16 year old wanting to increase muscle

T

The Bear

0
Been reading through this forum for a long time trying to find some information about fitness, working out and the like. Picked up some very useful tips.

I'm 16 years old, 5'7'' and 139 pounds. I run fairly often, with distances between 2 and 10 miles. Recently I've been running every day for about 30-50 minutes to see how that went. I own a set of free weights which I use every day. My diet is slightly limited, as I do not decide every meal I eat (I have a fair amount of control over breakfast and lunch though). I am training for the London marathon in 2011 but would also like to increase muscle mass.

Weight lifting wise, I've formulated my own plan (which looking around this website isn't really up to scratch) which involves a day of biceps, triceps, chest, shoulder and back, then a day of abs and legs, then back to the upper again, and so on. No rest days. I'm using my free weights on a plan based on a 100 push up/200 sit up plan, which I have changed slightly to suit the different exercises.

I would please like some advice for increasing muscle mass, so good exercises and work outs and diet ideas. I'm about to stop school and go on a long summer before sixth form, so I have plenty of time on my hands.
 
Wait, what? You're doing resistance training without a day of recovery?

As SkianS40 will tell you... you should be doing full body workouts and taking a day off in between. You didn't really go over your diet.. can you give us a typical day of what you eat?
 
You'd be much better suited to scale the volume of your workouts and stick to 3 or 4 days to ensure good recovery. If you're running 2-10 miles regularly, you are going to need to eat BIG to get any serious mass.

Given that you have a goal to run a marathon, I assume dropping your cardio would be out of the question. However, you should be able to put on quite a bit of mass if you put in a good 30 minutes of high intensity, full body weight training before you start your running.

At 139 lbs and running as much as you are, diet is going to be your biggest challenge. I would guess you'll need about 2500 or more calories, about 140 grams of protein, and reasonable amounts of good carbs and fats to make up your diet...

Also, check out starting Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe for a good resource and program to pack on pounds and power. I would seriously consider the "Gallon of milk a day" approach that he often prescribes....
 
Thanks for those replies :)

Well the marathon isn't for two years yet, as you have to be 18 to enter, but I would like to keep the running up. Increasing my diet to that shouldn't be too much of a problem really.

Having a look at that program you suggested SkianS40, it looks like I'll need some more equipment than the free weights I have. All I've got is two 8.5kg dumbbells (sorry for not specifying that).

But I'll start shifting my resistance training to full body, every other day.
 
Oh yeah, sorry, forgot to post diet. Well;

Breakfast - A bowl of cereal, sometimes with a banana or raisins
Lunch - A sandwich with a cold meat, lettuce and spread
Dinner - Varys greatly, usually fairly healthy with vegetables and some form of meat
Snacks - Yoghurt, toast, cottage cheese
I drink water most of the time with a glass or two of milk a day and perhaps a mouthful of a fruit juice.
 
The Bear said:
Oh yeah, sorry, forgot to post diet. Well;

Breakfast - A bowl of cereal, sometimes with a banana or raisins
Lunch - A sandwich with a cold meat, lettuce and spread
Dinner - Varys greatly, usually fairly healthy with vegetables and some form of meat
Snacks - Yoghurt, toast, cottage cheese
I drink water most of the time with a glass or two of milk a day and perhaps a mouthful of a fruit juice.
Click to expand...

Most cereal is crap and high in sugar. I'd go with something more substantial like eggs, wheat toast and fruit.

Your snacks.. not bad. If you want to eat cleaner go with plain yogurt, whole wheat toast, 2% cottage cheese.
 
To gain muscle your going to need to look at your recovery time, your diet, and your exercises. At your age you want to keep your reps up in the higher range...anything 8-15 would be good. You don't want to put to much stress on your ligaments early going to heavy. Use compound exercises like bench press, squats, and deadlifts. Since you say you work out at home, you will have to just make do with certain motions. As far as diet goes, you have to eat big to get big. Right now don't worry about fat gained, keep it under control but don't worry if you gain a few fat pounds. Its how you gain quality muscle. Keep it up and you will learn how your body develops efficiently.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top