Bulking Up / Building Mass

What I Did to Start Gaining Mass
So you think losing weight is hard? Try bulking up with a fast metabolism and a vast enjoyment for cardio activities and workouts. That's my problem. A lot of people think that in order to bulk up you have to completely stop cardio workouts. I disagree. You do not have to stop working cardio, but it does help. I am going to tell you what I did, and how I put on 15 lbs. of pure muscle in just over a month without cutting too much cardio out.

Lets talk workouts first. I am not going to give you my exact program, because I don't have one and everyone is different, but I will talk a bit about what I found works for me.

Workouts
I started lifting 3-4 times a week in the mornings. In the evening hours (5 days/week) I go outside and do interval training of all kinds. I try to do different things as often as I can, both for the physical benefits, but also psychological (it keeps things fresh). Monday and Tuesday I cover all my major lifts, hitting all my major muscles. Monday is my "push" day. This entails bench press, shoulder press, squats, dips, upper abs and other accessory exercises to punish those same muscles. Tuesdays are my "pull" days. This consists of deadlift, pull-ups, biceps, lower abs and other accessory exercises in the same muscle groups. The other two lifting days change constantly. Sometimes its Monday all over again, sometimes it's all body weight, and sometimes it's full body lifting.

For my evening interval workouts outside I do all sorts of things. And I really mean that. Some days I am doing hill sprints. Others I am at the track doing different length sprints, sometimes I'm in a field doing suicides or a circuit. But the one thing that all of these have in common, is they are interval. Meaning, I give my body recovery time. Sometimes it's a full recovery, sometimes just enough to lower my heart rate a bit. I never do long distance cardio. For a few reasons. First off, it's really boring. Second, intervals work my lungs very hard while still avoiding the high impact of long distance running. And third, my goal is to build bulky explosive muscles, which I gain from the explosive nature of my interval workouts.

Nutrition
In the food department, I had to completely change the way I thought about eating. When you are trying to build mass, 2,000 calories a day will never cut it. This is not exact, but I would guess that I eat at least 5,000 calories a day, and it is all healthy. I am on a 4-5 full meals a day, high protein diet. My meals are always changing just like my workouts, but I usually have 4 eggs for breakfast cooked with veggies and the rest of my meals have a lot of proteins with lots of fruit and veggies. It was surprising to me how easy it became to eat healthy during this "bulking" diet. I feel like I am always in the kitchen cooking and when you eat that much healthy food you just don't want, or have time for, sweets. Maybe because there is no room left in you stomach. I was also taking Syntha-6 Isolate Protein Powder. Today I started using True-Mass protein by the same company, but besides the delicious taste I have not been using it long enough to talk about its effectiveness.

Well, there you go. Like I said, it is not a program, but it is the type of approach I have had to take in order to get the results I was looking for.

Always changing, always working.