Tell your friends that you’re going to gain at least 12 pounds of muscle over the next 10 weeks. Wait until their laughter subsides, then smirk, grab your gym bag and make good on that day’s appointment with the iron.
No witty comebacks, no “you’ll see.” Just straight to the gym. Why the smug approach? After all, they just soiled themselves at the thought that you could actually be serious. Because you’ll have the last laugh, that’s why. Over the next 10 weeks you’ll train harder and eat smarter (and maybe more) than you ever have before.
The past..
In the past you’ve been diligent about consuming your protein shakes and creatine, and you’ve pounded out set after set at the gym, perhaps even with decent results. But for you to make such an outrageous claim the kind usually made by pros preparing for a contest or by, well, people whose meds are brought to them in their padded rooms you’ve just given people license to deride you.
We’re going to change that!
What we’re offering here is a can’t-miss blueprint for gaining at least 12 pounds of new muscle, maybe more. During these weeks, train following your usual schedule, and in addition, each week add a new nutritional technique designed to stimulate a specific anabolic response. This progressive program forces your body to adapt and grow over the course of 10 weeks. Follow these recommendations to the letter and you can return your friends’ laughs in spades with the deep, visceral kind of chortle that brings tears to your eyes.
Week 1 Anabolic Cocktail: Whey and Leucine
Goal: 1 pound
Keeping yourself in an anabolic (muscle-building) state is your first order of business because it’s when growth occurs. Staying in this zone is a simple matter of protein retention holding onto more protein than your body burns, breaks down or excretes. Since resistance training breaks down protein through catabolism, it’s important to bridge the gaps. Consume 20-40 grams of easy-to-digest whey protein immediately before and after training to stop protein loss and allow the body to maintain and build its protein reserves. Translation: Saturating your muscles with protein during this crucial window not only helps you retain muscle but provides you with a better foundation for repair and growth as well.
Take 5-8 grams of leucine postworkout, too. This amino acid brings protein loss to a halt by fueling muscles, increasing insulin production and turning on key muscle-building processes. Insulin, an anabolic hormone, rises after training, reducing protein breakdown and thus promoting anabolism.
Week 2 Nutrient Blitzkrieg
Goal: 1-2 pounds
Time to fuel up for the gains ahead. To keep your body anabolic, you have to get serious with your caloric intake. How serious? How about 8-9 meals a day, eating every two hours. Why? This virtually guarantees you’ll retain protein, gain muscle and keep bodyfat stores low because of the resulting increase in your metabolism. The nonstop delivery of nutrients saturates muscles with amino acids (the building blocks of protein) and carbohydrates for growth and repair.
Alternate a solid meal a smaller one containing protein and carbs with a protein shake throughout the day, and wake up once in the night for a quick shake.
This copious eating doesn’t give you free rein to live in fast-food drive-thrus, though. Limit your dietary prowess to high-protein sources, quality carbohydrates and healthy fats. For example, breakfast could be two slices of whole-grain toast with jam along with (here’s your protein kicker) 7-8 egg whites scrambled with 3-4 yolks. Your second meal might be a shake containing 20 grams of whey protein. The third meal could be a chicken breast and medium baked potato. Your fourth meal is a shake, and so on.
Week 3 Force the Carbs
Goal: 1-2 pounds
Carbohydrates are truly a conundrum. They’re necessary for muscle growth but can lead to increased fat retention if overconsumed. The key is to time your intake perfectly so it supports muscle-building without triggering an increase in bodyfat. Turns out, the quantity of carbs you can and should eat after training is radically higher than at any other time of day. Increasing your carb consumption after a hard workout reverses protein loss, helps keep testosterone levels from falling and blunts the catabolic (muscle-destroying) hormone cortisol.
To make gains this week, eat at least 0.5-0.8 gram of carbohydrate per pound of bodyweight after training. For a 180-pound lifter, that amounts to 90-144 grams of carbs, or roughly 2-3 cups of cooked rice or pasta or 2-3 small bagels. Can’t get it all down? Opt for a carb drink like Nutrex’s Vitargo.
Week 4 Pound the Creatine
Goal: 2 pounds
Now we bring in the big guns by adding creatine, the nutrient common to red meat that acts as a spark plug within muscles, providing an immediate burst of energy. This sudden surge dramatically increases strength and power, translating directly into mass gains. Creatine also traps water in muscles, which facilitates anabolism the more water trapped inside your muscles, the better they grow. Introducing creatine at this stage is more beneficial because it works best when you’ve already been training hard for 3-4 weeks. It “hyperinflates” your training-depleted creatine stores, producing an immediate increase in muscular creatine.
Take 3-5 grams of supplemental creatine before and after workouts for the remainder of the program to support your anabolic status.
Week 5 Load Glutamine and Taurine
Goal: 1-2 pounds
Training like a raging beast can definitely take a toll on your body. Its natural reaction to high-intensity exercise is to call upon its most available energy sources. Unfortunately, one of those sources is muscle protein. Glutamine, however, helps prevent protein loss and muscle breakdown by interfering with the uptake of cortisol, a catabolic hormone that chews up muscle mass, leaving you fatigued and scrawny. Glutamine also spares the burning of leucine (see Week 1) and, when taken along with carbohydrates, assists in pushing water into muscles after training, thereby enhancing protein retention. Take 5 grams in the morning, plus another 5 grams before and after your workouts.
Taurine is another amino acid that enhances water retention within muscles, giving you an anabolic edge and resulting in greater amounts of muscle mass. Take 1-2 grams of taurine before and after training.
Week 6 Go Big on Carbs
Goal: 1 pound
What happens when you really jack up your carb intake, doubling up on your carbohydrate portions at every meal? You get huge in a good way. When you eat more carbs than you need, your body stores the excess in your muscles as glycogen. The catch is, you need to continue lifting hard this week because inactivity could lead to that stored glycogen converting to fat. Aim for 2.5-3 grams of carbs per pound of bodyweight a day, shooting for the lower end if bodyfat is a major concern. Choose slower-digesting carbs such as sweet potatoes, oatmeal and wholegrain breads at most meals (except those around workouts).
The increased calories from carbs also aid your mass-gain efforts by temporarily increasing your anabolic mechanisms and by upping the water content in muscle tissue, which supports protein retention. The additional glycogen reserves boost strength as well by creating greater leverage within muscles, allowing you to push more weight.
One caveat:
Do not run a super-high-carb diet for more than one week. After your glycogen stores are topped off, the body begins to efficiently store excess carbs as bodyfat. Return to your standard carb intake at the start of Week 7.
Week 7 Boost Testosterone
Goal: 1 pound
Weight training boosts testosterone levels and makes muscles’ testosterone receptors greater in density, which allows more testosterone to do its job inside muscles. Take 500-1,000 mg of the herb tribulus terrestris twice daily, once about an hour before workouts. This increases luteinizing hormone (LH), which boosts T-levels in the body. In addition, take 1,000 mg of Vitamin C post-training to reduce cortisol, which suppresses testosterone uptake by muscles. The net effect is enhanced testosterone levels, which equate to greater strength, recovery and muscle mass.
Week 8 Double the Training with Growth Hormone Support
Goal: 2 pounds
There are a few certainties in life: The New York Yankees will outspend all other MLB teams in the off-season; Anna Nicole Smith will say something stupid if given a chance; and your weight-training program will stop yielding positive results if you never alter it. Getting your body out of a rut requires a radical change in training. Knock out twice as many sets in each workout, but for only one week to avoid overtraining. This shock to your system requires sufficient immune-system support to prevent you from becoming run down and slipping out of an anabolic state. Two required ingredients include the amino acids arginine and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). In addition to boosting nitric oxide-mediated blood flow, arginine increases growth hormone (GH) production, preventing muscle loss even with radical training protocols. Take 5-6 grams of arginine 30-45 minutes before training and 5-6 grams 30 minutes before bedtime.
GABA is an amino acid derivative that also increases GH release and induces an extreme state of relaxation, which can override muscle inflammation. But don’t take GABA right before your drive to the gym; this stuff is strong and can cause drowsiness. Take 3-5 grams 30 minutes before bedtime with your arginine.
Week 9 Add Special Fats
Goal: <1 pound
By this time you should be close to, if not at or beyond, your 12-pound goal. Your increased muscle mass has your metabolism running at a solid clip, so you may have also seen a decent drop in bodyfat. In turn, you’re probably wondering why adding fats is a good idea at this point. Allow us to explain. Medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs) are fats derived from coconuts that are slightly less likely than other fats to be stored as bodyfat. MCTs contribute to the anabolic process by preventing the burning of leucine and glutamine, and they also help form ketones (byproducts of fat breakdown that offer protein protection) in the body. In short, MCTs block protein loss, which is vital to create that sought-after anabolic state. Take 1 table-spoon of MCTs before training as well as with food up to four times a day.
Also, down 2-6 grams of supplemental fish oil preworkout, which provides omega-3 fatty acids to squelch excess muscle inflammation and keep the muscle-building machine in motion. If inflammation is left unchecked, you can say goodbye to muscle gains.
Week 10 Recover
Goal: 2-3 pounds
Haven’t hit the 12-pound mark yet? You will this week. If anything is more important than busting your ass in the gym, it’s resting your ass at home. Don’t reach for the remote just yet, though. We’re tapering you off with a week of active rest. Because your body has endured nine weeks of hard training, you should also stick to your supplement regimen, ingesting the same doses at the same times of day. The body can withstand huge amounts of stress for about 7-10 weeks. After that, it needs rest to recover and maintain its anabolic status. Training at lower levels of intensity performing the same total number of sets but using about 75% of the loads you handled previously and resting longer between sets for a week while following the same dietary plan often results in a sudden jump in bodyweight.
And, happy day, the increase in weight is nearly all muscle; the body maxes out in the muscle-repair department, and internal anabolic hormones that sometimes crash with constant training come back in a big way, which pushes up your bodyweight.
Conclusion
Squeezing an extra 12 pounds of lean body mass out of your routine is no small task. Following a consistent program will, over time, provide you with a well-muscled physique certainly more so than those who never lift. But accelerating those results is a challenge that can be met only by coupling that yeoman’s work ethic in the gym with a structured, nutritionally sound diet.
Who’s laughing now?
Author: Chris Aceto
