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8 Tips to pack on muscle and move UP a weight class!

These 8 tips will help you pack on some size and strength while keeping you fast on the mat... Get started now!

1. Eat Enough Calories If you need to gain size and strength, you can't do it without consuming enough calories. Your daily intake with your wrestling practices plus a growing body means you should consume roughly 20 times your bodyweight in calories per day. That means you take your bodyweight and multiply by 20:
   
   140lbs x 20 = 2800 calories daily


2. Divide Calories Into 6 Meals Now that you know how many calories to consume each day, you want to figure out how many you should eat at a time. However, you don't want to eat 6 evenly divided meals in terms of calories because your energy demands differ depending on what your body is doing.
   
   For instance, your body needs a lot of calories first thing in the morning during breakfast... especially if you're trying to gain weight. This is because your body has starved all night long. It is also the time to jump-start your metabolism so that you gain muscle, not fat.
   
   You also need more calories immediately following a workout or practice. This is your time to help the body recover from the catabolic activity you just required of it.
   So... Here's what you do:
   
   • Consume 25% of your daily calories at breakfast
   • Consume 25% of your daily calories after a workout
   • Consume 50% of your daily calories spaced evenly over 4 meals
   
   So for our 140lb wrestler seeking weight gain it looks like this:
   
   • Eat a 700 calorie breakfast
   • Eat a 700 calorie post-workout/practice meal
   • Eat 4 other meals daily. Each meal should be roughly 350 calories


3. Eat Carbs At The Right Times In the last step you figured out how many calories you should eat at each meal, and that breakfast and post-workout meals will contain more calories.
   Those extra calories at breakfast and post-workout will come from complex carbohydrates. That means you will use sources such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice (brown), beans, whole grains, oatmeal etc.
   
   60% of your daily calories should come complex carbohydrates. So for our 140lb wrestler it should be:
   
   2800 x .6 = 1680 daily calories from carbohydrates.
   Now take the 1680 daily calories and multiply by .25 to figure out carbohydrates at breakfast and post-workout:
   
   He'll eat 420 calories from carbohydrates at breakfast and postworkout.
   Now take 1680 daily calories from carbohydrates and multiply by .50 to figure out the rest of the daily carbs. That means you will now have 840 calories from carbohydrates to eat over 4 more meals. That comes out to 210 calories from carbohydrates in each of your 4 other meals.
   Now take your calories from carbohydrates for each meal and divide by 4. This will give you the number of grams of carbs for each meal.
   420/4 = 105 grams of carbohydrates with breakfast
   420/4 = 105 grams of carbohydrates post-workout
   210/4 = 52 grams of carbohydrates with each of 4 other daily meals
   * This isn't an exact science, and you just round up or down.
   


4. Frequent Protein Your body stores carbohydrates and fats. It doesn't store protein however. You need to eat protein frequently in even amounts.
   
   You should consume approximately 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight daily or roughly 30% of your daily intake. This means that our 140lb wrestler should consume between 140-200 grams of protein daily.
   
   * I would lean towards only 1 gram per pound of bodyweight and round out my program with carbohydrates.
   
   For the 140lb wrestler that means 140 daily grams of protein. Spread this over 6 daily meals and you now have roughly 25 grams of protein per meal.


5. Limit Exercises To 5 When you're strength training and trying to gain weight, you must prioritize your workouts so that you get the 'most bang for your buck'.
   
   I recommend that you put a cap on your daily workouts at 5 exercises. This is so your body can recuperate and use those calories that get burned up fast as food for growth. If you're really enthusiastic and want to grow, but you insist on long workouts with tons of exercises you won't grow as much.
   


6. Use Multi-Joint Exercises If you want to add size and strength, you have to use multi-joint exercises. These are exercises that force your body to move more than one joint at the same time. They're also called full-body exercises.
   
   Some great examples are:
   
   Barbell Squats
   Front Barbell Squats
   Barbell Deadlifts
   Barbell Hack Squats
   Power Cleans
   Hang Cleans
   Snatch
   Hang Snatch
   Dips
   Bench Press
   Bent Row
   Incline Barbell Press
   Standing Shoulder Press
   Upright Rows
   High Rows
   Pullups
   
   I could go on all day...
   These are the type of exercises you want to key on in order to gain weight fast.
   


7. Brief Workouts We want to keep your workouts brief in order to maximize hormone production. We want those 5 exercises to be completed in under 35 minutes so your body produces testosterone and growth hormone as a response.
   
   This means you're not screwing around. You do a warmup set of each of the 5 exercises, followed by 1 set to failure... and no more.
   Then you immediately move to the next exercise.
   


8. Train 2 Or 3 Days Per Week Depending on your schedule you will train 2 or 3 days per week when trying to gain weight.
   
   I like the Monday-Friday-Wednesday method.
   
   This means that on week 1 you train Monday and then again on Friday. On week 2 you train only on Wednesday. Keep alternating. This has you train every every few days.
   You can split your exercises so that you do 5 on A day, and a different set of 5 on B day.