Gaining Weight In-Season

Are regular trips to the buffet your only hope for gaining weight In-Season?

I’ll be the first to admit- gaining weight during the wrestling season is a very challenging thing to do.

However, it’s not impossible. It just takes a lot of discipline.

I’ve recently been asked by a number of coaches for tips on how to gain weight during the wrestling season.

And after many hours of consulting with my once overweight Min-Pin, Butters, I’ve come up with a 4-part plan that will set you up for success.

1. Nutrition

2. Lifting

3. Recovery

4. Mental Toughness

Nutrition Tips When Looking To Gain Weight In-Season

A lot of what I’m going to write about is from the Wrestling Nutrition post, so be sure to give that a look.

The first step to gaining weight In-Season is to get your diet working for you.

In order to gain weight, you must eat a surplus in calories. This is a tall order considering how many calories wrestlers burn on a daily basis during the season.

However, in order to be as systematic as possible, rather than just eating a lot all the time, I suggest this 3-step process.

1. Record all food and drink for 3 days. This can be done for up to a week but if you’re crunched for time, 3 is enough. These days should represent what an average week looks like, so consider recording 2 week days and a weekend day at a tournament or match. Or just be conservative and record it on your 3 most active days- maybe days when you both practice and lift.

2. Calculate the total calories consumed on each day and take the average.

3. Monitor your weight for about a week to see where it goes.

From there start drawing some conclusions and putting together a plan.

One of the first things you should do is to add between 500-750 calories per day to your diet.

This may seem like a lot, but if you break it up and simply add a couple hundred to each meal, you should be fine.

You can either add more of the existing food you eat, like adding 2 more eggs to your morning omelet, or add new foods.

A quick way to add more calories is by adding fat. For example, simply have a big handful of nuts, or 2-3 tablespoons of Peanut Butter. If you do this 3 times a day, you’ll add the extra calories you’re looking for.

The key here is to continue to measure your daily caloric intake to ensure that you’re hitting your goal of an extra 500-750 each day.

After a week of adding the extra calories to your diet, check your weight again. Try to check it on the same day and time as your last weigh-in. This helps to ensure consistency.

If your weight is up- congrats you’re on the right path.

If it’s about the same- shoot to add an additional 250-500 calories a day to your diet. That will put you up to 750-1000 from when you started.

Listen, I’m not going to lie to you- this isn’t going to be easy. At first you’ll think, “Oh man, this is great I get to eat more while all my teammates are cutting weight.”

But gaining weight isn’t the easiest thing in the world.

Just search Google for “how to gain weight” and you’ll see tons of articles and products for sale on how to do it.

If people didn’t have so many issues with it, there wouldn’t be tons of search results.

Some people have their secrets and patent-pending state-of-the-art systems. In my opinion, there really aren’t any big secrets.

You have to know how many calories you’re taking in and adjust them appropriately based on how your weight is responding.

**On a quick side note- make sure the calories you’re adding are ones that you know are not going to have a negative impact on your performance. For example, don’t just start eating a bunch of fast food or snack cakes. You’ll just end up feeling like shit and your match performances will reflect it.

A Side Story On Greg

One of my brother’s former training partners, Greg, is a great example of a man who puts forth maximal effort toward his goal of gaining muscle.

He’s been a competitive bodybuilder for a number of years and he has more muscle on him each time I see him. In fact, the last I knew he was over 280 and I’d guess his bodyfat wasn’t much over 10%!

His secret- exactly what I shared above.

He measures all of his meals and counts calories as well as the macro-nutrient breakdown (protein, carbs, fat). He uses that info and compares it to his weight on a regular basis.

Once, I asked him how he was able to eat as much food as he does on a daily basis and he revealed to me his big secret- exactly what I shared above.

He started adding a few hundred calories each day by introducing just a little more to each meal.

As his body adapted to the increase in calories, he added more. He continued to repeat the process until he found the total calories that worked best for him.

The last I knew he was eating around 6,000 calories per day.

A tall order for anyone , but attainable when you take it in small steps and let your body adapt.

So again, the first step to gaining weight In-Season: establish your average daily caloric intake and start to increase it week by week until you’re consistently gaining weight.

Lifting Tips When Looking To Gain Weight In-Season

When looking to gain weight, following a high-volume lifting plan goes hand in hand with a high-volume eating plan.

The same approach to adding calories to your diet should be taken when adding volume to your program.

Why?

Just imagine how you’ll feel if you take your volume from this:

a. Squat 3×8 (24 total reps)
b. Reverse Lunge 3x6ea leg (18 total reps each leg)
c. Glute Ham Raise 3×10 (30 total reps)

To this:

a. Squat 5×12 (60 total reps, more than a 200% increase)
b. Reverse Lunge 5x10ea leg (50 total reps, more than a 250% increase)
c. Glute Ham Raise 5×15 (75 total reps, a 250% increase)

Your legs will be sore for days; if not a week.

As a result, you won’t be able to practice effectively and you will slow your progress to becoming a better wrestler.

When you’re not becoming a better wrestler and your opponents are, they start beating you.

Now you’re losing to bigger guys who are technically better than you.

Not a way I’d like to spend 6 minutes…

So again, just like increasing your calories, you want to increase your lifting volume over the course of a number of weeks.

Here’s an example of a progression for a Reverse Lunge.

Week 1- 3x6ea
Week 2- 4x6ea
Week 3- 4x8ea
Week 4- 5x8ea
Week 5- 5x10ea

There, in 4 weeks you have more than doubled your volume AND you’ve been able to wrestle, compete, and hell, walk the whole time!

Increasing the volume of your accessory lifts will help provide the stimulus to put on the muscle you’re looking to gain. What I would avoid is making a big adjustment to your core lifts. These should remain focused on strength development/maintenance.

The last thing you want is to be big and muscular, but still weak.

So keep your core lifts like Box Squat and Weighted Chinups to a volume of 25 working reps or less.

A good set/rep scheme for these movements is 5×5.

And keep your Power movements (Clean variations, DB Snatch, etc.) to 15-20 reps total.

A good set/rep scheme for these movements is 5×3.

To conclude, the next step to gaining weight In-Season: increase your lifting volume over the course of a few weeks. Be sure to compare your volume increases with the results on the scale.

Recovery Tips When Looking To Gain Weight In-Season

I cover this topic in much greater detail here- Your Ultimate Guide To Recovery.

In a nutshell, the last thing you should do after a hard day of lifting and practice is to go home and plop down on your couch.

Remember- you’re doing a lot more than most, if not all, of your teammates.

With all the additional stress you put on your body it’s very important that you put some time into recovery.

Here are a few quick things you can do:

1. Massage

Use a Foam Roller, Rumble Roller, or other self-massage tool.

Don’t have any of these?

Try a baseball or lacrosse ball.

Use a PVC pipe as a Foam Roller.

Or grab a rolling pin from your kitchen to use like The Stick.

2. Hot/Cold contrast

I’m not an expert on this protocol, but basically you want to go from a hot shower to a cold one. This promotes blood flow which will bring nutrients to the muscles and help them repair.

The faster your muscles repair, the sooner you can work them again.

The sooner you work them, the more your total volume increases.

The more your volume increases (when coupled with a caloric surplus), the more your weight goes up.

In a nutshell, that’s what steroids do- they simply hasten the recovery process in the body. As a result, the user can train more frequently.

Following a good recovery plan will help you do the same.

3. Stretch

This is one of the easiest things you can do, especially when you feel like just laying down and relaxing.

Stretch whatever muscles are sore.

Don’t worry about how many sets or how long to hold each stretch.

Just stretch and focus on decreasing your soreness.

The third piece of the puzzle to gaining weight In-Season: add various methods of recovery to your program.

Mental Tips When Looking To Gain Weight In-Season

Gaining weight during the season can be mentally challenging. Here are a few things you should realize ahead of time.

1. It takes a lot of hard work and discipline.

Don’t get discouraged.

Get your shit together, track your calories, lift hard, work to increase your volume, and do recovery work.

2. You may not consistently gain weight each week.

Again, don’t get discouraged.

Stay the course.

Just add some more calories to your daily intake for the next week and see how it goes.

3. You’ll probably have to wrestle guys who are bigger than you.

First of all keep in mind that they aren’t that big.

Back before my time there were day before weigh-ins and my college coach would regularly cut 20lbs and gain it all back for a match.

Second, know that there’s more to being a successful wrestler than just being big and strong.

Yes, it certainly helps.

But instead of focusing on where your opponent may have an advantage on you, focus on where you may be better.

Your technique may be better.

You may be quicker.

Your cardio may be better.

Focus on where you’re better and develop a winning strategy around it.

Is your cardio better?

Maybe focus on a scoreless first period, only allowing an escape in the 2nd period, hand fighting and pressuring your opponent throughout, and in the 3rd period looking to score the match winning takedown.

You can’t control how prepared your opponent is.

You can control how prepared you are.

So focus on that and don’t worry about the rest.

The final step to gaining weight In-Season: “get your mind right.”

Conclusion

Alright, there you have it- my Super Easy 4-Step Process To Gaining Weight In-Season!

Fine, so it’s not that easy.

But, it is achievable if you stay focused and disciplined.

So get to work today and if you have any questions leave me a comment below.