TRAINING ADVICE 02 Gain weight

TRAINING ADVICE 02:

GAIN WEIGHT

WANT TO GAIN WEIGHT & INCREASE STRENGTH BUT DON'T KNOW WHERE TO START?



ADOPT A HEALTHY EATING PLAN

Gaining weight and increasing strength is quite simple really!


If your goal is to gain weight and increase strength, you need to eat the right foods at the right time. We recommend that you eat 5-6 meals throughout the day. Your body can only handle a certain amount of nutrients in any one meal. You’ll therefore, gain fat rather than muscle if you try to cram all your food into two or three meals.

It is important to follow the nutritional information in our Healthy Eating Plan, but basically…EAT!

To maximise weight gain and increased strength, the combination of a healthy diet and an effective exercise regime is vital. This will give you faster and more sustainable results than diet or exercise alone.

We have therefore created an easy to follow Healthy Eating Plan. This tells you what to eat and the optimum times when to eat throughout the day.


SIMPLE TIP:  When trying to gain weight and increase strength, aim to consume protein every few hours (ie most meats, skimmed milk etc). It is also important to drink sufficient water regularly throughout the day to maximise your fitness regimes results.

HEALTHY EATING PLAN

Personal circumstances will determine at what time you have your breakfast in the morning. The amount of time left between subsequent meals should follow the plan opposite. Make sure you eat little and often. Ideally you should not be eating later than 8pm – say goodbye to the late night take-away’s!



PLEASE NOTE: 1 portion of Protein (50%) and 1 portion of Carbohydrate (50%) means that the meal on your plate should for example, consist of 50% in volume of steak and 50% in volume of rice. Should you wish to have rice and vegetables together they should still constitute 50% in volume of your meal.

MAKE EXERCISE PART OF YOUR DAILY ROUTINE AND GAIN WEIGHT

It is important that regular exercise becomes an integral part of your day to day life. You will then achieve your health and physical fitness goals in the short term and be able to sustain them throughout a lifetime of fitness.

For many people gaining weight can seem almost impossible. The best way to build muscle and therefore gain body mass is to train in the gym with weights. The most effective routine is based on a 2 week cycle of 3×60 minute training sessions a week. Alternating between heavy and light weeks.

 

By rotating in this way you work on different muscle groups in each session depending on where you are in the training cycle. This maximises muscle growth and therefore your fat loss and fitness gains.

If you find it hard to gain weight, don’t perform a lot of calorie sapping aerobics on your days off.


NOTE: It may be tempting to try to lift heavy every time you train. Unfortunately, it is impossible to push every muscle group to its maximum in every session. It is also important to leave at least a day between each training session. The body builds new muscle tissue when you rest, not when you are in the gym!

TRAINING PROGRAMME

Over the years we have developed a highly successful Training Programme for men and women to help you gain weight and increase strength.

In order for you to follow this programme we have assumed that you are familiar with the names of the exercises, how to perform them correctly and the terminology used.

Whether you are new to regular exercise or are looking to improve your training, we recommend that you visit a reputable gym and seek professional instruction on all exercises before following our Training Programme. It is important that you perform the exercise under control using good technique in order to benefit from the exercise and to avoid injury.

When you begin training, start off light and gradually build up the weights. You might ache the next day, this is normal and shows you have trained well.

Everyone is different and capable of lifting different amounts of weight. Therefore over time you will find out what weight is your 100% maximum for each exercise. Using this 100% maximum you can therefore work out what weights to lift throughout the exercise. For example, if your 100% maximum for Bench Press is 100kg, after warming up with the bar, you should do 1 set of 5 reps with 50kg, 1 set of 1 rep with 70kg and finally 3 sets of 3 reps with 100kg.

The weight you are using should be heavy enough so that the last rep should be near impossible. The last few reps are the most important, this is when you build muscle and gain strength! If the last set is easy then you need to increase the weights to ensure you are progressing.



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