We were all young (and beginners) once, and we all started somewhere in the gym. So I know exactly what goes through the minds of young, eager men as they look at famous musclemen with huge physiques.
Let’s get straight to it. First, let me make it clear that these are my own thoughts and priorities—the advice I would give if someone came to me for help. Naturally, different coaches may put the emphasis in slightly different places.
For young men, nutrition is undoubtedly the number one priority. Unlike many other coaches, I certainly don’t advocate calorie tracking for young men who train. I’ll keep it short and direct: eat as much as you can. You’re still growing and need plenty of calories, even without training. If you want to gain mass, just eat. Of course, there are a few conditions and a few things worth highlighting. First, there’s no point stuffing yourself with pure fat or salted pork fat—it really won’t do much for you. There’s no point eating excessively fatty foods that are dripping with oil, either. You could also cut out butter and margarine. That may feel strange at first, but believe me, you’ll get used to it, and before long you won’t miss them at all.
So eating is absolutely essential. If you want strength and muscle mass, you have to eat. Don’t even think about your six-pack to begin with. You should train your abs, but don’t expect them to show just because you’re working them relentlessly. They won’t. Your abs only become visible through a strict diet. But I don’t think you need to worry about that—at least, I wouldn’t. If you start “dieting” in early puberty, you’re wasting a whole lot of potential. What for??? Especially if you don’t compete and have no plans to. Besides, if you’re still young and growing, have only just started training and are already hunting down fat-free cottage cheese in the shops—guys, that’s nonsense. Believe me, nonsense. Yes, you may get a few more abdominal “blocks” to show, but you’ll sacrifice size in your arms, legs, lats, chest and so on. That slight definition isn’t worth it. Build a solid foundation first; there will be plenty of time to sculpt a defined physique from it later.
If you’re an ordinary schoolboy who goes to the gym after school, what should you keep in mind? Here’s what matters if your goal is to build muscle mass and get stronger.
* You absolutely need to eat 5 6 times a day. You heard that right: 5 – 6 times. Ideally, you’d eat every 2.5 3 hours to keep your body supplied with nutrients throughout the day. A very common attitude is: “I’ll fill up at breakfast, then I won’t need to eat again until I’m at school.” That’s nonsense. You can’t eat in advance to cover the meals you’ll miss. If you eat breakfast at 8.00 and your next meal isn’t until 14.00 at school, you can be sure that a good deal of your work in the gym is going to WASTE. You absolutely need one more meal somewhere around the middle of that gap. I understand that many of you are thinking: “What? I have to bring food to school as well???” But it’s up to you—it’s your decision. Do you want to grow or not? Besides, I see nothing strange about bringing a small yogurt, a tub of cottage cheese or some oat-flake and protein cakes you made the night before, and eating during a break. There’s no shame in it, and why you eat or don’t eat is nobody else’s business. It’s simply a useful way to work toward your goal.
* Although I said earlier that you should eat, whatever the food, that’s not quite the whole story. You do need to eat, and eat plenty, but there’s one important condition: EVERY MEAL SHOULD CONTAIN BOTH PROTEIN AND CARBOHYDRATES. PROTEIN SHOULD MAKE UP ABOUT 1/3 OF YOUR MEAL AND CARBOHYDRATES 2/3. You need protein—our muscles are made of it. If you don’t consume protein, don’t expect to grow. As a general recommendation, I suggest consuming 2.5 g of protein per 1 kg of body weight per day. If you weigh 100 kg, you should aim for 250 g of protein a day. And it’s important to spread that amount throughout the day. You can’t simply say: “I may only get to eat 3 times today, so I’ll divide it into three and have 80 at a time.” That 250 g still needs to be divided across 6 meals, giving you roughly 40 g of protein per meal. But for a beginner, there’s probably little point talking about precision down to the gram. Just make sure each meal provides roughly 2/3 carbohydrates and 1/3 protein.
* As for carbohydrates, I wouldn’t give you any figures for how much to eat. The main guideline is to have a combination of simple and complex carbohydrates in the morning and before training. Immediately after training, definitely have simple carbohydrates. At other times, I recommend complex carbohydrates: oatmeal, rice, potatoes, buckwheat, pasta and pelmeni. You might ask: “What if I have a sweet tooth and want to snack on candy, dried fruit or other treats?” My approach is to have as much as you like, provided it doesn’t interfere with your main meals. For example, you’re due to have buckwheat with beetroot salad, cottage cheese and chicken breast at 18.00. But at around 17.00, you get an intense craving for something sweet and eat half a kilo of “Komeedi” candies. Now it’s six, your meal is due, and you feel so sick from all that sweetness that you decide to skip your meal at six. Instead, hold out until 18.00, eat your meal, and then, by all means, have as much candy as you like. You’ve had your protein and complex carbohydrates, and IF YOU STILL FEEL LIKE CANDY, GO AHEAD. The point is that you probably won’t want more than 3 4 candies by then. And if you do, go ahead—but again, only if it doesn’t interfere with your next meal.
* Forget about supplements altogether at first. Protein powders, glutamine and creatine aren’t miracle cures. If the rest of your routine is out of order, they won’t make you grow. You’ll grow like crazy on ordinary food—just pay a little attention to what you eat, when and how much. Once you’ve had a consistent routine for about a year, though, I do recommend protein powder. Even for a beginner with a year’s training experience, it isn’t excessive, because, as we know, meeting your protein needs through food alone is actually very difficult.
A few words on training…
* There has been plenty of discussion about the rep count to use for building muscle, but there is no clear-cut answer. Rep counts of 5–8 and so on get mentioned a lot. I would say that, yes, 5–8 or 5–10 reps is good for building muscle, especially since that range also helps you maintain strength. But even during a mass-gaining phase, that does not mean you should stick exclusively to that rep range. Again, my view is that when you choose a rep range to focus on for a while, 2/3 of your sets should actually fall within it, while 1/3 should use either higher or lower reps. Our muscles adapt faster than we realize. You may not even notice it yourself because you like training, enjoy the process and love the “pump,” but are you actually gaining muscle by using the same rep range day after day???
* Intensity techniques definitely have their place, especially for advanced lifters. These techniques have two benefits: they refresh both body and mind. Shock techniques and other extreme, unusual methods challenge and surprise both your mind and your muscles.
When it comes to building muscle, I particularly recommend focusing on the stretch, peak contraction and negative reps. I am not suggesting that the others are useless; these are simply the ones I would highlight.
For example, when training your chest with flyes, try holding the bottom position, where your chest is stretched, for 3–5 seconds on each rep, and do a set of 12 like this. One set is essentially equivalent to three regular sets. Or take this example of combining peak contraction with a stretch. When training your lats with seated rows, let your back move very slowly into a stretched position during the eccentric phase, then row the weight back and hold the peak contraction for about 3 seconds. You will feel an exceptional rush of blood into your back after the set—and during it, too.
Or take triceps pushdowns. These are not usually done very slowly or with an emphasis on the negative. For a change, try doing a couple of sets with an eccentric phase lasting 3–5 seconds. Very effective.
When trying any of the methods above, I recommend starting with weights about half or a third lighter than those you use for your regular working sets.
Supersets and tri-sets are certainly useful from time to time during a mass-gaining phase, too. From time to time, but not constantly.
* A system matters!!! It really does! My training experience certainly suggests that if you want to see gains in both muscle mass and strength, you need to follow a specific program or system. I do not just mean having a proper weekly training schedule; the program should also specify your weights, at least for the basic lifts. If you want to increase the weights you lift, then the weight you use in each workout clearly matters—and, most importantly, those weights must increase progressively as the program moves forward.
Some lifters may disagree with me here, but a standard pyramid, whichever way you do it, does not deliver, especially for a natural lifter. It can be “refreshing” to train this way occasionally without tracking your weights, but over the long term, those weights tend not to increase. Again, this applies particularly to advanced lifters. Of course, the weights do go up, but in my opinion, progress is extremely difficult to track and tends to “limp along.” For beginners, this probably does not matter as much, because they initially make progress with any system, whatever approach they use. Just like lifters on performance-enhancing drugs :)) OK, that was a joke, but the comparison is not a bad one: it is a well-known fact that with chemical assistance, the standard pyramid does make sense, while structured systems are relatively useless. And returning to the comparison between beginners and drug users, there really are certain parallels: whatever either group does in the gym, their muscles still grow and they still make progress.
I can give you a good example from my own experience to illustrate this. For years—a good 5–6 years—my barbell curl performance stayed at 10 reps with 50 kg. After adopting specific systems, I reached 10 reps with 65 kg in about a year. I attribute that improvement precisely to tracking my progress and weights so closely: it allows me to adjust my progression and know exactly what I am doing from workout to workout, what I did in the previous workout and what weights I need to use next time. Incidentally, I am a big fan of 5 x 5!!!
Another point about systems and specific programs: many people “worry” that they will not exhaust themselves and that the program will not let them push themselves to the limit. Broadly speaking, that is true of many programs, especially in their early stages, but I have “invented” a “remedy” for that, too. Taking my biceps training as an example, in my last workout the first 4 sets followed the system: standing barbell curls with 45 kg for 5 reps, 50 kg for 5 reps, 55 kg for 5 reps and 63.5 kg for 5 reps. Naturally, that did not exhaust me. Next came 2 sets of seated alternating dumbbell curls. Then EZ-bar 21s, 3 sets to failure, followed by 2 sets of barbell preacher curls to failure. That makes 11 sets in total: 4 sets following the system and 7 sets to failure. Two good things combined. I currently train my chest, legs, biceps and lats this way. 1/3 of my working sets follow a specific system, while 2/3 use a standard pyramid or intensity techniques. This approach lets me push myself to the limit while keeping a constant overview of my progress, and that progress continues because the weights for the chosen exercise keep increasing.
And if my body is tired, I always have the option of just doing the sets prescribed by the system and stopping there. Since I train biceps 2 x a week, that is usually how it works out. One day I use this combination; the other day I only follow the system for 4–5 sets.
So you need some benchmarks that allow you to progress steadily and keep track of that progress—even if it is just one basic exercise for each muscle.
* When planning your weekly training split for muscle growth, train a maximum of 5 days a week. In my opinion, the best option would be 4 days one week and 5 the next. Otherwise, you won’t have time to “grow.” This recommendation mainly applies to splits where you train several muscle groups on the same day.
Although this article was originally intended only for beginners, it has turned out that the first half—the nutrition section—is indeed more relevant to beginners. The training tips may also be useful to more experienced lifters!!!
* Finally, if your goal is muscle mass, the most effective approach is still to include the BIG THREE—SQUAT, DEADLIFT AND BENCH PRESS—in your training. I would list them in precisely that order: if we were to estimate how much each of these three exercises contributes to muscle growth, taking the total as, say, 100%, I would give the squat 45%, the deadlift 35% and the bench press 20%. Of course, other exercises also build muscle mass, but if I had to illustrate the relative contribution of these exercises to muscle growth in numbers, those would be the proportions in my opinion. This example would apply if we trained using only these three exercises.
In my opinion, the squat builds the most muscle mass, followed by the deadlift and then the bench press, but all three are good, effective exercises. My advice to beginners would be to learn to “love” all three right from the start, if at all possible. Later, when you have been training for 5 or 6 years and have diligently done only bench presses, it is very hard to get into squats and deadlifts. You are also leaving a large part of your potential untapped if your goal is muscle mass. If you have bigger ambitions, there is no getting around these three!!!
Those were a few thoughts which, again, are not 100% the only right approach, but may prove useful in practice for quite a few of you.
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Author: Janar Rückenberg
Come and train! ArtGym
