How to build muscle

[Kung Fu Wang102]

I didn't know that "more weight with less reps" (A) can build more muscle than "less weight with more reps" (B). In the past many years, I went from A to B and I was wrong all these years. I also didn't know that more reps only build endurance and not build muscle.

For example,

A 30 lb dumbbell that you work 3 sets of 10 reps is better than 15 lb dumbbell that you work 4 sets of 20 reps.

I was very proud of myself that I can still hold my 5 lb dumbbell and punch 2,000 times daily. I then find out that 5 lb weight is just too light to be any useful to build muscle.

For those of you who also work on weight, could you share your personal experience on this?

 

[Kung Fu Wang102]

I try to gain weight and not lose weight.

Old Chinese saying said, "有钱难买老来瘦 - Money can't buy someone to be thin in old age." Chinese was wrong. Losing weight in old age is far worse than gaining weight.

​

 

[Prince_Alarming102]

I didn't know that "more weight with less reps" (A) can build more muscle than "less weight with more reps" (B). In the past many years, I went from A to B and I was wrong all these years. I also didn't know that more reps only build endurance and not build muscle.

This is true, within certain limits. The sweet spot seems to be 5 reps for beginners. This will mean they will actually be able to lift weights heavy enough to have an impact. But if we're talking about a more experienced lifter, for hypertrophy works 10 reps works better. After about 12-20 reps though, you're just building muscular endurance. The main danger as a certain Rippetoe maintains is to start things at the end, when things are time consuming, costly and complicated. To build the kind of physiques you see in the magazines, it's not about light weights for higher reps or heavy weights for lower reps, it's about heavy weights for higher reps. As ever, this is not an original comment, there's nothing new under the sun and somebody whose name I can't remember said it first.

 

[Prince_Alarming102]

Although personally I don't do it like that- I find a relatively modest but consistent and incremental stimulus is far superior to beating the jesus out of your body twice a week.

 

[windwalker099102]

This guy has a good program ....

Real progress
starts with Anatoly's power System

Anatoly Fit - Strength training, smart programming and results

Anatoly Fit official site by Vladimir Shmondenko offers evidence-based strength training, smart programming, and long-term physical development. Explore articles, systems, and principles that actually work.

anatolyfit.com

Is building muscle the same as being strong are they the same ?

 

[Prince_Alarming102]

I.... think it depends on what level you're at with your strength. A complete raw beginner who wanted to build muscle would do more or less the same things as somebody who wanted to purely build strength. At a certain level there's a tradeoff to be made though.

 

[windwalker099102]

I.... think it depends on what level you're at with your strength. A complete raw beginner who wanted to build muscle would do more or less the same things as somebody who wanted to purely build strength. At a certain level there's a tradeoff to be made though.

From another perspective, what you’re calling strength isn’t something you’re adding so much as integrating what’s already there.

When the body starts working as a unit, what’s available expresses more completely — so it can look like someone has more strength without necessarily being bigger.

You can see that in Anatoli’s videos. He doesn’t look particularly strong, but he uses what he has more fully than the people he’s lifting against.

 

[Prince_Alarming102]

To a degree. It's possible to get a lot stronger by just learning to use what you've got better. I think most of us would be disappointed if training didn't come with any muscle though.

 

[MetalBoar50]

This guy has a good program ....

Real progress
starts with Anatoly's power System

Anatoly Fit - Strength training, smart programming and results

Anatoly Fit official site by Vladimir Shmondenko offers evidence-based strength training, smart programming, and long-term physical development. Explore articles, systems, and principles that actually work.

anatolyfit.com

Is building muscle the same as being strong are they the same ?

First off we have to define strength and figure out how to measure it. That's actually a lot harder than it may sound, skill plays a big role in any physical movement and I'm dubious about any claims of being able to seperate the two sufficiently to get an accurate measure of something like raw, muscular output (one definition of strength). MedX (and others) spent a fortune on developing a machine to do this and, while they feel they've done it (last I looked), I'm not really convinced. Still, let's just assume that some amount of practice removes the skill component (it doesn't completely), and we have two guys with equivalent skill at benchpress. One is a 350 lb. guy who can bench 400 lbs. the other a 150 lb. guy who can bench 300 lbs. Which is stronger? It depends on your definition.

Is building muscle the same as being strong are they the same ?

For the most part a bigger muscle is a stronger muscle for a given individual. If Anatoly there had an identical twin, and that twin had larger muscles, the twin would almost certainly be the stronger of the two. Since any relation I have to Anatoly is extremely remote, my relative size doesn't tell us a huge amount about how our strength compares. There's also a big skill component. Powerlifting is a sport and it requires a lot of skill to be good. Anatoly also does a lot of what I'd call "barbell tricks". They're super impressive, but part of the reason they're super impressive is because very few people practice them and they require a huge amount of skill. Plus, to some degree, his videos are staged. To what degree I'm not sure. He's strong for sure, but is he as strong as he appears to be in those videos? I haven't a clue.

 

[MetalBoar50]

I didn't know that "more weight with less reps" (A) can build more muscle than "less weight with more reps" (B). In the past many years, I went from A to B and I was wrong all these years. I also didn't know that more reps only build endurance and not build muscle.

For example,

A 30 lb dumbbell that you work 3 sets of 10 reps is better than 15 lb dumbbell that you work 4 sets of 20 reps.

I was very proud of myself that I can still hold my 5 lb dumbbell and punch 2,000 times daily. I then find out that 5 lb weight is just too light to be any useful to build muscle.

For those of you who also work on weight, could you share your personal experience on this?

You can build strength pretty effectively with both high volume, low weight, routines as well as low volume, high weight, routines, assuming that you work to something pretty close to muscular failure. The big things are to be consistent in your workouts, train close to, or all the way to, momentary muscular failure, have good form, get enough recovery, consume enough quality food, including sufficient protein, get good sleep, and stay hydrated. If you do these things you'll progress in both strength and size gains about as well as (naturally) possible. There may be ways to bias your results one way or the other a little, but to the degree that's even possible, it's largely irrelevant to the vast majority of people doing resistance training.

I personally hate high volume routines. They take a lot of time and you get to spend a lot of that time with your muscles on fire if you're training to something like failure, and I find them boring. I prefer short duration, very heavy, training sessions with very high intensity, to complete and utter failure. They're super time efficient and take so much focus that I have no mental bandwidth left for boredom or even really discomfort and I really enjoy that challenge. There may be routines that are slightly more effective or efficient on some axis of the size, strength, time commitment, time to results, etc. graph, but I've tried a huge number of protocols and none are better for my priorities.

 

[Kung Fu Wang102]

I try to gain weight and not lose weight.
Losing weight in old age is far worse than gaining weight.

You train hard when you were young. When you get older, you still train hard. Since your appetite is not as good as when you were young, you burn more calories than you take in and you start to lose weight. You want to regain your weight back, but you don't want just eating ice cream to gain fat. By lifting weight can be the only option to gain health muscle weight.

If you also have the same losing weight issue, can you share your solution besides eat more protein diet?

 

[Kung Fu Wang102]

I personally hate high volume routines.

60 used to be my lucky number. Today, I decide to cut it down to 30 by adding 10% extra weight instead.

I'll also stop doing my 2,000 punches with my 5 lb dumbbell. It only helps me to build up endurance. But endurance training (burn more calories) will cause me to lose more weight.

 

[isshinryuronin]

My main parameter is being able to do 15 reps without turning my face too red and my head feeling it's about to explode. So I don't squeeze out those last couple of reps anymore, content with moderate effort and preventing a possible stroke as I'm approaching 75. I maintain more than enough strength for everyday physical demands and along with my MA, enough to handle a casual, hostile encounter or a student who wants to spar. This old fox will not go down easy.

 

[MetalBoar50]

You train hard when you were young. When you get older, you still train hard. Since your appetite is not as good as when you were young, you burn more calories than you take in and you start to lose weight. You want to regain your weight back, but you don't want just eating ice cream to gain fat. By lifting weight can be the only option to gain health muscle weight.

If you also have the same losing weight issue, can you share your solution besides eat more protein diet?

Yeah, it's tough if you don't really want to eat. While it's a not as simple as some people make it out to be, if you're burning more calories than you're eating you're not going to gain weight not matter how good your resistance training program is.

I'd maybe think about trying to drink more of your calories. I don't mean as soda or alcohol, more like maybe fruit smoothies or protein shakes. You can get ~500 calories from 4 tablespoons or peanut or almond butter, 25 grams of whey protein, some ice and liquid (almond milk, cows milk, water, whatever) and it's quick and easy to drink. I add a little unsweetened cocoa and a tiny bit of stevia if I want it to be more desert like. Either way it may taste a little like ice cream but it's not full of sugar and it's got about 40 grams of protein, plus other nutrients and fiber. Add one in between lunch and dinner and that's significant calories over the course of a week.

Nuts can be another high calorie food that's also pretty healthy. Walnuts have a lot of healthy fats and are a good choice if you like them. I love almonds, pistachios, and pecans. Have a bag around and munch on them whenever you feel like you can. When I was working a tech job with long hours these were life savers for me.

If none of that sounds good, just trying to fit in a couple of small snacks of something you do like in between meals will probably help.

 

[MetalBoar50]

My main parameter is being able to do 15 reps without turning my face too red and my head feeling it's about to explode. So I don't squeeze out those last couple of reps anymore, content with moderate effort and preventing a possible stroke as I'm approaching 75.

I've worked with a lot of people in their 70s and not a small number in their 80s. I could show you how to train to deep failure with heavy weight and probably decrease your risk of stroke, your face wouldn't get red, no exploding necessary. It's mostly about breathing technique.

 

[Kung Fu Wang102]

protein shakes.

Nuts can be another high calorie food that's also pretty healthy.

I take "Ironvegan Athlete's Griner protein power" (42 g protein) mixed with Almon milk or carrot juice daily.

I also take daily on:

- 3 Brazil nuts,
- 10 walnuts,
- 15 Almond,
- 20 Pistachio,

The problem is I don't eat any meat or chicken (I only eat fish). I start to add olive oil into my meal.

I may have to reduce my 4 miles daily walking to 2, or 3 miles walking instead (since endurance training can increase my weight losing). Yesterday, I did only 2 miles walking. During those 2 miles, I did 200 push ups. It's just too difficult for me to carry my 25 lb dumbbell for my 2 miles walking.

I try to kill 3 birds with 1 stone.

1. Walk or run 3 miles for endurance.
2. MA kick/punch training (200 kicks, 1200 punches).
3. Muscle weight training (200 push ups, 100 squards)

 

[isshinryuronin]

I could show you how to train to deep failure with heavy weight and probably decrease your risk of stroke

Don't need it, but thanks. I have all the strength I need as noted in the prior post. Coming up to 60 years in TMA training so I'm good.

 

[Kung Fu Wang102]

Don't need it, but thanks. I have all the strength I need as noted in the prior post. Coming up to 60 years in TMA training so I'm good.

Today, both you and I are in "maintenance" mode. We are no longer in "development" mode any more. We train hard today so we won't lose our ability that we had spent so many years to develop.

My problem is that too much endurance training makes me to lose weight. Since I don't want to lose more weight, I have to re-adjust my training between endurance and muscle weight gain.

I may still be able to do this today. But I'm not sure it's a good idea.

 

[Appledog41]

I think you have a great training program. You should eat some meat. Doing farmers carry is good. The Taiwanese have a prohibition against beef which has become nonsensical--As for chicken, there is a new store here called chewken you might like. It sells nothing but well-packaged chicken breasts, legs, drums and wings. Various flavors including italian, french onion, mustard, thai pepper and ma la. I eat one of those for a meal or a nice steak. Good to take with you. Also look into protein drinks. Decathalon here in Taiwan carries many flavors-- chocolate, vanilla, and bubble tea flavor. I like Mango flavor.

Anyways your main problem is clearly your diet. How is it possible that doing muscle work causes you to lose muscle mass? You should start drinking an Ensure Protein during training if not eating a chicken breast, and see a chinese doctor about weight loss and diet.

 

[Flying Crane]

You train hard when you were young. When you get older, you still train hard. Since your appetite is not as good as when you were young, you burn more calories than you take in and you start to lose weight. You want to regain your weight back, but you don't want just eating ice cream to gain fat. By lifting weight can be the only option to gain health muscle weight.

If you also have the same losing weight issue, can you share your solution besides eat more protein diet?

If you are experiencing unexpected weight loss at your age, without significant changes in your lifestyle that might explain it such as diet changes or exercise, you need to see your doctor. That could be a sign of cancer or some other health problem that could be serious. Go get checked.