Gaining Size and Strength in the Off-Season
The off-season can be a great opportunity for athletes for multiple reasons. This can be a time to get away from their sport and allow for a mental break. For other athletes, this is a time to recover from bumps, bruises, and injuries that occurred during and lingered throughout the season. For some, it is a time to reflect back on their season and assess what went well, what didn’t and how they will adjust moving forward.
As many of our athletes, at BSP, return from college and their competition seasons, many of the requests are the same. Everyone is looking for improvement over last year’s performance. One of the most common requests we receive throughout the summer is the desire to increase size and strength in order to be more physically imposing, to earn a higher starting position in the rotation or to be more powerful.
In this article I will discuss some of the limiting factors we identify in athletes that are struggling to gain size and strength. I will also highlight some of the tips that we provide for these individuals.
First of all, I must begin by pointing out that I am not a dietician. I am, by no means, the professional that you should be talking to when you are considering drastic changes in your diet or looking for a meal plan. I am simply hear to provide tips and feedback that myself and many of my athletes have seen success with.
To properly address this topic I want to look at it from two standpoints:
1. The things that tend to prevent individuals from adding size
2. The habits that individuals can incorporate to aid them in their weight gain process
What is limiting your ability to gain weight?
Gaining weight, like many goals can be very difficult. It deals with the ability to change habits and this is difficult for anyone. After all, we have gotten to our current situation, good or bad, due to our current daily habits. In order to change our situation we must change our habits.
Inconsistency
The most common issue that I find when trying to gain weight (or change any habit for that matter) is consistency. Parents constantly tell me about how much their child eats. Then when I analyze their food intake for myself I see that they do indeed eat a lot when they sit down to eat. Unfortunately, this only happens once or twice a day. Or the individual will have a high calorie day then follow it with a day that brings only half of those calories. One of the major keys to weight gain is constant and consistent calorie intake. This does not need to be the same food every day, however, the number of calories should be similar each day.
This is going to be a process. Three good days of increased caloric intake will not satisfy your 5-10 pound weight gain goal. It will take weeks and sometimes months.
It is also important to note that an increased body size means an increased caloric need for the remainder of time that you intend to stay that size. You will not have the opportunity to return to the old eating habits once you have obtained your desired weight.
Eating Only When You’re Hungry
From a young age we are trained to eat when we are hungry. Babies cry when they want to be fed. Children begin to get cranky/ whiny right around lunch and dinner time. We are not a society that snacks and grazes on food throughout the day. The norm is to have “three square meals a day”. When this is our mindset we limit ourselves and the amount that we are able to consume. We should instead be using the time between meals to get additional calories by adding snacks.
In order to help prevent these scenarios it is helpful to have snacks accessible in the locations that you frequent the most. If you know that you’ll be in your car multiple times a day then keep some almonds or peanut butter crackers in your car. Consume some every time you get in your car. If you have a summer job or internship that you are spending time at, be sure to keep snacks available there.
This also takes some planning ahead of time. You must know where you plan on spending the majority of your time this summer and be sure that you something available at all times. These habits are not difficult, they just take extra attention at times.
Lack of Water Consumption
Many of us understand the importance of water for our body’s daily function. However, did you know it also plays a large part in our ability to gain and lose weight?
Water aids the body in its ability to function efficiently. This begins with the cognitive function then moves to respiratory and digestive function. Once these areas have been adequately supplied with water, the body will begin to supply water to the muscles. This is important for muscle function and growth.
In order to perform optimally, as well as, attempt to improve size and strength you must stay well hydrated. It is recommended that males consume 3.7 liters of water per day and females consume 2.7 liters of water per day. These recommendations are before any type of exercise or training. When you begin training the recommendations increase.
Be sure you are tracking and getting enough water.
Limiting hours of intake
One of the major factors that limit an athlete’s ability to grow is a restriction of time spent eating. Summer is a great time to get additional rest, spend time traveling, or increasing leisure. However, often times as these other activities increase time spent eating decreases. We can easily find ourselves waking up later, missing breakfast, then spending hours at the park or out around town, making it difficult to know when/ where we will have lunch, then finally we return home to have dinner. In this scenario, and many others that I see, our athletes are limiting themselves to one full meal each day with snacking sprinkled throughout the rest of the day.
There needs to be more hours spent eating and less hours of fasting in between. As a rule of thumb, don’t allow yourself to go two hours without eating. Set an alarm on your phone every two hours if you need to.
What can you do to help speed up the weight gain process?
In addition to avoiding the pitfalls that prevent individuals from gaining weight there are also ways that you can speed up the process. Below are a few tricks that we are sure to incorporate with each of our athletes that desire to increase their caloric intake.
Eat calorie dense foods
When selecting your food throughout the day it is important to make decisions that are best for your performance and that best fill you up. There are certain foods that are more calorically dense than others. These foods include granola, dried fruit, nuts, avocado and nut butters.
By incorporating these foods into your diet you can make it much easier to hit the caloric totals that you need in order to achieve your goals.
Drink your calories
One of the easiest ways to obtain mindless calories is to drink your calories, especially while you are on the move. This is a much easier habit to incorporate into your daily routine. With some planning on the front end you can be sure to continuously consume calories all day long.
When considering what to incorporate in your drinks think about the calorie dense foods listed above. It is great to start with a protein powder or fruit smoothly, but try to incorporate some walnuts, peanut butter, or even greek yogurt.
Eat right before bed, and as soon as you wake up
Finally, I recommend to all of our athletes that desire to gain weight that they eat prior to falling asleep. This way we are consuming calories up to the last second prior to falling asleep. Throughout the evening the body is still consuming calories, albeit at a slower rate, there are still calories being used to maintain body function.
The process of gaining or losing weight can be very difficult. As stated above, you are dealing with habit change. First highlight the habits that you would like to incorporate, then begin incorporating them one at a time. Don’t try to do everything at once. As you are successful with one habit for a week or two then think about incorporating the next.
This is a long term decision and not something that you will be able to change overnight. Take your time and have patience with yourself. If you miss a day or two, pick up where you left off. The time you spend working on your body and your performance this summer with pay dividends next season. Let’s prepare for a great season!