Gainng weight

[Sergio07]

Hi all, this is my first time posting in this forum, I came from the Starting Strenght Forums,but I got recommendations to join here.
Yesterday I posted a thread in the other forum saying that I wanted to see which program it's the best after the SSLP, however the people said that I needed to gain a lot of weight before checking on intermeadiate programming, the recommend me to gain 3-5 pounds per week, however I really don't think that's a sustainable approach for me, I wanted to know what's a decent rate of weekly/monthly weight gain to drive progress and not to stall in my main lifts?

My stats:
Height: 5'8"
Weight: 137 pounds
Age: 16

Squat: 90kgx5
Deadlift: 97.5kgx5
Bench: 62.5kgx1
Press: 42.5kgx1

[JohnHelton]

3-5 lbs. per week is stupid. A pound per week is rapid weight gain. At your age and weight, you should probably shoot for .5-.75 per week. Gaining strength and size is a marathon, not a sprint. There is no reason to gain as rapidly as humanly possible. There are no awards for that.

Once you stop making gains on a novice program, then you should move on to an intermediate program. It has nothing to do with your weight.

Also, read Greg Nuckols ebook, The Art of Lifting.

[Sergio07]

3-5 lbs. per week is stupid. A pound per week is rapid weight gain. At your age and weight, you should probably shoot for .5-.75 per week. Gaining strength and size is a marathon, not a sprint. There is no reason to gain as rapidly as humanly possible. There are no awards for that.

Once you stop making gains on a novice program, then you should move on to an intermediate program. It has nothing to do with your weight.

Also, read Greg Nuckols ebook, The Art of Lifting.

Thank you!, my god all those discussions telling me that I my problem was being underweight, it was so frustrating. Currently I'm gaining around .5 lb per week, however I think that I'll shoot for .75 now, and see how my workouts respond.
Thanks a lot, I'll post another thread regarding intermediate programs.

[JohnHelton]

No problem. Just be patient. Enjoy the journey and the PRs.

[Wayne]

Hi all, this is my first time posting in this forum, I came from the Starting Strenght Forums,but I got recommendations to join here.
Yesterday I posted a thread in the other forum saying that I wanted to see which program it's the best after the SSLP, however the people said that I needed to gain a lot of weight before checking on intermeadiate programming, the recommend me to gain 3-5 pounds per week, however I really don't think that's a sustainable approach for me, I wanted to know what's a decent rate of weekly/monthly weight gain to drive progress and not to stall in my main lifts?

My stats:
Height: 5'8"
Weight: 137 pounds
Age: 16

Squat: 90kgx5
Deadlift: 97.5kgx5
Bench: 62.5kgx1
Press: 42.5kgx1

Do you know your current waist measurement around the belly button roughly? I would suggest tracking this and weight daily. Waist gain I use as a proxy for body fat increasing so if your waist is moving up I would initially think about reducing rate of weight gain.

[Wilhelm]

@Sergio07, welcome to the site. Really good to have you here.

You are in the prime years for adding muscle.
Those smaller weekly gains are high quality gains.

What @JohnHelton and @Wayne have said is good advice.
I'm not great at the science, but afaik, staying relatively lean, while still gaining, allows you to maximize your rate of muscle gain.

[Sergio07]

Hi all, this is my first time posting in this forum, I came from the Starting Strenght Forums,but I got recommendations to join here.
Yesterday I posted a thread in the other forum saying that I wanted to see which program it's the best after the SSLP, however the people said that I needed to gain a lot of weight before checking on intermeadiate programming, the recommend me to gain 3-5 pounds per week, however I really don't think that's a sustainable approach for me, I wanted to know what's a decent rate of weekly/monthly weight gain to drive progress and not to stall in my main lifts?

My stats:
Height: 5'8"
Weight: 137 pounds
Age: 16

Squat: 90kgx5
Deadlift: 97.5kgx5
Bench: 62.5kgx1
Press: 42.5kgx1

Do you know your current waist measurement around the belly button roughly? I would suggest tracking this and weight daily. Waist gain I use as a proxy for body fat increasing so if your waist is moving up I would initially think about reducing rate of weight gain.

I track my waist measurement weekly, every Sunday, never done it daily, looking at the data from the last months, my waist has stayed within 74 cm, but I have a question, how much it's tolerable to allow the waist grow monthly?
Thanks btw

[Sergio07]

@Sergio07, welcome to the site. Really good to have you here.

You are in the prime years for adding muscle.
Those smaller weekly gains are high quality gains.

What @JohnHelton and @Wayne have said is good advice.
I'm not great at the science, but afaik, staying relatively lean, while still gaining, allows you to maximize your rate of muscle gain.

Thanks, I was getting bullied in the SS forum because I wasn't doing the program.
Thanks for the welcoming, it's nice, I got a lot of recommendations to come here for advices.

[Wayne]

Hi all, this is my first time posting in this forum, I came from the Starting Strenght Forums,but I got recommendations to join here.
Yesterday I posted a thread in the other forum saying that I wanted to see which program it's the best after the SSLP, however the people said that I needed to gain a lot of weight before checking on intermeadiate programming, the recommend me to gain 3-5 pounds per week, however I really don't think that's a sustainable approach for me, I wanted to know what's a decent rate of weekly/monthly weight gain to drive progress and not to stall in my main lifts?

My stats:
Height: 5'8"
Weight: 137 pounds
Age: 16

Squat: 90kgx5
Deadlift: 97.5kgx5
Bench: 62.5kgx1
Press: 42.5kgx1

Do you know your current waist measurement around the belly button roughly? I would suggest tracking this and weight daily. Waist gain I use as a proxy for body fat increasing so if your waist is moving up I would initially think about reducing rate of weight gain.

I track my waist measurement weekly, every Sunday, never done it daily, looking at the data from the last months, my waist has stayed within 74 cm, but I have a question, how much it's tolerable to allow the waist grow monthly?
Thanks btw

I’m 5’7” and used to be around 120-130lbs before I started lifting (and was about 8-9 yrs older than you!) so we probably have similar starting points with age on your side. If I could pass on anything it would be to NOT go mad and eat junk food / poor diet like crazy to “bulk”. I’ve been cycling through that for a few years and it’s not efficient. I think a slow and measured bulk would be better than going too aggressive (eg some do GOMAD unnecessarily) followed by a huge cut.

I suggest daily as for me I like to use week averages. My waist and weight often spike/trough. For example if I used a Sunday when I was 16 it would be after a day of pizza / booze and getting up late so not ideal conditions. You don’t have to do daily as long as you’re consistent, but more data is usually more helpful. You’re probably a more mature 16 yr old than I was anyway so won’t have those issues

Cards on the table - I do think you are underweight and have lots of room to get stronger. You also agree (as you’re bulking). If you went up a couple of pounds a month you could maybe bulk for a year to year and a half before starting to think about it much.

I don’t have any guidance on how quickly to let your waist change. I used BBM coaching for nutrition recently and they let my waist fly up surprisingly. It’s not something I would would suggest to someone else so I’m a bit confused myself on “the right thing to do”. I’d just monitor it and if it starts moving quickly it’s probably fat. Defining quickly is hard though

How are your lifts progressing? My other tip is not to burn yourself into the ground on LP. I’ve got more respect for LP and SS than most on here I’d say, but taking it too far or having stupid ideas of ending points has caused me issues previously.

[JohnHelton]

Taking you waist measurement is helpful for tracking your %BF, which in turn gives you your lean body mass (LBM) and fat mass (FM). You probably don't want to be gaining more than 1 pound of fat for every 1 pound of muscle.

The following is the YMCA formula for calculating %BF. It is as good as any. They are all wrong but you are only interested in the relative changes. It is good for that. Units in inches and pounds.

%BF = (4.15*Waist - 0.082*Weight - 98.42) / Weight

Incidentally, I measure my weight once per week but daily for weight, using a 7 day average for calculations.

[Sergio07]

Hi all, this is my first time posting in this forum, I came from the Starting Strenght Forums,but I got recommendations to join here.
Yesterday I posted a thread in the other forum saying that I wanted to see which program it's the best after the SSLP, however the people said that I needed to gain a lot of weight before checking on intermeadiate programming, the recommend me to gain 3-5 pounds per week, however I really don't think that's a sustainable approach for me, I wanted to know what's a decent rate of weekly/monthly weight gain to drive progress and not to stall in my main lifts?

My stats:
Height: 5'8"
Weight: 137 pounds
Age: 16

Squat: 90kgx5
Deadlift: 97.5kgx5
Bench: 62.5kgx1
Press: 42.5kgx1

Do you know your current waist measurement around the belly button roughly? I would suggest tracking this and weight daily. Waist gain I use as a proxy for body fat increasing so if your waist is moving up I would initially think about reducing rate of weight gain.

I track my waist measurement weekly, every Sunday, never done it daily, looking at the data from the last months, my waist has stayed within 74 cm, but I have a question, how much it's tolerable to allow the waist grow monthly?
Thanks btw

I’m 5’7” and used to be around 120-130lbs before I started lifting (and was about 8-9 yrs older than you!) so we probably have similar starting points with age on your side. If I could pass on anything it would be to NOT go mad and eat junk food / poor diet like crazy to “bulk”. I’ve been cycling through that for a few years and it’s not efficient. I think a slow and measured bulk would be better than going too aggressive (eg some do GOMAD unnecessarily) followed by a huge cut.

I suggest daily as for me I like to use week averages. My waist and weight often spike/trough. For example if I used a Sunday when I was 16 it would be after a day of pizza / booze and getting up late so not ideal conditions. You don’t have to do daily as long as you’re consistent, but more data is usually more helpful. You’re probably a more mature 16 yr old than I was anyway so won’t have those issues

Cards on the table - I do think you are underweight and have lots of room to get stronger. You also agree (as you’re bulking). If you went up a couple of pounds a month you could maybe bulk for a year to year and a half before starting to think about it much.

I don’t have any guidance on how quickly to let your waist change. I used BBM coaching for nutrition recently and they let my waist fly up surprisingly. It’s not something I would would suggest to someone else so I’m a bit confused myself on “the right thing to do”. I’d just monitor it and if it starts moving quickly it’s probably fat. Defining quickly is hard though

How are your lifts progressing? My other tip is not to burn yourself into the ground on LP. I’ve got more respect for LP and SS than most on here I’d say, but taking it too far or having stupid ideas of ending points has caused me issues previously.

First, thank you for sharing this information it's pretty helpful,
second, I think the same as you, a slower bulk it's better, because if I find that I'm getting a little too fluffy I can just do a mini-cut and don't have the worry in 3 months of doing a serious cut where I won't be able to gain strenght. Yeah daily averages are better, I do those with weight and BF% (I know it's pretty innacurate but it's good to have some point to compare), I'll see if I can try to measure my waist daily. Also my goal weight is somewhere between 150-170 pounds before considering going on a cut.
And third, my lifts are going up, well mostly the squat, yesterday I hitted 90kgx5 across all sets, but everytime I feel that I'm going to fail, it's like sometimes I get scared, on deadlift I did a deload last week because I was correcting my form and now I'm getting again to 100kg, also I'm trying to deadlift 3 times per week as SS, if I stall around 105kg on the deadlift I'm swithcing programs.
Thanks man

[Sergio07]

Taking you waist measurement is helpful for tracking your %BF, which in turn gives you your lean body mass (LBM) and fat mass (FM). You probably don't want to be gaining more than 1 pound of fat for every 1 pound of muscle.

The following is the YMCA formula for calculating %BF. It is as good as any. They are all wrong but you are only interested in the relative changes. It is good for that. Units in inches and pounds.

%BF = (4.15*Waist - 0.082*Weight - 98.42) / Weight

Incidentally, I measure my weight once per week but daily for weight, using a 7 day average for calculations.

Thanks for the information, I do the same as you, I track my bodyweight and %BF (my scale has this feature) daily and my waist measurement weekly. I have a question, how do you know or control not gaining 1 pound of fat to 1 pound of muscle?

[RyanB]

I don’t have any guidance on how quickly to let your waist change. I used BBM coaching for nutrition recently and they let my waist fly up surprisingly. It’s not something I would would suggest to someone else so I’m a bit confused myself on “the right thing to do”. I’d just monitor it and if it starts moving quickly it’s probably fat. Defining quickly is hard though

Hi Wayne. That's interesting, and I know each of us is our own case. But if you are open to sharing (and its cool if you don't want to), what was your waist increase and over what amount of time?

[JohnHelton]

Taking you waist measurement is helpful for tracking your %BF, which in turn gives you your lean body mass (LBM) and fat mass (FM). You probably don't want to be gaining more than 1 pound of fat for every 1 pound of muscle.

The following is the YMCA formula for calculating %BF. It is as good as any. They are all wrong but you are only interested in the relative changes. It is good for that. Units in inches and pounds.

%BF = (4.15*Waist - 0.082*Weight - 98.42) / Weight

Incidentally, I measure my weight once per week but daily for weight, using a 7 day average for calculations.

Thanks for the information, I do the same as you, I track my bodyweight and %BF (my scale has this feature) daily and my waist measurement weekly. I have a question, how do you know or control not gaining 1 pound of fat to 1 pound of muscle?

If your FM goes up by 5 pounds and your LBM only goes up by 2.5 pounds, then you are gaining weight too quickly. When you cut, you'll just end up in the same place. If you gain slowly, then theoretically you can gain mostly muscle. Results will vary by individual.

[RyanB]

the recommend me to gain 3-5 pounds per week,

Looking back at my own experience now, I've been wondering where I'd be stength- and composition-wise if I had been able to gain the same amount of weight ultimately (and linearly) while training over 2 years instead of over 3 months, all while in a constant calorie surplus instead of any periods of maintenance or deficit?

I started lifting while underweight, not unlike Sergio (but much older).

[SeanHerbison]

Well, you already know my opinion from the other thread, but yeah, I think 0.5 lbs/week is too slow, and 3-5 lbs/week past the first week or two is too fast. I don't want you to get fat, but given your goals, you do need to bump your weight up significantly over time.

I have a question, how do you know or control not gaining 1 pound of fat to 1 pound of muscle?

Most of that balance is genetics, honestly, for better or worse. That said, as a general answer, do enough work to build the LBM and don't eat a bunch of "junk". Junk is hard to define exactly, but just tend more toward meat and potatoes and less toward cheese sticks and booze.

So far as telling whether you're gaining fat or muscle, you could find someone who knows how to use calipers or do hydrostatic weighing, but generally waist measurements and looking in the mirror work well enough.

[JohnHelton]

The other thing that is different with kids is when their hormones kick-in. They become ravenous and can put on size like crazy. Obviously, you can't force that and you shouldn't fight it either. For me that didn't really happen until freshman year of college. I probably added 20 lbs. of muscle that year without thinking about how much I was eating.

[Sergio07]

Well, you already know my opinion from the other thread, but yeah, I think 0.5 lbs/week is too slow, and 3-5 lbs/week past the first week or two is too fast. I don't want you to get fat, but given your goals, you do need to bump your weight up significantly over time.

I have a question, how do you know or control not gaining 1 pound of fat to 1 pound of muscle?

Most of that balance is genetics, honestly, for better or worse. That said, as a general answer, do enough work to build the LBM and don't eat a bunch of "junk". Junk is hard to define exactly, but just tend more toward meat and potatoes and less toward cheese sticks and booze.

So far as telling whether you're gaining fat or muscle, you could find someone who knows how to use calipers or do hydrostatic weighing, but generally waist measurements and looking in the mirror work well enough.

But how much would you recommend? 1-2 pound weekly?
Thanks

[Sergio07]

Taking you waist measurement is helpful for tracking your %BF, which in turn gives you your lean body mass (LBM) and fat mass (FM). You probably don't want to be gaining more than 1 pound of fat for every 1 pound of muscle.

The following is the YMCA formula for calculating %BF. It is as good as any. They are all wrong but you are only interested in the relative changes. It is good for that. Units in inches and pounds.

%BF = (4.15*Waist - 0.082*Weight - 98.42) / Weight

Incidentally, I measure my weight once per week but daily for weight, using a 7 day average for calculations.

Thanks for the information, I do the same as you, I track my bodyweight and %BF (my scale has this feature) daily and my waist measurement weekly. I have a question, how do you know or control not gaining 1 pound of fat to 1 pound of muscle?

If your FM goes up by 5 pounds and your LBM only goes up by 2.5 pounds, then you are gaining weight too quickly. When you cut, you'll just end up in the same place. If you gain slowly, then theoretically you can gain mostly muscle. Results will vary by individual.

Oh I see, I'll keep an eye on that, thanks.

[SeanHerbison]

But how much would you recommend? 1-2 pound weekly?

Generally, yeah. I'd try to hit more toward the 2 lbs side for a couple weeks, and once you're consistent with that, back down a bit if you think it's too fast. If I correctly recall what you told me before, there were some weeks you were falling short of your weight gain goals, which indicates to me that you probably need to start off aiming a little more toward the aggressive side of weight gain.