Are Hardgainers Destined to be Skinny Forever?
Dec 3, 2020 mindpumpThe Hardgainers Guide to Not Staying Skinny Anymore
I envy hardgainers. They can eat and eat and they never gain weight. Their abs are always showing. Meanwhile, for the rest of us average and slow metabolism lifters, if we stare at 200 extra calories our weight somehow bumps up 3 pounds and we pretend it’s water weight from creatine.
On the flip side, that means adding size is easier for us and harder for them. I’ve had a lot of skinnier clients just give up because they would go years without seeing a change on the scale after what feels like eating all day. I’d like to help by providing a hardgainers guideline to ensure you don’t remain skinny forever.
Eat More! Lots More!
Most skinny guys don’t eat what is necessary to reap the rewards of their workouts. They’re afraid of losing their abs and want to be beach ready year round. Or their metabolism is revved up so high they need a LOT more than they realize. A lot more.
To get a rough baseline of how many calories to bulk, calculate your bodyweight x 15-16 and go from there. If you are 150lbs that would mean 2,250-2400 calories to start. You don’t need to be putting on 5 pounds a week contrary to what people tell you. You should be shooting for ½ pound to 1 pound a week. If you’re gaining weight faster, lower the calories. If it’s slower, bring it up by 200 calories.
Track Your Progress In the Gym
If your car wasn’t working properly would you diagnose what is going wrong or just guess, and hope you’re right?
Start tracking down each workout. It can be on a spreadsheet, on your notes, a weightlifting app, whatever you feel most comfortable with. It doesn’t need to be fancy. You just need to be able to see week to week, are you making progression in some form:
- 5lbs more than week before
- More reps than the week before
- More sets than the week before
Muscle is built through adaptation against stress. If you want your muscle to be BIGGER than the week before, than you need to be DOING more than the week before. The weight or volume NEEDS to go up. Start tracking. I’ve had months go by where I thought I was progressing in the gym. Then, I looked back at my workout log and saw good progress for 2 months. Then maybe I got injured and had to lower the weights. Then I didn’t push as hard because I wanted to make sure my form was perfect so I didn’t increase the weights as much. 3 months later I took some measurements and it looks like my body never changed. The reality was, it was only 5-10lbs higher in the weight room than my first two months because of all the drawbacks and I didnt actually progress as much as I thought.
Consistency On a Program
If you’ve heard about the details of any of the MAPS programs, one thing you’ll notice across the board is they’re all at least 12 weeks long. Hardgainers who claim to be forever skinny and came to me for advice had one thing in common as well – they never stuck with a program for more than one month. They would try it for 4 weeks, then give up because they didn’t add 4 inches to their arms, and 100 pounds to their squat. Progress takes time! Talk to any Mr Olympia and ask them how long they have been lifting. If it could be done in less time, these guys wouldn’t still be in the gym.
Any program you start, you must stick with at minimum 3 months. Ideally 3-6. That doesn’t mean do the same, exact thing. You can change the reps and the exercises (as long as they’re hitting the same muscles), but you must keep the overall concept of that program. If it’s geared towards powerlifting, then make sure it’s focusing on bringing up the powerlifting movements, and don’t turn it into a bodybuilding program. If it’s a bodybuilding program don’t try to shorten the amount of days in the gym because it’s convenient. Do the workouts AS intended.
Stop Doing as Much Cardio as Everyone Else
Here’s some irony. You’ve been a naturally skinny guy your whole life. You want to put on size (which involves putting ON weight), yet you are burning excessive calories doing crossfit circuits, or on the treadmill after every workout. It’s a little counterintuitive, no?
I see almost an ironic amount of skinny guys (and skinny girls for that matter) always on the treadmill for 30+ minutes. They’re the same people that complain they put so much time in the gym but can’t put on muscle. Yes, we for sure shouldn’t ignore our cardiovascular health, but if we have a specific goal, we need to be mostly catered to it.
If you are struggling to put on size, lower your cardio to 2 days a week (to keep your cardiovascular system up), and make sure you are resistance training 3-5 times a week. If your goal is muscle size, then your program should reflect that at least 90% of the time.
Focus on Compound Movements
Doing a bicep curl isn’t going to stimulate as many muscles, or growth as doing a bench press. Compound movements are in every bodybuilder and powerlifters program because they stimulate so much muscle. The body responds to heavy weight. A squat or a bench allows you to put hundreds of pounds against your body. Bicep curls rarely even break 100.
Isolation exercises on smaller muscle groups have their place. As finishers to give extra volume to lagging body parts. Other than that, (at least for now), you should be refocusing that energy and time towards adding more weight to the bigger lifts. More growth comes from progressively bigger loads.
Focus on the squat, deadlift, bench press, overhead press, rows, and pull-ups before starting to include smaller muscles like shoulders, biceps and triceps.
Focus on the Mind Muscle Connection
Most people mess this up. When I first started lifting, I genuinely thought, as long as I’m doing say a back workout, then my back is getting hit. Man, I was so wrong. It wasn’t until I worked with a bodybuilding coach who had me do the SAME exercises, but did the smallest tweaks, yet my back was SCORCHED for the first time after the workout. Even crazier, I did HALF as many sets as on my own.
The mind muscle connection is everything. Stop looking at exercise selection as copying your friends, or blindly following a program. Think of each workout as building up an arsenal of the TOP exercises you’ve personally found for each muscle group that maximally stimulate those muscles. For example, maybe I don’t feel much on dumbbell bench presses, but on cable flyes, my chest burns like crazy doing the same amount of reps.
We all have different body types. Angles, rep ranges, exercise selection all play roles into figuring out what creates the most tension for you personally. Spend more time finding those top exercises that allow you to create constant tension where you should be feeling it.
