This article is in response to another question I recently received and may ruffle a few feathers. The question came from a fit woman who is in the military, and she wanted to know if she should take a supplement called CLA because her goal is to add 4 pounds of muscle. The article briefly discusses supplementation, dietary intake and resistance training protocol as well as why cardiovascular training is a POOR use of time and energy!

I am typically inclined to modify dietary intake and training in order to assess progress prior to getting into supplementation. I have no problem recommending a multi-vitamin, some form of omega 3 (fish oil, krill oil etc) and in some cases protein supplementation. Beyond that there is much more background info that needs to come into focus.

Another thing to take into account when selecting supplements is if the product is processed or natural. If you work diligently to eat clean foods, it does not make sense to then ingest chemically manufactured products. The FDA does not test, verify or otherwise mandate what supplement manufacturers sell, so this is a tricky proposition. There are companies out there who produce natural supplements, but you have to look long and hard.

The company that I typically recommend is a company called Prograde Nutrition. They grow all of the ingredients that they put into their supplements on their own organic farms, voluntarily have every product tested by impartial third parties, and will not release a product unless it gets an “A” grade on said evaluations. Another benefit is that the products are not available for retail purchase in stores, they can only be purchased from qualified fitness professionals. I actually know the owners of the company personally, so that helps with piece of mind compared to these huge multi-million dollar corporations. I don’t believe they have a CLA product yet, but I can give you more info about other products they produce if you are interested in the future.

As a general rule, to increase muscle mass you need to increase protein consumption. I don’t know what your current intake is, but generally speaking people can stand to take in a bit more. The rule of thumb is .7grams/pound of bodyweight if you are trying to gain muscle. Are you taking in nearly 100g protein/day (this number is calculated for a person around 120 pounds)? In the short term if you really want to pack on muscle and you are active enough for your body to effectively utilize it, you can go up to a protein intake of 1gram/pound of bodyweight, but you need to spread your intake out properly throughout the day as your body can only metabolize a certain amount in a sitting. The excess will be excreted as waste, and high protein foods are typically the most expensive. Not an ideal scenario.

Most people (women especially) have a tendency toward longer duration cardio and light resistance work; the proverbial “toning”. In your instance not having any significant body fat to lose the odds are good that 3 days/week of shorter duration interval training (10-15 minutes) along with 3 days/week of a style of workout that most women avoid like the plague due to incredible mis-information in the media ie: fitness magazines, news programs etc. saying that it will make you big and bulky blah blah blah… I will explain this in a second.

The long duration cardio is often detrimental to increasing muscle mass as it can cause catobolism (your body using muscle for energy), whereas the intervals will not. Intervals are actually more effective at decreasing body fat and increasing metabolism as compared to long duration cardio training, and another added benefit is the fact that to a very small degree the high intensity of the intervals can stimulate a small amount of muscle growth. Both very good things. If you HAVE to do cardio, try not to do any more than what you have to in order to keep your PT scores up. If you want to max your 2 mile run, make sure you can comfortably hit 17:00 in your weekly run; if you can maintain that with one run per week, that is great. If not, you may have to add in an additional session. Just beware that doing cardio is not conducive to adding muscle mass.

Another benefit of the interval training is that the conditioning component, although not exactly the same as long duration work, is still effective at helping your body stay accustomed to performing sustained effort activity such as a 2 mile run.

As far as resistance training goes, this also will go against the grain as far as most people are concerned. In actuality “toning work” is a huge waste of time for most humans. By utilizing heavier loads working through multi-joint motions, MUCH more work can be accomplished in MUCH less time. The bigger the muscles you work the more benefit you get. Additionally, the more muscles you work the more benefit you get. That being said, if you work many of the largest muscles at the same time, the benefits are exponentially increased compared to isolation exercises.

Case in point: how many times have you seen the “experts” demonstrate biceps curls and triceps pushdowns? What percentage of your total muscle mass is being utilized? Maybe 5-6% in the pushdowns? Now let’s look at performing a pressing variation that you should be pretty familiar with, the pushup. We are now using closer to 50% of muscle mass (chest, TRI’s, shoulders, lats, core, hip flexors, quads etc.) What do you think will be more effective? What will stimulate more muscle fibers? What will additional muscle fiber stimulation produce?

This is a very basic example, but you get the point. By making some alterations to your training and intake, you can add a few pounds of muscle in rather short order. This is just a quick little overview of some topics that can play into your situation, and as I said previously, we would need to chat face-to-face to get things locked down for your individual situation.

Once again, please let me know what question you have so I can respond to them and help you toward your fitness goals. Leave your questions and responses in the comment section and we will do our best to answer the most common concerns that people have. Thanks for your time, and have a great day!

Tags: Article, Common Questions, Diet, Education