Advise and help.

[lowery]

Hello everyone. I’m still new here on this forum and I have a question about the things I should be doing or the things I shouldn’t be doing to gain muscle. First I want to start off and give my weight and height. I’m 5’-8 and 150lbs (68kg). I recently lost around 35 pounds. I want to gain muscle but I don’t think that I am going about it the right way. I eat around 1500-1800 calories a day and have done so for the last 3 years and I have a clean diet. I only drink water and green tea. I take in around 125-150 grams of protein a day. I train in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu 3 days a week for 2 hours each of those days…crazy cardio. I lift 3-4 days a week. I don’t do BJJ the same days I lift. I recently have been doing 5 sets x 6 reps. I stay at a weight that I can keep good form but heavy enough that I feel it towards the end. I haven’t seen that much change as far as muscle growth. I look more lean and tone but the growth just doesn’t seem there. I take creatine monohydrate, BCAA and 50grams of Whey protein after each gym visit. Daily I take krill oil, astaxanthin and a multi vitamin. Any suggestions on what I should do or could do to help muscle gain? Thanks

[Off Road]

Bump up your food intake and make sure you lift a little more weight each time you go in the gym. Good luck.

[J_Byrd]

Is the 120-150 grams of protein per day counting the shakes? If so I think you need to up that some. I would try to add in some more calories. You need to be progressing in weight on your lifts. It takes time under tension to build muscle. If you are completing your sets, add lbs a week until you level off again. Best of luck with your training and welcome to the forum.

[lowery]

Originally Posted by J_Byrd

Is the 120-150 grams of protein per day counting the shakes? If so I think you need to up that some. I would try to add in some more calories. You need to be progressing in weight on your lifts. It takes time under tension to build muscle. If you are completing your sets, add lbs a week until you level off again. Best of luck with your training and welcome to the forum.

That does include my shakes and thanks

[TitanCT]

eat a lot more.

[jhew]

2000-2200 calories would be a little more reasonable for a slow gain, although, given that you are very active outside of straight strength training, I would say something closer to 2500 would serve you well. Im not a nutritionist but 1800 seems pretty close to maintenance for your height and weight, and you really need to have a hypercaloric intake to make mass gains.

[Fazc]

Firstly congrats on the weight loss. I can understand being hesitant to add back in the calories but to grow you really do need to do just that. Definitely need to be eating more. Add in 200-300 additional calories per day and see how that goes.

Also you're doing a hell of a lot of activity for the week. Cutting either your BJJ or your training, or better both, back to twice a week each would work much better.

[IronManlet]

Originally Posted by Fazc

Firstly congrats on the weight loss. I can understand being hesitant to add back in the calories but to grow you really do need to do just that. Definitely need to be eating more. Add in 200-300 additional calories per day and see how that goes.

Also you're doing a hell of a lot of activity for the week. Cutting either your BJJ or your training, or better both, back to twice a week each would work much better.

My thoughts precisely.

Clean diet is good, and being set for gaining muscle/strength again is even better. You will need to up the calories though; even if you cut back both BJJ and weightlifting to 2x weekly.

[lowery]

Thank you guys for the information. As of last week I have cut BJJ back to two days and week and started to increase my calorie intake to 2000-2400. Lets see how this goes. Again I thank you guys for the information.

[Fazc]

Sounds great lowery, let us know how it goes