Total-Teardown. Need help building serious muscle.

Hello everyone. Let me start this off by painting a picture. I am a 20-year-old middleweight MMA fighter with a Jiu-Jitsu background, 6’2’’, 173lbs (fight at 170lbs) who’s looking to build serious muscle while keeping my fat levels low. I am very active, weight training and refining my art daily. I supplement with multivitamins, calcium, omega complexes, glucosamine sulphate, as well as whey and casein proteins. I’ve been told to eat between 5-6 small meals a day, but find it very difficult with my schedule. Consequently, my weight training has yielded very little results, despite the effort put in. Usually, my meal plan for the day is as follows:

 

6:00am : two bowls high fibre cereal w/skim milk and fat-free yoghurt

9:30am : one banana and a fat-free yoghurt

11:30am : one cup 1% cottage cheese w/fruit (usually strawberry)

1:00pm : two scoops creatine complex (26g) w/12 oz. water (before gym)

4:30pm : one pear and low fat, low carb protein shake

5:30pm : salad w/tuna and salsa

*2 Hour Rest Before Practice*

10:00pm : two scoops casein protein before bed

 

As for my training after work, (busboy) it starts with 30min running between 6.5 and 8.5mph at a steadily raising incline from 2.5 to 4 degrees, followed by crunches. After which, I divide my work-out into two basic programs; arms/back (bi’s, tri’s, forearms, back) and chest (chest, traps, shoulders) for about two hours, in which I alternate days. Now here’s where I need help. This routine leaves me exhausted, with very little to show for it. I am fully prepared to scrap this program and start fresh with a more sane approach, and I need all the advice I can get. Again, I am looking to gain muscle mass while maintaining, or even lowering my body fat levels. Any help is greatly appreciated. If you have any questions for any reasons, don’t be afraid to ask. Again, thank you for your help, it means a lot. Take care.

 

P.S.: I apologize for saying ‘I’ and ‘me’ so many times.

two things that are very obvious, 1 you are not getting enough protein, and 2 the cardio isn't going to allow you to put on size.

What you want to do isn't going to work with out putting on some body fat, you can always lose it later. What you might want to try and do is breakdown your yearly training cycle into meso cycles where you are in a mass building phase and a leaning out phase. In the mass building phase you up your calorie intake cut back on the cardio and do compound movements for strength and size, once you get closer to your competitive season start the cardio back up and gear back the calories so you lean out. Each time you do this you will get bigger and stronger. you have to prioritise your training.

 Lessee, shall we?

Your food schedule looks reasonable, you just need to get protein with every meal. The amino acids from your food only lasts about three hours in your blood stream, so you need to refill every three hours or you're compromising your potential gains.

 You should be eating 1.8g/kg of protein a day when looking to build muscle mass - for you that's roughly 140g/day or 23g protein every meal on a 6-meal schedule. More than that is strictly speaking overkill, but since it's hard to get an exact measurement of the bioavailability of the protein that you're eating, it wouldn't be outside the realm of sanity to aim for 25-30g protein per meal.

 Your weights schedule is overkill though. Go hard, go heavy, go home - your split is not bad but you're doing too much or not enough if you spend two hours lifting each day. If you actually lift all that time, you're doing it way too much. If you aren't lifting all the time while you're in the gym, you're not working hard enough.

 Rule of thumb: only genetic superiors like Bodyscience (and steroid users) benefit from proper weight workouts lasting longer than an hour. Every 15 minutes you spend lifting in the gym beyond one hour means compromising your potential gains by about 20% - a two-hour workout means you pretty much overtrained away the gains you could have made. Well, you can extend that somewhat with the right blend of protein and supplementation, but why? You're a fighter looking to move up a weight class or two , not a bodybuilder looking to pack on muscle just for the sake of it.

 You can get a lot done in an hour though - read my CC journal for one example of how to structure a set of workouts.

 Though your split is probably more functional for your sport than mine is, a bodybuilding protocol like what I do is not optimal for any sport that isn't bodybuilding.

But you're making two basic mistakes in your approach beyond what I've already covered - you're doing cardio and weights in the wrong order. Pre-exhausting yourself with cardio before hitting the weights means not being able to go heavy enough to make the gains you could have if you started fresh with the iron.

 And you're not doing squats. Deep squats, ass-to-calves deep, is the single best exercise for really packing on overall muscle mass all over your body. Squats work 75% of the muscles in your body and the hormonal response from doing squats will make even the muscles you don't use grow larger.

 Yes, that does mean that proper squats will make your arms grow larger :)

Thanks for replying so fast, and so brutally honest. Okay, so from what I understand, doing it all at once, trying to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time is out of the question. Priority is key. So, I'll cut the cardio and focus more on the weight training. Also, when I hit the iron, I make sure the weights are heavy enough that I can barely finish my sets before exhaustion/muscle failure, however, I do tend to take long breaks in between to recover. The trainers say we should rest 30-60 seconds, but my rest periods are no less than two minutes at a time. Is this a bad thing?

In response to Melkor, I definitely can't say I'm genetically superior, if anything my gentics are below average, as I store fat easily and gain muscle slowly. Also, what you said about my work-out, is it that any weight training over an hour is harmful? Also, would adding in more protein shakes and bars into my diet be able to substitute for meals? Because I can't exactly spend the time to cook and prepare food. Also, I'm a pretty lousy cook anyways. Thanks for the tips, it's very well appreciated. I've got a lot of work ahead of me..

How many calories does that add up to? It seems fairly low to to me.

 Sure, shakes can work - I'm an unimaginative cook myself on most days so I tend to stick with the same few basic meals. Lots of threads around here that go into more detail on eating, but yes, you can add shakes. Bars - not so much. Most of them are held together with suspiciously large amounts of sugar, hardened fats and all the other things we're supposed to avoid.

 Well, maybe BodyScience has some brand names for you that'll work in addition to shakes.

 Your genetics aren't below average, though. You're just training wrong for your body type.

 It's not that weight training over an hour is harmful per se - it's that after 45 minutes your body starts producing extra cortisol as a stress response to the lifting. And after 1 hour or so your blood serum level of testosterone crashes - it can fall by up to 80% in a matter of minutes.

 Continuing to train in that state is just counterproductive - you'll lose the gains you should have made, and your risk of injury skyrockets.

 Well, you can postphone the cortisol/test response some by pre-workout meals and supplementation, but really, if you can't get it done in an hour you're probably doing too much for your goals.

 Unless you want to move up to superheavyweight/unlimited anyway.

 Rest periods you need is more a function of what your training goal for that specific session is - the short rest periods help with cardiovascular and anaerobic fitness, but they're suboptimal for developing maximal strength.

Yep, more protein. Let me give a suggestion that my husband has actually done and the results were incredible!  He would have 4 HUGE meals a day which included a type of meat (tuna, grass fed beef, chicken,...) of HUGE proportions.  And with his meat he would eat 2 whole cans of Legumes. (any kind of beans) And he would not touch any types of sugar, much less anything else.  He drank Organic milk and water. 

He would go to the gym and MAX OUT.  Do as much weight as you can stand...as slowly as you can stand it.  The main goal is not how many reps. you can do, the goal was to pump SLOWLY which enables your muscles to grow.  Give yourself 2-3 days in between gym days.

 Within 2 months he gained 20lbs worth of mass. (without taking any kind of suplements)

you've gotten excellent advice from the above- melkor is right on... it's what I learned from him & others that got me going too.

i went from 26% fat to 19% fat in 5 weeks - I (a girl no less) packed on 10-12 lbs of muscle in that time... I ate very little in the beginning and from this site, learned to pack in protein and my good carbs only in the AM - i found too that keeping fruit (not sweet fruit) in the am/mid morn also worked better - afternoons to dinner were all protein, protein, protein & vegs - good vegs - not starchy ones like potatoes *except yams*... keep your insulin/blood sugar steady - eat 6 -8 times a day and PROTEIN PROTEIN PROTEIN. Use complex carbs in the AM to burn during the day and for your workouts...

I didn't know I could pack on muscle like I did and can't believe the difference in my body- I lifted 2x a day for 5 weeks - i've cut back to one time a day now to focus on fat loss - i did cardio 2x a day as well those five weeks for fat loss AFTER lifting - use the glycogen for HEAVY MAX lifting as posted - then ran the last resources out on cardio and mid-high intensity at HIGH TENSIONS / SPRINTS to build muscle in those hard to reach places I hate to lift on - like calves.

Overall, i've lost 5 inches in my waist, but gained 2.5 in my arms and 3.5 in my back- my legs are killer but I am a girl *sigh* I have fat on my hips and thighs to lose to get to 12-15% fat in teh next 6-8 weeks.

The only thing I can suggest is this- the creatine 'pumps' muscles up and size is lost once you stop using it... it's like a lean tissue filler.

Look into DHEA also, it's at GNC... my husband is a muscle head and SWEARS by the stuff as it is the precursor to testosterone... it is NOT a steroid and I saw his arms explode from large to LARGER after 6 weeks on it... it was sick...

Good Luck!