Hardgainer Workout?

If you’re looking for a hardgainer workout, or you consider yourself a hard gainer and want to know how to “tweak” your workouts to gain more muscle, then you’re going to like what I have for you here.

First, let’s define a “hardgainer”. People who are hardgainers typically:

• Are very skinny
• Don’t have very big appetites
• Have a fast metabolism
• Because of the above, can’t build muscle easily…

… That’s why they call themselves “hard gainers” because they face those challenges. But how should you workout to build muscle if you’re a hardgainer?

1. Get In And Out

Most hardgainers find it hard to build muscle when they start working out. They get on a program, go the gym, and after a couple of weeks have nothing to show for it.

The first thing they want to do is start doing MORE workouts, more exercises and more stuff in an effort to “stimulate” more muscle growth.

But that’s not the key to gaining muscle, short workouts rule, here’s why:

• Manage fatigue – you want to get in a lot of quality sets/reps with relatively high weights, working out for hours on end doesn’t let you do that.
• Hormones - Testosterone and other muscle growth hormones all drop after 45 minutes in the gym, get out in an hour max.
• Focused - if you focus on getting in and out in an hour, you won’t be chatting with your buddies in between sets, or dicking off — you’ll be working hard.

The idea is to get in, get a workout in to stimulate growth, and get out and eat. Of course, you’ll want to stick to full body, compound exercises like the ones in the DoubleYourGains’ 3-5 program which will make your workouts quick and efficient.

2. Move a Lot Of Weight

Simple question: If you bench press 75lbs now and have limp noodle arms… do you think your arms will be bigger and more muscular when you can bench press double that — 150lbs?

Damn right they will. Focus on getting strong first and your muscles will grow, they have no choice…

Here’s the equation: High load X high volume = growth. So you want to do a lot of work (reps/sets) with heavy weights, with little rest periods (but manage fatigue as best you can to get in the most amount of work with heavy weights).

That’s what stimulates growth. That’s what you need. That’s why you should do squats and deadlifts like my program tells you to.

3. Keep Your Hormones Pumping

You should avoid anything that’s going to lower your testosterone, blunt growth hormone release, or anything like that. So no more watching sappy chick flicks or teenage love story movies and when you see the dorky guy who can’t get the girl, thinking “hey, I understand where he’s coming from — that’s ME!”

Seriously though, pay attention:

• Soy – it’s bad for you and your hormones
• Broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables – good for you, help get rid of estrogen (flip side of hormones)
• Sleep – get a lot of it, helps raise your good hormone levels.
• Eat organic - if possible to minimize exposure to toxins, etc that promote higher estrogen levels
• Fiber - get more of it in your diet. Take more craps to help clear your system
• Water - drink more of it to help flush out your body

Seriously, pay attention to promoting the right hormones in your body…

4. Avoid Cardio

If you’re super skinny you don’t need to be doing any cardio right now because your body fat is probably 10% or lower right now.

Are you “skinny fat”? Start eating clean’er (broccoli and cruciferous veggies), following the tips above and working out hard with the weights and you’ll see the little “fat pouches” start to disappear without the need for cardio.

You need to minimize the amount of calories expenditure each day, which means avoiding doing things that aren’t necessary that burn calories, which brings me to…

5. Be Lazy Out Of The Gym.

Work hard as hell in the gym, but be lazy out of it. Paraphrase of some powerlifter advice: “Don’t run if you can walk, don’t walk if you can stand, don’t stand if you can sit, and if you can sit you might as well take a nap”. That should be your motto.

Don’t use up any extra energy playing sports or crap like that, go home eat, rest and grow. The big part of that last sentence is eating, which I’m absolutely, postively SURE is the real reason you’re still a hardgainer right now — you need to start eating more.

I’ll probably cover eating in tomorrows post, so watch out for it, in the meantime follow these 5 tips and you’ll have a very effective hardgainer workout.