What's Reasonable Weight Gain for Muscle Growth?
Near the beginning of the year, Scott Bird announced a diet to put some pounds on. At one point, John Yeo (blog defunct) suggested he would likely put on two kilos of fat for every kilo of lean muscle mass. That's the real conundrum with weight training. You have to gain weight to gain strength. How much weight should you gain?
Nancy and I discuss this in our most recent podcast about our periodization program. We also include links to something called the metabolic diet that's advocated in Serious Strength Training, the book we are deciphering as we pursue our periodization program. The metabolic diet is a low carb diet for athletes with carb loading on the weekend . The authors of Serious Strength Training suggest targeting a weight no more than 15% above your ideal while simultaneously maintaining a body fat percentage of no more than 10% (that only applies to men). What's ideal weight? It's the weight you feel most comfortable competing at in bodybuilding contests. Personally not competing in bodybuilding contests, I think the 10% body fat guideline is the easier to figure out, and you can even relax that to 15%.
As I mention in a note on Scott's blog, we're doing a lot of triangulating between reading and doing as we move forward. You can follow details of our progress on this blog and in our periodization podcast series.
I wish I could say that I had my diet dialed in enough to comment on how you'd gain and such, but I don't have it that dialed in yet. I carry a bit to much fat on me right now, which I'd like to get rid of, but I also like eating. But I have seen that as your weight goes up so does the amount you can lift!
Posted by: Chris D. | June 08, 2006 at 22:21
Chris, fortunately, during hypertrophy, you can eat. This bodybuilding regimen Nancy and I have been following is tough on the eating side.
Posted by: Bud Gibson | June 08, 2006 at 23:11
I suspect I've relaxed that 15% bf down to around 20% over the past few months :)
Posted by: Scott | June 09, 2006 at 04:48
Well, indeed Scott. It sort of makes me realize how far down the pike we have gone. There was a point in time when I would have liked to reach 20% body fat.
Posted by: Bud Gibson | June 10, 2006 at 08:14
alot of it depends on your BF setpoint.
you feed your body X calories above maintence and it decides whether its going to store it as muscle or fat. Sure weight training systems, nutrient partioning etc will help us somewhat but a big part of the fat gains are down to genetics - but thats what diets are for ;)
john yeo
Posted by: john | June 11, 2006 at 00:27
John, I may be shaped by my experience with weight loss, which is that it is generally hard. I'm probably just trying to thread the needle here and figure out how to gain muscle only.
Posted by: Bud Gibson | June 11, 2006 at 07:43
Dieting is hard but if your naturally around, say 14% getting back down there from 16-17% is pretty easy. the really hard part is getting down to 10%. YMMV :)
But I know what your getting at... However, aiming to gain only muscle isnt realistic. Im not sure its physically possible let alone for mere mortals.
i'd consider it pretty good going if a male could gain 1:1 muscle to fat ratio.
by the way you seem to have made some good gains since i was last around, good work.
john
Posted by: john yeo | June 11, 2006 at 13:04
Gaining only muscle would seem hard if not impossible now that I think about it.
Good to see you back in blog circulation. Any hope you'll resuscitate your blog?
Posted by: Bud Gibson | June 11, 2006 at 14:05
looks unlikely mate, maybe once i figure out how to better manage my time around work. only realising now how easy i had it with 10hour weeks at university ;)
stay strong.
john
Posted by: john yeo | June 11, 2006 at 16:34
Hey John,
good to see you're still alive and kicking. I know what you mean about the beauty of 10hour weeks at uni :)
Posted by: Scott | June 12, 2006 at 04:39