Mark Bell's Power Project - Bodybuilders React To Hamza "5 Reasons You Can't Gain Muscle"

Starting point is 00:00:00 All right, so this video is from Hamza Ahmed. Yeah, he's a self-improvement YouTuber. His main audience is like young men who are trying to improve, and I came across this video, and I was like, this is interesting, we got to talk about it, because I think there's probably a lot of good stuff in here, but maybe some stuff we disagree with. Plus, we have experience.

Starting point is 00:00:24 So we can go about it. This is about getting jacked it's about yeah yeah yeah so five biggest reasons you can't gain muscle and well i mean there's a lot of reasons people don't gain muscle but i'm curious what he's going to tell people let's check it out how well it's going to do i think i built a pretty good physique here's some good pictures of me i've been on this for about eight years does this guy always wear this amazing robe? All the videos? Look at that thing. I saw these dickheads, and you probably see them as well,

Starting point is 00:00:50 who are telling you not to bulk, and instead they're telling you to do what's called main gain. Uh-oh. Main gain, gaintenance, whatever the fuck. Gaintenance. Who says this shit? It's a very popular YouTuber. He's like an old bodybuilder.

Starting point is 00:01:01 There he is. Main gain. I like the thumbs up. That was great. Greg's going to make a video about that. That was a little bit of shade. Greg's going to make a video about that. Coach Greg is crying right now.

Starting point is 00:01:13 What do you think about the main gain thing? I think one of the biggest issues with some of the younger people or people that are just new to fitness in general, one of the biggest reasons to get yourself into the gym is to gain muscle mass. And I think if you're trying to main gain or you're trying to be lean or trying to have abs while you're trying to build out muscle, if the abs are kind of the main concern, you're probably just going to be skinny because you don't have anything quite yet. And when we were younger, there wasn't Instagram or social media, right? And I think that kind of

Starting point is 00:01:42 messes with people because when younger guys are looking at fitness influencers and they're all lean and they have abs, it makes it hard to be like, I need to just grow. Because one of the reasons why a lot of these influencers are able to stay lean, like we're usually pretty lean, is because we had the time when we were younger to put all that muscle on. I got up to 270 at a certain point. You've been 330, right? So we've had- A little bit of chub on me, yeah. Just a little bit. Just a little bit. So we gave ourselves the time to put on muscle,

Starting point is 00:02:12 eat a lot of fucking food. Like I've bulked before, but being where I am now, I wouldn't go on a bulk again. Like main gaining and main, like main gaining can be a thing for me now. But when you're younger, you got to put in the time and you got to eat enough to grow.

Starting point is 00:02:28 I think, again, just to reiterate, like if someone is new to training and they're just trying to get leaner, they might not really notice much of a better physique because they don't have the muscle mass yet. So you have to, it's going to take a while to gain that muscle mass. Work on the muscle mass first. Young men, not to bulk. I think K body says this you know like these fucking like fitness influencers essentially so kino body talks about fasting and stuff too and we talk about fasting on the show we've been utilizing fasting for years now but if you're a young guy who's trying to grow you don't have a reason to fast unless some people if you if you're very overweight

Starting point is 00:03:04 a little bit of restricted feeding can be beneficial but if you if you if you're very overweight a little bit of restricted feeding can be beneficial but if you're you know you're underweight and you need to put some mass on there's no reason to fuck with fasting yet the single most important thing for you to do to build muscle it's not to main gain it's not to do this shit you know what it is bulk the single most important thing for you to do is to bulk i think it sounds good man i think a lot of people do need to be a little bit bigger and i actually like that he's encouraging people to eat uh be interesting you know moving forward you know what he encourages them to eat it is helpful to use the time when you're younger because you got a cocktail of fucking hormones when you're a kid every you're not just gaining muscle but you're gaining so like so much different

Starting point is 00:03:44 shit because you're growing that you can you can eat a lot and if you're gaining so like so much different shit because you're growing that you can you can eat a lot and if you're working out you can fucking grow to look good lean you need to first bulk up heavy and this isn't to say that you should dirty bulk or you know to eat shit because that's the second reason why i didn't gain much muscle because i ate a lot of shit during my bowl that is a major you see these dickheads eating just between donuts and telling you yeah just get the calories in bro just get the calories what's uh one of the issues you think with those kinds of foods well blood sugar right you notice that when you eat really sugary food and you eat quite a bit of it you will have this energy burst but immediately you'll start

Starting point is 00:04:18 to feel lethargic what tends to happen if you do that too often and you eat like that too often it's going to impact the way you actually perform in the gym. Because if you don't have as much energy for your workout, that compounds from workout to workout to workout. So even though you took in those calories, your workouts are not going to be as quality. Compare that to like fucking rice, potato, just like actual food. Also what happens is like your body can actually get full because processed food doesn't tend to activate ghrelin which is your hunger hormone leptin which is the hormone that makes you understand you're full which is why people can tend to overeat cereal overeat oreos

Starting point is 00:04:53 overeat donuts but try to overeat fucking apples or rice critique that i have to these dirty bulk guys which no one has ever said in the fitness industry before calories are not the same even macros are not the same protein and protein is not the same you do realize that people don't ever say this right we've been talking about this for a long time on this show so it's not that no one ever said it dickhead like yeah you know we had gabriel lyon on and we've had a lot of people who've come and talked about protein like you like the protein from whey protein because of the amino acids. You're going to absorb more from that protein versus plant protein because there are more bioavailable amino acids from animal protein. 100%.

Starting point is 00:05:35 Yeah, animal protein is superior. Eggs are really high up on the list. Whey protein is really high up on the list of bioavailable amino acids. And then obviously meat as well. 30 grams of protein from whey protein will build you more muscle than 30 grams of protein from some bullshit like vegan protein soy or some shit. It literally has a different impact on your body, even though the macro is still 30 grams. 100 grams of carbs from ice cream compared to 100 grams of carbs from potatoes will change

Starting point is 00:06:02 your body composition. You will gain more fat, even if it's the same calories. Like we just talked about, you're going to perform differently when eating pure processed foods from eating real food. So food quality is a big deal and it will affect your performance, even if the calories are the same. And we talk a lot on the show about protein leveraging. leveraging. Me personally, you know, being 330 pounds at one time, being on a perpetual lifetime bulk and allowing myself to grow and expand in many more ways than one in my face and my stomach and my ass. And it really helped me a lot with my goals because my goals were centered around powerlifting. But to be able to remove a lot of that body fat, it was protein leveraging that

Starting point is 00:06:43 helped me a ton. And the diet was built out around that. And it was primarily and still is primarily meat, eggs, some protein shakes here and there. And then I have some fruit, potatoes, rice, stuff like that is in the diet, which is all just natural foods. Because the athlete these days that tells people, oh, look at my diet. I just eat chicken and rice and stuff. That's seen as an eating disorder. The athlete who eats clean is now seen as the guy who eats clean. And now the second reason why you're not making enough muscle, you're eating shit food. When you eat shit food, you gain more body fat. Even if it's the same calories, you gain more body fat. Because if you have that ice cream today, your performance in the gym tomorrow is going to go down. Of course it is. You're going to feel

Starting point is 00:07:23 more lethargic. Your insulin's spiking upiking up you feel tired you're going to end up spending more time on the couch after you've ate some shit food i don't necessarily agree like some small amounts of some shitty food isn't really going to make a big difference in the grand scheme of things but i do love the fact that he's hammering over and over again like guys like get more serious about your fucking diet yeah you know the people that are listening to this right now um you got to be at like an eight or a nine on a scale of one to 10, you know, every day with your nutrition. The reason why you're not gaining enough muscle is testosterone is probably too low. The majority of men have low testosterone levels.

Starting point is 00:07:55 Yeah, I do think that nowadays young men do have certain habits that can decrease testosterone. Like playing a fuck ton of video games. I have nothing against my dude Dick video games, but overdoing that. And we had Andrew Hoobman on the podcast. He talked about porn's effect on testosterone you should watch that video but i'm a millennial i'm 30 years old and i was one of that test generation that like internet porn was out when i was like eight years old and i ended up starting at 11 and i was addicted for hella years but what i found and when i look back on it um is that because I would watch porn and have the bad habit of just watching beaten off and shit, there are certain days that I'd do that and

Starting point is 00:08:30 I just wouldn't have the energy to go and do the things that I knew I wanted to do. And it was an addiction. It wasn't like, oh yeah, just watch porn once a week and I'm fun. No, I was watching shit every single day. And since it's just a fucking hyper stimulus, it's easy for young guys to get addicted to that and seek that and seek that instead of doing the things that are hard, like working out. If you're a young guy who's watching a lot of porn, get your shit together. Try to figure out how to get that out of your, you know, get that out of your system and try to, you know, try to build habits that are going to lead you towards doing harder things. The fourth reason that I can think of whilst you're not gaining enough muscle, you're simply not training hard enough. But a lot

Starting point is 00:09:03 of guys, you want to know why you're probably not building muscle honestly and you won't like to hear this no man would ever want to hear this bro you're probably training like a little bitch you're probably training like a pussy you're training at about four out of ten intensity which you call more like an eight to four that's true i think he he is alluding to this we've all made the mistakes and i know i've definitely made a mistake of having just stupid hard training sessions when i was younger like training sessions that got me injured because I was pushing way too hard. And I could have just lowered the intensity a little bit and been able to go to the gym the next day and the next day and the next day. So when you start working out, you got this hype and you're like fucking failure, failure, failure.

Starting point is 00:09:39 You know you're pushing but you fatigue yourself so much that you can't have quality workouts from session to session. So that's just something to try to be careful with. Power Project Family, how's it going? Now we talk about sleep all the time on the podcast because it's one of the biggest things that helps you with your health and fitness, your recovery, your muscle gain, your fat loss, everything. That's why we've partnered with Eight Sleep for such a long time now because the technology behind the mattress allows you to track your heart rate, the amount of times it takes you to fall asleep, your tosses and turns, your heart rate variability. It changes its temperature through the night based off how you sleep, but not only yourself, but maybe your partner on the other side of the bed. It is an amazing mattress.

Starting point is 00:10:14 Andrew, how can they learn more? Yes, head over to 8sleep.com slash powerproject. That's 8 spelled out, E-I-G-H-T, sleep.com slash powerproject. Along with more information, you guys will actually save $150 off of your entire order automatically. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. No wonder that you hear those guys

Starting point is 00:10:32 who are really good at, you know, like the professional bodybuilders and everything. They train for like 45 minutes. Why? Because their fucking one set is worth five of ours. You've seen videos of Arnold. He's literally making that fucking like triple chin face

Starting point is 00:10:42 once he's doing chest press. That's how you're supposed to train, right at the same time i don't expect you to totally believe me because all of those youtubers who are lying to you who are scamming you who are showing you krispy kreme donuts who are telling you to main gain will also say that this is over training so you can trust them if you want and stay skinny fat i like a lot of what hams is saying but one thing that i actually i think it's partially why he's made me grow so much is because when people would create an like an us versus them type deal type deal, like these people are scamming you. They're doing this.

Starting point is 00:11:09 They're doing this. It makes you kind of believe more what somebody is saying. Like, yeah, fuck them. I believe you. I think we got to be a little bit careful with that because like a lot of these like Greg Doucette, Lane Norton, Alan Aragon, like Jesse, like all these other, like Russ Swall, all these people, they're doing different things, but they have different pieces. And I think that we can learn from a lot of different people rather than thinking like, like, you know, we have different people that talk about diets all the time on the podcast from carnivores to vegans,

Starting point is 00:11:36 but people like to be like, this is the one right way. And this is the one right way. Just stay away from that type of thinking. I don't think it's fruitful. I don't think it's helpful for you to be able to actually learn more and progress. Yeah. Really what you want to try to take home from people is what is their explanation good? Forget about the color of everything that he's throwing at, throwing out at you here with the cartoons and all the other stuff. Like don't get swallowed up by that. And then just all of a sudden believe everything that he says, because now you're in the same category of, you know, believing somebody that, putting too much power in someone's hands

Starting point is 00:12:09 and you want to be able to sift through, like, are these, does he have good explanations of the things that he's talking about? And so far, it seems like most of his explanations are good. The fifth reason that you're probably not building muscle, you probably would think it's that you're not sleeping enough. Sleep is important for testosterone and muscle, but the truth is that a lot of guys who are jacked actually don't even sleep that well you know i was gonna just keep going no sleep is really vital here my argument is student bodybuilders you know guys who are in university

Starting point is 00:12:36 who party who take drugs who drink who go to sleep at like 2 a.m i was one of them and still build an okay amount of muscle now yeah you can say they've got noob gains but some of them are pretty jacked whilst they're like you know you can imagine the college frat boy who's drinking alcohol and going to sleep like 4 a.m sleeping for like three hours before he needs to wake up and they're still building some muscle so i don't think sleep is like as important as we say it is yo this is okay so he did end by saying he doesn't think it's maybe as important as people are leading to be he did these things in college you drank and he partied a bit, but he's still able to gain some muscle. And I understand that. And we can do a lot of things despite us doing things that might be fucking with our progress. We still might

Starting point is 00:13:14 be able to make progress. But the thing is, at this point, with the amount of people we've talked to and the amount that we know about sleep, sleep is something that is a non-negotiable. You should be trying to get quality sleep because number one, sleep affects your testosterone, right? Sleep affects your hormones. Sleep affects like your hunger hormones, ghrelin, leptin, the hormone that helps you feel fuller. It affects all these things. So if you have a lack of sleep, you're going to feel hungrier through the day. Food won't make you feel as full.

Starting point is 00:13:39 Your testosterone won't be as good. Your workouts, you won't be able to recover as well from session to session versus if you got less sleep. One thing to think about is like, he's definitely a driven guy. So like thing is, is when you're driven, like we know Goggins, you've heard of like all these high performers who are like, fuck sleep, get money. Like I understand the, you know, if you're driven, you'll work yourself through it. But at the end of the day, why not put all of the factors in your favor to be able to get, to be able to progress as well as you possibly could out of everything you said in this video i would say that this is a big miss and if you can if you're a guy that can optimize your sleep optimize your fucking sleep yeah and one of his top reasons

Starting point is 00:14:15 for not being able to gain muscle was low testosterone but we know better sleep is going to lead to better testosterone levels and then also for the young guys if you want your dick to work a lot better you need to get that sleep yes it's that important so i just yeah that's i agree it's just definitely a miss yeah there's actually something that i think is more important than that which is kind of common sense but it's progressive overload in the right way sleep will help you be able to progress better in the gym it's sleep's going to help you with everything i mean it literally will right like it's going to help it's going to help you with everything. I mean, it's going to help better decisions with your diet. It's going to help you be better in your relationship. It's going to help you to be less nervous, have less anxiety. It can help just about everything. Obviously, you can

Starting point is 00:14:55 overdo it. And there's some people that are depressed that stay in bed. And like, that's not what we're talking about. But trying to optimize your sleep and get good, comfortable, quality sleep will help just about everything what you need to do to progressively overload is choose the exercise first of all let's say flat bench press then choose the rep range that you're going to use this exercise for so for example you'll choose 10 to 15 if you want to build muscle 10 to 15 is usually the best a lot of people say 8 to 12 all of the dickheads who are trying to sell you their strength programs will tell you five reps and stuff okay what what do you say right here is pretty interesting we've

Starting point is 00:15:24 had andre milanich on the podcast and he's like a powerlifter who's top 10 all time at some point. He was huge too, but he talked about within somebody's first three years of training, I think he put it, he said that you should be focusing on volume, meaning you should be focusing on eight to 15 reps, training for volume, building muscle to give yourself a base so that you can start to train for strength effectively. There are other powerlifters we know who have actually done this. Russ Swole was a former bodybuilder. And even myself, I lifted bodybuilding style for probably like 13 to maybe 20 years old. And then it was when I was 20 or 21 that I started doing deadlifts and squats and stuff. But since I already put on a good amount of size, I was able to get strong

Starting point is 00:16:02 quickly because the muscle was there. So you've chosen the exercise. You chose the rep range for that exercise. What you do is you first pick a weight and you assume you could probably hit for 15 reps. Once I know where I could hit for 15 reps, I then reset back to 10 reps with a heavier weight. So now I'll do 65 kilograms for 10 reps. Yeah, that was kind of easy. Let's do that now next week for 11 reps. Eventually you will get to the point where you're actually being deeply challenged by this rep range i like the uh shift in focus you know it might help some people might help uh people not to hurt themselves because people uh get so obsessed with the weight one of the things that gets people injured the most and i've injured myself when i was younger was chasing weight meaning chasing trying to put more weight on the bar pick up heavier dumbbells

Starting point is 00:16:41 because i was like gotta do heavier but if you work with heavier weight before you're prepared for it, that is the easiest way for you to fuck yourself up. But if you just focus on trying to increase the reps you're doing with that load, much safer progression, much easier way to get in more training volume in a safer manner. That makes sense. As far as progressive overload is concerned, there's a lot of ways. If you slow down your reps, right? Because some people- Tempo, yeah. Tempo. That mind muscle connection shit, it is not a fucking myth. If you slow down your reps, right? Because some people- Tempo, yeah. Tempo. That mind-muscle connection shit, it is not a fucking myth.

Starting point is 00:17:07 There are bodybuilders who, because they're able to connect to muscles better, they could get away with a lighter weight bicep curl than you working with 50s. They can do better with 30s. If you slow down the reps and you make sure that, okay, is this bicep curl,

Starting point is 00:17:20 am I doing it with my bicep or am I using momentum and adjusting so I can work with heavier load? Tempo is another way that you can increase your ability to have progressive overload. Don't just think about just the reps or just the weight. Think of other ways that you can focus on getting that muscle to actually work the way it should. Bonus number six, the reason why you're not making muscle, which I briefly mentioned, is that you're training for strength instead of muscle.

Starting point is 00:17:40 Muscle growth comes from hypertrophic rep range. And yeah, if you train for some strength, you may get some bits of muscle, but if you care mostly or solely for muscle gain. This is an interesting thing. When I added strength training in when I was like 2021, after I already had like a good seven years of muscle building training, it's like I got another set of newbie gains because now since I was able to be stronger, I was able to go to those movements that I was progressing before. And I was able to push them with more volume because I was now overall stronger. I agree with him with starting with hypertrophy and that should help you build your base. But at a certain point where you become a bit more experienced, do some strength training because you're going to be able to progress your physique even more.

Starting point is 00:18:18 To my own experience and stuff, I've noticed that people that power lift, they seem to have a completely different look a lot of times to the point where their body looks 3D. We can't really tell like, what's the difference between that guy? What's the difference between that guy? Okay, that guy's leaner, but there's something different about that other dude. And we're not talking about the power lifter who just eats.

Starting point is 00:18:36 It's about the performance power lifter. Yeah, someone like Dan Green comes to mind years ago. I mentioned it, but Russell is another example of that. That man looks 3d he's unbelievable he just most likely wouldn't have that physique if he only concentrated on bodybuilding the muscle building rep range people say it starts from eight and it probably does but eight still builds like too much strength in my opinion it's too heavy to maximize your muscle growth 10 to 15 even four compound lifts seems the best case scenario he mentioned that eight reps will did a little bit too much strength let me say this there's nothing wrong

Starting point is 00:19:08 with getting stronger it will allow you to move more reps for the movements you're trying to do so i mean i i get what he's saying about like just don't do singles and doubles and triples when you're first starting i can understand that but getting stronger is not a bad thing this was a really good video though i think overall it solid. It was a lot of good information, especially for younger guys. They take that advice. They'll do well. The one thing I'll say is learn how to optimize your sleep. We've talked about it a lot. That is a big deal. That is something that can speed up your progress a lot more than other things. Your low testosterone cravings, whatever, sleep can help you out. So don't glaze over it like he mentioned. Other than that,

Starting point is 00:19:45 he had a lot of amazing info. Yeah. Be a student of this stuff. Search around, look on YouTube, check out and see what other people are doing and sift through it. It's not easy to always sift through it, but I thought he had a lot of great information there too. And he's encouraging people to be a little more intense in the gym. He's encouraging people to be more intentional with their diet. I mean, that's a huge one. What I like is he wasn't talking about chasing the number on the bar, the number on the dumbbell. It was more of like that stimulus, which is what we've been preaching for a long time now. And that's definitely helped my training and it's helped my physique for sure is by just focusing on that, not necessarily what number is on the bar. Whether you're trying to be strong or whether you're trying to have muscle or whether you're

Starting point is 00:20:28 trying to be lean, all of this takes a really long time. It takes a lot of effort to be lean. It's like a full-time job because it's all day, every day. You got to think about your sleep, the hours that you're awake. You got to think about the food that you ingest. You got to think about your hydration. There's a lot of shit to go through. So if you're having. You got to think about the food that you ingest. You got to think about your hydration. Like there's a lot of shit to go through. So if you're having a hard time with it, it's no surprise. It's actually very difficult.

Starting point is 00:20:51 Become a student of it. Be a white belt and try to learn as much as you can. I've dug the video myself too. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later.

Mark Bell's Power Project - Bodybuilders React To Hamza "5 Reasons You Can't Gain Muscle"

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