A Hardgainer’s Guide To Build Muscle – Part 2 – Diet

Time for part 2 of my five part series on gaining muscle as a hardgainer. As we have already shown, hardgainer’s can’t train like everyone else. You have to train like your life depends on it and more. Well now that we have that out of the way, I am going to take you through the most CRUCIAL part of gaining muscle as a hardgainer: diet.

As a hardgainer you know your diet sucks. If it didn’t you wouldn’t be a hardgainer, I swear. You don’t want to lose those precious abs and you really want to build muscle. Well, lucky for you, bulking doesn’t necessarily have to mean losing abs at all. As a hardgainer you have a very hard time putting on fat in the first place, so buckle up, grab your fork and knife, and lets dive in to out diet rules.

Diet Rule #1 – Eat Like A Horse

If you aren’t eating twice what you normally eat already start today. Hardgainer’s have fast fucking metabolisms that Usain Bolt couldn’t even beat and you have to over-fuel that metabolism. Giving yourself extra calories on a daily basis is a must for hardgainers.

Gaining mass means you have to be in a state of caloric surplus, meaning that you need to take in more calories than you burn each day. This is especially important for hardgainers. Keeping your diet high in calories is tougher for a hardgainer because you have such a high metabolism.

The easiest way to calculate what you need to eat to gain yourself mass is to take how much you are eating now (probably not enough) and add 500 calories to it. If after a few weeks you still haven’t added any mass add another 500 calories to your diet. At this point you definitely should be eating enough to gain mass.

Diet Rule #2 – Take In Your Fat

Now I feel like it’s safe to assume that you all know that you must have protein in order to gain muscle, but what you don’t see taken into consideration a lot of the time is fat intake. I’ve seen lifters avoid fat like it’s the plague and they tend to never get anywhere with their bodies. Now I know you don’t want to lose your abs so I want you to know that taking in fat will not make you gain fat. It can even aid in fat loss.

Fat is essential to hormone production. You know that hormone, testosterone, that makes you build muscle. Well, fat is essential to it’s creation. I’m not telling you to go out and eat a bunch of fat and you’ll end up getting steroid-like results, but make sure to include it in your diet to make sure your hormones are being produced correctly and your body is working at it’s best.

Diet Rule #3 – Eat Your Carbs

Carbs aren’t for you if you’re overweight, but as a hardgainer you aren’t overweight at all. You can handle carbs and if you are trying to bulk up you need them if you want any hope of gaining any muscle. Eating 4000 calories a day in fat and protein can be a very rough task.

Take in carbs, but only clean ones. Whole grains, vegetables, fruits, and starches will give you healthy sources of carbs that will help you get all the calories in that you need. And on top of that you are getting high quality carbs that will fuel your workouts every day.

A Hardgainer’s Guide To Build Muscle – Part 1 – Working Out

Today is going to be my first in a 5 part series covering all of the aspects that hardgainers need to keep in mind when trying to gain muscle.

If you are a hardgainer, you know it. You are skinny, weak, and have a damn hard time gaining muscle. You have had a hard time up until now when it comes to getting bigger, but this series will help get your physique on the right track.

Today’s portion of this series is going to be on the most enjoyable part of being a hardgainer, the working out part.

Finding a great program for a hardgainer is like finding real tits on a Hooters girl. It just doesn’t happen. You can search all over but you will almost never find a truly effective program that works very well for a hardgainer, but lifting rules to follow; I can give you those.

Instead of giving you an exact program to follow, I am going to give you a set of rules to follow and you can apply them to your program. If you want an exact personalized program, go over to my train with me page and I can help you out.

Hardgainer Rule #1 – Lift With All You’ve Got

As a hardgainer you’re at a disadvantage. This disadvantage is that you aren’t as big or strong as most and can’t become that without lifting as heavy and hard as possible. This isn’t much of a hardgainer rule but a rule for everybody. TO GAIN MUSCLE YOU HAVE TO LIFT HARD. Simple as that. No matter what program you are on or what you eat, if you’re not lifting as hard as you can you will NOT gain as much muscle as you have potential for. Lift your ass of.

Hardgainer Rule #2 – DO NOT Do Body Part Splits

Body part splits are great . . . for guys who AREN’T hardgainers. A body part split doesn’t gain you the most mass at a quick rate. A body part split will refine your physique. At this point you need to build your physique. Building your physique requires doing all of the bigger movements in conjunction with each other. For example, don’t give your chest, back, and shoulders each their own day, group them together and work them on the big movements with a upper lower split (I suggest a 2x per week frequency for this) which leads me to my next rule . . .

Hardgainer Rule #3 – Use Compound Exercises

Compound exercises kick ass when it comes to packing on a serious amount of mass in a short time. Compound exercises make you use multiple muscle at the same time and allow you to use the greatest amount of weight compared to isolation exercises. A larger amount of weight = a larger amount of muscle mass (math is my strong point). Compound exercises will allow you to work less exercises but still hit all of your muscles in a very efficient manner. As a hardgainer you need as much bang or your buck as you can so compound lifts should be your best friend (and your only friend) until you lose your hardgainer title.

Follow these lifting rules to the body you want and keep reading each week for the rest of this series.

Good Luck and Good Lifting

Sparky

The Right Way To Do A Dip

It’s been called the “upper body squat.” It works all of your pushing muscles at once. It can increase your performance on the bench press enormously. Oh and did I mention it can leap tall buildings in a single bound?

It’s the Dip. We’ve all done them at some point (I hope) and we’ve all done them wrong at some point (I know). Just because you’re doing them wrong now doesn’t mean you can’t learn how to. Just follow my instructions and the dip will become your favorite exercise for building both size and strength in your upper torso.

How do I start

If you have done dips before, but have yet to really get anything out of them, start here. As most of you know, the dip is an exercise that is done on dip bars, parallel bars that can be from shoulder width apart to much farther apart.

The beginning of a dip is set up very simply by placing your hands around the parallel bars and pushing your upright body all the way up so that your arms are straight. You want to feel your triceps flexing, trying to keep your arms locked under your body’s weight.

Performing the rep

Now that you are in the starting position (hopefully not while reading this) you are ready to start doing reps of dips. First thing I want you to do is to forget how you usually do them (if they have never worked for you at all) and ditch your ego (we’ll talk about adding weight later).

After getting into position to start your set, begin to descend, keeping your body tight. DO NOT drop your body. I see guys all the time that look like they are on a fucking trampoline instead of performing an exercise. Don’t do it. Go nice and slow on all of your reps, especially if you suck at them to begin with.

The bottom of your rep should feel like you are stretching your chest and shoulders out really well. If it hurts, though, you’re doing it wrong. As soon as you feel the stretch push your body up and back to the starting position. You will most likely feel this the most in your chest at first but then in your triceps as you get to the lockout. I like the way this guy does his dips. He keeps his body in the same position the entire time and has really good form. You can also watch all of his muscles working correctly.

Making your chest work hard and your triceps work even harder

Dips will kill your chest. They will make you pumped up and engorged in blood. You won’t have any other choice but to puff your chest out, but if your doing your dips correctly you should have another body part just as pumped and worked: your triceps. Your triceps don’t get enough recognition when it comes to dips and I think they deserve it. If you are doing your dips correctly you’ll feel your triceps much bigger and much more sore than usual the next day. Add dips into your schedule and please focus as much as possible on working them (especially at lock out) and you’ll see an enormous increase in tricep strength.

Doing dips will cause you to build muscle in your upper body much more efficiently.

You just came to the point we all come to at one point or another. Some let this point be the death of their lifting careers. Some are stuck at this point for their entire lifting careers. And then there are the few who break through this point time and time again and go on to be the successful bastards who grow to be monstrous in size.

This point is what we tend to call the wall.

We hear about hitting the wall when it comes to sports and physical events when you are all out of juice and seem to be done. A marathon runner can hit the wall in a race and never finish because of it. I like to think about this as a mental wall as well. Just as a runner can “hit the wall” during a race, you can “hit the wall” mentally throughout your lifting career. This tends to be the time (or times) that you want to stop lifting because you don’t feel like lifting anymore. You either don’t want to and you don’t know why or you don’t seem to be getting results. This article is for the first guys. This site is for all of you.

Just like in sports, when you hit the wall you have to break through it to finish the race, game, etc. Without breaking through the wall you end up with nothing to show for all the work you put it. This goes doubly for lifting. If you can’t break through the mental wall that somehow made it’s way into your testosterone-ridden brain you will never reach your fitness goals in the long term. There are a few things that I do every time I hit another wall to get my ass through them.

Watch some badass lifting videos

Pumping Iron brings my motivation back every time I watch it. Watching people like Arnold, Lou Ferrigno, Mike Katz, Franco Columbo, etc. workout is one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever seen. Watching any Ronnie Coleman workout video wakes me want to go lift big shit and yell at my imaginary friend. Give this a try. All you’ll want to do is go out and get big. I consider that the best motivation ever.

Lift for the pump

The pump can be a damn inspiring thing, if used correctly.

Nobody in their right mind will tell you that the pump will get you to your goals, but it will definitely make you look damn good. Go ahead and take a day or two to just lift for the pump (basically lift wrong) and tell me how you feel. I bet it’s great.

While lifting for the pump won’t do much for your muscle gains, it will make you look and feel bigger. For today, that is all I’m going for. Looking bigger will make you want to continue working out. What is a bigger motivator than progress?

Eat a lot

This tip is my favorite of the three because it also will end up making you gain muscle at the same time.

I know when I eat a lot more than usual (upwards of 5000 – 6000 calories) I always feel pumped up. My chest feels indestructible, by arms feels swollen, my abs are solid, and even my quads are enormous! You want a great damn motivator, thats it. You walk around like your big being this pumped. You get to feel what it feels like to be a big guy, and on top of that you get to gain some very welcome muscle in the process.

This one is also my favorite because you can see what it feels like to really bulk (for all you hardgainers out there). This gives you the feel you should have every day when you are bulking so you can almost just go by feel other than by counting calories.

Keep these tips in mind and apply them to get your ass back on track to the body of your dreams.

Good Luck and Good Lifting

Sparky

For More please visit me at metaltraining.com

Goblet Squats Kill Your Core (In A Good Way)

Remember when I was souped about close grip chin ups for bicep strength (I get a little giddy about my exercises =P), well I have a new one for you that is getting me weird results: The Goblet Squat (click here for a good how to. . . and no it’s not me).

The Goblet Squat is such a simple but effective exercise that I finally gave a chance today. See, I tend to not want to do an exercise that looks like I can’t use a lot of weight on so I avoid them sometimes (you’re not perfect either). Goblet Squats seem to be that exercise. Seem. You can hold a damn big dumbbell on them even on your first try trust me (I got a 90 in my arms before my wrists gave out).

The Goblet Squat is a squat exercise (No Shit) that is meant to help squat form a lot and work your legs, of course. Both of which it does, amazingly. It forces you to keep good form (chest up, back straight) and allows you to go ATG (ass to the ground) if you really want to without feeling weird. Your entire lower body gets hit perfectly while keeping good form instinctively. What more can you want!?!

What Surprised Me

This exercise kicks your core’s ass. Every rep my core was flexed and worked more than any other exercise I’ve done to date (bye bye crunches). When I focused on it flexing, I got an even better workout (and even better soreness now). This surprised me because logically you’d think that a squat, using more weight, would activate your core a lot more but it doesn’t for me at all. This is going to be a staple in my routine from now on, if not for legs than definitely for core.

Give it a try, you’ll fall in love I swear.

Visit me at metaltraining.com for more

Good Luck and Good Lifting

Sparky

Article of the Week – Puncturing Popular Broscience Myths

T-Nation is the greatest website for training out there (along with bb.com). They give out some of the greatest lifting advice out there, mostly for more advanced trainees that actually understand a lot about lifting already. And on top of that they’re the coolest fitness guys out there. So for those of you who don’t get my point . . . go visit T-Nation ; after this of course.

This week I want to cover an article that T-Nation came out with called Puncturing Popular Broscience Myths by Jimmy Smith.

Before I give you guys a review of the article I want to touch on what a broscience myth is. Broscience is defined as (by urbandictionary.com) “the predominant brand of reasoning in bodybuilding circles where the anecdotal reports of jacked dudes are considered more credible than scientific research”. So therefore a broscience myth is a long held belief by big guys that certain things work even though science doesn’t support them fully. Example: You have to eat different foods for different goals (yeah I copied the article).

So this article is written to disprove the beliefs a lot of guys have about bodybuilding and lifting. The general theme of the myths are nutritionally based because those are the most misconceived aspects of lifting.

The examples include

• Never Eat Carbohydrates and Fat in the Same Meal
• You Have to Eat Different Foods for Different Goals
• Depleting Water Will Make Your Midsection Tighter and Leaner
• Sodium Makes Your Body Hold Water

All of which I have heard and believed until now.

What the author is saying is that there is no evidence to support something like a clean vs a dirty bulk or that sodium makes you hold a significant amount of water. As I do like the concept of the article, I do still believe in one thing that he says isn’t important: clean vs dirty foods. I tend to gain a lot less fat with clean foods (chicken, rice, pork, tuna) than with dirty foods (McDonalds,, BK, Wendys, etc.).

Whether you believe the broscience myths or not this is a good read for the science behind (or not behind) it. Why not try em out for yourself!

Good Luck and Good Lifting

Sparky

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Comment and tell me what your favorite broscience myths are

Also Visit Me for More at metaltraining.com

Why Do You Lift

That’s a damn good question.

A lot of guys go to the gym, work out, and get home day after day and I’m willing to bet they’ve lost their drive to an extent.

When I get to the gym every day I have to psych myself up. It’s really tough to get your ass to the gym at 7 am after a late night. But I do it. And I caught myself asking myself “Why?”

“Why do I torture my body on an almost daily basis?” “Why do I eat until I’m sick, and then eat more?” “Why do I want to do this?”

Well I got my answer after a long while thinking

I do this for me. Most guys do this to look good for chicks, some to get better cardiovascular health, but most just for the ladies. I can understand that and you know what I do workout so that my girl can have something good to look at but I do this so that I can be o.k. with me.

I lift because I can exorcise my demons in the most productive way possible. I can turn them into muscle, into something useful.

I lift because I want to look like a superhero. I’m a geek, and I look up to the guys who have superhuman powers and superhuman physiques. I think we all want that to some extent anyway, some of us are just to cool to admit it.

I lift because when I look in the mirror, I see imperfections. I see things that I can improve and I have to improve them.

I lift because I love the pump. I know the pump doesn’t really do much for you per building muscle but god is it euphoric. Like Arnold said, “Having a pump is like having sex. I train two, sometimes three times a day. Each time I get a pump. It’s great. I feel like I’m coming all day.” Mr. Schwarzenegger, I do concur.

Lastly, I lift because It’s the one thing that I have done for years and have yet to get sick of. I always get to learn something new and I always get to make changes to my body and mind via bodybuilding.
Good Luck and Good Lifting

Sparky

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Why do you lift?

Tell me why in the comments section

Also visit me at metaltraining.com to here more of my fitness knowledge.