Muscle Mass Gain

lunacocoa

Anyone on here trying to gain muscle mass rather than lose weight with P90X?

Dburroughs

I am loosing body fat and toning up dude, once i am happy with the definition, i then intend to build on some more mass. just for clarity what is P90X?

lunacocoa

Cool cool. P90X is an extreme at home workout program (check it out). I was just wondering if anyone looking to gain size has taken the cardio workouts out of their routine until the size was gained and then began the cardio to tone up.

Dburroughs

I see.. i would imagine so, if your goal was to build mass then a little less if not no cadio would make sense to me? Also you would expect to be taking in more calories for this goal too.

Karna6e

I'm doing P90X to try to do both I guess. I'm almost done with the 1st 90 days and I've lost a lot of inches, but I would like to see a little bit more progress with the muscle mass, though I still have 2 1/2 weeks to go.

stroutman81

Don't get locked into thinking a program is magic and needs to be followed to a T. There's no one program that's right for everyone.

If you're looking to increase muscle mass... yes, reducing the volume of cardio would probably help with the process. Dropping it all together I wouldn't suggest as maintenance of cardiorespiratory health is important.

lunacocoa

Don't get locked into thinking a program is magic and needs to be followed to a T. There's no one program that's right for everyone.

If you're looking to increase muscle mass... yes, reducing the volume of cardio would probably help with the process. Dropping it all together I wouldn't suggest as maintenance of cardiorespiratory health is important.

Thanks for the info. I planned on cutting out the cardio specific workouts, but not forever. I mean I will still burn calories while weight training. What do you think of my food intake for mass gain? I'm about 140lbs going for 160lbs
Cal: 2,480
Carbs: 341
Fat: 28
Protien: 217
Sugar: 50

I figured once my weight goes up I can revise the percentages to go with my weight.

stroutman81

Thanks for the info. I planned on cutting out the cardio specific workouts, but not forever. I mean I will still burn calories while weight training.

This statement says you're not concerned with health, just appearance. Which very well may be the case. I just want to be sure of that before throwing recommendations at you.

Sure, weight training will burn calories, but assuming you're doing weight training that's conducive to muscle growth, it's no where near the calories you'll expend doing traditional forms of cardio and/or circuit training.

Plus, expending calories isn't what maintains cardiorespiratory health. Working your cardiorespiratory system is what maintains its health. That's why I mentioned that reducing the volume of cardio would be beneficial, but maintaining at least a handful of sessions each week would go a long way in maintenance of health.

It's your call.

What do you think of my food intake for mass gain? I'm about 140lbs going for 160lbs
Cal: 2,480

I generally start people's "bulks" at 16 calories per pound of bodyweight. You're close to 18 right now, which may or may not be appropriate.

Worrying about pinpointing the appropriate intake, though, is silly. Read this article in my MFP blog:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/stroutman81/view/the-importance-or-lack-of-of-pin-pointing-the-exact-caloric-intake-19622

My suggestion would be to worry about the process outlined in that article rather than an exact intake.

We know we can't "fast forward" muscle growth by eating more and more. There's a biological limit to how fast protein accretion can happen. We also know that whenever we're in a calorie surplus, we're going to be gaining muscle AND fat.

With that said, the secret to successfully bulking entails finding that sweet spot, calorically speaking, where we're eating enough to facilitate muscle growth yet no so much that we're hoarding away tons of calories to fat.

Knowing this, my suggestion would be to start at 16 calories per pound and readjust every 2-3 weeks based on how your body is responding. This means you need to take baseline measurements (pictures, anthropometric measurements with a soft tape measure, weight, etc) to benchmark against at each assessment every 2-3 weeks.

Questions?

Carbs: 341
Fat: 28
Protien: 217
Sugar: 50

You're fat intake seems very low. Is there a reason for this. I'd much sooner see 25-30% of calories coming from fat. That would put you at 60 grams or so.

Protein is currently at 1.5 grams per pound. I typically tell people to stick to 1-1.5 grams per pound of lean body mass. I also tell them to err on the high end of that spectrum when dieting and trend towards the lower end of that spectrum when maintaining or bulking. Given that you're at 1.5 grams per pound of total body weight, it might be a little high without knowing your body fat %. If that's the case, you could lower it a bit and that would help bump up your fat intake.

Carbs are a bit high, but not overly. These two can be trailed down slightly which will help bolster up your fat intake.

lunacocoa

Thanks Steve. I am reading your article right now and I will try out your recommendations. Tomorrow I am actually going to buy a BF% caliper so I will know exactly what my fat % is, just didn't have the money until now. I am also going to drop my calories by about 200 and change around the percentages. For my numbers, I kind of just through around percentages from a number a different sources, that's why I've continued to take your advice into consideration because I see your size which means you know what worked for you.

On the note of the health/cardio issue, I do very much care about my health as well as appearance, but in the past I've done hard weight training and cardio and only got lean with no size. So my initial goal is to cut out most of the cardio (but will most likely run the eliptical trainer for about 30-1hr a couple days a week), but I do plan on throwing in the fully P90X non weight training routine after I start to see my results. I know you may have different feelings about this.......There are many reasons I want to do cardio , but for now I want to change my routine up a bit from the past and see if this works better for me.

Thanks for being so helpful and thorough in your replies to me. I will continue to update with results.

Thanks again Steve

stroutman81

On the note of the health/cardio issue, I do very much care about my health as well as appearance, but in the past I've done hard weight training and cardio and only got lean with no size.

And that's because you weren't in a calorie surplus. Which of course, doing cardio makes it more difficult to eat more calories than your body needs. However, if you had, you're size/weight would have increased... no questions about it.

So my initial goal is to cut out most of the cardio (but will most likely run the eliptical trainer for about 30-1hr a couple days a week),

That's really all that's needed for maintenance. Personally, when I used to care about bulking up, I'd maintain a handful of 20-30 low/moderate intensity sessions of cardio each week. That's it. I'm naturally very thin so adding bulk was a very, very laborious task.

Thanks for being so helpful and thorough in your replies to me. I will continue to update with results.

Anytime.