Weight Gain Problems

monkeyman

My weight 1.5 years ago was 55kg and now its 59kg, but I can't get any more muscle gains. I've tried heavy weights and less reps (4-6), less weight and more reps (10-12) and not much difference.

Height: 5' 6"
Weight 59kg
Age: 29

Cardio: Bout 5-10 mins to warm up
Weights 3 times a week.

About 1700 calories is enough to keep me at the weight I am now. I went up to about 2800 calories/ day for 3 months
and the only place the weight went on was the stomach. Just bloated to bits. My breakdown is approx 40/40/20 for protein/carbs/fat.

My diet is very healthy except for the beer or vino on a Sat night.

I'm also on Whey protein, 30gm a day and have also tried cyclone (protein/creatine) for a month with little effect.

Needless to say my metabolism is very fast, although slowing now so I'm gonna have to start a bit more cardio as I'm losing 2 pack I have (never got the six pack)

Any ideas/suggestions appreciated.

pwd

Read the sticky "I can't gain weight!"

Your metabloism is unlikely to have slowed down while you have been exercising.

You don't say much about the actual exercise you do. Use free weights, not machines. Focus on compound exercises, not isolation ones. In particular focus on deadlifts, bench presses and squats.

monkeyman

I've read the sticky and no joy. Just wondering if anyone had the same problems.

I've been using free weights for 5 years. I've tried a good few variations as well for maybe 6 months at a time. Supersets, compound, drop sets, working one body part per day, working them all per day. etc..

pwd

Maybe you are overdoing it. How often do you do dropsets?
Try using creatine. Make a post workout drink with glucose and protein in it. A sample formula for one is in the recent thread on nutrition for weight traning.

Mr E

monkeyman wrote:

I've tried a good few variations as well for maybe 6 months at a time.

I assume you aren't sticking with the same program for 6 months? Ideally, you should change it around every 4-6 weeks.

Are you keeping a training diary? If so, are the weights going up?

monkeyman

I'd change it around about every 2 months, but if I was doing supersets, then I'd probably stay at supersets.

Weights originally went up bu t fairly static now. I must start a training diary. At least I can refer back.

I'll try that glucose and protein mix after workouts as well.

Didn;t find the creating worked much at all for the months I was on it. One month on one off.

pwd

how were you taking creatine?
You need to dissolve it fully with sugars for it to be absorbed properly.
10g/day is probably the best dose (any more than that will probably be excreted).
It needs to be drunk within 15 minutes of dissolving it or it becomes creatinine, which is useless and will be excreted.
The number of reps you do per set also effects how effective creatine will be in aiding you. I am a little vague in my recollection of this point you would need to google for the exact info, but I think creatine is fairly useless if you do sets bigger than 12 reps or so.

tribulus

you should consider changing your diet %'s. Not everyone works well on 40/40/20. are you naturally skinny with a high metabolism?? if so more carbs could be important. I had a lot of trouble gaining wieght before when I had a diet with similiar ratios to yours. 350-400g of both carbs and protein.

It wasn't until I increased my carbs quite considerably that I started to make gains again. Nowadays my carb intake on a training day would be close to 600g and still over 500g on off-days.I also get over 1g protein lb/bodyweight.

Some people such as easygainer do pretty much the reverse with very high ~600g protein and lower carbs however he sounds like an easygainer *cringe* and not ectomorphs/hardgainers like yourself and me

Give it a try for a month or two in conjunction with a training diary and see if you get past your sticking points.

also make sure:

you're eating 5+ meals a day

drinking plenty of water

getting enough sleep

training consistently

good luck