Weight Gaining

Strength and speed training with weights alot of peanut butter sandwiches and protein shakes! My son is 23 but only an inch taller at 5'11 but weighs in at 190-200. He was about 165-170 his Junior year of HS and about 180his senior year. He weight trained regularly, alternating between upper/lower body. A local YMCA may have trainersthat can guide you.

Eat a peanut butter sandwich before bed.  

Drink lots of milk.  Chocolate milk is great! 

Eat lots of small meals, rather than 3 large meals, a day.

Eggs, chicken, bread, pasta, icecream....

 

I don't have a problem gaining weight at my age, but I don't think you want to wait until you are 50+.

My son has a pop-up Jugs net and tee and practices hitting in our back yard.  Hit 100 balls a day, in addition to running, weight training, etc.  

 

Do you go to Parkland or Nazareth? My son went from 5'11", 135 to 160 in four months drinking protein shakes and weight lifting. If you love baseball don't woory about making JV or varsity. Make a team and play. Who knows what happens senior year. Are you playing summer ball? Travel or Connie Mack?

Are you a pitcher? If throwing high 70's low 80's would think you could make it as a PO at the very least with reasonable pitching skills. My sons team is a competitive program & only a couple of 9th graders hit 6' mark. Mine is 5'9 130 lbs and one of harder throwing pitchers cruising high 70's. Several in 70's this class but only one over 70 last year & still a couple of pretty good pitchers. Mine also plays MIF. Several on team smaller than him.

Tim Lincecom.

4-foot-10 and 85 pounds as a high school freshman and just 5-9 and 135 pounds as a college freshman

 

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/...e_jim&id=5728944

I'd hate to see a kid hang his hat on becoming the next Lincecom. There aren't many Lincecom's versus normal circumstances. Plus Lincecom had a heavily involved father who knew pitching well enough to optimize his son's abilities.

Lincecom may be an extreme example but don't think size of poster would be prohibitive for playing HS baseball. At our school one of the most effective pitchers down the stretch winning state title this year was listed as 5'10" 125 lbs. granted the "ace" of the staff was 6'2" 220 lbs.

I'm familiar with the quality of ball in the area where the poster attends high school. His high school already has two D1 prospects. I'm guessing I may be right when I asked if he attends one of two schools. If I listed five high schools I'm sure I would have where he attends. Some of these schools have pitchers stuck on JV who could pitch varsity elsewhere. It's very difficult in a large high school to compete when you don't throw hard unless a pitcher has impeccable command. The poster didn't make the freshman team. He didn't make JV soph year. He's up against it. He needs to make JV this year or he'll be off the radar screen. He needs some bulk, velocity and command. He also needs to get on a summer team where he can get on the field.

Agree with keewart, but would add: trade your PopTarts (carbs) for protein.

 

 

Add muscle mass through a good SAQ training program.  The following applies only when you're working out hard.  To fuel your workout you need carbs; rapidly digestible for the initial workout (i.e. orange juice), and something that is digested easily but releases energy a bit more slowly (i.e. PBJ sandwich or Bagel and cream cheese).  You also need some fat and some protien.  The problem with fats and protien is that it can be a challenge to digest  so that you need to consume it a couple of hours before a work out - that's an issue if you're working out in the morning.  One way around that is a protein shake along with your PB&J sandwich.  This will provide fuel for you and your muscles.  During your workout consume water, possibly a sports drink (if you cramp for example in hot weather), and an energy bar if you're going at it hard for a few hours (i.e. football 2 adays, basketball preseason, soccer).  Within a half hour after a hard workout have some carbs and protien (a 2-1 or 3-1 ratio of carb-protien).  My son likes one of the Muscle Milk powders for that.  Carbs and protien taken right after your workout will help your muscle's in recovery and in building them up.  You need to do this within a 1/2 hour though to be effective.  My son bulked up a lot this summer, burning off fat, and adding lots of muscle.  He gained very little weight (230-235) overall but he wasn't trying to gain.  In your case, building muscles will add the appropriate weight for you.  Avoid consuming a high calorie, high fat, high protein diet as a way to add weight.  You'll gain weight but it will be useless fat.  Work your muscles hard and feed them appropriately

For gaining weight diet plays an important role. With healthy diet we can also join a gym for doing some exercises. High protein food like egg,fish and meat are good for weight gain. Protein shake is also useful for weight gain.

Click here for more information.

Make sure any time your player hits the gym he has been trained in what to do and not to do. Have seen too many injuries w kids going it alone and lifting too much to get quick results. It's not going to happen overnight. 

Gaining weight, and losing weight for that matter, is all about calorie consumption. If your goal is to gain weight you should aim to add 1 pound per week. Any more than that is an unhealthy amount. 

 

Let me stop a second and add this: your primary goal, before gaining weight, should be gaining strength. If you focus on gaining strength the weight will come. If you focus on gaining weight it can be easy for that weight to actually become detrimental to performance (heavier, less explosive, etc.) 

 

With that being said, the first priority is to look at the foods you're consuming. Keep a food journal. For a whole week write down everything you eat and drink, and at what time you do so. Be honest with yourself and evaluate how much "junk" food or unhealthy food you should omit from your diet. Once you have eliminated most (notice I said MOST and not ALL. It's important to occasionally include foods that you enjoy into your diet even if they're not the healthiest. If you absolutely hate your diet then it's not a successful diet) you need to make sure you're dedicated to a strength and conditioning program. Remember, your goal should be to gain strength!

 

After that all you have to do is eat. Eat like it's your job. Eat a big breakfast every day. If you skip breakfast you can basically give up on gaining healthy weight. Eat every couple of hours. Even when you're not hungry, EAT. (get the point yet? haha). Like I said at the beginning, it's all about calorie consumption. If you wanna gain weight you gotta consume around 500 more calories than you burn. If you're active as an athlete then you're gonna burn a lot of calories. So basically, you just gotta eat a ton!

Hey Dylan,

Former skinny kid, chiming in.

I think I graduated high school weighing in at a buck-fourty-five, soaking wet. (For reference, I was 6'2".) When I got to college I decided it was time to learn how not to be so damn skinny. I spent the next year teaching myself to lift weights and eating enough food to feed a small army.

My hard work paid off and, a year later, I was about 30 pounds heavier. Since then, I’ve managed to put on another 30 pounds. And my velocity went from sitting in the mid-80s to the low-90s.

 

Here’s (more-or-less) how I did it…

I (finally!) lifted weights.

When I started my weight-gain journey I was embarrassingly weak. I remember the first time I got on a leg press and barely managed to lift the cage (without any additional weights) for 10—maybe 15—repetitions.

Resistance training (i.e. “strength training” or “lifting weights" is a potent stimulator of something called muscle protein synthesis (in other words, “muscle growth") and will be an important, if not vital, component of your own weight-gain journey.

When you first start lifting weights almost anything will work. But that doesn’t mean you should just do “anything”. If you want to ensure constant steady progress over the long-term and avoid injury you have to approach your training in a strategic, intelligent manner.

While it’s difficult to give personalized training advice in the context of an article like this*, the ideas I’ve outlined below are a good place to start. At the beginning, take the time to learn the technique that’s right for your body and use loads that are challenging but within your capabilities. Getting bigger and strong is a marathon, not a sprint. Treat your workouts as such.

*These are really simplified recommendations. Designing strength and conditioning programs for baseball players (or any athlete for that matter is a highly-individualized process. Just like no two pitchers should be expected to throw exactly the same way, no two pitchers should be expected to train exactly the same way. (Nor should they.)

Split your week into two lower body days, two upper body days and two sprint days*.

It’ll look something like this…

Monday: Lower Body
Tuesday: Upper Body
Wednesday: Sprints
Thursday: Lower Body
Friday: Upper Body
Saturday: Sprints
Sunday: Off

 

*Note that this is just one option. There are many ways to split up your training week.

 

Each workout should include at least one multi-joint exercise (e.g. squat/deadlift variations for the lower body and pressing/rowing variations for the upper body) as well as an additional 2-3 “accessory” exercises (e.g. lunge/bridge variations for the lower body, shoulder/scapular stability exercises for the upper body). I also like to do some kind of corrective or core stability work during my “rest” periods.

Putting this altogether, a lower body day might look like this:

*After a dynamic warm-up…

A1. Deadlift Variation: 4 sets of 6 reps with 2-3 minutes rest between sets.
A2. Corrective Exercise
B1. Lunge Variation in Sagittal Plane: 3 sets of 8 reps/side
B2. Anti-Rotation Core Stability Exercise
C1. Unilateral Bridge Variation: 3 sets of 10 reps
C2. Corrective Exercise
D1. Lunge Variation in Frontal Plane: 3 sets of 10 reps/side
D2. Anti-Extension Core Stability Exercise

Each week you should be trying to increase (1) the number of reps you do or (2) the amount of weight you use. This is a goal not a requirement. Judge your abilities on any given day and adjust accordingly. Don’t be afraid to push yourself but stay sensible and know when to back-off. The number one thing that’s going to hold you back from getting stronger is getting hurt. Remember: it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

A note on aerobic training

“But there’s no running in your program. What gives?”

When I was growing up, many pitching coaches considered long-distance running to be the Holy Grail of physical conditioning for pitchers. We would run poles until the cows came home. I was so awful at it that Eric Cressey has done a fantastic job dismantling this dogmatic approach to training pitchers. According to Cressey, a repetitive motion like jogging can cause pitchers to lose mobility in their hips. “That’s the very mobility they depend on so much to generate stride length and, in turn, velocity”, wrote Cressey on his blog in a 2008 article series entitled, A New Model for Training Between Starts.

That's not to say that aerobic training is not beneficial for pitchers; increasing your aerobic capacity helps you recover better between training sessions (lifting, throwing, etc.) and handle a higher workload during those training sessions by increasing recovery between sets/throws. But when your main goal is to gain weight you really need to dial back how much training time you choose to devote to aerobic training (if any at all).

My general recommendation would be: if your resting heart rate is somewhere in the 50-60 beats per minute range you are probably unlikely to benefit from further aerobic training at the moment. But if you feel like you are recovering poorly between training sessions and you've appropriately addressed other recovery strategies like sleep, diet and stress management (did I mention sleep?) then adding in some light aerobic work might be a good idea.

Nothing crazy here! Start with 2 sessions per week, 20-30 minutes each at 60-70% of your maximum heart rate*.

*To estimate your maximum heart rate take the number 220 and subtract your age. So, if you're 18 years old your estimated MHR is 220 minus 18 or about 202 beats per minute.

Gaining weight is an expensive process—it takes a lot of energy. You don’t want to unnecessarily waste that energy recovering from aerobic training if you don’t have to.

I ate. A lot.

Reality check: if you’re struggling to gain weight, you don’t eat enough. Plain and simple.

I used to think I ate “so much” because I could devour an entire pizza once and awhile. <--- Lol! Silly, naïve, skinny Tavis. (I realize now that doesn’t count.) If you want to gain an appreciable amount of weight that’s going to actually have a noticeable effect on your pitching velocity you need to consistently eat more food than you currently eat.

If you’re a naturally skinny guy like me, chances are you’re going to need a ridiculous (sometimes uncomfortable) amount of food to get bigger. That doesn’t mean gaining weight is an excuse to binge on potato chips and candy bars. (Although those are okay in moderation.) The majority of the food you eat should come wholesome, unprocessed foods like vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, legumes, wholegrains, meat, fish, eggs, and dairy. But because you’re trying to get in more calories than the average person you can afford to have more “treats” than the average person.

When I was going from 145 to 205 pounds, I was eating 3-4 solid meals per day. Each meal would contain 1-2 palm-sized portions of protein, 1-2 fist-sized portions of carbohydrates, 2 fist-sized portions of vegetables, and a handful of nuts (or other source of healthy fats).

I was also supplementing with liquid nutrition in between meals and after workouts in the form of what Precision Nutrition’s Dr. John Berardi calls, “Super Shakes”. If you’re having trouble gaining weight, “Super Shakes” can be a real life saver. You can make your own shakes using the directions below…

In a blender, combine the following:

• 1 scoop of protein powder (I use whey but you can use vegetarian options like rice of pea protein)
• 1 vegetable (I like to use a handful of raw spinach or kale)
• 1 piece of fruit (I like bananas or frozen berries)
• 1 handful of nuts (or substitute with a tbsp of peanut butter)
• 1 cup of milk (you can substitute almond, rice, or coconut milk if you’re intolerant)
• 1 cup of ice

Some days I drank as many as 3 of these in between solid meals to accelerate body weight increases.

How much weight should you expect to gain?

If you’re eating properly and training hard, you should expect to gain about 1-2 pounds per week. Most experts agree that, for underweight athletes, this is a relatively safe rate of weight gain. Ideally, we don’t want to gain weight too quickly as this approach results in excessive and unnecessary increases in body fat. For the underweight athlete, gaining a bit of fat is not a bad thing (it might even be beneficial) but we don’t want to sacrifice our overall health in the pursuit of a few more MPHs.

After this the formula is pretty simple:

Weigh yourself every 1-2 weeks. If you aren’t gaining weight you need to eat more. If you’re gaining more than 2 pounds per week, maybe dial back on the amount of food you’re eating*.

*This depends on your genetics, goals, training experience and current body composition. For instance if you're really lean and you've never lifted weights before, your muscles are going to pretty sensitive to any hypertrophy stimulus and you might be able to "get away with" a faster rate of gain in the initial weeks.

Do this consistently for the next 3 months and I’ll be damned if you aren’t at least 10-15 pounds heavier (and much stronger) than you are right now. Now, think about what that would do for your weight multiplied out over a year.

Hope this helps! And let me know if you have any questions.

Cheers,
Tavis

Great info Tavis,

Gaining for hard gainers is, well....hard.  

One thing I did was made my own mix of oats, honey, tons of almonds and fresh raspberries....some super foods and very calorie dense almonds....baked it up and it wasn't half bad.  Took a few go arounds to get it decent though.  

Half a jar of honey roasted peanuts with a large glass of whole milk will give you about 1,500 calories. 

Thanks for joining the site Travis.  In my family unfortunately gaining weight is not an issue!  But I look forward to all sorts of strength and fitness info from you.  We can never have too many opinions and viewpoints on this!

Thanks! I hope to provide as much high-quality information & support as I can.

Wonder what happened to original poster. He was a 2015 who never made HS team. My guess he never went to next level, as he mentioned not having money for travel ball or showcases. Hopefully he was able to go on to college.

Travis have you heard of a supplement called C4? Thoughts?

I'm familiar with C4 but I've never tried it myself. I tend to shy away from pre-workout stimulants myself and I rarely (if ever) recommend them to my athletes (and, for what it's worth, never to my high school athletes) because they decrease perceived exertion and can lead to falsely high training intensities which can lead to burnout/overtraining.

That being said, I think it's perfectly fine to use stimulants sparingly (once and a while), such as when you haven't slept well but you want to perform the next day. But in these cases, caffeine (about the amount you find in a coffee) and/or creatine have been shown to work extremely well for this purpose. (And they're much cheaper/safer than a product like C4!)

It's also important to note that different people respond vastly differently to the compounds that are in popular pre-workouts like C4. Because of this, you could end up taking too much (not good) but you could also be taking too little to see an effect -- it works both ways.

The final consideration for any athlete (high school and beyond) considering any supplement is:

Are supplements really necessary for me at this time? Do I truly believe this is what is going to make the difference in my training? What else can be improved first? Do I have an intelligent strength & conditioning program that takes into account the specific demands of my position? That's geared towards my individual goals? Could my nutrition be improved? Am I eating enough calories, protein and/or carbohydrates to fuel recovery? Am I sleeping well? Do I consistently get 7-9 hours of deep sleep/night? Do I take advantage of other recovery strategies? Do I do all of those things consistently well? How can I improve those first?

Hope this helps! And if you have any more questions, feel free to shoot me a message.

Tavis

No idea what C4 is, but loved the final paragraph from tavisbruce - nicely outlines numerous issues that need to be addressed first before any type of stimulant should be considered.  As for his portion sizes when trying to gain weight, I wouldn't think that much food would fit on an ordinary plate at one time.  That sounds like a blowout Thanksgiving plate everyday!

Taking this in a little different direction, assuming a kid could include one "candy" in his diet - what would the best mainstream candy be (can be purchased at your typical grocery store)?  Snickers?  Reese Peanut Butter cups?  Peanut M&M's?  Almond Joy?  Others?

"Are supplements really necessary for me at this time? Do I truly believe this is what is going to make the difference in my training? What else can be improved first? Do I have an intelligent strength & conditioning program that takes into account the specific demands of my position? That's geared towards my individual goals? Could my nutrition be improved? Am I eating enough calories, protein and/or carbohydrates to fuel recovery? Am I sleeping well? Do I consistently get 7-9 hours of deep sleep/night? Do I take advantage of other recovery strategies? Do I do all of those things consistently well? How can I improve those first?"

 

Well said.  

A couple of the most common issues I see with young players are very simple things.  

Lack of proper hydration.

Lack of proper sleep. 

Proper eating habits.  

Lack of good programming, including recovery from lifting and throwing.  

Never said I didn't have to go back for seconds! (Or thirds.) 

Dont gain weight without gaining strength too. That is counterproductive. Plus dont forget to do your sprints while you are actively adding weight to get your body used to carrying that extra weight. No reason to sacrifice speed either.

Be very selective with your supplements...... more is not always better.

I see a good portion of these diet tips include items with peanuts / peanut butter.

 

What are some good substitutes for those ingredients for a kid who has a severe peanut allergy?  Any good supplements out there that don't contain peanuts?

 

Thanks.

Dylan- size is an easy excuse for a Coach to use when he is not seeing the talent set he wants. Brett Gardner, Joey Cora, and many other MLB players are quite short- the bottom line is they can play. Adding junk weight by eating Peanut Butter and Jelly- as well as high calorie shakes is not the answer. You need to get on a strong strength/ power based training program, then redefine diet. But.. behind all of this is you need to get better as a player. No coach is going to cut a quality player due to size. Speak with the Coach about your weaknesses from the skill stand point so you know what you need to work on and what he is looking for. Start there. Then.. lets get you on a quality program.

OP, 

 

There you go, basically just do this.

 

Appreciate the post Travis! You obviously put time and effort into it and it's extremely helpful because of that.