My brother is an amazing person. Has a great job, wife, family, etc… but he’s 6 feet tall and 145 pounds and in his mid 30’s. He just got back into weight-lifting by re-starting his adjustable dumbbell program and he texted me this pic earlier of his workout today.
I don’t want to give him a firehose of information as I watch/listen to about 2 hours of fitness & hypertrophy videos per day. His motivation is also very fickle and I absolutely do not want for my advice to make him feel like he needs to push himself too hard (his burnout risk is high). He also has been thin his whole life and says he wants to put on more weight but he always goes back to his old eating habits after 2-3 weeks and loses any weight that he gained.
Muscle growth is metabolically expensive so should I just recommend that he train only 1-2 muscle groups (such as shoulders and biceps) if I’m 100% confident he won’t eat more?
He is motivated enough to try but his effort is mostly wasted since he doesn’t want to invest into a real gym membership because he had a nightmarish experience trying to cancel his old gym membership 5 years ago so that ship has metaphorically sailed. He also doesn’t eat enough calories nor protein.
What am I missing? I feel like there’s some helpful advice I could probably give him but I’m unable to figure out what to tell him that he should mostly focus on (since he’s still a beginner). Any/all recommendations for how to traverse this situation/opportunity would be greatly appreciated. 💪
In metric: he is around 1.82m and 65 kilos which puts him at a bmi of 19.7, which is at the lower end of a healthy range.
As a beginner doing anything is better than doing nothing, so why not just be supportive and offer to help/explain stuff but don’t give unprompted advice. There is so much you can already achieve with some weights at home and he doesn’t have to go full gymbro to see meaningful changes for health and fitness
As for the diet, maybe send some nice recipes, but don’t push it either.
Or invite him for dinner and cook something nice. If anything will work here, it’s positive feedback.
Here is a timestamped youtube screenshot of how my brother approximately looks (very tall and skinny but not sufficient to suspect eating disorder) since I should have provided an image in my OP rather than give his height/weight.
I agree and I hope to just give him encouragement and let him know that I’m very knowledgeable and will happily share info with him about any topic as it relates to hypertrophy or muscle protein synthesis. However, I’m not sure if I should get his hopes up that he will gain any muscle or strength, given his lack of insight into eating more everyday. He might be self-conscious about his thinness and I don’t want to make him feel bad about being underweight even though that’s the #1 thing that will hold him back from seeing any benefits such as strength or gaining muscle.
In your OP you only mentioned that your brother just recently got back into weightlifting but there isn’t anything about his goals in relation to that. Is he just trying to get his feet wet to get into the habit of exercising just for the sake of it (to “stay in shape”) or did he outright tell you that he wants to build muscle (and you didn’t just assume that he does)?
I agree with the person you’re replying to that a hands off approach would be best. Honestly the routine he’s doing is fine when it comes to just getting general movement in. I think the most important thing is getting him to see exercise as “something that you just do” like brushing your teeth. This is achieved more by e.g.:
rather than sending him a Google Sheets spreadsheet for the Jacked & Tan 2.0 routine for the ultimate minmaxed muscle growth. “Physical Education” in school is meant to “Educate” you to appreciate and incorporate any sort of movement into your life even after graduating. Sadly it just boils down to playing some ball games. So hopefully he can put some physical education into himself this time around.
Becoming a gymbro is very much a brainwashing process. Appreciating a “sick pump” isn’t really immediate, considering good programming & browsing nih.gov for studies isn’t either. When I started I was going to my middle school gym after hours because a P.E teacher was staying after hours so we could be supervised and be allowed to use the gym. I was doing the most dogshit workout imaginable, but at least I got “Physically Educated”.
My serious gym days are behind me but I still go to join my friend during his workout, to stretch or do 30 minutes of cardio. I know I won’t build any muscle due to low sets/week and no surplus. But I go because of the habit - exercising is something that you just do.
I talked to him today and it seemed to catch him off guard. He basically just said it’s a good habit to get into and he considers it exercise more than bodybuilding. He has 3 young kids under 5 so I’m guessing that his main reason is to do exercise in a productive way that lets him still help out around the house like if a kid starts crying or breaks something, he can immediately stop what he’s doing and take care of it.
Yes, that would be great but I fear without a goal to focus on, he will probably quit before it becomes a long-term habit. As you probably know, when you involve a habit with a long-term goal, it not only makes the habit more meaningful, but you’ll also dump 100x more effort into it rather than (like brushing your teeth) just “going through the motions” to get it over with. I’m also low-key hopeful that muscle-building will increase his appetite and help him put on 30 pounds of lean mass. He’s been toothpick-shaped his entire life and I can’t help but see his body type as sickly (even though he’s very healthy and much healthier than me).
Your brother is doing something that falls into your area of expertise and it’s expected that you’re excited and drawing up scenarios. Although I feel it’s worth respecting the bar your brother has set himself, no matter how low it is even if he is a beginner and may not know any better. To be honest, his idea is pretty smart if it’s how you described - work out at home casually so that he could be interrupted to help out his family.
You mention that he has been skinny his entire life, but when you asked him about building muscle you say it looked like it caught him off guard. My conclusion is it’s possible it doesn’t bother him that much and he may never actually lean more into bodybuilding as you’re hoping. Having a more ambitious goal would for sure make him do that and as a side effect allow you to become a proper mentor, but it sounds like he just want to work out unto itself and he’s ok with his body. He’s healthy weight after all. You’ll see in time if his motivation wanes in time and you could step in, anyway.
I’d say treat it more like a cool thing your brother is doing rather than a project where there’s your responsibility in the mix.