Maybe you've had sand kicked in your face. Maybe you've lost one too many attainable women to beefier guys. Or maybe you've read so much about weight loss that actually admitting you want to gain weight is a societal taboo. Whatever the reason, you want to bulk up. Now.
But forget about your alleged high-revving metabolism, says Doug Kalman, R.D., director of nutrition at Miami Research Associates. "Most lean men who can't gain muscle weight are simply eating and exercising the wrong way," he says.
Here's your fix: Follow these 10 principles to pack on as much as a pound of size.
1. Maximize Muscle Building
The more protein your body stores in a process called protein synthesis the larger your muscles grow. But your body is constantly draining its protein reserves for other uses making hormones, for instance. The result is less protein available for muscle building. To counteract that, you need to "build and store new proteins faster than your body breaks down old proteins," says Michael Houston, Ph.D., a professor of nutrition at Virginia Tech University.
2. Eat Meat
Shoot for about 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight, which is roughly the maximum amount your body can use in a day, according to a landmark study in the Journal of Applied Physiology. (For example, a 160-pound man should consume 160 grams of protein a day the amount he'd get from an 8-ounce chicken breast, 1 cup of cottage cheese, a roast-beef sandwich, two eggs, a glass of milk, and 2 ounces of peanuts.) Split the rest of your daily calories equally between carbohydrates and fats.
3. Eat More
In addition to adequate protein, you need more calories. Use the following formula to calculate the number you need to take in daily to gain 1 pound a week. (Give yourself 2 weeks for results to show up on the bathroom scale. If you haven't gained by then, increase your calories by 500 a day.)
Your weight in pounds.
- Multiply A by 12 to get your basic calorie needs.
- Multiply B by 1.6 to estimate your resting metabolic rate (calorie burn without factoring in exercise).
- Strength training: Multiply the number of minutes you lift weights per week by 5.
- Aerobic training: Multiply the number of minutes per week that you run, cycle, and play sports by 8.
- Add D and E, and divide by 7.
- Add C and F to get your daily calorie needs.
- Add 500 to G. This is your estimated daily calorie needs to gain 1 pound a week.
4. Work Your Biggest Muscles
If you're a beginner, just about any workout will be intense enough to increase protein synthesis. But if you've been lifting for a while, you'll build the most muscle quickest if you focus on the large muscle groups, like the chest, back, and legs. Add squats, deadlifts, pullups, bent-over rows, bench presses, dips, and military presses to your workout. Do two or three sets of eight to 12 repetitions, with about 60 seconds' rest between sets.
5. Have a Stiff Drink
A 2001 study at the University of Texas found that lifters who drank a shake containing amino acids and carbohydrates before working out increased their protein synthesis more than lifters who drank the same shake after exercising. The shake contained 6 grams of essential amino acids the muscle-building blocks of protein and 35 grams of carbohydrates.
"Since exercise increases bloodflow to your working tissues, drinking a carbohydrate-protein mixture before your workout may lead to greater uptake of the amino acids in your muscles," says Kevin Tipton, Ph.D., an exercise and nutrition researcher at the University of Texas in Galveston.
For your shake, you'll need about 20 grams of protein usually about one scoop of a whey-protein powder. Can't stomach protein drinks? You can get the same nutrients from a sandwich made with 4 ounces of deli turkey and a slice of American cheese on whole wheat bread.
But a drink is better. "Liquid meals are absorbed faster," says Kalman. So tough it out. Drink one 30 to 60 minutes before your workout.
6. Lift Every Other Day
Do a full-body workout followed by a day of rest. Studies show that a challenging weight workout increases protein synthesis for up to 48 hours immediately after your exercise session. "Your muscles grow when you're resting, not when you're working out," says Michael Mejia, C.S.C.S., Men's Health exercise advisor and a former skinny guy who packed on 40 pounds of muscle using this very program.
7. Down Carbs After Your Workout
Research shows that you'll rebuild muscle faster on your rest days if you feed your body carbohydrates. "Post-workout meals with carbs increase your insulin levels," which, in turn, slows the rate of protein breakdown, says Kalman. Have a banana, a sports drink, a peanut-butter sandwich.
8. Eat Every 3 Hours
"If you don't eat often enough, you can limit the rate at which your body builds new proteins," says Houston. Take the number of calories you need in a day and divide by six. That's roughly the number you should eat at each meal. Make sure you consume some protein around 20 grams every 3 hours.
9. Exercise big muscle groups to jumpstart the muscle building process
Studies show that training big muscle groups jumpstarts the muscle building process leading to faster and bigger muscle gains. Make sure you involve these muscle groups at least once a week. The largest muscle groups are the leg, back and chest muscles.
As your muscles get used to the heavy load, you may need to shock it by constantly changing the weight you lift. If you used 100 pounds on your bench press during your first week of training, try to add 10 pounds for the second week. Add another 10 pounds on the following week and so on. The same goes for other body parts.
Progressive lifting makes sure that your muscles don’t get complacent and stop growing. The additional weight tells your body to grow more muscle fibers to keep up with the load. Watch yourself get bigger and stronger every week.
10. Alter your exercise routine
If you’re working out three times a day training two body parts, try to spread it to six days working only on one body part per day. If you’re doing chest and biceps on Mondays and back and triceps on Wednesdays, make it chest and triceps then back and biceps. This puts more stress on the common muscle groups (biceps and triceps) forcing your body to grow more muscle fibers.
11. Diet to Get Ripped
It’s an age old saying, but ‘you are what you eat’ has an annoying ring of truth to it, especially when it comes to your fitness. Maintaining a balanced diet is vital if you want to bulk up in the right way. Although it’s not always easy to plan meals when you’re trying to slim down and on top of that gain muscle, there are a few key foods that you should keep in mind when you’re training.
12. Muscle gain how to get ripped fast diet
Fish: There’s a whole list of benefits to eating fish, but the main things to focus on when you’re trying to bulk up is that it helps increase testosterone, lowers body fat, and enables easier joint movement. It’s also a strong source of protein and if you go with something fresh like wild salmon, you’ll gain a good helping on omega-3 fatty acids.
Eggs: Again we’re dealing with protein here, and eggs are a great provider. They’re also high in vitamins E, D and A, and are easy to incorporate into your meals. Greek yogurt: High in calcium and protein, and helps keep muscles on the go by providing them with a stream of amino acids.
Greens: We’re talking spinach, kale, chard and all those other food that get called ‘rabbit food’ 80% of the time. These are a great source of iron, fibre, vitamins and yes, again, protein.
Flaxseeds: These will probably end up stuck in your teeth at least once a week, but with the benefits that come with them, it’ll be worth it. Flaxseeds are great for your heart, they aid in fat burning, keep your mood up, which is vital for that rainy walk to the gym, and are an easy source or omega-3 fatty acids.
Water: Seems like a no brainer, but something as simple as replacing your morning coffee with a glass of water (I know, not easy to do) is going to drastically help replace that caffeine with clean hydration, ensuring that you stay alert without that crash mid afternoon. Drinking between 2 to 3 litres of water a day is ideal, and will help keep you full, meaning you’ll be less likely to snack on unhealthy alternatives.
As you can see, there’s a lot of protein heavy foods there. Protein is rich in amino acids, which are vital in building, repairing and maintaining muscles. If you didn’t have amino acids you essentially wouldn’t be able to build up muscle, which explains why protein shakes are so popular with gym goers.
13. Best Supplements to Get Ripped
Now it’s important to eat right if you plan on bulking up, but it’s not always easy to get all the vitamins and minerals you need just from your meals. Taking additional supplements can help boost your body’s levels, and prevent you from falling short on the necessary nutrients you need. It’s important to have a range of vitamins to stay healthy, but if we’re talking specifically building muscles, these are the supplements you should think about investing in.
14. How to build muscle get ripped fast
Whey Protein Powder: Yep, back to protein, but it really is important when you’re working out. Protein powder can be more useful than protein heavy foods before and after a workout simply because it digests so much faster. Taking some of this 30 minutes before a workout is going to noticeably improve muscle growth.
Creatine: Creatine is made from three amino acids and increases the amount of fast energy in your muscles. This not only gets you that little but closer to being like Usain Bolt, and allows you to run and lift more in your normal workouts.
Beta-alanine: It’s a common story – you start a work out, get into the swing on things, and then 20 minutes in you’re exhausted and your muscles are dead. This is because during exercise we accumulate a large amount of hydrogen, which then causes our pH levels to drop, which ends with us falling off the treadmill. Beta-alanine however helps increase the body’s levels of carnosine, which helps delay the build up of hydrogen, and therefore allows our workouts to go on for longer.
Glutamine: Glutamine has been attributed in helping slow down muscle breakage, and improves your strength threshold, allowing you do to high intensity workouts for longer.
High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
You might have heard of this form of workout, and over the years it’s gained increasing popularity, especially for men who want a workout, but don’t have a whole lot of time on their hands. The general idea of HIIT training is that during your intensive workout your body can’t provide enough oxygen to your muscles, meaning that after you’ve finished your workout your body is still working to get back to normal. This means you’re still burning fat even after you’ve stopped exercising.
15. Build muscle get ripped fast HIIT
There are a tonne of workouts online, and the best thing about most of them is that you can easily get ripped at home, meaning you can avoid those gym fees. It’s important to keep your exercise super intensive (thus the name), so don’t run – sprint, and make sure you’re not doing this for any longer than 45 seconds to avoid overworking your muscles.
16. How to Get Ripped Without Weights
If you’re the type who does bodyweight training, or even HIIT, then you’ll know that although these are great workouts, and will help on your journey on how to get shredded, you can’t rely on them alone. In order for your muscles to grow they need to be under a high amount of resistance, and the obvious answer is to train them up with weights.
However if you don’t the time to get to the gym, or you’re just not a fan of working out in public, there are ways to build muscle without the use of weights. Using your own body as a weight is an simple, yet still demanding way of training your muscles, and the best way to exercise if you’re wondering how to get ripped at home.
17. Build muscle get ripped without weights
Squats, push ups, chin ups and pull ups are the easiest ways to gain muscle without using weights, and you can easily vary the intensity of your workout depending on how long you hold a position for and the angles you perform them at.