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Been looking to put on some serious weight and been doing some heavy lifting for the past 4 weeks. Going to move to follow what Robb Wolf did when he started to gain some time back.

I can so relate to the eating the part. Hasn’t been easy to go paleo and stuff a l lot of real food down in the calorie amounts required. I am trying to keep the protein shakes to a minimum, mainly post workout for recovery. Otherwise really getting a heck of a lot of food down.

Mass Gain Experience

Posted by Robb Wolf on Oct 24, 2008 in General | 52 comments

 

I’m a skinny fuck. I’ve wished I was not for sometime and the main reason for this (beyond performance improvements) would be that I am no longer mistaken as a “runner”. Yeesh. I competed in PL’ing in both the 181lb and 198lb classes in my youth but it required gargantuan amounts of food to pull that off. As soon as I was not force feeding myself I whittled back to ~160 lbs. At that time however I had NO clue about insulin management, nutrient partitioning, metabolic conditioning…I was just a whipper-snapper! So I resolved to a mass gain program for the dual purposes of improved performance and not looking like a “runner”. Here is how I tackled the training and food:

Training

I’ve talked at length with several folks including Rutman, OPT, Rip, Ido and Greg Everett on this topic and a consensus emerged:

Squat, Press and Pull, heavy and progressively. Shocker, right? I modeled Rip’s beginner program and added a few tweaks of my own. Here’s how things shook out:

Day 1-

Back Squat 5×5

Push Press 5×5

Weighted Pull-up 5×5

Day 2- “Speed Day”

10×2 power clean

Permutations of this circuit:

45″ box jump, 4 dynamic/explosive pull-ups, 4 dynamic push-ups, rounds in 10 min.

This was a very power biased WO that was metabolically challenging but not a lactate melt-down. The box jump precluded getting completely knackered lest I kill myself. I played with a lot of variations on this theme but this day was consistently made up of a tall box jump, speed press, speed pull.

Day-3

I played with a variety of CF WOD’s that ranged in the 4-8 min range. Heavy Fran, Heavy Diane, Helen, Grace etc. I might also sub this day for sprints, anywhere from 50m to 400m sprints, full recovery (4-5 min) and I stopped when I started feeling knackered.

Occasionally a sprint day popped up as a 4th training day. I only did this if I was feeling “really good” and it was always with the idea in mind that I needed to progress the loading on my 5×5 day and thus needed to be recovered.

Loading and other Junk

I started the Back squats at an embarrassingly hard 225lbs. Push Press at 135 and weighted pull up at 12 kg. I also tracked power clean loading which started at 185 lbs. My first few weeks I took a 1 min rest between sets of these exercises and wanted to fudging die. I talked to Rip and he caringly stated: “Robby you are fucking strength training, not doing a met-con…take 5 min between sets…”

I altered my rest peiod and the loading just took off. By the end of 3 months I was at back squat 315lbs 5×5, push press 190 lbs 5×5, pull up 5×5 72 kg (plus 18lbs of increased body weight…I’ll get to that later) and the power clean went up from 10×2 at 185 to anywhere from 215 to 245. I really went by feel on this and focussed on speed. If I felt strong I loaded it up, if not I went lighter. It’s interesting to note that my speed was far more impacted by travel, food and sleep than base strength progress. Silly neurological factors.

Food

I ate a lot. Really. I calced a few days and I ran between 4,200 and 5,000 cals/day of predominately paleo food. The main exception was a quart of goats milk post WO. I tolerated this pretty well and I really noticed a boost in my recovery. I took Now Foods Super Enzymes with each meal (mixed enzymes, ox bile and HCl), fish oil and I shot for 4-5 meals per day, occasionally making 6. I did not force feed at night like I’ve done in the past, but I WAS packed full of food and did not feel particularly well or healthy during this process.

Results

I went from a very scrawny 163 to a much stronger, although chubby 180. My strength improved a bunch but I really do not consider 5×5 efforts “strength” work. Too much fatigue, too little neuro activation and specificity. That considered, I think I have a shot a really increasing my strength levels with some focused work in this area. That in mind, I started the Catalyst Athletics WOD 2 weeks ago and am hammering the Olifts and and few specific gymnastics elements. I’ve curtailed the force feeding, still shooting for 4-5 meals per day but the heavy Olifting has actually brought up my BW to a solid 183 and my strength is taking off. Not bad for a 36n year old nutrition geek!

I think I mentioned in the comments that I went to a Poliquin biosignature seminar recently. I’m working on a write-up for that but for now I’ll just mention that I became aware of some significantly impaired insulin sensitivity on my part. I’m hoping the biosignature approach rectifies this situation…if it does I SHOULD be able to put on muscle mass much more easily. I’d like to run at 185-190 and ~8% BF. This seems to be where the ass-kickers live, so I’d like to give it a shot. I will update how that protocol is affecting my progress (or said another way, does that stuff work). I will also write a piece on my thoughts regarding Poliquin’s stance on CrosSfit. Sure to be popular…

About the author

Robb Wolf, author of The Paleo Solution, is a former research biochemist and one of the world’s leading experts in Paleolithic nutrition. Wolf has transformed the lives of tens of thousands of people around the world via his top ranked iTunes podcast and wildly popular seminar series. Read more…

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