Expert: Brian - 7/11/2006

Question
Hey Brian,

Im a 14 year old male,  I play football and basketball. I've started weightlifting at a very early age and still do it now. When most people see me, they think i'm on steroids. I've got a question, how can i gain muscle with the workouts i'm doing. everytime i go to the gym, it seems that im always on the same weight and cant increase much. I'm going to a school that is big in football and I need more muscle. Some drills i do is: squats,bench press, many dumbbell exercises,shoulder presses, bicep curls,tricep curls, pull ups, 300 pushups(i did 500 yesterday), and 300 situps. When I began working out hard, i began to increase my muscle alot. But it seems that i havnt gain muscle in a pretty long while. Can you please tell me other drills or give me tips to gain muscle. I also dont eat the best foods(burgers,hotdogs,fatfoods.) I'm not fat, I have six pecs, but it seems like my stomach is still a little soft even with the 300 situps i do almost everyday. please help me!

Answer
Marcus - From your question, I didn't get a very good idea what your workout program looks like. So, hopefully some of what I offer here is different from what you're already doing.

I think the best thing you can do is to do more sets per muscle group. The best way to do this is to work one muscle group at a time. What I mean is that each day should be targeting a specific group of muscles. Something like this:

Mon - chest
Tue - back
Wed - legs
Thu - shoulders
Fri - triceps & biceps

Each day you should do 4 exercises that target that day's muscle group. Each exercise should be done for 4 sets of 8 reps. Use an amount of weight that makes doing the 8 reps challenging. Also, skip the 300-500 pushups. That will not really make you stronger.

--Brian