Helping my cousin pack on size.

[Spyder122]

Hey bros,

I need some advice for my cousin. Right now he's 5'7 ,135lbs. He's getting married in 6 months and wants to look buff for the wedding. I just started working out with him and I'm having him lift heavy right off the hop. Low reps, 5-6 reps, 3 sets.

Aside from having him train hard and eat more, which supplements should I recommend for him. I was thinking of just Protein and creatine, and a good Multi vitamin.

So, any advice? He wants to at least be 145 for the wedding. Yes, still pretty small for 5'7.

thanks in advance.

[Aaron_37]

http://stronglifts.com/gomad-milk-squats-gallon-gain-weight/

That for one-two months. Then some regular work the way we all do. Looking buff is going to be difficult, but not being underweight is fixable.

[#8]

lots of egg whites and lean beef. nothing makes me grow faster than these two foods.

Nothing. I SAID NOTHING!!!!!

[tiramisu]

Hey bros,

I need some advice for my cousin. Right now he's 5'7 ,135lbs. He's getting married in 6 months and wants to look buff for the wedding. I just started working out with him and I'm having him lift heavy right off the hop. Low reps, 5-6 reps, 3 sets.

Aside from having him train hard and eat more, which supplements should I recommend for him. I was thinking of just Protein and creatine, and a good Multi vitamin.

So, any advice? He wants to at least be 145 for the wedding. Yes, still pretty small for 5'7.

thanks in advance.


You didn't say what his lifting experince was but I'm guessing novice.
The first 6 months of a lifting program can be very dramatic for a skinny novice.

http://startingstrength.wikia.com/wiki/Starting_Strength_Wiki
http://startingstrength.com/resources/forum/

gomad should be pretty easy. What gomad (gallon of milk a day) boils down to is a 2000 calorie over regular meals and snacks diet.

There nothing wrong with 5x5 and stronglift but for a pure novice the starting strength program and recommendations by Rippetoe are brain dead easy to follow and pretty much guaranteed to provide results IF AND ONLY IF he eats enough.

When I did the program I tracked all of my calories for my meals using http://www.fitday.com and was eating for a minimum of a 1 pound a week weight gain.

There is a fairly good chance that if he is a rank novice that he would be pretty close to the same body fat percentage at the end as he was in the beginning only heavier. I would assess at the 16 week mark ~20 pounds and see whether he was feeling pudgy or not and if he was that would give 8 weeks for a quick keto diet using a modified palumbo template to clean him up a bit OR just keep eating and lifting depending on how his body reacts.

[Praetorian]

In order to gain some good size hell need do the following.

1. Eat every 2.5 to 3 hours every day...6-7 meals per day and have some dense calorie foods...tuna, egg whites wont do squat...he needs Tbone steaks, pasta with meat sauce, whole eggs with oatmeal,whole milk, BBQ chicken with fried rice, regular cottage cheese, beef burgers and potatoes, peanut butter, protein powder n shakes with whole milk and banana and peanut butter.

2. He needs to learn how to lift correctly on the basic power lifts and stick to them 4 days per week....bench press, squat, deadlifts, shoulder press, barbell rows, chin ups

3. Avoid cardio

4. Get 8 hours of sleep every night

P

[bigtavi8]

In order to gain some good size hell need do the following.

1. Eat every 2.5 to 3 hours every day...6-7 meals per day and have some dense calorie foods...tuna, egg whites wont do squat...he needs Tbone steaks, pasta with meat sauce, whole eggs with oatmeal,whole milk, BBQ chicken with fried rice, regular cottage cheese, beef burgers and potatoes, peanut butter, protein powder n shakes with whole milk and banana and peanut butter.

2. He needs to learn how to lift correctly on the basic power lifts and stick to them 4 days per week....bench press, squat, deadlifts, shoulder press, barbell rows, chin ups

3. Avoid cardio

4. Get 8 hours of sleep every night

P

Someone should Sticky this advice to the board. Best way to help a hardgainer who is having a hard time putting on any weight. Good one P.

[Forever]

In order to gain some good size hell need do the following.

1. Eat every 2.5 to 3 hours every day...6-7 meals per day and have some dense calorie foods...tuna, egg whites wont do squat...he needs Tbone steaks, pasta with meat sauce, whole eggs with oatmeal,whole milk, BBQ chicken with fried rice, regular cottage cheese, beef burgers and potatoes, peanut butter, protein powder n shakes with whole milk and banana and peanut butter.

2. He needs to learn how to lift correctly on the basic power lifts and stick to them 4 days per week....bench press, squat, deadlifts, shoulder press, barbell rows, chin ups

3. Avoid cardio

4. Get 8 hours of sleep every night

P

That says it all.
My brother is a hard gainer and tried to get big eating tuna and egg whites, avoiding high fat foods and eating clean, yada yada. He's still 6'3" 150lbs.

[Spyder122]

In order to gain some good size hell need do the following.

1. Eat every 2.5 to 3 hours every day...6-7 meals per day and have some dense calorie foods...tuna, egg whites wont do squat...he needs Tbone steaks, pasta with meat sauce, whole eggs with oatmeal,whole milk, BBQ chicken with fried rice, regular cottage cheese, beef burgers and potatoes, peanut butter, protein powder n shakes with whole milk and banana and peanut butter.

2. He needs to learn how to lift correctly on the basic power lifts and stick to them 4 days per week....bench press, squat, deadlifts, shoulder press, barbell rows, chin ups

3. Avoid cardio

4. Get 8 hours of sleep every night

P

Thanks, I'll pass this info on to him. As far as supplements go. Should he try a weight gainer, or just stick to an isolate protein?

[Forever]

Thanks, I'll pass this info on to him. As far as supplements go. Should he try a weight gainer, or just stick to an isolate protein?

IMO gainers are garbage and I say stick to whole foods and a simple whey protein to supplement protein intake. I have seen even hard gainers get "fat" from all the sugar (**** you its not complex carbs) in weight gainers.

[tiramisu]

Thanks, I'll pass this info on to him. As far as supplements go. Should he try a weight gainer, or just stick to an isolate protein?

EAT!!!! eat every 2.5 hours! Drink Milk, Eat steak, chicken and fish (all of them, every day, THEN EAT SOME MORE

Isolate is great when you need a low calorie protein source but what he needs is a dozen eggs every morning to start his day.

[#8]

In order to gain some good size hell need do the following.

1. Eat every 2.5 to 3 hours every day...6-7 meals per day and have some dense calorie foods...tuna, egg whites wont do squat...he needs Tbone steaks, pasta with meat sauce, whole eggs with oatmeal,whole milk, BBQ chicken with fried rice, regular cottage cheese, beef burgers and potatoes, peanut butter, protein powder n shakes with whole milk and banana and peanut butter.

2. He needs to learn how to lift correctly on the basic power lifts and stick to them 4 days per week....bench press, squat, deadlifts, shoulder press, barbell rows, chin ups

3. Avoid cardio

4. Get 8 hours of sleep every night

P

Granted this is the correct response, I believe this will leave him a bloated mess. If you wanna gain only 10lbs in a relatively short period of time, just increase your protein intake substantially with a minimum increase in carbs and fats.

Praes formula will make you huge, but for this dude I think its excessive.

[tiramisu]

Piffle, Praes formula will put on a pound a week and give the guy the opportunity to tighten things up in the last 8 weeks if he doesn't like what he sees.

We are talking about a pure novice. It's easy to get significant results in a short run with big basics and a big diet.

A 135 pounder is not going to magically be a "bloated mess" by gaining 10 pounds. He could put on 10 pounds of pure fat and he wouldn't be a "bloated mess". The nice thing about Praetorian's advice is that is generally based on experience and it's almost always right. (It's kind of annoying sometimes.)

[#8]

^^ eating the above way will result in WAY more than a 10lb gain. When I first started weight training I barely increased my calories at all (because I was dumb and knew nothing about nutrition) and I gained about 15 lbs in the span of a couple months.

I dont believe HUGE eating is necessary for a 10lb weight gain for someone who doesnt train or eat large in the first place.

[Praetorian]

Granted this is the correct response, I believe this will leave him a bloated mess. If you wanna gain only 10lbs in a relatively short period of time, just increase your protein intake substantially with a minimum increase in carbs and fats.

Praes formula will make you huge, but for this dude I think its excessive.

At 5'7 and 135lbs he would have an extremely fast metabolism..eating clean would be a waste of time and he would gain very little...you need to put things into context...we are talking a young guy with a very fast metabolism...to gain weight he needs to eat serious calories. Increasing protein intake will do little if anything at all...calories are key at this stage.
P

[tiramisu]

He's only got a couple of months 16 weeks and putting on 10 pounds of muscle is probably close to achievable for a rank novice (not fat muscle). Total weight gain would be about a pound a week.

To do that he needs to eat a couple of thousand calories a day over maintenance and he needs to lift the big basics effectively. Prae listed them, I picked starting strength, someone else said stronglifts. No real difference.

Your statement that 15 pounds of gain was added in a couple of months requires some basic math:

To add 15 pounds of fat in the perfect world requires about 52,500 calories over maintenance.

A couple = 2 or 26,250 per month or 875 calories every day over maintenance. That's 2 litres of milk over a regular maintenance diet.

Now muscle isn't fat. It requires a whole bunch of energy to synthesize muscle from the amino acids in your diet. There are about 2500 calorie in a pound of muscle BUT it will take a shit load more energy to turn those calories into meat. I wouldn't be surprised if the number was a lot closer to 10,000 calories than it was to the 3,500 in a pound of fat. I'll just pull a number out of my ass.... 7,500

If it takes 7,500 calories to put on a pound of muscle and 3,500 calories to put on a pound of fat and I put on 15 pounds (7.5 pounds fat / 7.5 pounds muscle) in 2 months then my caloric surplus is....

56,250 + 26,250 = 82,500 / 60 days = 1375 or about 3 quarts of milk a day over maintenance. Ignoring the actual increased caloric requirement of the additional exercise and metabolic changes.

Muscle doesn't magically appear. A novice who wants to grow at this rate needs a full couple of thousand well balanced calories over maintenance per day. 500 just isn't going to do this no matter what magic you may claim.

[Praetorian]

Piffle, Praes formula will put on a pound a week and give the guy the opportunity to tighten things up in the last 8 weeks if he doesn't like what he sees.

We are talking about a pure novice. It's easy to get significant results in a short run with big basics and a big diet.

A 135 pounder is not going to magically be a "bloated mess" by gaining 10 pounds. He could put on 10 pounds of pure fat and he wouldn't be a "bloated mess". The nice thing about Praetorian's advice is that is generally based on experience and it's almost always right. (It's kind of annoying sometimes.)

You mean i cant just make shit up and hope people accept it as fact! ;o) The thing is when i post something...it is NOT what I think is a good idea....its is what works because I have done it before....many many times.
P

[Forever]

^^ eating the above way will result in WAY more than a 10lb gain. When I first started weight training I barely increased my calories at all (because I was dumb and knew nothing about nutrition) and I gained about 15 lbs in the span of a couple months.

I dont believe HUGE eating is necessary for a 10lb weight gain for someone who doesnt train or eat large in the first place.

Maybe for you, definitely for me, but the extreme hard gainers work differently, they actually need this.

[#8]

Im just speaking from experience (although pretty limited I suppose). I was an extremely hard gainer considering my daily calorie requirements at the time I started lifting.

If one needs about 1000 cals a day extra to grow, this can be attained by adding one relatively large meal to his diet. Lets call it a post workout meal consisting mainly of lean ground beef and macaroni and cheese. Add that to his daily regimen and he should grow no?

[tiramisu]

I'm just speaking from experience (although pretty limited I suppose). I was an extremely hard gainer considering my daily calorie requirements at the time I started lifting.

If one needs about 1000 cals a day extra to grow, this can be attained by adding one relatively large meal to his diet. Lets call it a post workout meal consisting mainly of lean ground beef and macaroni and cheese. Add that to his daily regimen and he should grow no?


If it was true then it would be true. The trainers I have read that successfully put meat on young underweight men say about 2k per day over maintenance. We can play with numbers but those are the numbers that actually produce the consistent results that young underweight men actually want.

Now after almost 3 years of training 2k over maintenance for me makes me fat. The obscene first year gains are over (I miss them so). I still do everything in my power to increase my calories but I now have to add dragging a tire around the parking lot to balance things out. Pounding the calories is fundamental to my continuing to put muscle on my frame but I have to turn up the thermostat in order to keep the fat accumulation down.

Off the top of my head trainer's I'm basing my opinion on include Rippetoe, Wendler, Tate, Dante Trudel, Strossen. The practical experience is pretty clear. (Praetorian isn't famous yet so I won't include him in the list but I also trust his experience in this matter)

Now if you were to argue that this isn't the best way to get a six pack and 8% bodyfat I'd agree whole heartedly but the request was to get a 135 pound underweight man to 145 pounds before he gets marrried with the underlying assumption that we probably want as much of that to be muscle as possible by the end of 16 weeks.

[Forever]

Im just speaking from experience (although pretty limited I suppose). I was an extremely hard gainer considering my daily calorie requirements at the time I started lifting.

If one needs about 1000 cals a day extra to grow, this can be attained by adding one relatively large meal to his diet. Lets call it a post workout meal consisting mainly of lean ground beef and macaroni and cheese. Add that to his daily regimen and he should grow no?

The thing I find with hard gainers is they usually grossly underestimate how much they eat. If you tell them to eat all that stuff above, they might crack an extra 1000-1500 calories if your lucky. Your body will try and regulate what you eat so if you just tell them to eat a 1000 calorie meal in addition to their normal daily eating, they will just end up subconsciously eating less the next day.
Hardgainers are masters of minimalist homeostasis.

Just for perspective sake, I am a former fatty, but my brother is a pretty extreme hard gainer, 150lbs at 6'3" and although he swears he eats like 4-5k calories in a day I have watched him and he eats more like 2-3k at most. And that's making an effort to eat more lol.