16 y/o 6'3, 180

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Hi i’m a 16 y/o 6"3 180lb male - have been training for a little over a year but really only had access to proper equipment in the last 6 months. When I started i was your typical tall super skinny guy, and since then i have put on about 17lb and become a little less skinny, but definitely nowhere near where I want to be! However i do realize that these things take time (Rome wasn’t built in a day!) but would appreciate any comments/tips on how I could gain mass faster, as i have a lot to gain yet.

I generally train 3 days a week, 1hr workouts starting off with a compound movement e.g. squat, deadlift, barbell row, bench press with rest periods arount 2 mins, then progress to other movements that are more focused around isolation.

I do have limited gear in my home gym: bench press, squat rack (with adjustable spotters - very handy when training by myself), dumbbells, and a home gym machine which I use for mainly leg extensions, lat pull downs, tricep pushdowns, and seated rows. I would like to purchase a leg press, but haven’t got the cash to spend on it at this stage. Also planning to put a pull-up bar in somewhere.

In the way of diet I try to have a decent amount of protein every 2-3 hours, I have virtually no sugar or alchohol, but a good amount of slow digesting carbs (eg sweet potato, wholemeal bread, brown rice etc) especially on training days.

A typical day’s food would be protein shake at 5:00 am, bacon + 3 eggs + 1/4 oatmeal + whole cream on top + banana for meal 2, meal 3 would be a wrap with some sort of meat + maybe some cashews, meal 4 would be another wrap + brown bread sandwiches x 2 slices, meal 5 protein shake, meal 6 would be meat + carbs + heaps of greens, meal 7 protein shake at 9:00.

I supplement with creatine, fish oil, magnesium + calcium, multivitamin and i have pre-workout supplement for about 1/2 my workouts.

I have only really started doing squats 2-3 months ago, and since then my squat has gone from 132 x 10 to 242 x 10. I haven’t been doing any low reps, sticking to 3 sets of 10 and staying about 2 reps away from failure until last set and then go as far as i can for the last set.

Deadlift is around the same - 242 for 10 reps, but has always been relatively strong.

I haven’t been doing any bench for the last month or so because I had a twinge in my shoulder where it was really painful to lift my arm above shoulder height (i thought i might have done a rotator cuff) but it seems to have sorted itself out now and I am slowly getting back into shoulder exercises, but keeping the weights quite low. About two months ago i did 214 for a single on bench.

I don’t do any cardio - I find that I can keep my body fat % down just by eating clean and going hard in workouts. btw i have some scales (bio-electric impedance or something technical) that claim i am 21% bf. I could be? have a look at pics and see what you think!

Sorry about the long post - I have probably include a lot of unnecessary stuff but anyway I would appreciate any tips, comments, criticism, encouragement etc!

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I think a pull-up bar would be a priority, certainly over a leg press machine (I honestly see no value at all in this for a home gym).

I think more details of your training would be useful, sets/reps, exercises and how you progress from workout to workout.

Your diet looks ok, but an idea of total calories will be useful to you so you can correlate that with the increase in scale weight and come to an understanding of how one affects the other.

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I would say that if you’ve gained 17 lbs in 6 months, and stayed lean, then you’re on the right track. I would try to continue to push your bodyweight up at a similar rate for another year. If you start to stall, add calories from both carb and protein sources. It looks like you’re not going to have a problem with bodyfat, so this shouldn’t be an issue.

If you cannot bench press without pain/injury, but you can do dips pain free, then you can substitute weighted dips for bench press. Bench press is not necessary if you’re not competing in powerlifting.

Cardio is not just for controlling bodyfat. I would do something outside of the gym to maintain/improve your cardiovascular conditioning. It could be sprinting, it could be playing a sport, it could be tire flipping. Just do something, regularly. I promise it won’t hurt your gains.

As I said earlier, you’re moving at a good rate. At this rate, you’ll have gained 34 lbs in 1 year. That’s huge, particularly if you stay lean. Don’t look for ways to move your bodyweight up faster than this. This is a marathon, and these things take time.

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Legs

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Front

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[quote]flipcollar wrote:
I would say that if you’ve gained 17 lbs in 6 months, and stayed lean, then you’re on the right track. I would try to continue to push your bodyweight up at a similar rate for another year. If you start to stall, add calories from both carb and protein sources. It looks like you’re not going to have a problem with bodyfat, so this shouldn’t be an issue.

If you cannot bench press without pain/injury, but you can do dips pain free, then you can substitute weighted dips for bench press. Bench press is not necessary if you’re not competing in powerlifting.

Cardio is not just for controlling bodyfat. I would do something outside of the gym to maintain/improve your cardiovascular conditioning. It could be sprinting, it could be playing a sport, it could be tire flipping. Just do something, regularly. I promise it won’t hurt your gains.

As I said earlier, you’re moving at a good rate. At this rate, you’ll have gained 34 lbs in 1 year. That’s huge, particularly if you stay lean. Don’t look for ways to move your bodyweight up faster than this. This is a marathon, and these things take time.

[/quote]

Thanks very much for your reply!
Although I tend to have 1-2 very large meals a day, I think that including more calories in my other meals would be very do-able without gaining very much fat if I still leave out sugar, so I intend to implement this for 3 months or so and will post results then!
Also about the cardio, I really like the idea of sprinting. I quite like the idea of being faster anyway so will definitely be doing this… I am thinking HIIT, would this be best on non-training days?

Also just a question about workout frequency, do you think 3 intense workouts per week at 1hr long is good for a 16 y/o??? - I have read a few articles that recommend this frequency for BBers my age… I generally keep rest periods pretty short except for large compounds and do a few supersets for smaller muscle groups as i don’t have heaps of time.

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[quote]NewZealander wrote:

[quote]flipcollar wrote:
I would say that if you’ve gained 17 lbs in 6 months, and stayed lean, then you’re on the right track. I would try to continue to push your bodyweight up at a similar rate for another year. If you start to stall, add calories from both carb and protein sources. It looks like you’re not going to have a problem with bodyfat, so this shouldn’t be an issue.

If you cannot bench press without pain/injury, but you can do dips pain free, then you can substitute weighted dips for bench press. Bench press is not necessary if you’re not competing in powerlifting.

Cardio is not just for controlling bodyfat. I would do something outside of the gym to maintain/improve your cardiovascular conditioning. It could be sprinting, it could be playing a sport, it could be tire flipping. Just do something, regularly. I promise it won’t hurt your gains.

As I said earlier, you’re moving at a good rate. At this rate, you’ll have gained 34 lbs in 1 year. That’s huge, particularly if you stay lean. Don’t look for ways to move your bodyweight up faster than this. This is a marathon, and these things take time.

[/quote]

Thanks very much for your reply!
Although I tend to have 1-2 very large meals a day, I think that including more calories in my other meals would be very do-able without gaining very much fat if I still leave out sugar, so I intend to implement this for 3 months or so and will post results then!
Also about the cardio, I really like the idea of sprinting. I quite like the idea of being faster anyway so will definitely be doing this… I am thinking HIIT, would this be best on non-training days?

Also just a question about workout frequency, do you think 3 intense workouts per week at 1hr long is good for a 16 y/o??? - I have read a few articles that recommend this frequency for BBers my age… I generally keep rest periods pretty short except for large compounds and do a few supersets for smaller muscle groups as i don’t have heaps of time.
[/quote]

I think the best way to find these kinds of things out is to try them. Implement one idea at a time for a reasonable time (3-4 weeks) and see how it affects your training.

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[quote]NewZealander wrote:

[quote]flipcollar wrote:
I would say that if you’ve gained 17 lbs in 6 months, and stayed lean, then you’re on the right track. I would try to continue to push your bodyweight up at a similar rate for another year. If you start to stall, add calories from both carb and protein sources. It looks like you’re not going to have a problem with bodyfat, so this shouldn’t be an issue.

If you cannot bench press without pain/injury, but you can do dips pain free, then you can substitute weighted dips for bench press. Bench press is not necessary if you’re not competing in powerlifting.

Cardio is not just for controlling bodyfat. I would do something outside of the gym to maintain/improve your cardiovascular conditioning. It could be sprinting, it could be playing a sport, it could be tire flipping. Just do something, regularly. I promise it won’t hurt your gains.

As I said earlier, you’re moving at a good rate. At this rate, you’ll have gained 34 lbs in 1 year. That’s huge, particularly if you stay lean. Don’t look for ways to move your bodyweight up faster than this. This is a marathon, and these things take time.

[/quote]

Thanks very much for your reply!
Although I tend to have 1-2 very large meals a day, I think that including more calories in my other meals would be very do-able without gaining very much fat if I still leave out sugar, so I intend to implement this for 3 months or so and will post results then!
Also about the cardio, I really like the idea of sprinting. I quite like the idea of being faster anyway so will definitely be doing this… I am thinking HIIT, would this be best on non-training days?

Also just a question about workout frequency, do you think 3 intense workouts per week at 1hr long is good for a 16 y/o??? - I have read a few articles that recommend this frequency for BBers my age… I generally keep rest periods pretty short except for large compounds and do a few supersets for smaller muscle groups as i don’t have heaps of time.
[/quote]

Eating more frequently would probably be a good idea. It’s very difficult to eat enough to support a reasonable amount of muscle on a 6’3 frame eating 2 meals per day. You might be able to get away with it now, but I doubt this will work for much longer.

Do your cardio whenever you want to. You’re 16, so you should be able to handle it. Run everyday if you want to.

Your workouts sound like mine. 3 days a week is fine.

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Generally speaking you’re on the right track. Reading a bunch of articles by this guy will help boost things…

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The shoulder thing is a problem. You probably aren’t benching correctly.

Get someone who knows what they’re talking about to look at your bench. Or you could post a video.

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Sorry it wasn’t very clear - the shoulder injury was just a tweak that i got (i think it was from sleeping on it), not ‘bencher’s shoulder’, and it is now absolutely fine for bench/incline bench etc. Both shoulders do tend to click a lot, especially on incline though, which i am currently doing quite a lot of since my upper chest has hardly any muscle. Not sure if I should worry about this since there is no pain? If I bring my elbows in closer to my body this usually stops it but I don’t feel it in my chest as much that way :frowning:

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[quote]NewZealander wrote:
Sorry it wasn’t very clear - the shoulder injury was just a tweak that i got (i think it was from sleeping on it), not ‘bencher’s shoulder’, and it is now absolutely fine for bench/incline bench etc. Both shoulders do tend to click a lot, especially on incline though, which i am currently doing quite a lot of since my upper chest has hardly any muscle. Not sure if I should worry about this since there is no pain? If I bring my elbows in closer to my body this usually stops it but I don’t feel it in my chest as much that way :([/quote]

Yogi’s right, you don’t know how to bench. Remember you’ll never get a big chest if you fuck your shoulders up.

try this:

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Sorry I can’t seem to view the video - do you have a link?

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[quote]NewZealander wrote:
Sorry it wasn’t very clear - the shoulder injury was just a tweak that i got (i think it was from sleeping on it), not ‘bencher’s shoulder’, and it is now absolutely fine for bench/incline bench etc. Both shoulders do tend to click a lot, especially on incline though, which i am currently doing quite a lot of since my upper chest has hardly any muscle. Not sure if I should worry about this since there is no pain? If I bring my elbows in closer to my body this usually stops it but I don’t feel it in my chest as much that way :([/quote]

you really need to pay attention to that shit now before it gets worse. If I could go back in time and meet young Yogi that’s what I’d tell him.

Keep your shoulders healthy

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Ok I totally agree… Have a look at my benching and see what you think, I will put up some videos soon.

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hope you can see what’s going on…

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2nd video