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How I added 5kg of Muscle in 10 Weeks with No Supplements and No Gym!

My response to From Geek to Freak by Tim Ferris

Written by Jof on 14/08/09 View Comments
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Me. Approximately For me, gaining muscle is hard. For years it seemed that relentless visits to the gym and gulping down buckets of whey protein made no difference. So when I stumbled upon Tim Ferris’ post I was pretty excited; here’s a guy who put on a phenomenal amount of muscle in a short time. It sounded too good to be true (doesn’t it always?), but it was pretty convincing all the same.

So a few months ago – with nothing to lose and everything to gain – I set about the task of turbo-boosting my muscle, Ferris-style. But here’s the catch; I wanted to do it completely without supplements. That’s right; no casein, no whey protein, no Weight Gain 4000 – just simple meat and vegetables. What’s more I wanted to prove you don’t need to be a gym-obsessed meat-head to make gains, so I ditched the gym too! Crazy huh? Here’s how it went:

UPDATE [31st Aug 09]: If you came here wondering how I added TEN kilograms of muscle (rather than the 5kg now in the title) then you may be disappointed – but don’t be! If you’re aiming for 1kg a week you are probably deluding yourself (I know I was). Find out why in the follow-up post. In the meantime, enjoy the rest of the article:

1. Multi-Joint Exercises

To gain maximum weight you’re going to have to learn to love squats! Fortunately, barbell squats is a fantastic exercise that leaves you buzzing afterwards. Combined with pullups, pushups, crunches, deadlifts and rows this is a really great workout. Here’s my schedule (note; this is totally ripped from Stronglifts.com, so please visit their site!)

Day 1 Day 2
Squat 5×5 Squat 5×5
Bench Press 5×5 Overhead Press 5×5
Inverted Rows 3 Sets to Failure Deadlift 1×5
Push-ups 3 Sets to Failure Pull-ups/Chin-ups 3 Sets to Failure
Reverse Crunch 3×12 Prone Bridges 3x30sec

2. Record Everything

Measure your weight, body fat, dimensions and all your calories. How will you know to eat more or less if you don’t know what the changes are? I recorded my body fat using calipers I bought from Amazon (these ones are the best, in my experience). I cannot stress enough how important this is; you MUST measure your % body fat accurately – looking in the mirror can play tricks on your mind.

3. Always Make Progress

Don’t increase your weights suddenly by 10kg and struggle to do 3 reps; simply add 2.5kg every training day to your squats and deadlifts, and 1kg to the others. But ALWAYS do 5×5. This way you’ll make great progress.

4. The Equipment

For this experiment I didn’t use a gym; I wanted to prove that all you needed was a few of our apps, and a few freeweights. It’s definitely doable, but making a home gym that’s safe requires some care – especially as the weights start to get seriously heavy. I’ll be writing how I did this, on a budget, very soon. Subscribe here to read it first.

The Results

5kg of lean muscle is a spectacular result and is actually in the upper end of what I could have expected to achieve. I also added a couple of kgs of fat (which might not be a bad thing – having some body fat is thought improve your ability to fighting, for example) but this needn’t have happened had I monitored my stats better.

All in I’m really pleased with the results because before I was totally convinced I was a slow-gainer; just goes to show what hard work can achieve. Plus it was great fun – and that’s what GymFu is all about; whatever your goals, keep your workouts fun and you’ll achieve amazing results!

Not got one of our apps yet? Don't miss out - get PushupFu, CrunchFu, SquatFu and PullupFu to start improving your health now. You can find out more about them at GymFu.com here.
  • Who was drinking whey protein as a dietary supplement to reduce weight.
  • jmak21
    Haven't been on the website in a while.
    Checked this out, looks similar to what I was doing. Mark rippletoe's Starting strength.
    I gain roughly 4kg a month, but I am taking creatine/protein/weight gainer.

    Im looking to gain 7kg more, before i start cutting. I'll probably get back into pushup when i can cut alot of the BF i gained off of me, which is quite a bit already.
    I used to do 50 pushups, now im puffed at 20, maybe im bulking too long!

  • JMak: All I say is be careful!

    I did a second experiment on myself (haven't had time to write-up yet, annoyingly, but soon) testing super-high calorie intake versus "sensible" - i.e. 5000cals versus 3000cals. What I can say is that for me (and possibly for most people - this is quite well-explored, scientifically) extreme diets do very little if anything to increase the rate at which you gain muscle but they cause you to gain a lot of fat. Worse than that, cutting afterwards can consume the muscle you gained so sometimes you are worse off.

    I make the point in the article about measuring % bodyfat but I don't think I make it strongly enough; you MUST measure your changes in body fat - looking in the mirror is very deceiving. I know this because I wasn't very thorough measuring body fat towards the end of the above test and (completely unknown to me) gained a huge amount of fat in the last couple of week.

    I'm no expert on this - I'm just exploring my health like we all are - but I'd suggest trying 3000cals for a couple of months and seeing where that gets you. Then try increasing the cals and see if that increases the rate of muscle gain (I bet it doesn't!). I'm currently of the mind that bulking and cutting isn't a great idea, and that protein shakes etc aren't needed for most people. I hope to explore all these issues in a new post in the next few weeks.
  • jmak21
    hmm.. sounds bad..
    Im taking roughly 4000 calories, this includes supplements.
    This is my first ever bulk so im unsure what to expect.

    Might cut it down a bit, I have noticed a change in my BF.
    No stats, i cant measure my BF, but i no longer have any lines on my stomach..

    thanks.
  • Yeah, I know how you feel. There's so much about cutting/bulking on the web it's difficult to see that there are alternatives. Get yourself a set of these: http://www.amazon.com/Accu-Measure-Fitness-3000-Personal-Tester/dp/B000G7YW74/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=hpc&qid=1254300808&sr=8-1 They are definitely worth it.

    But the key thing is (as with many things in life, I've come to learn!) start with the minimum, see the effect then work up from there. And even if you only gain 1kg a month of actual lean muscle, if you keep that up you'll be frickin huge after 12 months... and better still, you wont have a fat belly to match!

    Bear in mind that these are my personal non-expert opinions (not those of the company) and I don't have the authority of a lot of the beefcake experts on the web. But then, I'm also normal guy who doesn't have an affiliate deal with Maximuscle! Lol :P
  • jmak21
    Yer, I should have bought one of those before I started, I would love to know exactly how much BF i have gained.
    I have spoken to a lot of 'beefcake experts' on their view on bulking, most tell me to bulk for at least 20kg, probably due to my low weight, im 16 year old and weighed 58kg before i started.
    I am going to bulk to 70kg, I want something low so i wont gain obvious BF, dont want people calling me a fatty..

    Probably would have been in my best interests to go for the lean muscle.
  • You'll reach 70kg in a year, so I wouldn't worry; you'll be massive by the time you are 18! Lol. Just keep increasing the intensity of your training and don't skip sessions too often and you'll get there.

    Watch our twitter account for a blog post on this soon. If I haven't posted something in the next fortnight, please remind me! :)
  • jmak21
    Thanks.
    I hope to reach it in december, currently im 64kg, and i gain 4kg a month.
    Probably a bad decision since Its summer in Aus, and it will make cutting that much more harder.

    I just bought a Power rack, So now i can move up weight much quicker without fear of killing myself.

    I'll keep updated with GymFu, hopefully when i get back to my previous BF I will be able to do 50+ pushups again!

    thanks.
  • Good stuff...you get to eat loads of food and train hard without the fear of becoming a bloater. I'll look at doing this when I finish my current program. Will have to save up to buy all that food :-)
  • I spend about £10 a day on food. I buy all the meat when it's on offer :)
  • londontwat
    Seems a lot of calories that. More likely to put on fat?
    Why cannot we eat fish, cheese and pasta + vitamin drinks
    THEN exercise like crazy ?
  • Fat and muscle go hand-in-hand, but provided you keep precise tabs on everything and adjust your diet at you go it'll be mostly muscle. These big full-body workouts boost testosterone and promote muscle growth very effectively, and the high-cal nutritious diet gives your body the building blocks with which to build that muscle.

    Fish is great, although the calories are low so you'd have to eat a lot of it. Cheese probably fine. Pasta probably fine (although personally I'd rather eat 500cals of veg than 500cals of flour). Vitamin drinks? Do they actually do anything? I'm skeptical.
  • Nice post Jof, where you doing 5s down, 5s up for each rep or at normal speed? I gained between 5 and 10% strength (depending on muscle) doing that for one month after reading Tim's post (without altering diet as I'm a runner)
  • I used the cadence set by the GymFu apps (which is about 1.5s on average - it varies from app-to-app).
  • That's a good looking workout..impressive results...you'd have to work hard to burn all those calories otherwise you would be big..like a whale! How many times per week did you train?
  • Typically these types of routines will work on a cycle of 6 workouts per two weeks.

    Week 1 : A, B, A
    Week 2 : B, A, B

    And repeat.
  • I forgot to answer your training question. I trained 3 times a week - sometimes less and no more than 4 hrs in total. E.g:

    Mon: Day 1 routine
    Tues: --
    Wed: Day 2 routine
    Thurs: --
    Fri: Day 1 routine
    Sat: --
    Sun: Day 2 routine

    and so on. Sometimes I'd not have time (running GymFu is pretty time-consuming) so I think I took at least one week off during those 10 weeks. Rest is CRITICAL though. Maybe I should stress that in the post.
  • Indeed. Remember, weights build strength, but eating sleeping and drinking is what builds mass.

    These routines require you to do minimal cardio. In fact, cardio can have an adverse effect because the calorie intake is there to build mass, not to be burnt off running or cycling. It's important that people DO NOT ADD to the workouts. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that adding a day of something else will help gains. It will hinder them.

    Regarding food, Jof eats weird stuff :) Wholemeal bread is great. In fact anything wholemeal is good. Cereals are a great 'snack' to help hit the food target. Jof didn't mention that you need at least 1g per lb of body weight per day, although with a 4-5k calorie intake it's fairly hard not to hit this unless you're eating junk.
  • Oops, I meant to say that you need 1g OF PROTEIN per lb of body mass. As opposed to 1g of food obviously :)

    Make sure you do as Jof says and record your calories. It is way harder than you'd think to just estimate. To prove this point, estimate your calorie intake for today then calculate it. Bet you're 500+ off. Then consider that 500 calories per day = 3500 per week, which is the equivalent of 1 lb of body mass change.
  • Agreed on all accounts!

    In terms of amount of food you require... well, you CAN calculate it (loads of great research papers on the subject), but TBH it's best just to keep cramming in more and more wholesome food until you get the gains you want.
  • Thx Rob!

    I think you'll be surprised to hear I did no cardio AT ALL (except 5 mins rowing to activate my muscles before stretching). The reason why this works is because I was tracking my calorific requirements very closely... if I didn't gain any muscle, I added calories. If I gained too much fat, I dropped it down a bit. This is critical, I suspect - especially because your calorific requirement goes up with your body mass, which people seem to forget.

    Having said that, in ABSOLUTE terms I did gain a bit of fat along with the muscle, but in relative terms it stayed even. It's possible to do this workout and actually drop % body fat!
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