Skinny to Strong

Ever since I switched from strength training to muscle mass gain, I have had trouble gaining weight. Unfortunately I cannot blame the new program. There are a variety of reasons that are responsible. First let me start off by showing the chart that shows my weight gain progress in the last 3 months. Observe how the curve looks like when I am healthy and gaining weight. This is represented by the slopes from 4/10/2010 to 5/8/2010 and from 5/15/2010 to 6/5/2010. Right around 6/5/2010 I switched to mass gain program. And then I lost weight the first week, then started to gain very little if any after that. Now for the breakdown by week. 6/5 to 6/12 During this week I probably lost weight because I was over-training. When I switched out of strength training I miscalculated that I would not require as many days to recover while on mass gain program. I was probably wrong. I went from 2 workouts per week to 4 workouts. With the new schedule, I saw a dip in my weight while I maintained e...

In my last post , I mentioned about the big switch from strength training to a more balanced muscle mass training and strength training. In this new program, I attempt to keep my weights in 80 to 90% 1RM instead of the heavy 90 to 95% 1RM, I used before for strength training. I used to do 2 workout per week during my strength training regimen. Usually it was on Mondays and Thursdays. Occasionally I would do another workout on Saturdays, time and motivation permitting. On Mondays and Thursdays I used to do 4 exercises. One for each body part Chest and triceps (bench press or dips) Back and biceps (rows or pull-ups) Quads and Hamstrings (deadlifts or squats) Calves or Abs They are mostly concentrated towards bigger muscle groups. On the occasional Saturdays I used to do these exercises Shoulder press Barbell Bicep curls Close grip bench press After switching to the new program and doing a couple of sessions with the lighter weights, I felt like I was not doing enough per w...

I have so far been training for strength without giving any though to the muscle mass. My aim was to do 3x5 benchpress, rows with 1x my body weight, squat with 1.5x and deadlift with 2x. I have reached all my goals except for deadlift goal. So now that I have enough strength I want to switch my training to build muscle mass. Another reason is because I am getting bored with the strength training and my central nervous system seems to be getting taxed heavily for too long. Switching to muscle mass training means nothing more than reducing the weights to 80% instead of 90 to 95% and then doing 8 to 10 reps instead of 3 to 6 reps. I am not going to completely switch to muscle mass training. I plan to do strength training one week and muscle mass training the next week. Here is my plan Week 1: 3 x 8 with 80% 1RM Week 2: 6 x 4 with 90% 1RM Week 3: 3 x 9 with 80% 1RM Week 4: 7 x 4 with 90% 1RM Week 5: 3 x 10 with 80% 1RM Week 6: 8 x 4 with 90% 1RM At the end of the 6 weeks and ass...

With my last post I have completed recollecting my past bulking and leaning phases. Now to the present. After my first round of bulking and leaning I understood my body more. I still am not sure what is the best formula for leaning. However I think I have a better understanding of how to bulk up. Since it has been over 4 months of leaning I decided to switch to bulking phase now. Starting this week I am increasing my calorie intake and see if I can lift more weights. Here is what I found out about me when bulking: I should not be overeating suddenly but instead increase my calorie intake slowly and let me body see the change in calories. I should be eating more carbs than either fats or proteins. In fact I decided on 60% carbs, 20% protein and 20% fat ratios. Without all the carbs my body hates me. I have headaches and feel very tired. I should reduce the number of exercises, sets and reps. Instead I should concentrate on lifting heavy with low number of reps. Since my body recovers...

After doing strong lifts for 3 months, I was very satified with the results. I did not become huge but I did become strong and I was more confident about myself. During the strong lifts phase I made a small home gym with all the barbells and weights. I always worked out at home after coming back from work. I was very shy to go to gym because I was so skinny. I was worried that everyone will make fun of me if I could not even benchpress the empty bar that weights 45 lbs. Strong lifts helped me come out of my shell. So I decided to go to gym at my workplace along with my colleagues who have been asking me to join them ever since I told them I wanted to become strong back in december 2008. Since I have gym partners now I wanted to do what they were doing so we can spot each other at one place instead of me running all over the gym with the strong lifts routine. That was the main reason I stopped doing strong lifts. It was fun while it lasted though. I would definitely recommend any sk...

I started strongs lifts on Februry 23, 2009 and ended it about 3 months later on May 13, 2009. Here are the logs of my workouts by day and weight lifted. All the weights are in lbs. The cells marked with a blue background indicate that I could not do 5x5 and so I had to repeat those weights. As you can see I had some good progress overall. I never did squats and now I know what those are and how much I can squat. Bench press has always been my weakest workout. I could not go over the 100 lb weight (even today). For push-ups I used a weighing scale below my hands and checked how much weight gets exerted on it when I try to do a push-up. The scales showed 70 lb (I weight 120 lb). So I am not lifting my full body weight when I am doing push-ups. I was able to do 3 sets of 5 reps each. Then for my next push-up day I kept a 5 lb plate on my back and did my push-ups. If I was able to do 3x5 then for the next time I added another 5 lb plate and so on. That is how I got those numbers for m...