1 Surprising muscle building trick for your YOUNG ATHLETE

There are many things that I have told you about on how to build muscle. First, you've got to eat enough. If you aren't eating enough, nothing else you do will matter. You'll just be a really STRONG skinny kid.

Dead lifts are a MUST for muscle building!

The second thing is you've got to lift heavy. Heavy lifting uses lots of muscle which increases growth hormones and testosterone, both of which are necessary for muscle gain. So skip the body part splits and start doing squats, bench press, deadlifts, cleans, pullups, rows.

And building on the second point, you've got to keep the reps under 8. Anything more and you're wasting energy with reps 1-4, because those first few aren't nearly as difficult as the last 4. So make it work. A great starting point is 5 reps for 5 sets. This keeps you lifting heavy and keeps the total workload low so that you're stimulating type II muscle fibers to grow (which by the way grow the biggest).

Then you've got to sleep and allow your body to recover. This includes drinking plenty of water and sleeping 8-10 hours a day.

But there is another little trick that has been discovered to indirectly increase muscle building: Fat.

A study done by Dorgan, et al. (1996) found that those who had a fat intake of between 20-40% of their total calories had elevated testosterone levels. They also found that higher cholesterol levels were associated with higher testosterone levels. Granted this study had a pretty small sample (10 people) the outcome can still be used, but with caution. 

So how do you increase fat intake? Start eating more tree nuts, avocados, and eggs. Heck that could make a pretty good omelet right there! Grate some cheese and throw it over the top and you've got a muscle building breakfast that is high in protein, moderate in fat and low in carbohydrates!

The take away from today's lesson??

Don't be afraid of fat. Instead embrace it. But not the kind on your hips or around your belly. But rather the kind you eat. Because by boosting fat intake, you boost testosterone, and testosterone builds muscle!!

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Dorgan J. F., Judd J. T, Longcope C.C,, Brown C.C., Schatzkin A.A., Clevidence B.A., Campbell W.S., Nair P.P., Franz C.C., Kahle L.L., Taylor P.R. (1996). Effects of dietary fat and fiber on plasma and urine androgens and estrogens in men: a controlled feeding study. The American journal of clinical nutrition. 64, 850-855.

The Forgotten Part 4: The WORST thing for gaining muscle

If there is one thing that skinny guys are almost instantaneously afraid of when they start trying to gain weight, its gaining fat. 

At the first sign of their skinny guy 6-pack disappearing, they make a mad dash for the treadmill. But this is THE WORST THING they could do.

Go back to the first part of this series and see how many calories you've got to eat in order to gain muscle. What do you think happens when you hit the treadmill after a workout? Or if you spend 2-3 hours a day playing basketball with friends?

Using even more calories is counterproductive to muscle gain.

You have to eat that many MORE calories! 3 hours of basketball can burn up to 2000 calories. So now not only do you have to eat 4500 calories just to gain weight, but now you have to eat an additional 2000 calories because of what you burned playing basketball!

So what should a skinny guy be doing when he's not working out?? 

Stretch, sleep, eat. That's right. Until you start gaining weight, you need to back off all that extra curricular activity that is chewing up calories you COULD be using to gain muscle.

So unless you enjoy going crazy because you aren't gaining weight despite the dump truck worth of food you're eating, then you need to BACK OFF the extra curricular activity.

But at that point, the question becomes which do you want more: muscle, or the extra activity?