Do a summerjob digging dirt and lifting bags. And eat extra eaccordingly, and creatine shakes. This shit just works.
There can be multiple factors
Consistent muscle stress, not enough to cause pain, but enough to encourage growth. Ensure your doing just enough exercise to get to technical failure then stop.
Sleep
Stress
Adequate high quality protein, check the diaas score, but animal protein is best
Too much sugar in the diet, which messes with insulin
Mixing fat and carbohydrates, which causes inflammation
Basically the body needs to be in balance to build muscles.
Don't worry about hypertrophy. Use something like grip strength to track your progress, not muscle bulges.
Your lack of specificity indicates you have no clear goal and no defined plan. Your progress matches that: newbie gains that will hit a ceiling shortly. That's fine, newbie gains are awesome. While enjoying those, research so you can start taking your training from "well-intentioned newbie" to "beginner".
Getting stronger, having larger muscles, losing fat, and developing boxing-specific skills are all separate goals.
Pick a goal. Find a plan from a reputable source that is designed for that goal. Follow the plan. Make sure the plan isn't just working out, but diet and nutrition to support it too.
I can gain strength through pull-ups
I can lose fat from cardio (boxing)
I can build endurance muscles by training longer
I can obtain all three points if I wanted to
Yes and no.
Doing pull-ups will make you stronger, but it’s lats and biceps, if you’re wanting to be a boxer they aren’t the most important muscles to target. Also at a point you’ll be training endurance not strength. You’ll need to add weight to overload.
Losing fat through cardio. Ehhh… like technically yes. Practically though not really. It’s really hard to out-train a bad diet. Losing fat is something best done in the kitchen not the gym. Problem is losing fat requires a callorie deficit, and gaining muscle requires a surplus. It is possible to do both but you’re really fighting biology. Do do cardio though - it’s its own benefit. Better lungs and heart is so important for everything else.
Yeah training will work endurance. Much like strength. But the way you train for the two is different. You can train both but again it’s non optimal.
The good news is that as you’re just starting out the gains should come easy so you don’t need to be optimal just yet. Keep it up and decide what you want to be your goals. Then build a focused training plan for those goals. You don’t have to do it forever either. You can initially try lose fat, then pivot into strength training, then pivot into endurance or back to fat loss or whatever suits your goals at the time.
Yes, especially during newbie gains phase, but not optimally and it will get progressively more difficult as goals become counterproductive to each other. E.g., you will rarely find intermediate+ folks attempting to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. Calorie restriction for fat loss will also impede muscle growth.
Something that has been effective for me is to do weight training being conscious of progressive overload. I do 2 upper and 2 lower days per week. I have a spreadsheet setup where i track each of the movements for each day, what weight i am at, what my target rep range is and number of sets, how many reps i achieved for each set this week, and how many last week, and some notes. Like just tips for form or a note to self to increase the weight. Using rep ranges instead of a single value for reps is important i think because as you move up in weight you will naturally be able to do fewer reps at the beginning. So, for example, you might do 3 sets of 6-10 reps of dumbbell bench press. When you can hit 3 sets of 10 reps you increase the weight and maybe you'll do 8, 8, 6 or something the next week.
Doing this you should be able to see your progress over time through increasing reps or increasing weights
if you are looking for volume, research bodybuilding - its a specific approach. strength training is also different. what you are likely experiencing is endurance (muscle/cardio/etc) training in addition to the skill bumps.
fat wont hold back muscle gain, but it will hide it. good news is that as you more build muscle, you burn more calories. less mass means better cardio, which builds muscle endurance.
good luck with the boxing! its a fantastic martial art.
Endurance muscles tend to be more compact, if I recall correctly.
yes, they are smaller, aerobic, slow twitch muscle fibers. my endurence comment was more related to delivering oxygen to the muscle, but was sloppy. was waiting for someone to poke me over it :-)
smaller functional muscle fibre size is one of the reasons you will often see very svelte endurance athletes.
you can build both slow twitch and the 2 types of fast twitch muscle fibers simultaneously with well planned workouts, but dont worry too much about this. your body will adapt to whatever you train for, just keep a good mix of everything you have mentioned so far and your body will respond.
never neglect the cardio though. a resonable mix of HIIT cardio will add aerobic capacity without sacrificing muscle mass or size. your high rep. punches with 16oz gloves will take care of shoulder endurance.
It take months, years... It is a long con game... Don't give up and keep working hard, nothing comes easy!
I have the patience, let's do it.
If you want to get bigger, you need to put your muscles under enough stress so their fibers break and rebuild stronger (you feel it as aching when they rebuild).
Lifting weights, chest press or anything with pushing or pulling at a high force can do this.
Yeah, in addition to boxing... I also do pull ups and dumbbells.
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