What food supplements and training programs are good for developing muscle mass?
Anita Morgan says, "What food supplements are good for developing muscle mass?"
Well, foods, so overwhelmingly, muscle mass is, work out enough, eat enough protein, eat
enough calories.
Working out enough means 10 to 20 -- I mean, probably for most people, what’s sustainable
is trying to hit 10 sets per muscle group per week.
If you're really devoted to it, maybe going up to 20 is where you might get maximal advantage.
When we're talking about sets, we're talking about going up within 80% of failure.
If you're doing a set that's 8 reps and you could have done 20, then that doesn't count.
But if you're doing a set that's 8 reps and you would have failed at 10, then that does
count.
Ideally, you would mix them up in like 5-rep range, 10-rep range, 15-rep range, maybe split
them equally across those ranges.
But again, doing 5 reps when you could have done 6 is okay, but doing 5 when you could
have done 15 is not.
I think if you get that in, that's a huge thing right there.
Then protein, you probably want to be up around 1 gram per pound of body weight or per pound
of target body weight.
Whatever your goal is to gain, set it that way.
Then calories, you do need a caloric excess, but you don't want to get fat.
What I would recommend is to titrate the calories up if you know where your weight is stable
at 100 calories a day and then track your progress if you are gaining waist circumference.
I know this is a little bit harder when you're a woman because you're going to have more
fluctuations in water weight and stuff.
But I guess in terms of simple things to do to track your progress, waist circumference
is valuable, and looking in the mirror is valuable.
In terms of better things, then if you can get an actual Bod Pod or DEXA Scan, then that
would give you more reliable information.
There's a device called Skulpt.
It's bioimpedance, I believe, but it's taking it at many different points where you take
so much data that it actually becomes pretty accurate, but it's very time-consuming.
Anyway, take your choice of what you're going to use to track your progress.
If you're not gaining any fat, you can very slowly add your total calories.
If you are gaining fat, you need to cut back on the calories.
But you need to have a caloric excess to maximize your muscle gains.
That right there is probably 90% of it and anything else is probably completely pointless
unless you are a very good athlete, in which case you're going to be looking for what's
the next –
Like, someone who is very close to their potential, who is at 90% at their potential is going
to need everything in the book to figure out how to get from 90% to 91%.
Someone who is at 10% of their potential doesn't need to do anything.
They just follow what I just said and they're going to be at 30% of their potential in like
two weeks.
I think it depends where you are.
If you haven't put on much muscle before and you're not well trained, meaning you've been
at this for five or ten years consistently, then I wouldn't do anything else.
But in terms of doing other things, creatine supplementation, for sure.
There's a couple other things, but they're probably not worth it to most people, I would
say.
Thank you, Anita.