what else you ate for the day. For most individuals I don't feel something so drastic is needed or a good idea.

You'd be better off determining your maintenance and eating 10-20&#37; above that. Assuming your maintenance is around 2500, aim for 3000 calories a day. If you like milk and want to include it in your diet, go for it, but keep in mind your total caloric intake for the day. Besides that, just make sure protein is at least 1g per pound of bodyweight. Fat intake I like to keep around 20-25% total calories and let the rest be carbs. Also, keep in mind 3000 calories would just be used as a starting point. If you're not gaining weight, up calories a little bit more until you're gaining at a rate you're happy with.
 
allies said:
birkis - since I only want to gain 15 pounds or so, should I follow starting strength? it seems to me like the "demographic" he's alluding to are powerlifters or football players.
Click to expand...
Starting strength (or SL 5x5) works for anyone who wants to get stronger. It is not just for football players or powerlifters, but a general purpose routine that builds a solid foundation of strength for almost any endeavor. There are no weight gain requirements to do SS or SL, but since you want to gain weight anyway, you'll find that doing them while bulking will make your progress significantly faster.

allies said:
If I throw on 15 pounds of weight in 2 months it's more than likely going to be <50&#37; FFM. I honestly would prefer cleaner weight - it's nonsensical to gain a pound of fat for every pound of muscle if I'm going to be carrying that dead weight during my runs and bikes.
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As I said, the only way to gain muscle mass in a reasonable time frame is to also gain fat. Perhaps if you are genetically gifted, your ratio of muscle:fat will be more favorable, but it's almost impossible to keep the fat gain close to 0 unless you are willing to gain mass at a VERY slow rate. Alternating cycles of bulking and cutting will get you to your desired body composition much faster than just a slow bulk. As a very rough estimate of the numbers, it would be pretty reasonable for a newbie to gain 15lbs of muscle and 10lbs of fat in 1-2 months of SS on a bulk diet; you could then cut do a cut and drop the 10lbs of fat in 1-2 months more. So all told, you'd get to your desired +15lbs in 2-4 months. If you do a slow, clean bulk to avoid any fat gain, you'd be lucky to add 15lbs of clean muscle in an entire year, all the while having to VERY meticulously track your caloric intake to maintain a slight caloric surplus. It's doable, but much less efficient.
 
I can see two things from the original post that are making it difficult for you to gain weight other than your diet. Endurance cardio is eating any muscle you have a chance of gaining. Also, it appears that you really need to focus on some excercises to build up your back and legs. The majority of a "big" guy's size comes from their back and legs. The rest of the muscles in your body will fall in line with what your back and legs look.

Don't be obsessed with the vanity muscles like your biceps because some of the best ways to build them are doing compound exercises that build your back at the same time.

As others have stated you need to eat like it's your job also, and I would recommend cutting your cardio down to about 3 times a week for 15 minutes. Do yourself a favor and cut that long distance running out because you will pay for it dearly when you are older. Running is awful for your joints, as many 40-50 year old ex marathoners I know will testify.
 
You might want to check out http://www.crossfitendurance.com if you're really focused on endurance competitions. Not during a strict weight-gain cycle, mind you, but for a long term training routine that lines up with your goals of endurance events without requiring the endless miles that tend to eat up your hard earned muscle/strength gains.
 
brikis98 said:
Starting strength (or SL 5x5) works for anyone who wants to get stronger. It is not just for football players or powerlifters, but a general purpose routine that builds a solid foundation of strength for almost any endeavor. There are no weight gain requirements to do SS or SL, but since you want to gain weight anyway, you'll find that doing them while bulking will make your progress significantly faster.


As I said, the only way to gain muscle mass in a reasonable time frame is to also gain fat. Perhaps if you are genetically gifted, your ratio of muscle:fat will be more favorable, but it's almost impossible to keep the fat gain close to 0 unless you are willing to gain mass at a VERY slow rate. Alternating cycles of bulking and cutting will get you to your desired body composition much faster than just a slow bulk. As a very rough estimate of the numbers, it would be pretty reasonable for a newbie to gain 15lbs of muscle and 10lbs of fat in 1-2 months of SS on a bulk diet; you could then cut do a cut and drop the 10lbs of fat in 1-2 months more. So all told, you'd get to your desired +15lbs in 2-4 months. If you do a slow, clean bulk to avoid any fat gain, you'd be lucky to add 15lbs of clean muscle in an entire year, all the while having to VERY meticulously track your caloric intake to maintain a slight caloric surplus. It's doable, but much less efficient.
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I think this is what I'll do, sounds reasonable. Thanks birkis.

VulgarDisplay said:
I can see two things from the original post that are making it difficult for you to gain weight other than your diet. Endurance cardio is eating any muscle you have a chance of gaining. Also, it appears that you really need to focus on some excercises to build up your back and legs. The majority of a "big" guy's size comes from their back and legs. The rest of the muscles in your body will fall in line with what your back and legs look.

Don't be obsessed with the vanity muscles like your biceps because some of the best ways to build them are doing compound exercises that build your back at the same time.

As others have stated you need to eat like it's your job also, and I would recommend cutting your cardio down to about 3 times a week for 15 minutes. Do yourself a favor and cut that long distance running out because you will pay for it dearly when you are older. Running is awful for your joints, as many 40-50 year old ex marathoners I know will testify.
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Ehh... I appreciate your opinions but I pretty much disagree with most of it. My roommate is 5'11 185ish and is a runner. He trained with me and maintained his weight. Also, where did I say I was focused on "vanity" muscles? I haven't done a curl or ANY small muscle group exercise in over 1.5 years (SS *doen't have a focus on "vanity" muscles, and my current regimen of pushups/pullups/core definitely works on my large (upperbody) muscle groups. I wasn't doing legs because heavy lifting while training for a marathon is not really the smartest thing 😛

AND for your "running is awful for your joints" comment, I'd like to say that I know plenty of marathoners in their 40-60s without joint problems...

spamsk8r said:
You might want to check out http://www.crossfitendurance.com if you're really focused on endurance competitions. Not during a strict weight-gain cycle, mind you, but for a long term training routine that lines up with your goals of endurance events without requiring the endless miles that tend to eat up your hard earned muscle/strength gains.
Click to expand...

I might take a look into this as well.

To everyone else - thanks for your suggestions!
 
Last edited:
Just wanted to say that my current weight is 163 lbs. That's slightly less than 1 lb/week. I've been drinking a half gallon of 2&#37; chocolate (cocoa powder + cane sugar) milk on the days I lift, and then a gallon of 2% plain milk for the rest of the week. Did FitDay a for a couple of days to see my approximate intake days and I get ~3700 cals on lifting days and ~3200 cals on non-lifting days. I've been running about 15 miles/week and haven't really been biking, but I have been playing a decent amount of basketball and some soccer.

Pretty encouraged by the results, I feel if I bumped up to ~3700+cals on ALL days I could be putting on more weight, but I'm doing all right so far. Some of my weight is flab but most of it is muscle. My bench is going up steadily (easily did 5x5 @ 150 today), but I feel like I might've hit a little bit of a plateau on squats - I failed on the 4th rep of the 5th set two workouts straight at 175 lbs. Think this might be from being active with my legs outside of lifting, but I'm not entirely sure...
 
allies said:
Just wanted to say that my current weight is 163 lbs. That's slightly less than 1 lb/week. I've been drinking a half gallon of 2% chocolate (cocoa powder + cane sugar) milk on the days I lift, and then a gallon of 2% plain milk for the rest of the week. Did FitDay a for a couple of days to see my approximate intake days and I get ~3700 cals on lifting days and ~3200 cals on non-lifting days. I've been running about 15 miles/week and haven't really been biking, but I have been playing a decent amount of basketball and some soccer.

Pretty encouraged by the results, I feel if I bumped up to ~3700+cals on ALL days I could be putting on more weight, but I'm doing all right so far. Some of my weight is flab but most of it is muscle. My bench is going up steadily (easily did 5x5 @ 150 today), but I feel like I might've hit a little bit of a plateau on squats - I failed on the 4th rep of the 5th set two workouts straight at 175 lbs. Think this might be from being active with my legs outside of lifting, but I'm not entirely sure...
Click to expand...

Just make sure you aren't doing any extensive cardio prior to doing squats on your lifting day. If you aren't doing that you might want to drop the weight a little and start working back up again.
 
allies said:
but I feel like I might've hit a little bit of a plateau on squats - I failed on the 4th rep of the 5th set two workouts straight at 175 lbs. Think this might be from being active with my legs outside of lifting, but I'm not entirely sure...
Click to expand...

This happened to me when I started SL when I was still running. Squats are a bitch, for me, if I've been running. I wouldn't be too surprised if as long as you keep running that your squat gains will be more difficult than bench gains just because you're working your legs a lot. If you can, try to run after you squat. And try not to work your legs too hard for a day before you squat, it will help a lot.
 
Pantlegz1 said:
This happened to me when I started SL when I was still running. Squats are a bitch, for me, if I've been running. I wouldn't be too surprised if as long as you keep running that your squat gains will be more difficult than bench gains just because you're working your legs a lot. If you can, try to run after you squat. And try not to work your legs too hard for a day before you squat, it will help a lot.
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If you're going to run after you squat, make sure to do so at least 3 hours after lifting. Aerobically intense exercise inhibits hypertrophy (muscle growth), which would be way too counter-productive during a bulk. If you wanted to run, I'd make sure to lift in the morning and run at night.
 
you should be eating a lot more with that activity level. I was doing 4000+ when I started SS and had no outside activity other then weight training. 15 miles + soccer+ basketball....that's a lot.
 
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