From: border@wilbur.nas.nasa.gov (Ryan A. Border)
Subject: Re:      About 'bulking up' for veggies or anyone.
Organization: NAS, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 92 02:37:05 GMT

loc@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM (Leigh Clayton) writes:

> Both bone and muscle mass can be increased only by exercise. You can eat more
>fat and/or protein, but without exercise it will just turn to fat (if anything)
>and if you do exercise you don't need the extra fat or protein to build muscle
>and bone mass. Some people put on muscle mass extremely slowly, but studies
>have shown that *everyone* (even very elderly people) gains muscle mass in
>response to regular exercise. The important thing is absolute regularity. At
>*least* 4 times a week you should do strenuous exercise for at *least* 20
>minutes. 

Something Leigh has forgotten to mention is the importance of recovery.  If
you're going to start a serious weight program, with the interest of putting
on muscle mass, you really shouldn't exercise the same muscles everyday.
(or 4 times a week... 2 times a week is pushing it)

When you lift weights your are partially breaking down (hurting) your 
muscles.  When they heal, they heal a little bit stronger and a little bit
bigger than they were before.  Repeating this cycle over and over is how 
you systematically increase strength & size.  For optimal results, it is 
important to let your muscles completetely (well almost, at least) recover 
before beating them up again.  Depending on idividual characteristics and 
how hard you train, recovery time seems to range from 3-5 days.

So, split your body up into 'regions' and concentrate on 1 region each workout.
This allows both better concentration on each bodypart (don't have to train
your whole body every day) and gives each muscle time to recover between its
workouts.  Rather than enumerate different 'splits' here, I'll just invite
anybody interested to email me.

> I recommend weight training because I enjoy it, and because it's the most
>convenient way to get full-body load-bearing workouts, which are the way to
>gain most bone and muscle mass. If you are very slim and want to be more
>muscular, swimming and cycling and so on are not likely to help as much, but
>*everything* physical you do will help you in some way (for example, running
>doesn't itself do much for the upper body, but the cardio-vascular conditioning
>makes a big difference in how well your weight training sessions go).

I'm not sure I agree with this...  If your objective really is to build 
size- I think running/cycling etc. might be counterproductive.  The energy
required for these activities could be better directed into weightlifting
intensity.   It is awfully hard to do both.  Also, I believe it can interfere
with muscle recovery... eg, cycling between leg workouts can't help but
interfere with the normal recovery process; *and* make the next workout more
difficult.  But, Leigh is right- a hard weightlifting regimen will require 
aerobic fitness (or 4 hour workouts :-).

My reservations also come from personal experience.  I went from a 207lb
weightlifter to a 168lb cyclist over a period of a few years.  I knew that
by concentrating on cycling I would lose muscle mass- but I have to believe
that the rate at which I lost size and strength was accellerated by the 
cycling I was doing.

Followups should probably go to some other newsgroup (misc.fitness?) 

>Leigh Clayton                  loc@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM
>    -or-                     loc@ipsaint.ipsa.reuter.COM
_______________________________________________________________________________
* Ryan A. Border               border@nas.nasa.gov,   border@craywr.cray.com  *
* Cray Research Inc., On Site Applications Analyst 415-604-4633  o__ o__      *
* Numerical Aerodynamic Simulator, NASA Ames Research Center    _.>/-.>/'_    *
* Never trust someone who can count to 1023 on their fingers.  ( ) \---\(*)...*
==============================================================================*