Anyone have experience with weight gain products?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My 14 year old son will be trying out for his high school football team next month. Unfortunately he’s built like a marathon runner, about 6 feet tall and 150 pounds. The only positions I can see him playing would be free safety, wide receiver, and quarterback. But he wants to put on lots of muscle and asked me to look into it for him, which is what I’m doing now.

Has anyone here, or anyone close to you tried to gain muscle weight? Either by supplements like protein powder, or exercise or anything else?

FWIW I have an open mind and I’m not going to make up my mind until I can get more info.

2

Supplements are supplements, not a replacement for an actual diet. Put him on a 4000 calorie per day diet–clean, healthy food, not junk food–and he’ll gain the weight. Some of that can be protein shakes and whatnot, but most of it should still be actual food.

3

ultrafilter’s advice sounds right.

One of my boys took supplements for awhile, in his 20’s. He also joined a gym and started working out, and joined a softball league. He gained a bit of weight and increased muscle definition. He stopped taking the supplements after about a year but kept exercising, and he’s managed to stay in good shape and keep the weight on.

I think the new takeout teriyaki place in his neighborhood helped too.

4

I put on about 40 lbs in a year, a few years back. It’s actually pretty easy.

Sit around all day playing World of Warcraft. Eat fatty foods eight times a day.

Stick to that regimen and he won’t want to play High School football, which never did anything for anyone, ever. But grinding out that hot level 70 armor? That’s an achievement.

5

I have never had trouble gaining weight, but I did have reasons for using protein powder and so have some opinions about them.

I read a report in one of the weight-lifting magazines regarding the various protein powders. The report ranked them thusly:

  1. Whey
  2. Egg
  3. Soy

The Egg powder is much more costly, but for my money that is the way to go. While the report said that Whey is the gold standard, Whey powder tastes horrible. The runner up - Egg - tastes much better and didn’t perform significantly worse.

There have been some studies that suggest Soy may also have some issues promoting estrogen production - something your son may not want. My doctor was dubious and he said that plant estrogen was not viable for humans and to not worry about it. However, a recent study suggest that Soy may reduce your sperm count Link

I am not an expert and - other than my opinion on taste - can not vouch for the veracity of the info found in the muscle mag.

6

He won’t gain much in a month, if anything, but should start this now for the following season.

Yes, he has to eat a ton, but clean food. Low saturated fat, high protein, lots of veggies, and he needs complex carbs also (brown rice, whole wheat bread). He should be eating at least one gram of protein per body pound per day, so he needs to be eating at least 150 grams of protein per day. Things like grilled chicken, lean beef, turkey are excellent. Many also have a protein shake or 2 becuase its so hard to get that much protein from food.

Then he needs to lift heavy, low reps in order to build muscle. Just core exercises, 1/2hour to 45 minutes per day - hard and heavy, and limit the running/cardio. Things like squats, bench, deadlifts, rows. Don’t do 2 hours of 7 different kinds of bicep curls - waste of time.

Muscle actual grows in your off day, not while lifting, and it needs protein to build. Eat carbs for energy so the body won’t burn the protein, but will instead use it for muscle building.

Eat clean + Protein + Lift heavy

7

LOL, I’m sure if he doesn’t make the team this will be an option.

Thanks for all the responses so far, looking forward to more

8

Basically, the traditional US food pyramid is a home run when it comes to picking out foods you need to gain weight. All you have to do is increase the volume, keeping proportions the same. The pyramid is available everywhere on-line. You don’t need much science beyond that.

**IF **he tries to gain weight rapidly, his body fat % is going to increase – substantially. He is already ‘lean’, and to make gains as requested he will be packing on muscle (just to carry the heavier load) and fat, and he will get stronger if he weight trains.

**Rapid weight gain **is surely a way to increase injury to joints, ligaments, tendons and even support structures such as the spinal cord (disks, etc). Mentally, it is also a burden, as the sheer effort involved will increase stress levels and decrease his immune system’s ability to ward off illnesses.

Maybe there is some begging the question going on here. For example, I have trained teenagers, adults, middle-aged men and the most durable and rugged people I know are the leanest and most flexible people. ** You just don’t need to be an Ox to remain healthy and durable on a football field (you might find the oxen to be more injury prone and with shorter careers). **

Sure, you need to weigh a certain am’t to play lineman, but athletes continue to prove on thing over and over and over: At the ‘skill positions’, such as QB, WR, Safety, etc, sheer body weight means very little. As the NFL grew to gigundous proportions, smaller backs continued to thrive and out pace anyone’s forecast of their durability.

**Keep him lean, flexible and make sure he eats right while he weight trains – and gain mass through weight training only! ** To simply add caloric content so he can pack on the pounds is just making terrible assumptions. The extra pounds gained merely from storing excess calories are likely to have a **negative **impact on his success, not a positive one.

9

You sure about this? 150 grams is only about 6 ounces. That’s not much chicken…

Joe

10

The only weight gain products I am familiar with are snickers and pizza so I don’t know that I can be of much help. My brother keeps trying to bulk up though (he is already incredibly huge and muscular and doesn’t need to gain anything but he is insistent on trying every GNC weight gain product in the world) and what was recommended to him was powdered milk. High protein without all the dangerous crap companies might be putting into other weight gain suppliments.

11

150 grams of Protein per day.

1 chicken breast is approx 25 grams of protein.

12

According to this site, you would need 17oz of roasted chicken breast to get around 150g of protein. That would be around three chicken breasts a day. I imagine that would get really old really fast.

13

Thanks, this is very helpful information to have. And once again I’ll mention that because of threads like this SDMB continues to be one of the great bargains for me. And thanks to all who contributed info, especially the humorous posts.

And in a couple of days I’ll start my drivers ed thread.

14

He should be lifting weights, if he isn’t already.

Try the old “breathing squats and pullover” routine - they always say it can put ten pounds on a broomstick. You do this three non-consecutive days a week - Mon-Wed-Fri or Tue-Thr-Sat.

The routine is as follows:[ul][li]Warm up adequately. Ten or fifteen squats with no weight, arm circles, hip circles, etc. []One set of crunches, done slowly. Shoot for 20-25 reps.[]Choose a weight you can normally squat for ten reps. If he is new to lifting, go about ten pounds less than what he thinks is right. Now do twenty reps with that weight. Keep your back absolutely flat, head up, and take three deep breaths between each rep. Deep breaths, such that the bar moves with each intake. If you have to pause in between reps, fine, but don’t put the bar down. Do the reps one at a time until you get to twenty.[]Immediately, with no pause whatever, lie down on a bench and do pullovers, 15-20 reps. Use a light weight, and breathe in as you lower the weight, and out as you raise it.[]Walk around gently at the end of these sets; don’t sit down. But give it a few minutes while your pulse drops below 100 bpm.[]Then, two sets of 8-10 in the dumbbell bench press[]two sets of chin-ups, to failure[]three sets of six in the dumbbell clean and press[]two sets of eight in the curl[/ul]If he feels he needs more sets or reps in any of the exercises, he isn’t working the squat hard enough.[/li]
Then add an egg a day and a glass of skimmed milk to his regular diet. And be prepared to buy some new shirts.

Regards,
Shodan