Weight training for muscle gain?

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Permalink Reply by Karen Lemburg on May 8, 2012 at 8:52am

Hi Annie,

 

To gain muscle you need to lift weights and eat. You're doing a lot of cardio and toning classes, but to put muscle on it takes resistance training. To build muscles on upper body use free weights for bench press, flys, bicep curls, tricep kickbacks. Three or four sets of 10 to 12 reps are a good place to start. Make sure you're eating enough to put muscle on. Eating five meals a day, three hours apart is what bodybuilders recommend. Vegan's need to make sure they're eating a good amount of protein. A good protein smoothie is good to have after a workout. To tighten the belly, it's all about diet. No amount of crunches will do it. You've got to get the layer of fat off to see your abs. Think about calorie/carb cycling. Eat 3 days at lower calories, for fat burn and every fourth day bring the calories up to maintenance or above maintenance for muscle growth. Try this a see how it goes. Measure every week to see if you're getting results. Change it up if you're not getting the results you want.

 

Karen

Permalink Reply by Annie CHEN on May 8, 2012 at 8:52pm

Hey Karen, 

thank you very much for helping. I will have to google the names you mentioned. 

Eating 5 times a day is a good idea, I love eating healthy vegan food. I will try to add more protein after workout heavily. 

The reason why I want to gain muscle is that I want to be stronger, as I am currently 153cm tall, but only 41kg, a bit too light on my weight, yet my BFI is 23%, but my goal is to reach 18-20%, so I think when I tightened my skin and gain some muscle, I will weigh heavier but look leaner. I attached two pix that would be closer to my goal. 

Karen Lemburg said:

Hi Annie,

 

To gain muscle you need to lift weights and eat. You're doing a lot of cardio and toning classes, but to put muscle on it takes resistance training. To build muscles on upper body use free weights for bench press, flys, bicep curls, tricep kickbacks. Three or four sets of 10 to 12 reps are a good place to start. Make sure you're eating enough to put muscle on. Eating five meals a day, three hours apart is what bodybuilders recommend. Vegan's need to make sure they're eating a good amount of protein. A good protein smoothie is good to have after a workout. To tighten the belly, it's all about diet. No amount of crunches will do it. You've got to get the layer of fat off to see your abs. Think about calorie/carb cycling. Eat 3 days at lower calories, for fat burn and every fourth day bring the calories up to maintenance or above maintenance for muscle growth. Try this a see how it goes. Measure every week to see if you're getting results. Change it up if you're not getting the results you want.

 

Karen

Permalink Reply by Karen Lemburg on May 8, 2012 at 9:59pm

Love the pics. You're right. The number on the scale is worthless! I used to weigh myself not only once a day, but twice. Once in the morning and once at night. Finally broke that addiction. Now I only weigh once a week. I'm working toward gaining 5 pounds of muscle while losing the last - last 5 pounds of fat! Keep me posted on your progress.

 

Karen

Permalink Reply by Annie CHEN on September 22, 2012 at 6:07pm

Hey there, 

it's been a while! So after the summer, despite my exercises, I didn't see much progress it seems... 

Right now my weight is 42.4kg, BFI 21.4%... And the layers of fat on my belly is looking like sharpai dog...T_T  I don't know whether this is a sign that I lost fat but didn't have enough muscle to fill it up. 

Right now I am doing Pilates( 20 mins abs sculpting) 3 days a week, street dancing (mainly hip hop abs moves) 2-3 times a week. I'm considering adding more body weight training and dumbbell to gain muscle. 

How is your result Karen?