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Hey, whats up guys, I'm hoping somebody here may be able to shoot a few tips my way on how to gain roughly 10-20 pounds.
Currently I am 5'8, 18 years old, and 125-130 pounds. I play Squash in college and train 6 days a week, and one of my sessions will burn anywhere from 2-3 thousand calories. Since I'm burning so many calories, its hard for me to bulk up and put on muscle. Are there any foods or tricks in particular I should be looking out for?
Im playing at Nationals next weekend so after that I'm up for completely changing my training regimen, planning on incorporating more lifting in addition to the large amounts of cardio work I do. Thanks so much!
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Why is it you want to gain weight to start with? Isn't it advantageous to be light for a sport like squash?
If you want to build muscle you must lift heavy weights and eat well over your current maintenance level. There is no trick, you just have to eat more. An easy way to get more calories is by drinking lots of milk, whole milk if you are having a really hard time gaining weight. As for lifting programs, a lot of people here do starting strength or strong lifts, both good programs for putting on some mass relatively quickly. Check out the stickies in the forum. But remember that putting on muscle is not something that takes only a couple of months. Real, solid, thick muscle takes a long time to develop. You just have to stick to a program and eat
...and I seriously doubt you're burning 2-3k calories/workout (unless you train all out for at least 3 hours each training session).
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If your burning 3000 calories in a single session of working out you should probably be playing for an Olympic team of some sort. A way to add a ton of calories is to drink Milk instead of water throughout the day. Its pretty easy to down between 1/2 gallon and a gallon each day and that will add between 1000-2000 cals depending on the type of milk and how much you drink. 1 cup of 2% milk has 120 calories... 16 cups to a gallon makes 1920 calories per gallon.
Also eat lots of grains, as carbs are calorie dense
Also for some perspective running stairs all out for two hours would give you 2500 calories burned at 200lbs. At 125 lbs I have a hard time imagining how long you would have to workout to burn 3000 calories.
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Drink whole milk. Go to macdonalds. Eat pizzas. And then drink some more milk
Disclaimer: some of the weight you gain will be fat.
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You don't want to get fat. Read my words. You don't want to gain weight.
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If you want to put on weight, eat a ton of food. See the nutrition thread.
There's almost no way your burning 3k calories a session.
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plenty of people here to tell you your numbers aren't realistic. I don't need to do that again - however I can offer some advice, as someone who started out at your weight (and 6'3) a few years back.
1: Count calories. Count them honestly. There's no more important change that you can make. Count macros too, if you can.
2: always have something to eat. You don't necessarily have to increase the number of meals you're eating, but you should always have food. Bag of almonds with my school books, protein bar in my jacket pocket, beef jerky in the car, fruit by your bed, etc. When I first started trying to put on weight, vending machines were my best friend - terrible quality of food, but it's still calories.
3: As mentioned, more milk. This one is easiest of all, so long as you're not lactose intolerant.
4: Smoothies. Liquid calories are just easier to get in. Bananna/Peanut Butter/Whole Milk/whey protein is the basic one to start with, from here branch out and figure out what tastes you enjoy that still get you your calories. Drop these if you ever need to cut weight.
5: Carbs. No one in the history of ever has gotten big eating a low carb diet - and since you're an athlete, you know a low carb diet is going to be awful for your performance anyway. No matter what meal you're eating, it should come with a side of rice, potato, sweet potato, oatmeal, or some other carb source. If you're already doing this, make the sides bigger.
6: Small increases to each meal you're currently eating. Say you're eating 4 eggs and 4 strips of bacon for breakfast. Adding 2 eggs and 1 strip of bacon to that is an extra 200 calories. Three times a day is 600 calories. Seven days a week is 4200 calories - which equals a little over a pound put on. This won't result in you eating until you're sick (save that for when you stall out)
7: Slow cooker, tupperware, moicrowaveables, whatever - real food is good, and you should try to have it as often as possible, but sometimes you just need to have something that you can heat and eat in 5 minutes. However you decide to do it, there should always be something in the house that can be ready to eat without any real effort.
8: Sometimes you just have to suck it up and shovel in the food that you don't want to be eating. Yes, it's boring. Yes it feels terrible, it takes time to cook, it's expensive, you really would rather be doing anything else right now - but when you've just finished dinner on a day you had exams and practice and work and you're 1600 calories short for the day, sometimes you just have to suck it up (literally).
Of course, if you're not lifting heavy weights, all the tips in the world are just going to result in you getting fat. So hurry up and get in the gym this off season.
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Phyre, thanks so much for all the help. I'll make sure to implement all of that as soon as I can.
And for everyone else... yes, I burn 2-3 thousand calories a session. I train with professional players for roughly 3 hours a day, and Squash burns more calories than any other sport - which is both a blessing and a curse. For those who offered help instead of just saying I'm unrealistic, thanks again.
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Count calories.
If not gain weight, eat more.
Count again.
If not gain weight, eat more.
Get the pattern?
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I'm just gonna chime in and say counting calories is a pain in the ass. Better get a scale and weight urself every morning after piss. Stuff yourself with food until you see your weight going up steadily; follow the trend, day to day weight ins are not important, but if you are gaining weight almost daily then you are obv doing it correctly.
This doesn't work if you got drunk the night before, you will always wake up slightly dehidratated and weight less.
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On February 19 2013 07:59 Premier wrote: Phyre, thanks so much for all the help. I'll make sure to implement all of that as soon as I can.
And for everyone else... yes, I burn 2-3 thousand calories a session. I train with professional players for roughly 3 hours a day, and Squash burns more calories than any other sport - which is both a blessing and a curse. For those who offered help instead of just saying I'm unrealistic, thanks again. Close! Speed skating comes in slightly higher :-P but yeah squash can burn 800 calories or so an hour
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On February 19 2013 03:05 Premier wrote: Hey, whats up guys, I'm hoping somebody here may be able to shoot a few tips my way on how to gain roughly 10-20 pounds.
Currently I am 5'8, 18 years old, and 125-130 pounds. I play Squash in college and train 6 days a week, and one of my sessions will burn anywhere from 2-3 thousand calories. Since I'm burning so many calories, its hard for me to bulk up and put on muscle. Are there any foods or tricks in particular I should be looking out for?
Im playing at Nationals next weekend so after that I'm up for completely changing my training regimen, planning on incorporating more lifting in addition to the large amounts of cardio work I do. Thanks so much!
Seems unlikely That's about the same number of calories you burn from running a marathon.
For a good, hard two hour session you might approach something like 1000-1500 calories. Though I guess you could be practicing for much longer than that. That would almost certainly be pretty high level stuff however (then again you do talk about playing at nationals)
Either way, the key here is just eating above baseline. If you don't take in the calories as well as have proper nutrition you flat out aren't going to gain weight.
On February 19 2013 11:01 decafchicken wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2013 07:59 Premier wrote: Phyre, thanks so much for all the help. I'll make sure to implement all of that as soon as I can.
And for everyone else... yes, I burn 2-3 thousand calories a session. I train with professional players for roughly 3 hours a day, and Squash burns more calories than any other sport - which is both a blessing and a curse. For those who offered help instead of just saying I'm unrealistic, thanks again. Close! Speed skating comes in slightly higher :-P but yeah squash can burn 800 calories or so an hour
800 calories an hour doesn't seem all that high. That's similar to most estimates I've seen of biking at a modest 20mph.
Running certainly blows that out of the water, doing a decent session can easily burn 1200+ calories in an hour. Some of the top guys racing a half-marathon probably approach 1500-1600 calories in an hour.
"Pound for pound" it's hard to see anything topping endurance sports for top rate of caloric expenditure.
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On February 19 2013 11:18 L_Master wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2013 03:05 Premier wrote: Hey, whats up guys, I'm hoping somebody here may be able to shoot a few tips my way on how to gain roughly 10-20 pounds.
Currently I am 5'8, 18 years old, and 125-130 pounds. I play Squash in college and train 6 days a week, and one of my sessions will burn anywhere from 2-3 thousand calories. Since I'm burning so many calories, its hard for me to bulk up and put on muscle. Are there any foods or tricks in particular I should be looking out for?
Im playing at Nationals next weekend so after that I'm up for completely changing my training regimen, planning on incorporating more lifting in addition to the large amounts of cardio work I do. Thanks so much!
Seems unlikely That's about the same number of calories you burn from running a marathon. For a good, hard two hour session you might approach something like 1000-1500 calories. Though I guess you could be practicing for much longer than that. Eh he said 3 hours, but at 125lbs it is damn near impossible to burn 3k. At 200-225lbs with a muscular build maybe.
Regardless of this it really isn't that important. They key is to always be eating or drinking milk. I try to eat 4k cals a day right now, it takes some getting used too, and it isn't particularly fun. On the other hand 4k is less than I had to eat this summer when I was doing landscaping for 10 hours a day 6 days a week.
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On February 19 2013 11:24 feanor1 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2013 11:18 L_Master wrote:On February 19 2013 03:05 Premier wrote: Hey, whats up guys, I'm hoping somebody here may be able to shoot a few tips my way on how to gain roughly 10-20 pounds.
Currently I am 5'8, 18 years old, and 125-130 pounds. I play Squash in college and train 6 days a week, and one of my sessions will burn anywhere from 2-3 thousand calories. Since I'm burning so many calories, its hard for me to bulk up and put on muscle. Are there any foods or tricks in particular I should be looking out for?
Im playing at Nationals next weekend so after that I'm up for completely changing my training regimen, planning on incorporating more lifting in addition to the large amounts of cardio work I do. Thanks so much!
Seems unlikely That's about the same number of calories you burn from running a marathon. For a good, hard two hour session you might approach something like 1000-1500 calories. Though I guess you could be practicing for much longer than that. Eh he said 3 hours, but at 125lbs it is damn near impossible to burn 3k. At 200-225lbs with a muscular build maybe.
I dunno, 3 hour sessions going steady could hit mid 2k w/o much problem. 800 cal/hour for someone of that weight would be the equivalent of running 7:30-8 min pace which isn't really all that fast.
I'm not even sure I should have mentioned that though, as it is a little off topic from what the OP is asking about, as the key thing here is that he does need to eat above his maintenance level. That's what is going to lead to weight gain. Combined with his squash training, and perhaps some additional lifting, which I would guess he already does, that will be sufficient stimulus to gain lean body mass.
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On February 19 2013 10:03 Release wrote: Count calories.
If not gain weight, eat more.
Count again.
If not gain weight, eat more.
Get the pattern?
tl;dr
eat more
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I'd always been told rowing burned the most calories, that was whilst I was a rower though. I know rowers got through the most oxygen, which would be the most calories if the exercise was aerobic I'm guessing.
Good luck with gaining weight. Just squat heavy and eat loads, cut back if you think you're putting on too much fat.
Also regarding the calorie argument, we could all be talking about two different things: 1. Three hour workout, calories burned during those three hours. 2. Three hour workout every day, calories burned throughout the day as someone who does those workouts.
Those are going to be two different numbers right? As I understand it doing a lot of exercise regularly will cause you to be burning more calories even when not exercising. I don't think it's that unrealistic that he eats 5k calories a day but would only be eating 2k if he didn't play.
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On February 19 2013 14:02 Deadeight wrote: I'd always been told rowing burned the most calories, that was whilst I was a rower though. I know rowers got through the most oxygen, which would be the most calories if the exercise was aerobic I'm guessing.
It sounds like one of those 'bragging rights' stats that every sport likes to claim with little evidence. I would be surprised that it would be squash (tiny court) but then I've never played. I would've guessed swimming (all that resistance), but then I used to be a swimmer, so yeah...
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On February 19 2013 15:17 BoxingKangaroo wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2013 14:02 Deadeight wrote: I'd always been told rowing burned the most calories, that was whilst I was a rower though. I know rowers got through the most oxygen, which would be the most calories if the exercise was aerobic I'm guessing.
It sounds like one of those 'bragging rights' stats that every sport likes to claim with little evidence. I would be surprised that it would be squash (tiny court) but then I've never played. I would've guessed swimming (all that resistance), but then I used to be a swimmer, so yeah...
Probably so.
But it's definitely going to be an endurance sport. Nowhere else are you going to go for as long, or as consistently high percentages of VO2 as in endurance athletics. Any traditional sport has breaks, slower periods, etc. that all decrease the overall caloric expenditure per unit time.
I know that running burns around 1400-1600 cal/hr for top runners in an hour long race effort (half marathon). Anyone know similar values for swimmers or cyclists?
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Cross country skiing is also way up there.
@Premier: GL at the nationals! Lifting along with technical practice in the offseason is king. (played national level badminton at some point so I can relate )
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