Guide: Pack on pounds of muscle; the OneOn way!

Sun 02 May 2010

For both professional athletes and recreational gym enthusiasts, packing on muscle and size is often seen as a hard reached goal. Many people think that by simply lifting heavy weights they can achieve the mass gains they desire. The truth is, without consideration for suitable nutrition and supplementation strategies, many will struggle to add the smallest amount of muscle mass, if any at all.

The Training

During high intensity strenuous exercise like weight lifting, muscle fibres become damaged. During the all-important recovery period following training the body both repairs existing muscle, and builds new muscle, resulting in an increased cross-sectional area of muscle tissue (known as muscular hypertrophy). This is a super-compensation effect whereby the body is preparing itself to be able to carry out the same amount of exercise with greater ease next time round. By repeatedly stressing muscle fibres in this way, it's possible to continually increase the size of muscle tissue, resulting in increased muscle size and body mass. At this point it's important to mention that this training effect places stress on the body, making a sound nutrition strategy, and supplementation with the right nutritional products important factors in injury prevention and maximising training gains. Moreover, a lack of the necessary nutrients will mean poor or no results from training.

Training programs used to increase mass should focus around utilising moderate heavy compound movements such as squats, bench press and rows, as these types of exercises recruit the most muscle fibres, and stimulate the greatest endocrine (hormonal) responses. Essentially, this means carrying out these types of exercises puts you in an anabolic muscle-building state by flooding your body with growth-stimulating hormones. Furthermore, progression with these types of exercise will also provide you with the core stability and muscle foundation upon which muscle mass can be increased safely. It is important to make sure you are progressing with training, which means that when a weight you are lifting becomes easy, you need to increase it in order to stimulate the muscle recovery response that is required for any increase in muscle mass. These increases in weight do not have to be huge, but need to ensure you are providing your muscles with sufficient training-induced overload.

The Nutrition

For anyone training to add muscle mass and bulk, it's important to fuel the body with the nutrients it needs to carry out the high intensity exercise required to add mass. As with all training programs, results will be maximised when a tailored exercise strategy is combined with a sound nutrition plan. A weak link in either aspect will significantly hamper the ability to meet and furthermore exceed training goals. Both the exercise strategy and nutrition plan will vary depending on the specificity of training goal, alongside other factors such as ability level and training frequency. For anyone looking to add mass (commonly termed bulking), it is important to ensure that you are consuming enough calories and high quality protein in order to provide the platform for building muscle mass. An increased calorie intake will provide the energy required to build muscle, and regular protein consumption will ensure muscle recovery and growth are maximised. The best way to ensure calorie needs are met is to consume regular meals throughout the day and as a general rule increase calories to about 500 above your weight maintenance guideline. This will create a calorie surplus meaning you will be consuming more calories than you are using through the day and therefore increases in mass will be attainable. However it is important to note that you must be eating the right type of foods to provide ‘healthy’ calories and carrying out the correct type of training, or the weight you add will be through fat instead of predominantly muscle. Weight gainers/meal replacers like OneOn Titan provide a great way to increase calorie intake and provide your body with the high quality source of protein and carbohydrates for use between meals.

A key nutrient required by the body whilst undertaking a mass gain training program is high quality protein. Without it, your body will be unable to fully recover from intense training sessions, muscle degradation will occur, recovery times will increase and the immune system will be strained. Therefore supplementing a high protein diet with products like OneOn Whey Protein will help to ensure you are feeding your body the required daily protein intake to aid muscle growth and recovery. Consider timing of protein intake, a nutrition strategy based around 5-6 smaller meals throughout the day will help to ensure your intake is optimised. It's been shown that consuming protein and carbohydrate before and after exercise can boost energy and increase muscle recovery and development. It can also be beneficial to consume a source of protein within an hour of going to bed. Overnight your body requires nutrients to support recovery and growth. A high-protein snack will help to maintain an anabolic state whilst you sleep.

In addition to protein, ensure you are consuming enough complex carbohydrates as these will provide the fuel required to train hard during intense workouts. Furthermore, if you do not consume adequate carbohydrates to both provide and replenish energy stores, your body will look for energy from other sources, like you muscle. It has been shown that when combined with strength and size boosting products such as OneOn Creatine Monohydrate, carbohydrates can help to increase muscle strength and size further. As well as carbohydrate and protein it is important to ensure you are consuming some healthy, essential fats. These are only required in small quantities for optimum growth, health and energy, but play an important role in a healthy diet.

In order to ensure you're doing everything you can to gain muscle mass, it's important to prevent muscle breakdown caused by intense periods of training. If you don't provide your body with sufficient protein, it will break down its own protein source (muscle) for use as energy. Therefore, it's key to minimise this protein degradation to maintain a positive protein balance, through the use of the correct supplements following a workout, such as OneOn Whey Protein, Creatine Monohydrate and L-Glutamine. Fuelling your muscles with high glycemic carbohydrates (these breakdown quickly during digestion to help refuel carbohydrate stores following exercise) and a high quality source of protein will ensure you move into an anabolic (muscle building) state.

The Supplements

The following links provide information on the key supplements recommended for use by those looking to bulk up.

• Protein - essential for promoting recovery and growth of muscle tissue.
• Creatine - research-proven to aid increases in muscle strength and size!
• Meal Replacement - ideal for those with a hectic lifestyle.
• Carbohydrates - the energy source you'll use for weight training.

For a complete list of recommended supplements visit our mass & bulking supplement section.