Bulking up...

Ok heres the scoop...

I weigh 147 right now and I plan on fighting by the end of the year. I want to gain at least 10lbs. So i can be bigger and just cut down to 145 for the featherweight division. Now cardio is very important in MMA cause you have to last 2-3 3 min rounds. Sounds like nothing but when youre going full force it can get exhausting. The main thing i need to know is if the cardio is going to slow down my muscle mass gain. Maybe i should try and gain and then work on my cardio a month or so before my fight. I dunno, any suggestions would be great.

Also i printed off a few of Roberts meal suggestions for gaining weight and i plan on making up a meal schedule soon.

I don't know how it would affect your muscle gains but for me I quit lifting immediately and went straight to cycling. For the first month(granted I started at 270lbs) I doubt I lost much muscle at all, I'm pretty sure it was almost all fat...the next month I probably lost a couple pounds of muscle at most for the next few after so I don't think you've gotta really worry about losing muscle...you may lose a little stregth though...but then again boxers go up and down in weight all the time and I doubt an elite boxer can ever really afford to take off for more than a week in terms of cardio. I think its just gonna make your life harder...which is the whole fun of the thing right!!!

Yea my theory is that if i do both then it will slow down my gaining weight. Mainly cause ill be burning more calories with the cardio.

Im kinda suprised not many people are really helping me out with this one. I guess ill have use the whole trial and error road. Thanks for your input though Veganpotter

I think the help thing is because most people don't really try to do both at once...they want to but don't really put the effort in...and thats fine but your on a timeline and most people aren't I've been on those timelines to loose weight and maintain strenght(gain if I could) but I wasn't concerned about how much muscle I gained or lost it was all about power to weight ratio...which is what I'm working on now but in the sense that I'm trying to lose 10lbs of muscle at the same time

I imagine you can gain muscle weight while doing cardio too. You would probably have to eat a lot more and sleep more

Some cyclists build muscle by using bigger gears so it cardio but it puts more tension on your muscles(bad for the knees though) so I guess you can do the same with rowing and eliptical machines and such

I'm certainly no expert on boxing; but is mass really important? I thought it was more skill, speed, cardio, reach, and strength? That doesn't necessarily mean mass ??

I agree with willpeavy about gaining by eating and especially sleeping!

From what I've learned, the only way to gain muscle is by lifting; you gain fat if you consume more than you burn, period. So maybe lifting heavy and resting heavy

When is your fight? You should post it for us.

Good luck!