If your visiting this post I assume two things, you are a hard gainer and have trouble gaining muscle, and you enjoy strength training. If you have discovered during your strength training that you are having a hard time gaining muscle don’t worry it is very common and there are some steps you can take to help maximize your success in the gym.
1. Shorten your workouts
Yes I know this may sound counter-productive, but if you know how the body works it makes perfect sense. Your ability to gain weight is directly correlated with your body’s production of certain hormones. The most important for this discussion are testosterone and cortisol.
Higher levels of testosterone lead to more strength gains, more muscle gains, higher energy and even benefits how you metabolize food for strength and physique.
On the other hand,
Higher levels of cortisol cause catabolism (breaking down) of your fats and muscles as fuel sources and stop your body from synthesizing protein to create new muscle.
So why shorten my workouts dude?
Assuming you are working intensely for the entire time you are working out your body physiologically cannot withstand a high intensity of workload for longer that 1 hour before it starts seeing diminishing returns.
After one hour testosterone levels begin to drop and cortisol levels begin to elevate. This is exactly the opposite of what we want to see.
There are other negative side effects such as increased inflammatory effects that can lead to other health issues as well. You body just doesn’t want to do it.
Solution
1. Keep your workouts under an hour
2. Focus on your meat and potato lifts (big compound, ie: squat, bench , deadlift)
3. Don’t waste time doing every accessory you can think of this becomes counter productive at a certain point.
2. Drink your calories
Said nobody ever right? Well that’s because we live in a society that is overall overweight and should avoid drinking their calories as much as possible to help lose weight.
Well your goal isn’t weight loss is it?
To gain weight you need to be in a caloric surplus. To accomplish this you need to be eating at least 500 cal over your resting caloric intake.
It is much easier said than done when you only need to eat 1500 calories. What about when you need to eat 3k,4k, even 5k?!
Eating that much food is a pain and it isn’t fun. Adding in periodic weight gain shakes and carb drinks is a great way to add extra calories without stuffing your face every time it is time to eat.
Here are my two favorite methods
Weight gain shake: when I need to gain some weight I will make a smoothie that fits my macro distribution (50% carbs 30% protein 20% fat) and has however many calories I need to be in surplus.
Example:
Let’s say my normal 3 meals a day gets me to 3500cal per day and I need to now consume 4500cal. I will make a smoothie in the morning that is 1000 calories and break it up into 3 servings . I will eat one serving after each meal or as a 4th meal.
This drastically increases my caloric intake and does it in a way that doesn’t break the bank and also isn’t time consuming to make or eat (I am a terribly slow eater).
Here is my go-to smoothie
- (1/2 cup) oats
- (2 scoops) Carb Pro
- (1) banana
- (1) scoop of protein
- (1/2 cup) of egg whites
- (3 tbs) peanut butter
- (1 cup) Frozen fruit of any kind
920cal 121g carbs 29g fat 51g protein
Carb drinks: this can be something as simple at your favorite fruit juice or if you want to be a little healthier get a complex carbohydrate easily dissolvable supplement powder that you can drink throughout the day drink this periodically preferably before and after your workout to increase your intake.
3. Sleep more
You can only grow in your sleep. Sleeping is the time when your body builds itself back up after hard workouts. It is recommended that athletes sleep 9-10 hours out of the days which is 2 more than normal folks. With that being said how much do you value your sleep? Are you staying up late to watch whatever show you’ve been binge watching recently, working late because of strict deadlines, or just have a hard time falling and staying asleep?
These are all things that are eating away at your progress.
Also sleeping optimizes your hormones. It increases your testosterone levels and lowers your cortisol levels. This is a recipe for success going back to what we discussed earlier regarding long workouts.
It also increases another hormone we haven’t discussed that is responsible for increasing muscle mass, growth hormone. More of this means more muscle mass and less fat storage the perfect storm for being strong and muscular.
If you are like me and have a hard time falling asleep at night or even stay asleep consider utilizing relaxation techniques to help wind down for a more restful night sleep. Asking your doctor about melatonin supplements is worthwhile also if you struggle with getting good sleep. Melatonin helps your body produce hormones to regulate a normal sleep wake cycle. It is over then counter and can be found and any grocery store. I use this every night it helps me get to sleep fast and stay asleep. (affiliate)
4. Increase your training frequency
This one bounces off of number one which was to decrease your workout duration. As we spoke about previously, long workouts have detrimental effects on recovery and hormone production. On the other hand, more stimulation means you will have more opportunities to ask your body to get bigger. So how do you manage this dichotomy?
Workout more often.
This could mean going from 3-4 workouts a week to 5 or 6
Or
Working out multiple times a day for 3-4 days a week.
My personal favorite is the latter, but I’ll explain both
Increasing workouts per week is easy enough to figure out. Break your workouts up in a way that allows you to hit all muscle groups 2-3x per week and spread it across 5-6 days. I go into great detail on my favorite rep schemes and how you can organize them here.
Doing two-a days is trickier, but not overly complicated. You need to break apart your workout in a way that doesn’t lead to overtraining and separate them by 4-6 hours.
I usually do this by taking a normal workout
Back squat 5×5
Hack squat 4×8
Leg press 3×10
Walking lunges 3×15
Calves 3×20
And break it in half. You can then add an exercise or two if they are small to the morning and or evening sneaking in a little more volume.
Morning
Back squat 5×5
Hack squat 4×8
Abs
Evening
Leg press 3×10
Walking lunges 3×15
Leg extensions 3×15
Calves 3×20
There are two main benefits to this method
1. Cause more protein synthesis.
More stimulation to the muscles tells them to adapt more. More stimulation, if it is not over done is going to create more growth and strength gains than less.
2. Allow for a higher quality of work.
The break after your main lifts allows you to recoup and come back fresh for the second session. You hit those accessory lifts with a higher intensity than you would of after 9 sets of squats. This leads to more volume and again more gains,
5 stick to the program
A lot of hard gainers I see also tend to get easily side tracked with the new and improved program that will solve all of their problems. (I am guilty of this myself). This can have detrimental effects on progress if it happens every other week or so. You need to do the same program for at least 4 weeks, but preferably more to see the results of what you are doing.
Truth be told anything works that is programmed intelligently if only for a short amount of time. So if your like me and get easily side track stick to the same workout for a minimum of 4-6 weeks before moving on to something new.