So You Wanna Bulk Up?: A Case Study

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"So You Wanna Bulk Up?" Especially in this era of multi-million dollar sport contracts, full college scholarships, and the high level of competition at every level of sport, many athletes that are involved with physical contact sports try to "bulk up" or gain weight so that they may become stronger, improve their sports performance, and better protect their bodies from the physical contact demanded on a routine basis. The request to gain a certain amount of weight from collegiate coaches and team recruiters to these young, highly impressionable high school players, in order to better their chances of being considered a serious college prospect is not uncommon. In fact, the goal of this junior high school basketball player (we'll call him "David" for the purpose of this report) to be in the best physical condition possible and desperately trying to meet the demands of certain college sport team recruiters, is very similar to other high school athletes that are presented with the opportunity of continuing their sporting careers at the collegiate level.…show more content…
To calculate his daily calories needed to maintain his weight and support his high activity level, we can then use the Harris Benedict equation. Since David usually spends the day exercising at a high level and he does this about 6-7 times a week, we will use the "very active" level factor of 1.75 to compute his daily calorie needs just to maintain his current body weight. According to the Harris Benedict method, David should be consuming about 3885 calories a day to maintain his body weight. Now keep in mind that this is just an estimate, some say with an error rate of about 5%. So we can adjust our numbers accordingly by adding and/or subtracting about 194 calories. In this case, since David wants to gain weight, we'll play it safe and add the 200 calories. Therefore, David's adjusted actual daily required calorie intake to maintain his body weight is about 4100

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