Total Confusion about Building Muscle: How to Realistically Bulk Up (w/o drugs)?

Hi -

I'm new here.

I want to build muscle, so I've searched for days thru different sites on weightlifting, health, nutrition, bodybuilding.  It's incredible how much contradictory and bizarre information is floating around out there, all of it presented as fact.  Gain 50lbs muscle in 1 month!  Bench 2x your bodyweight in 6 weeks! 6-pack in 2 months with only 20 minutes workout a week!  Etc, etc...

It's so confusing.  And it's amazing to me how much every "solution" relies on supplements/ steroids/ hormones.

So I was really happy when I found your forum, because y'all really seem to focus on realistic, non-doping solutions backed by legit scientific research.

So I wanted to ask what your suggestions might be to help me build muscle and bulk up.

About me:

I'm a pretty typical, half-sedentary half-athletic male, 33, 5'10" (178cm), 145lbs (66kg), 9.5% body-fat (according to the (slightly suspect!) body analyzer at the gym).

Compared to the general population, I'm definitely in good shape: stamina, strength, flexibility, nutrition and overall health.

Nutrition-wise, I eat somewhere around 2200-3000 calories a day.  Lots of fruits/veggies.  Lean chicken, tuna, tofu, low-fat milk, eggs, oatmeal, nuts, beans are my main protein sources.  No junk food at all.

I exercise 3-4 times per week.  Once a week cardio (usually some high intensity interval running or biking), 2-3 times a week weightlifting in the gym.  And some sports (volleyball, soccer, tennis) once in a while.

For my size, I'm pretty strong.  Not competition levels or anything, but after a few years of gym-work I'm strong enough now that it always surprises me (and others!) that on lots of different exercises, I can lift more weight than most gym rats who weigh 50+lbs more than me.

Don't know how useful somatotypes/body-types really are for understanding, but they're treated reverently by the bodybuiliding community.  So: I'm probably an ectomorph (hard-gainer) mostly, maybe with with some endomorph characteristics.  For 2 years or so, I didn't exercise at all and ate a lot; my weight went from 145lbs to 165lbs, and believe me, it was all fat (think man-boobs!).  Fortunately, my weight never went above 165 no matter how horrible my diet/lifestyle.  When I got back into shape, I was able to drop back from 165 to 145 relatively easily, in around 5 weeks.  I've stayed at around 145 and 10% body-fat since then, for 5 years now.

My goal:

I want to build up muscle and bulk up.  I'll never be in competitions or shows or whatever; it's just for me.   I don't ever expect (or want!) to be a hulking 200+lbs.  Don't know if it's realistic, but I'd be pretty happy with even 165-170lbs (=20-25 more than now) and around the same 10% body fat.

I've really been happy to see that I've gotten stronger over the last 3 years of working out.  My weightlifting gains aren't as fast as when I started, but I'm still gaining and definitely haven't plateaued.

However, despite getting stronger, I don't seem to grow.  No weight gains.  Same size skinny arms and legs.  And based on the results of the body analyzer at gyms (bioelectrical impedance), I figure I've gained at most 2-4lbs of muscle over 3 years.

My questions:

Without supplements or steroids, what do you think is the best strategy to build up muscle and bulk up?  

After reading and hearing so many different plans from so many different sources, I'm totally confused.  Here are some areas where there's so much contradictory info and advice:

- How many calories to eat?  Blast thru 5000 per day (or even more??) until I start gaining weight?

- Fat gain vs. muscle gain.  Is it possible/advisable to gain muscle without increasing body fat percentage?  Some plans recommend to gain huge amounts of weight, suck up getting fat, hopefully build muscle and bulk, then eventually trim down and hope the muscle stays.  Others recommend somehow maintaining my current body-fat percentage, and build up bulk thru some combo of extreme training and eating lots and lots of protein.

- How many grams of protein per kilo-weight per day?  I've seen 0.8g/kg/day, 1.2, 1.8, and even up to 3.3-4.0 (the upper-end is usually quoted in grams per pound, so 1.5-2g/lb/day).   At my current weight of 66kg, that's an enormous range which has left me confused as to what is right: from 53g/day up to 264g.  

- Training.  Heavy weights, low reps vs. lighter weights, high reps?  Frequency/duration of workouts per week?  (I'm sure y'all know this, but it's incredible how much totally contradictory information is out there on this particular topic.  I've even seen advice from Gov. Arnold himself (lol) where sometimes he says to do huge weight, low reps and then later he contradicts himself and says the opposite.  So I have no idea.).

- Finally, what is a realistic goal for muscle gain without doping?  The claims and goals for muscle gain that you see on the net are incredible, so I don't even know what to shoot for.  For example, here's a guy with pretty close to my starting stats who claims to have gained 34lbs OF MUSCLE in 4 weeks.  No idea how real this could be.  And on this forum here, I saw you discussed a guy who made incredible gains in 4 months, and you figured he must have been doping.


So, I'd really appreciate any suggestions you would have.

Thanks!

hi Kiwi_p

Calories are important when wanting to bulk up, if your fairly active which it sounds like you are id say you should eat 3000 minimum for 2 weeks whilst lifting then weigh yourself, if you dont gain, raise your calls by 200 - 250, for 2 weeks again, weigh yourself again after 2 weeks, if youve gained, you know this is your new call intake, weigh yourself every 2 weeks, if you stop gaining it means you need to up the calls again and do it only by 200-250 each time.

If you follow the method above your less likely to put fat on as your not taking riduculos amounts of calls you dont need which will get stored as fat some guys say eat 4-5000 cals a day and you end up looking like a blob.

For size you need a good routine with block builders or compound exercises, deadlift, squats, bench, bent over row etc, with some isolation thrown in, im using the routine below at the moment and have good size gains from it as have others i have given it to but you might need to adapt it for you.

As for steroids, pro hormones and other supplements>

steroids yes do give you gains but really only if your eating right and lifting heavy there mainly there to increase protien sysnthesis and recovery and the real gains come when  you use them with testerone aswell, even if your shooting roids if your diets off its kinda pointless, they also have a **** load of side effects so i woudlnt ever recommend doing them unless youve trained a very long time and have reached your full growth potential naturally, same with pro hormones too, also they can mess up your bodies own production of growth hormones and test so dont do what alot of guys do and think its a great way to get big, normally after they stop using all the gains dissapear as they're body isnt used to supporting the size.

Supplements however can be good, things like tribulus and cissus-drol which help your body increase your own natural testerone production and protien synthesis can help shed fat and give alittle size benefits to and have no sides. Ive used cissus drol recently 4 tabs aday and theyve actually improved my mood to. 

Amino acids and creatine can also be good whilst training and improve recovery, i use reflex one stop which is an all in one shake which contains creatine, protien, carbs and amino acids and stuff, theres others on the market but these are good as it stops you spending lots of money on all this stuff and i find this quite good for me.

As for the amount of protien to eat a day i think a 40,40,20 or 50,30,20 split is always a good way to go, that means either 40% of calories a day from protien, 40 from carb and 20 from fat, or 50 from protien, 30 from carb and 20 from fat. 

Lifting heavy is best for size, low reps, 3 or 4 sets of 6-10 reps, or some even say 3 sets of 6 reps at a very heavy weight with 1 warm up set with very light weight to get your muscles ready.  I found 3 sets of 6-8 reps ormally works well but depends on your body and how you feel during the workouts.

As for realistic goals on gains it depends on the person but 34lbs is like 2.4 stone and if he put that on in 4 weeks drug free id eat my hat and yours.
 
It could have been some serious bloat but ive not seen that even with guys on roids so think hes full of it.  1-2lbs per week is possible for some, other aim for 2 lbs every 2 weeks, but it comes down to the right combination of food and training and youll learn this yourself through trial and error. 

One thing id say to is avoid strenous long cardio sessions, if your naturally slim with high metabolism 15-20 mins max of running or cycling at over 40kmh is enough for you, it will keep the heart healthy and increase your metabolism enough to burn any excess cals but any more than 20 mins starts to burn lean muscle so i wouldnt go overboad when trying to bulk up.

This is the routine,

Monday
Flat barbell bench 3 sets 10 reps
Barbell bent over row 3 sets 10 reps
Barbell Military press 3 sets 10 reps
Barbell Shrugs 3 sets 10 reps
Close grip bench 3 sets 10 reps
Barbell curls 3 sets 10 reps
Cable flies 3 sets 10 reps
Seated Cable row 3 sets 10 reps

Tuesday
Squats 3 sets 10 reps
Standing Calf Raise 3 sets 10 reps
Dumbbell Lunges 3 sets 10 reps
Seated calf raise 3 sets 10 reps
Straight leg dead lift 3 sets 10 reps
Incline Crunches 3 sets 15 reps
Leg raise (lower abs) 3 sets 15 reps

Wednesday - Rest

Thursday
Barbell Incline Bench 3 sets 10 reps
Wide Grip Chin Ups 3 sets 10 reps
Dumbbell Side Laterall raise 3 sets 10 reps
Dumbbell Shrugs 3 sets 10 reps
Tricep (Skull Crushers with ez bar) 3 sets 10 reps
Seated dumbbell curls 3 sets 10 reps
Dips 3 sets 10 reps
Close grip lat pull down 3 sets 10 reps

Friday
Deadlift 3 sets 10 reps
Standing Calf Raise 3 sets 10 reps
Leg Press 3 sets 10 reps
Seated Calf raise 3 sets 10 reps
Reverse Leg Curls 3 sets 10 reps
Leg Curl 3 sets 10 reps
Incline Crunches 3 sets 15 reps
Leg raise (lower abs) 3 sets 15 reps