Weight Gain

[RowBot11]

So I've tried looking through the site to find answers, but i can't find what i'm looking for. Maybe i'm bad at searching? please don't get mad at me if this is in another post or something. Maybe just direct me to it?

I'm a short vaulter in my senior highschool year. (somewhere between 5'5 and 5'7).
I weigh nothing (110-115lbs) with a high metabolism. Weight gain is difficult for me.
I only vault mid 3m right now, but am training hard with the desire to make at minimum 4m by the end of the coming outdoor season.

Does anyone else feel weight gain would be beneficial for me as a pole vaulter? I've read a lot of posts saying weight gain is bad, but often is referred to people significantly bigger than I. I do weight train frequently, with good amounts of olympic lifts (snatch, clean + jerk), sometimes some squats (med ball one foot, or with actual weights), bench, and plyos and bounds. Also in my workouts are a lot of sprints, or pole runs. I do gymnastics stuff once a week, sometimes twice, if facility is available. I do think i have a good strength to mass ratio, with very minimal fat on my body, but I feel I am not very powerful or explosive at this body size. I run a 60m in barely sub 8s, which is ridiculously slow for a guy my age. So would good weight gain be beneficial to me?

I know i still have a lot of work to do with technique, but I'm happy with the coaching I have and amount of technical training I get; I understand weight gain wont be everything, but with my weight lifting, would it be recommended for me to buy a Weight Gainer Protein shake, or just a regular one? Would the muscle weight gain be beneficial???

Thanks

[KirkB]

If you haven't already done this, search for "strength weight ratio" ... you'll get 7 pages of hits. Read them.

You do say "I do think i have a good strength to mass ratio, with very minimal fat on my body".

When I search for "strength mass ratio", I only get 2 pages of hits. But whether it's 2 or 7, you must know by now that it's your strength-to-weight or strength-to-mass ratio that's important ... NOT your weight. Yet you seem to be focused on weight gain. Weight gain without strength gain is only going to make it harder to run fast and jump high.

At 5-6 115, you must have a VERY good S2W ratio!

If that's your NORMAL weight, then I wouldn't worry about it ... just train hard and eat what you need to to keep your strength up. If you're UNDER what you think your normal weight is ... as in if you have some kind of health problems that have prevented you from eating normal amounts of food ... or keeping them down ... then yes, you should fix that. This is not a question that can be answered properly on an online forum ... you should check with a medical practitioner that can actually see how much muscle you have covering your bones ... and give you a proper assessment.

Kirk

[RowBot11]

thanks kirk for the suggestions of what to search. I guess i really am just bad at searching things.

but i didn't make one thing clear with what i was asking. Would a weight gainer protein vs regular protein powder be more beneficial as I try to get stronger, and weigh more, to keep or even improve my strength to mass ratio?

[KirkB]

I'm the wrong guy to ask ... I always avoided anything that would put on pounds ... but "weight gainer protein" doesn't sound like it's going to result in as good of a S2W ratio as regular protein.

The way you get stronger isn't by what you eat (alone) ... it's by how you train.

Kirk

[rainbowgirl28]

thanks kirk for the suggestions of what to search. I guess i really am just bad at searching things.

but i didn't make one thing clear with what i was asking. Would a weight gainer protein vs regular protein powder be more beneficial as I try to get stronger, and weigh more, to keep or even improve my strength to mass ratio?

I think they usually put less than good stuff in the weight gainers to add extra calories.

Protein powder = good. You need to be eating a LOT, but it's important that it's quality stuff (not a lot of Big Macs haha). It is possible that your metabolism is so fast that it's hard to gain muscle. It is important that ASAP after you work out you consume something that has carbs and protein, like a turkey sandwich or a protein shake. You should try eating lots of nuts. Snack a lot.

I think it would benefit you to try eating more and see what it does to your strength.

[vault3rb0y]

Make sure you focus on WHAT you eat and WHEN you eat it.

The body needs more than protien to get stronger. You need a great deal of carbs along with all the fruits and vegetables for vitamins and minerals essential in growth and repair. If you have the resources, have a salad with lunch/dinner and fruit with breakfast every day. It goes a long way in a week of eating right as far as your energy levels and your overall feeling of recovery. Of course, you need tons of carbs and protien, but i'm assuming you already have plenty of that. Stay hydrated, like over-hydrated. I try to drink 2-3 water bottles PLUS what i drink with meals throughout the day. It can help with the movement of nutrients and wastes in and out of your body (namely your muscle cells).

Always have a big, good breakfast with a variety of nutrients (carbs, protiens, fats, water, vitamins, minerals), and make sure your blood sugar is high before exercise and stays high throughout (aka drink gatorade or munch on a little something while lifting) and as soon as you can eat after a practice, the better. Also realize that your body can only process and use about 30g of protien at a time, so eating a HUGE dinner with 60g of protien might not be as beneficial as eating a balanced and substantial dinner (30g) , followed a couple hours later by another meal (30g). This will also help if you have such a high metabolism, to keep a constant flow of nutrients into your body.

Its also CRUCIAL to get the proper amount of sleep. Our sports nutritionist's quick and simple advice is that our body needs two things to recover most quickly- food and rest. As a high-level athlete you should be getting more sleep on average than the GP. I average about 9 hours a night but I have teammates averaging anywhere from 8-10, with a steep drop off in results when you dont get that minimum. Also be smart, if you have a huge workout and you feel drained, get a big meal and get to 10 hours of sleep. Your metabolism also slows down slightly when you are asleep (FWIW). I hope that gives you some ideas!

One last thing.... my teammate in high school jumped 17' when he weighed 123 Ibs and was 5'7. Certainly, there are advantages in your situation, but most important will be your explosive ability. Its up to you to decide whether how to do it, but building into outdoor if you have time a strength phase followed by a more explosive phase is going to be necessary for speed development. Talk to any athletic trainer or coach worth their salt and they could help write you a workout cycle to get you more explosive and stronger before outdoor.

[bel142]

***keep in mind I am NOT a registered dietitian, and generally neither are the people who work at GNC, you are responsible for what you put into your body***

Allot of good advice, keep in mind rapid weight gain or loss can be detrimental to health. But to continue on with what RG wrote, snack allot...

General rule of thumb... it takes about 3500 extra calories to make 1lb of muscle/fat. So if you start your training regiment and are burning 2000 calories a day and eating 2100 calories a day it would take you probably about 35 days to grow 1 lb of muscle.

If you are training (and as an athlete lets use 2500 --> 3500 calories a day) and want to put on muscle weight, then you need to consume more that you expend. The key is making sure you are training as well not just eating, putting weight on is easy, the human body has an almost infinite ability to store energy, but you want muscle not fat.

So think about where you can add in calories. Eating 200 --> 500 extra calories a day can be difficult, but snaking is a great way to do it. Eating a few handfuls of raisins, peanuts, and m&ms can put you over the top easily. So as an athletes and burning 3500 calories a day eating 4000 calories can be difficult... OR it can be easy... depends on who you are as well...

If one can add an extra 500 calories and train hard they maybe able to put on about 1lb of muscle every week. But keep in mind that is a very watered down version of general nutrition and training theory.