Beginners Guide to Building Mass.
When starting out as a skinny guy or girl the image of being a muscular or a fit looking person can be daunting if not deemed impossible as you have had so much experience with being as you are that the idea of physically changing through adding muscle in such a drastic way seems to be a distant dream and not really something that you can imagine happening to you. Well at least that's how I felt when I started lifting weights.
When I started out I was 6ft, eight and a half stone (118lbs) and anemic. I looked at the guys in the gym like they were a different species! I never even knew where to start when talking about getting close to their size, This memory is a vivid one for me and so I thought I would share my personal experience which got me to where I am today after putting on nearly 6 and a half stone since that point.
Changing Your Attitude Towards Food.
Most underweight people have a very particular relationship with food. That is to say they usually don't have a relationship with food in a healthy way. At the beginning of my journey I was an extremely picky eater. The textures of foods freaked me out and I ate a very narrow spectrum of food. That needed to change and through me having fantastic advice from the guys I was fortunate to have around me I had to force myself out of thinking about food the way I did.
If you want to gain muscle tissue 70% of it comes from your dietary choices, and I was made very aware of that so I was tasked to making myself eat things I really didn't want to eat and in quantities that made me feel sick just thinking about them. Through eating between 5 and 7 small meals a day I found that most of my problems with food were based purely in the mind and once I started seeing food as fuel for my training that's when things truly changed.
Eating small amounts regularly will stretch your stomach out eventually and before you know it your relationship with food and nutrition will change, you just need to have the mental fortitude to get past your pre-conceived notions of food. Keeping yourself in a constant caloric surplus is the only way that your body is going to gain weight and that needs to be remembered when you feel full to bursting and the next meal is only another 15 minutes away. Rule No 1 THINK OF FOOD AS FUEL TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS.
What To Eat.
What to eat is a very open ended question. Everyone will differ to what they can or are willing to eat. Because of this I always like to keep this advice as succinct as possible. Eating plenty of good proteins, White Meat, Red Meat and Fish will make sure that your muscles are always repairing and fueled.
Carbohydrates will play a massive part in you gaining muscle tissue so making sure that your eating quality carbs to avoid excess body fat, things like oats, sweet Potato, white and brown rice and the list goes on! Not forgetting veg, now I never ate vegetables before I began training and the benefit I felt when I started eating spinach and broccoli with each meal was unbelievable. I never got sick, I felt like I had more sustainable energy levels and just overall felt so much healthier!
Making sure that your diet has a good variety of everything and plenty of it, is as good a place as any to start. Too many people forget about the role of healthy fats in a bulking diet. Foods like cashews, walnuts or avocado provide the body with a lot of linoleic acid which helps to regulate everything from fat loss to good cholesterol balance. So to recap ,Plenty of quality proteins, loads of High quality carbs, plenty of veg, and a varied source of fats.
Training Smart, Not Hard.
When you start out training the temptation is to throw as much weight around as possible and cover many different exercises. I would contest this idea completely. When I began training I was fortunate enough to have very knowledgeable people that filled my gym, And they told me something that I have past on to the people that would later ask me for advice.
Train the fundamentals to begin with... What do I mean by this? I'll tell you. Start off by perfecting the three basic movements. BENCH PRESS, DEAD-LIFTS AND SQUATS. I done these three exercises solely for about 2 months before moving onto anything else. It gave me a foundation level of strength that made everything else ten times easier. I made sure to study the form perfectly and listen to those around me who I trusted to tell me where I was going wrong. RULE No 2 TRAIN SMART NOT HARD.
Rest Well and Often.
Rest is one of the most important factors in gaining muscle tissue. When you start off underweight your body is going to struggle with the shock experienced through intense training. It's important to get the optimal level of rest in order to repair and grow healthily. I made sure to be in bed and sleeping for eleven o'clock every night. Waking up at the same times each morning. This gives your body so many benefits. From metabolic rate regulation to also increased levels of growth hormone. Your body will be sore for weeks on end. A big priority you need to focus on is that you make sure that you are doing everything you can to repair that broken down tissue. So rule No 3 REST WELL AND OFTEN.
Supplement Intelligently
Now the final rule of my bulking strategy and I left this one until the very end for a reason. That is because first you have to master the first three in order for this rule to even be considered. Supplementation when starting out is a great way to make the body recover quicker. It also provides you a way of increasing your calorific intake without having to slog through another meal. The only supplements I would recommend to a beginner are simply a Mass Gainer (a high calorie protein shake used to keep the body in a caloric surplus) and creatine monohydrate, simple.
The temptation of a lot of beginners is to buy hundreds of pounds worth of supplements. The common misconception is that it will garner them quicker results. This is wrong because its not the correct place to start when thinking about longevity in training. Mass gainers can be taken straight after a gym session. They are great at giving the body a complex blend of proteins and carbohydrates to help the body repair at a much faster rate.
Creatine monohydrate is simply an amino acids which provides the body with more phosphates. This stops your muscles fatiguing and giving out earlier than you would want. Keep supplements simple but don't neglect them completely. Focus mainly on the diet and training aspects of this lifestyle and you will see results quicker than you realise. Rule No 4 KEEP SUPPLEMENTS SIMPLE
Conclusion
Thank-you for taking the time to read through today's blog. At Premium Raws we make sure not only to supply our clients with the best quality raw ingredients, and the best advice. We hope that through reading this that you are less overwhelmed by the idea of having to put mass on. I have been where you are now. I know the mental battle that you're having with yourself. "Is this going to work, Am I ever going to have a physique?" ect. I would ask that you place your trust in this advice. Weigh yourself after a month of following it. If you haven't gained weight I'll eat my hat!.
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