The Wright Direction: Health and Fitness: Hulk up...I mean Bulk.

As a personal trainer, the most usual thing you hear from people is 'how can I loose weight'? However, there are those of you out there that are at your goal weight and are now looking to build up your muscles and your size... These few tips will help:

Often, people looking to bulk up concentrate mainly on their training and forget that a good diet is equally important to supply the muscles with their needed nutrients for growth. Good quality proteins and carbs are the essential 'building blocks' required to help build up your physique and achieve real gains in size.

Proteins:

Meat
Dairy Products
Eggs
Fish

Eat 2g of high quality protein per Kg of body weight daily.

Carbs:

Rice
Pasta
Potatoes
Bread
Vegetables

The other top tips are these; eat regular meals (5-8 times daily), increase Kcal intake by about 500 daily, avoid simple carbs (white bread, sweets e.g.), drink plenty of fluid during training, take a carb-protein shake immediately after training and get sufficient sleep to help the body optimise recovery.

In terms of training, as a guide - you want to be doing 6-10 reps and 3-5 sets per exercise. To build strength and size, you need to be overloading your muscles on a regular basis to allow the necessary adaptations to take place. This is about 70-100% of your 1 repetition maximum (the weight that would allow you to ONLY do 1 rep).

However, REST is as important as training in these situations. Be sensible with your training and give your body time to rest both in between sets and in between sessions. To reach your goal, you must avoid over training which can cause your training to plateau or for you even start to see regressions. Therefore change it up every so often....There is no shame in every so often dropping the weight and doing a higher rep range (looking at endurance rather than strength). The body needs a new and different stimulus every 4 weeks or so.

Lastly, and this is a big one, PLEASE make sure you work on your WHOLE body. Don't just work on your chest and 'guns'....Walking round with HUGE frontal muscles, no back muscles and a hunch is not attractive. Neither are twiglet legs. So think about getting a whole body work out: