My husband is naturally slim 5'11 and weight trains he has a nautilus gym at home and trains 4 times a week. He takes a protein weight gain and creatine as well his weight is now 12 1/2 stone but it sort of stops here and he finds it hard to put more weight on (muscle) so would he then need to eat more and train more. But theres a limit to how much you should do if you still have a life to get on with as well dont you think?

Hi hayley,

I would stick with your original conclusion that you may have toned up & added a little bit of muscle over time. Monitoring your body fat % is often a better way to judge rather than weight.

Weight training can mean many different things. An exercise with a low weight & high reps would improve endurance in a muscle but add minimal bulk. On the flip side, heavy weights & low reps to fatigue will increase strength and add muscle bulk & increase weight. If a weightlifter does a BMI test for instance, they would often come out as 'Overweight' because of the muscle bulk they are carrying.

Weight training is not of great benefit to running, though core strength is important to prevent injuries and help your posture while running. So Pilates or Yoga would be good for improving this.

Doing other cardio workouts will not do any harm and will give you variety, but will probably not improve your running times much.

If you are feeling 'beat up' it may be that your running your training runs too fast. If more than 2 sessions are 'fast' then I would look to change this.

Couldn't agree more! That's why I'm doing some glass lifting exercise tonight following by some heavy pizza reps!

Are you Dave in disguise?!

Yep, I do!

I've met a lot of body builders over the years and they tend to be obsessive about it.
One thing they all do to increase bulk is eat and eat and eat.

Lazy J is right about the method but even working out to deliberately increase bulk will only work if you eat loads! Did I mention that already?
I don't agree that weight training is no good to runners. Running does not make you strong but you need strength to run, a proper resistance training programme will help to keep you injury free.

Hi Wounded Knee,

You're right of course, you do need to eat more calories + low rep/high weights to add muscle bulk.

As for weight training for running, I'm not saying it isn't benefical for protecting against injuries, but it will not improve your running directly. I think calling it resistance training is probably a better description than 'weight' training.

Steve, I'll be putting on my 'Dave' shoes straight after work with a nice pint!