I have been asked before how to gain fast. Most people that are lifting weights at one time or another, usually in the winter, try to bulk up and gain a lot of muscle for the summer, of course there is the diet down afterwards but we can deal with that later.
How to gain fast is a question that many people that are dieting to lose weight think is insane but I know from personal experience that many people would like to gain but do not really know how. I have a former lifting partner who had a really hard time gaining muscle no matter what he tried.
Here are some tips on how to gain fast that I think would help almost anyone.
How to Gain Weight Fast – Eat Lots Of Food
This is probably a gimmie. If you want to gain fast then you have to expect that if your are going to try to learn how to gain that you will need to eat a lot of food to do this but there is a style to the idea that you can not forget.
What you want to do is eat at least six and hopefully up to eight times a day.
The meals should be an average size because as you can remember last Christmas it would be hard to eat a turkey dinner and then two hours later eat another dinner.
Most training magazines have a good idea of what you need to eat but mostly you will want to eat 30 grams of so of protein, 60 grams of carbs and another 30 grams of fats.
How to Gain Weight Fast
Most people try to make a couple of meals based on a can of tuna because it is nice and easy to prepare. This brings up a major problem in eating a lot, and that is preparing the food.
You should try to make up large meals that you can break up into freezer packs to eat over the next few days. You can also premake a lot of rice and of course, it is quick to microwave a baked potato.
When you are trying to bulk up you would likely not want to eat very much candy or junk food as it gets in the way of trying to take in very high quality nutrients.
How to Gain Weight Fast – Get Lots Of Rest
Rest is very important for your body to recover from workouts. In learning how to gain weight you are going to find that you will need to get lots of rest during the day and then at least 8-10 hours of sleep at night to try and rest and recover your body from the very tough workouts that you are doing.
One of the best reasons to get a lot of sleep is for hormone levels. In a test that studied 11 males that deprived them of sleep, during the height of their sleep debt, subjects took 40 percent longer than normal to regulate their blood-sugar levels following an injection of glucose.
The subjects ability to secrete insulin decreased by about 30 percent. A similar decrease in acute insulin response is an early marker of diabetes.
How to Gain Weight Fast – Cut Back The Cardio Workouts
Cardio is a great way to raise your metabolism. Doing lots of cardio is great for weight loss but we are looking at how to gain weight fast and cardio workouts are terrible when you are trying to keep a low metabolism.
Another problem with cardio workouts is that they will use up the valuable energy that you need for your workouts.
In saying this I worry that people will just get chubby by not getting any cardio and I think this would be bad in the long term but for a month or two skipping or radically cutting back on your cardio is not going to hurt and as we will see in the next section you will still be getting some intense exercise.
How to Gain Weight Fast – Do Lots Of Compound Exercises
Compound exercises are the types of exercises that use more than a single muscle group.
Compound exercises are really the key in how to gain fast. Do not waste your time in curls and leg extensions instead of pulldowns, squats, and bench.
- Bench Press – Works Pecs, Deltoids, and Triceps
- Pulldowns – Works Lats and Biceps
- Squats – Works your quads, calves, lower back, and abs
- Deadlifts – Works entire back, hamstrings, Quads
There is a synergy to working multiple muscles and then ending your workouts after this. One bad habit some people have is that they will do a lot of exercises and really drain their bodies and then have no energy left to heal, the classic overtraining.
Compound exercises are exercises will help you gain weight fast, stuff like bench presses, lat pulls downs, squats, deadlifts, and military presses. When doing these exercises you want to stress as many of those muscle fibers as possible so make sure that you do your sets and reps very deliberately, slow and very controlled.
How to Gain Weight Fast – Lift Heavy Weights and Variable Reps to build muscle quickly
Decreasing reps is very important in your quest to gain fast. Most people try to do 8-12 reps per exercise for four sets.
Try instead to do 4-8 reps instead and try to get in an additional set. This means that you will still be doing less reps overall but you will hopefully do more weight overall.
Lets say this is your current and reps for bench press are four sets of 10-12. Try doing four sets of 4-8 reps with long breaks in between and slow reps, maybe 50% longer reps.
Count when doing your reps and have it take three seconds down and three seconds up for each of these heavy reps.
Remember as well that your body will get used to these low rep sets so it is important to change it up occasionally and do higher reps and other styles of forced reps
How to Gain Weight Fast – Think Big
Now that you know all of the physical keys in how to gain weight fast you can look at the mental side in how to gain weight.
One of the best things that you can do in your quest to get bigger is to think about your size and your workouts and visualize. If you know that you can take your bench press from 185 to 245 pounds this month then you can do it.
In saying this I don’t just mean that you have to idly think about improving your bench press but instead you make a plan and really push and at all times visualize yourself doing this and in fact you will be able to in a month if you have put everything together.
There are lots of great examples of people making extraordinary changes to their strength and fitness in a very short period of time just by doing everything right and not getting caught up in the standards of what people think is possible.
Do all of the above to gain fast
So there you have it. If you want that quick gain then over the next month do all of these things right and you should have no problem being up 10 pounds. Watch your weight though as you do not want to know how to gain weight fast, too fast to the point that your body starts to put on too much fat.