Skip to main content

Classic Bodybuilding: Vince Gironda's Weight-Gaining Tips



     For the last few days, I've been working on a post/article on the original Muscle Beach Iron Guru Vince Gironda. That piece will be much more extensive than this one, but it will also be largely about his training principles, revolutionary as they were at the time Gironda unleashed them upon the bodybuilding world. But in rummaging/scouring through old Ironman and MuscleMag International articles, I came across an article in the October '95 Ironman where Gironda listed his weight-gaining suggestions.
Gironda at his peak


     Gironda had so many innovative - not to mention downright cool sometimes - training ideas that it would be almost impossible to discuss them in one article, but I will discuss a couple of other additional nutrition ideas he had at the end of this post. But first, the tips! Here they are*:Drink water during your workout. Drink at least one pint after each muscle group worked, but dont' drink out of a fountain, because you swallow air.
     It's a necessity to eat three good, generous meals a day. Even more beneficial, if time permits, is six small meals per day. Include a lot of broiled meats, baked potatoes, stewed fruits, eggs, brown rice, thick soups, stews, nuts, and natural grains. Be sure also to include lots of green and yellow vegetables.
Drink a pint of certified raw milk in addition to your regular meals at 10am, 2pm, 4pm, and one hour before bedtime.
     Give your food a chance to digest thoroughly by lying or sitting with your feet propped up on a high footstool after each meal.
     If you take your lunch to work, be aware that the best sandwiches for gaining weight are made with 100 percent whole wheat, pumpernickel, or rye breads. Ground beef patties, tuna with mayonnaise, turkey, meat loaf, avocado and bacon, peanut butter and bacon, and cream cheese all make excellent high-protein, high-calorie sandwiches.
     Don't miss a workout unless you're ill or it's absolutely imperative. Remember, your whole bodybuilding program is based on regular habits
It's essential to get sufficient rest and sleep in order to fully recuperate from your workouts and for muscle growth to occur. I recommend eight to nine hours of sleep each night.

     Here is a sample diet that Gironda recommended for anyone attempting to gain weight:

Breakfast – two-egg cheese omelet, buttered whole wheat toast, milk. 10 liver tablets, 1 ounce amino acid, wheat germ oil, Sterogyn, Vitamin C.
Lunch – one-half pound hamburger, green salad, protein and milk drink. 10 liver tablets, 1 ounce amino acid, Sterogyn, wheat germ oil, Vitamin A.
Dinner – one-half pound meat of any kind, baked potato, salad, milk. 10 liver tablets, wheat germ oil, Sterogyn, Vitamin B, Iron tablet.
Before retiring and between meals – Protein and milk drink.**

     One cool "additional" tip that Gironda used was that of combining whole cream and ginger ale in equal amounts for any bodybuilder who was really struggling to gain weight. Gironda claimed this addition to your diet alone could really pack on the muscle mass!

     Another secret of Vince's was his "special protein drink" which was as follows:
12 oz. half & half
12 raw eggs
1/3 cup protein powder (Typically Rheo H. Blair’s product)
1 banana




*From the October, 1995 issue of Ironman magazine entitled "Messiah of Muscle, part 2"

**From the November, 1973 issue of Ironman

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The 5x10x5 Program

A HIgh-Frequency Muscle-Building Routine So Simple That It Seems Almost Too Good to Be True      A few years ago, after suffering from some herniated discs that were causing me pain, I experimented with a program so simple that I wasn’t sure it would work.  I should have known better.  After utilizing it, and getting good results, I thought it was even too simple to write about.  Readers might think I had gone off the deep end.  But I didn’t.  And I haven’t.  I’m currently using the program right now, after taking a week-long layoff in order to prepare myself for a “bigger” program a few weeks down the road.      Before using this program, I had already had a lot of success with easy strength methods.  I write about them quite a bit, so, unless this is your first time reading one of my articles, you’re already well-aware of the methodology.  With easy strength, you, typically, do no more than 10 r...

The High-Frequency, High-Volume Training Strategy

Some Thoughts and Tips on How to Design a High-Frequency, High-Volume Workout Program      I believe some of the best training programs available are ones that utilize high-frequency training (HFT).  I think that many lifters, bodybuilders, and just casual trainees believe that they are so-called hardgainers for one simple reason: they’ve used low-frequency programs (whether they were high-volume workouts, high-intensity routines or a combination of both) and could never get good results.  Many of these same lifters, if they were to engage in HFT, may discover that being a “hardgainer” becomes a thing of the past.      The one issue, however, that I have found with HFT is this: lifters often find it hard to properly program.  And because of this lack of understanding, they either use it improperly and then give up on it too soon or they never give it a chance in the first place.  In this essay, I want to show you how ...

Marvin Eder’s Mass-Building Methods

  The Many and Varied Mass-Building Methods of Power Bodybuilding’s G.O.A.T. Eder as he appeared in my article "Full Body Workouts" for IronMan  magazine.      In many ways, the essay you are now reading is the one that has had the “longest time coming.”  I have no clue why it has taken me this long to write an article specifically on Marvin Eder, especially considering the fact that I have long considered him the greatest bodybuilder cum strength athlete of all friggin’ time .  In fact, over 20 years ago, I wrote this in the pages of IronMan magazine: In my opinion, the greatest all-around bodybuilder, powerlifter and strength athlete ever to walk the planet, Eder had 19-inch arms at a bodyweight of 198. He could bench 510, squat 550 for 10 reps and do a barbell press with 365. He was reported to have achieved the amazing feat of cranking out 1,000 dips in only 17 minutes. Imagine doing a dip a second for 17 minutes. As Gene Mozee once put ...