Weight Training

Weight gain is not easy for high school athletes to accomplish with consistent results.  Any 130-pound freshman reading here probably already knows this.  The key to weight gain is to do everything BIG.  You must eat big and you must lift big to become big.  Try repeating this three times until it sinks in.  Many people understand strength training to be the most critical component of weight gain.  Tantamount to an appropriate strength training routine is an athlete's diet.

Here are five of the most commonly repeated suggestions for consistent weight gain:

Count Those Calories and Record Your Body Weight
Keep a food diary.  Utilizing the nutrition information printed on all food labels, count how many calories you consume over a typical five-day period.  Use a calculator to determine your five-day average caloric intake.  Remember to consider the portion size indicated on food labels.  Are you eating one serving or six servings of white rice?  Nutrition information for school lunches is available upon request in the kitchen.

Pile On The Bacon
With your five-day average caloric intake, you are ready to begin packing on the pounds.  Simply add 500 additional calories to your average daily caloric intake.  Suppose a Junior Basketball player found his average caloric intake over five days as 3,200 calories.  He would need to consume 3,700 calories each day to begin gaining weight.

Here's an often-recommended tip:  Instead of eating 3 big meals a day, spread those calories out over 5-6 smaller meals. Eat one meal every 2.5-3 hours.  Remember: To get big, you must eat big!

Hit The Gym
Come to the Wildfire weight room and speak to the strength coach.  Show Coach Zachmann your lifting card.  Weight lifting programs are not like one-size-fits-all hats.  Together you and the strength coach can develop a customized routine that will help maximize the energy potential of all the extra calories you're now consuming.

Weigh Each Friday
If you kept an accurate food diary and if you have actively pursued the extra 500 calories, you will have gained weight.  Now don't expect to see a 10lb increase in only 7 days.  Gaining more than 1 or 2 pounds a week poses a health risk and may indicate you're putting on too much fat. 1 or 2 pound gains at the end of each week is perfect.

Feast Throughout The Day
After a period of weeks you will stop seeing weight gain.  Now it's time to increase your daily caloric intake by an additional 250 calories.  Our example basketball player must not consume 3,950 calories each day to continue gaining weight.  Athletes in high school often underestimate the volume of food they must ingest every 24 hours to consume almost 4,000 calories.  This means eating a champion's breakfast loaded with carbohydrates and protein, having snacks at 9am, 2pm, and 8pm, and leaving the family dinner table slightly uncomfortable (the dinner table must be your second workout of the day).

Additional often repeated tips:
Watch your fat intake-no more than 20-30% of your daily caloric intake should be calories from fat.  Even though weight gain is your goal, you don't want to gain fat rapidly.  Fast food, potato chips, candy and other junk food should be consumed in moderation.  Try sticking to high protein low fat foods like tuna fish (and other seafood), chicken breast, turkey, lean meats, fruits and vegetables etc.
 
WATER! Drink water!  Your goal should be 1/2-3/4 of a gallon daily. Water is a critical component of your body's digestive process.  Without water your body won't efficiently digest food and absorb nutrients from food.

Sleep! YES! Sleep! The easiest, yet most over looked step.  Athletes in high school require approximately 8.5-9.25 hours of sleep each night.  Authorities who study sleep often show that teenagers average far less than the recommended sleep time for their age group.