Skinny and giving up on bulking

Ok so here is the situation with me:

I am 23, 135lbs, very toned with little body fat but also little muscle. I have tried in the past to build muscle with very little success. I won't say I am giving up on muscle building, but I want to try a new approach to fitness.

I have pretty terrible endurance. I'm used to working out for less then 30min 3x a week. So endurance is my new goal. BUT I do NOT want to get any skinnier then I am! I really can't afford to lose any more weight. Here is what I am thinking:

Sunday- Hot Yoga

Monday- Spartacus Workout ( http://www.menshealth.com/spartacus/workouts/ )

Tuesday- Dynamic Apnea (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_apnea) / swimming

Wednesday- Spartacus Workout

Thursday- Rest

Friday- Spartacus

Saturday- Dynamic apnea/swimming

How does this look to people? Remember, I want to get fit and get better endurance without getting skinnier!

How tall? when did you first start lifting? What programs have you tried? Give us some examples.

All of your routines look cardio-intensive. To build mass you want to do short sets of heavy weight.

If you exercise routinely your problem is probably entirely diet-related. Eat MOAR food!

Too much cardio intensive stuff. Drop it. Shove more food in your face, 3,000, 4,000 calories. Eat more saturated fats to try and stimulate testosterone, peanut butter, olive oil, coconut oil, avocados, get that to 75-100% of the RDA.

Might want to only lift 3 or 4 days a week to spare calories. Want endurance from that, do 30-60sec rest between sets, and no rest between exercises.

Do farmers walks or weighted walks for cardio once or twice a week. >20 min, endurance to the max.

Too much cardio intensive stuff. Drop it. Shove more food in your face, 3,000, 4,000 calories. Eat more saturated fats to try and stimulate testosterone, peanut butter, olive oil, coconut oil, avocados, get that to 75-100% of the RDA.

 

Might want to only lift 3 or 4 days a week to spare calories. Want endurance from that, do 30-60sec rest between sets, and no rest between exercises.

 

Do farmers walks or weighted walks for cardio once or twice a week. >20 min, endurance to the max.

What Yeti said!!!!

Sets/Rep schemes of 3x5-10 would be good too. Minimal workload with maximal pathway construction/strength/hypertrophic gains.

You would be good following a minimal Stuart McRobert style workout program........

Motivation, motivation, motivation, how do you want to look a year from now? Think of it everyday, eat more and perhaps pickup Roberts book, it has helped me a lot.

http://www.amazon.com/Vegan-Bodybuilding-Fitness-Robert-Cheeke/dp/0984391606

Beyond Brawn helped me a lot.

http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Brawn-Insiders-Encyclopedia-Muscle/dp/9963916368/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317153922&sr=1-1

Agreed on the notion to eat more and put focus on lifts known to pack on mass rather than worry about a Men's Health workout-du-jour that won't likely do much of anything for your goals.

You can still work on endurance while lifting hard and heavy by simply decreasing rest periods and/or incresaing the workload volume - it's not really rocket science, if you've got poor endurance due to having usually done 30 minutes or less of training (I can already see one reason right there why you aren't gaining mass via such short workouts...) you're going to need to train longer and more intensely to build the endurance factor.

Also consider, if you're not upping the calories and are already finding that you can't seem to gain and tend to lose ground over time, you're only going to see things get worse if you train harder/longer/etc. without putting more quality food in your body. Don't neglect the food, I know that far too many people worry "I don't want to get fat!", but it isn't as if fat just sneaks up one day and deposits 20+ lbs. on your midsection. Monitor your progress (visually, and preferably by getting periodic bodyfat measurements by someone else), focus on what's known to really work for achieving your goals, eat more, train hard, and things will fall into place so long as you experiment and don't let fear steer you away from what's best to get where you want to go.

If all else fails and you're dead-set on short workouts that will build enduance and strength, look for a good Crossfit gym in your area. For those who need some guidance and want shorter workouts that are pre-structured and will have both elements of building strength and overall fitness endurance, you could do worse! Or, you could just eat more, squat, deadlift, overhead press, row and bench hard and heavy, and let nature take its course!

I hate to say it but be careful with Crossfit gyms. They tend to really focus on speed and timing and sometimes miss technique.

From what I can see, they mostly focus on draining your wallet.

Crossfit, unfortunately, doesn't seem to be universally great from one facility to the next. Some are definitely fly-by-night operations trying to cash in on the craze, some are run by great people who know their stuff, it will definitely vary from one to the next. And, agreed that sometimes they're not the best for learning excellent technique, that's another factor that can vary wildly from one to the next. It's probably best to check out a bit of background on any Crossfit facilities in your area to see what type of people they're catering to, what credentials the trainers have, what their clientele looks like (after all, if they're not turning out people who have a good balance of strength and endurance who look the part, they're not doing their job!) and go from there. Just an option for those who refuse to spend more than the bare minimum training, it's better than nothing!