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ORIGINAL: CTBaker

Hi everyone,

I'm new to this forum, but not entirely new to bodybuilding. I've dabbed inexpertly in it for a long time, knowing plenty of theory but not actually putting very much of it into practice. While I actually am one of those people who annoys women by being able to eat and drink whatever I like without putting on weight, I've got to stop hiding behind that as an excuse for not getting any results from bodybuilding. Truth is, I've realised, it doesn't matter how fast my metabolism is - if I'm working out and eating properly, I should be seeing results.

So, about me. I'm 21 and 6'3", about 170lbs/77kg. I've not got a huge amount of body fat - when I was a teenager it was measured at about 6% and while it's a bit more than that now, if I tense my abs they're still pretty defined without any gym work at all. What I don't have, however, is much muscle. Saw a couple of photos of me the other day and realised I still look really skinny; I kinda expected to have filled out a lot more by the time I got into my twenties than I actually did.

I want to gain as much size and muscle mass as possible, as quickly as possible. I've tried this before, however. In the university holidays about a year ago I went to the gym three times a week for two months and worked like a demon with a personal trainer. I got noticably stronger but only marginally bigger, and I put on about 2lbs total I think. I was pretty disappointed at this and kinda gave up, because it had been an awful lot of work and I thought it was pointless to put myself through it for nothing. Now I realise that I must have been doing the nutrition wrong.

I'm coming to you guys for a decent gym programme and for nutrition ideas - once I've got both I'll start a training diary on the other section of this forum and get to it. I'll post my own ideas for you guys to look at in a couple of hours (unless anyone has something to reccommend for me in the meantime), once I've done some more research. As I'm not playing a great deal of contact sport at the moment, I'm not even particularly bothered about my physical strength - I just want to get big!

C

EDIT - forgot to mention something important, I've got a problem with my left shoulder that's a bit of a bitch. The ball in the ball and socket joint got a stress fracture or something when I was younger and healed up into a rugby-ball shape instead. This means I can't raise my left elbow laterally above my shoulder. I can raise it as high as I like forwards, so it actually took me a while to notice this, but the knock on effect is that I can't support a lot of weight with many shoulder exercises like the military press, and nor can I actually do standard squats - I can't actually rotate my left shoulder far enough back to grip the bar when its behind my neck. Obviously, this makes things a bit more complex...