Tryptamite said:
I actually have the very question for you!
I don't have a product in mind but hopefully you can recommend something for myself and a friend. We'll be getting it in the local health shop so I suppose it'll be whatever brand they stock of the product you reccomend.
We're both 18 and very skinny. (9stone ish) We never played sports and did quite a few drugs as younger teens so I feel we never matured physically as much as we could have had.
He's shorter than I am and I am quite gangly!
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
I'd say we both have (I definately do) really fast metabolisms because we can eat like horses and never put on weight.
Anyway we are going on holidays (to IBIZA
) this summer after our exams and we want to have half decent bodies for the ladies.
I presume we need to build up our mass and put on weight before we can start to work that into muscle?
We won't be training too hard because we have to study for exams aswell. Maybe weights for half an hour, sit ups, press ups etc 3 times a week.
I was thinking protein? or do we need fat? and does that seem like enough excercise to you?
We won't be able to afford the gym too often unfortunately.
Thanks a lot - disco
okay, not so much a supplement thing per se, but let me help set you in the right direction.
You need food!!!!! I am in a similar situation as you, in that my body just burns whatever I throw at it, so I need a higher amount of calories for muscle gain than someone else of a comparable weight. For instance, at 165lbs of bodyweight, I need ~3500 calories / day to gain muscle.
Now, it does seem you should be able to hit a very nice goal given your situation (and your friend as well).
((before I forget, you don't "add weight and turn it into muscle". The ole "turn fat to muscle" myth just won't go away haha, it's just not how it works. Muscle tissue is specific, no tissue just becomes muscle, you'll need to grow muscle directly))
Alrighty, as was said you need to jump those calories up ASAP!! Protein needs to be high as well, somewhere around 1g/lbs daily (err on the side of too much).
You really, really, really should check out a program called fitday. Check out fitday.com for a free nutrition journal. I only enter carbs/protein/fat, and total calories. It then displays your food intake for the day, week, month, whatever. It'll even show pie charts broken down from carb/protein/fat.
I hope you don't just ignore the fitday recommendation, it's a very, very useful program! It takes a couple days to get used to, but after that it's a breeze (it saves your food values, so you can enter "0.75 protein shake" and it'd compute 3/4 of a protein shake for you. You'll likely find that after about a week, most of the foods you eat regularly are entered, and you're now just entering in portions of said foods).
But calories/protein are crucial, they're so commonly viewed as less important than training, when the fact is that bodies are made in the kitchen more than the gym to an extent. You can have the best training regimen ever, with the poorest diet, and have no / almost no results. However, you could have a pretty shitty training program, a great diet (when I say "great", I am NOT talking in terms of 'healthy'. Rather, in terms of caloric intake and protein intake), you'll still have good results.
If you choose not to use fitday, you still need to know you're gaining weight so you can adjust your guessing on your intake. Be sure to use a scale regularly to verify weight gains, aim for roughly a pound a week (a couple pounds a week in the beginning is normal, after a few weeks I wouldn't be aiming for more than a pound or so a week). Remember proper weighing procedures, such as weighing in upon waking, after the bathroom, before food/coffee, in the same clothes/naked, same scale. Otherwise the margin of error is far too high, given the tiny jumps in weight you're measuring.
3 times a week available for training, at 30 minutes apiece. You may think that's not enough time, but you'd be wrong!! Luckily, with a smart, efficient program, you'll have enough time to get the proper muscle damage (which'll make those extra calories go towards anabolism/muscle growth, and not fat
- unless you take in more than needed for anabolism, then it goes to fat still). Forget about any isolation moves right off the bat (simple movements like curls, situps, calf raises, wrist curls, leg extensions, etc). Your half hour needs to be devoted *entirely* to intense compound exercises, such as squats, deadlifts, good mornings, bench press, pullups, military press, bent over barbell rows, etc. (***note - I can hook up links with videos of said exercises, but please do not do these unless you're doing proper form, w/o proper form there is real safety risks here). But with a proper half hour of high intensity compound moves, done 3X/week, you'll seriously have enough gym time for your needs right now.
Now, about supplements directly. I generally don't call protein powder or weightgainer powder supplements, I just tend to call them food, as that's what they are - powdered meals. So as far as 'supplements' go, the only thing I'd recommend would be creatine, and that's not even a strong recommendation. Creatine's ok, nothing too special, certainly not worth the price unless you're talking about pure, creatine monohydrate powder. But about food supplements - I couldn't begin to tell you if you need them or not. Why? Because I don't know your total calorie needs, or your current daily breakdown. Only after you have a ballpark idea of how many calories/day you need, how many grams of protein/day you need, and how much of both you're currently getting, will you see if there's a deficit that would be easily corrected by weightgainer and/or protein. If in doubt, and you don't mind a dirtier bulk (read: more fat gain with the muscle gain), just grab weightgainer and get on it asap!
((notes on creatine:
loading isn't really necessary, but if you're using the only kind I'd recommend, the cheap stuff, you may as well load. Loading schedules vary depending who you ask, if you ask me I'll tell ya 4X/day for 4 days, then 1 serving/day thereafter, although some say 5X/day for 5days, some say more/less/etc. Note that all servings based on 5g serving size, you'll want to increase water upon starting, you'll have a little boost in water retention so you'll notice a 2-3lbs jump off the bat.
(((notes on protein powders:
verify if you need more protein, and if you need a weightgainer - if you still need more protein after a weightgainer, or didn't need a weightgainer, then a milk based protein <such as whey or casein> is great, egg is very good too. Same as creatine on types to purchase - get the most plain, cheapest ones they have. A kilo of protein will vary between $13 and $50, the differences being so negligible it's not even funny. I wouldn't pay $15 for the $50 containers, I don't even value them $2 more than the $13 ones lol.
(((((notes on weightgainers:
Same recommendation on price - find the cheapest. Now, there's a caveat to this on weightgainers - the cheapest tend to have far less protein/lbs of weightgainer (be wary that some may *seem* like a lot of protein, maybe 50g/serving, but then you realize they recommend some asinine serving of 2,500 calories, so once you break it down to your serving, there's like 5g of protein!). Based on protein powder needed or not, and protein intake, keep those in mind when determining which weightgainer to choose. If you are gonna get separate protein, definitely just get the cheapest weightgainer. I wouldn't recommend more than maybe 500 calories at a time from a weightgainer shake, regardless of what the label says. If its chief carbohydrate is maltodextrin, which is the most common, keep in mind it's got the glycemic value of table sugar - it digests insanely fast <<yes, I'm aware they call it a 'complex carb', but I assure you its nutritional equivalent is sugar>>, so you may want to add stuff to slow it down, such as milk or fatty stuff.
So, that's it in a nutshell, let me know if I can clarify anything, but basically you gotta determine how many calories needed/day, how much protein, and look at your current intake. Tweak that accordingly with either food, powdered food, or both (don't neglect this! you cannot gain weight if you're not eating a calorie surplus daily!!), and you'll have your calorie surplus that'll enable the muscle gain. Give your body the proper stimulus by utilizing those three 30min workouts as efficiently as possible (ie crazy intensity compound training), and you'll be gaining properly in no time at all.
Some other far more general tips:
- reduce alcohol consumption if you're a heavy drinker, reduce it as much as possible. Drinking a small amount very regularly isn't very bad at all - getting hammered once or twice a week is quite detrimental (that's probably an understatement lol. See 3rd post of "alcohol and you" on these boards for far, far, far more info on ethanol/alcohol and lifting)
- proper rest is important, try not to be sleeping 5 hours a day lol
- proper hydration is important as well
