What are the Best Exercises to Gain Weight?

Exercises to Gain Weight

If you want to gain weight fast and healthily in the form of muscles, then exercising is a must. However, there are literally hundreds of different exercises you can do, but not all of them will help you gain weight.

One of the most common mistakes, many Ectomorphs (aka Hard Gainer) make when they first enter the gym arena (myself included), is they spend way too much time doing the wrong exercises, such as riding the bike, or bicep curls.

Sure, riding a bike for 30-60 minutes might be good for your cardiovascular health, but it will hinder you from gaining weight for two main reasons:

        It causes you to burn more calories
        It will increase your metabolism

As a Hard Gainer you will probably already struggle to eat all of the calories you need to gain weight, and you don’t need to make this more difficult on yourself by doing too much cardio!

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Exercise To Gain Weight : Lat Pull Downs

 Lat Pull Downs

There has been much debate about whether Pull Ups or Lat Pull Downs are superior for maximizing back muscles, but my personal preference is Lat Pull Downs.

Sure, Pull Ups might utilize more stabilizer muscles, but what if you can’t do pull ups yet and what do you do once you can easily lift your own weight?

In order to gain weight, you need to stimulate muscle growth, and this requires you to do a certain amount of reps and lift a certain amount of weights, which will change over time.

Lat Pulls Downs offers you this flexibility. You can easily adjust the weights as you get stronger and stronger, and can even lift more than your own weight if you wanted to.

What’s great about this exercise is that you stretch and squeeze your lats more than you could with Pull Ups, and can easily control the weights to MAXIMIZE your muscle growth.

        TIP: Squeeze and hold onto your lats for a second at the bottom of the motion

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Exercise To Gain Weight : Overhead Press

Overhead Press

‘Overhead Press’

                       is another great exercise to help you gain weight and build bigger and stronger shoulder muscles.

What I really like about this exercise it that it complements the Bench Press exercise.

For instance, if you warm up with Bench Press then there’s no need to warm up before doing your Overhead Press (although you still can if you want).

Also, by strengthening your shoulder muscles and rotator cuffs by doing Overhead Pres you will be able to lift more weights with Bench Press.

        TIP: Keep your core and abs tight during this exercise

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Exercise To Gain Weight : Bench Press

Bench Press

Next on my list of best exercises to gain weight is Bench Press, which I believe is the best Upper Body Exercise to gain weight for two reasons:

You are able to lift more weights than other upper body exercises

You are able to target muscle large muscle groups such as your chest, shoulders, and triceps.

Basically just like Leg Press you are able to lift a lot of weights, and the more you can lift, the more muscles and weight you can gain!


        TIP #1: Start with dumbbells if you struggle to lift the bar like I did when I first started

        TIP #2: Make sure you have spotter especially if you are lifting very heavy weights

Exercise To Gain Weight : Leg Press

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Exercise To Gain Weight : Leg Press

Leg Press

Many experts will tell you that ‘Squats’ is the best exercise to gain weight, but from personal experience I have found that ‘Leg Press’ is actually a lot better.

You might be wondering, why that is?

Doesn’t ‘Squats’ utilize more muscle groups and joints than ‘Leg Press’ does?

Well if you look at that criteria alone then ‘Yes’ I would agree with you, but if you take other considerations such as amount of weights you can lift, and risk of injury, then I think Leg Press is the better contender.

For instance, with the Leg Press machine I am able to lift over 300kg (over 660 pounds), but with Squats I can’t even do a quarter of that amount without injuring myself!

        TIP: Start off with light weights and gradually build up from there E.g. 20-40kg increments

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Body Building Supplements

Body Building Supplements

Bodybuilding supplements consists of various substances including proteins and amino acids, metal replacement products, prohormones, testosterone boosters and are taken by boy builders and sports persons to help building muscle or supplement fat loss. These bodybuilding supplements are also suitable for improving sports performance.

Amino acids, Branched chain amino acids, glutamine and protein:

Protein consumed by our body metabolizes into amino acids. The bodybuilders prefer most commonly three branched chain amino acids leucine, isoleucine and valine. Muscles metabolize these branched chain amino acids. Additionally these branched chain amino acids are assumed to have resistance towards muscle breakdown.

Although soy protein, a naturally occurring complete protein may sometime exhibit estrogenic activity and is therefore avoided by many of the bodybuilders, however egg protein is preferred as it is also a complete protein. Casein, another richest protein source of amino acid glutamine is preferred as it contains casomorphine additionally, which releases amino acids at regular intervals.

Bodybuilders prefer to take protein just after exercise or as a replacement of meal. Protein powders are available in the market and right quantity of these at recommended helps in making muscles, as muscles are primarily made of protein and protein also helps us in repairing and growth of muscles.

Whenever you purchase a protein packet, you must look for total serving in the pocket and gram protein, gram carbs, gram sugar and gram fat per servings. If you are lactose intolerant, you should select a protein packet, which does not contain lactose. On the basis of all these information you must select the right product suitable for you.

Metal Replacement Products:

The metal replacement products are either available in powder form or in bar form. Powder form can be mixed with water, milk or juice and can be taken thereafter, however bars can be consumed straight away.

These are made available for complete meal replacement and contains high amount of proteins, moderate amount of carbohydrates and also contains various vitamins and minerals.

Various manufacturers of metal replacement products claim to have added soy protein, egg albumin, whey protein or micellar casein as source of protein. For replacement of carbohydrates ingredients derived from oat fiber, wheat flour or maltodextrin have been added. Some may contain essential fatty acids substitute and other mineral substitutes. Some other products such as glutamine peptide and additional amino acids are also added by some of the manufacturers.

Creatine Monohydrate:

Creatine monohydrate is one of the essential organic acids. It is one of the few products suitable for making healthy muscles. Creatine monohydrate is useful for sports persons engaged in weight lifting and short-range sprinters. Creatine monohydrate works in our body and plays a vital role in making and replenishing of ATP. It is also occurs naturally in beef, pork, and salmon.

If you are on creatine, you may notice a weight gain as creatine has a volumizing effect and draws water and various other nutrients to muscle cells.

Some of the common and minor side effects associated with intake of creatine include stomach upset and gastrointestinal distress. Although, some of the recent studies on creatine shows that it has a positive influence on our heart health and it lowers our lipid profile.

Prohormone Supplements:

Prohormones are precursors to both male and female hormones. Body builders are only interested in the supplements capable to increase male hormone testosterone as at elevated level testosterone will lead to improved muscle growth. Studies carried out on various prohormone have not given the desired results. Some of the horhormone are not significant and effective and may have side effects.

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Bodybuilding: From The Pros To The Everyday Trainers

Bodybuilding: From The Pros To The Everyday Trainers

Bodybuilding’s Jay Cutler wakes up to a breakfast of 15 egg whites, a couple of whole eggs and some toast. He’s just getting started. A steak dinner comes a couple hours later. He then heads to the gym for an intense weight training session. After that, meals of chicken, buffalo meat and turkey are on the schedule. In between meals he’s taking in various supplements for extra protein and vitamin coverage.

Tomorrow’s schedule isn’t going to get any easier.

Cutler is a disciplined trainer. He has to be. In 2006 he took pro bodybuilding’s most prestigious title, Mr. Olympia, away from a legend. Ronnie Coleman, perhaps the most recognizable bodybuilder since Shwarzenegger, had won the title 8 consecutive times. Word is that Coleman wasn’t at all pleased to relinquish the title and is focused on taking it back in 2007.

When these guys walk on stage, it is an impressive sight. They weigh in excess of 260 lbs. with body fat percentages so low they aren’t even worth mentioning. It’s a display of just how far the human physique can be pushed. It’s a battle of nutrition and training strategies.

But, most of all, it’s a battle of dedication.

Bodybuilding’s rise in popularity can be traced not only to the professional ranks but to a health-conscious public that is discovering the benefits of natural bodybuilding. Keeping the workout intensity and healthy diet but subtracting the drugs has led to increase in six-pack abs and bulging biceps in the everyday population.

The dedication put forth by the sport’s top pros may be a bit much for the average person — a daily diet of 5 lbs. of meat and truly grueling training is a lot to ask. However, impressive results are attainable with a more tempered approach.

People willing to put in a few intense hours a week in the gym and show some diet savvy are finding that natural bodybuilding training techniques have true power. They are feeling and looking younger. They are getting stronger and experiencing the thrill of having their physiques demand double-takes.

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