How to Train for the Hard Gainer
Posted: Sunday, January 11, 2009
by Bill Davis
Most bodybuilders and weight trainers can follow a simple exercise and nutrition regimen and make satisfactory muscle gains. For the hard gainer, however, training and diet are two pieces of a complex puzzle that is hard to figure out.
Take it from a hard gainer: I know what it's like to slave away at the weights for years at a time, eating my parents (and later myself!) out of house and home, and taking the latest "fad" supplement that supposedly packed on the pounds like nobody's business.
Less is more.
Now, I'm not one of those one-set advocates. And neither am I one of those high intensity "train to failure every set" fellows, either. My experience tells me that the body needs to be constantly challenged and you need to confuse it and keep your mind in the game by constantly training your muscles in different ways. The term used to be "holistic training," but it seems to have fallen out of vogue.
Indeed, variety is the spice of life for a hard gainer. One day, train "heavy." (Heavy is a relative term, though, isn't it? "Heavy," to me, means that your last rep or two of exercise ought to be nearly impossible to complete.) The next day, work out for a set or two more. Then, follow that up with sets of higher reps, sometimes hitting 20-30 reps, or more.
Muscles grow ("hypertrophy") in various ways, and training them in a variety of ways facilitates overall growth.
But the trick is to work out hard enough and with enough stimulation to get muscles to grow without overtraining.
In fact, I believe hard gainers don't make progress is for one of two reasons: Hard gainers don't eat enough and/or they are in a constant struggle to keep from overtraining.
You see, muscles need sufficient training to stimulate growth, nutrition to provide the building blocks for bigger muscles, and rest to facilitate the growth of the muscles.
In short, you need to train right, eat enough, and get adequate rest and sleep for your muscles to grow.
Want to build more muscle? Follow my plan at Hard Gainer's Manifesto and you'll gain weight and muscle mass faster than you ever thought possible.
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