Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 026: Hardgainer Solutions

Episode Date: February 16, 2015

If you think you are a "hardgainer" and struggle to put on muscle mass, then you need to listen to this episode! No matter your genes, Sal, Adam & Justin provide practical solutions that will allow you to add muscle and dramatically change your body composition faster than ever before.

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind, hop, mind, hop with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Welcome to Mind Pump. This is Adam Schaefer, Salda Stefano, and Justin Andrews. We're coming to you live. Don't forget to subscribe. One of the things I do, hey, one of the things, first of all, before we get started, I have to, I'm going to apologize because maybe I should apologize. So tonight, you should apologize. Tonight, I just, I told Sal and Justin, so we've been

meeting and hanging out with him. We're trying to take advantage of Adam. So yeah, that's you would have. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm not the ramble about something that takes two seconds to probably explain, right? So these guys poured me a drink and I haven't, I don't remember the last time I even drank alcohol. Much, much less, straight vodka over. He says vodka and celser, but I think he held the celser. And I'm a little bit tipsy. So if I accidentally misplaced some words of like that,

please don't hold it against me. I'm retarded, but I'm not that retarded. So. How can I hold all these extra chromosomes off? That being... That was offensive. I apologize. Oh my.

That being said, we're gonna keep this out off and we're gonna talk about hard gainers. Part of the reason why I've had a chance to drink, it's partly celebration. I told the boys I wasn't gonna be competing in the next show that's coming up. I was debating that up until literally about yesterday and Decided I'm gonna enjoy myself a little bit. So that's part of the reason why we're having some drinks to celebrate We can actually eat together and have some some why don't you why don't you let them in on your normal? On your awesome meal you just have. Yeah, I just had a steak quesadilla that I that I washed down with a double double chicken burrito bowl that was followed up with some chips and guacamole. So it's pretty bomb.

But, yeah. Hard gainers, this is a great way to say going to a hard gainer. Yeah, right, so today we talked a little bit about it. Yeah, right, hard gainers. I get this question asked a lot. Well, what is a hard gainer? Like, what does that mean? So a hard gainer would fall in a category

if somebody would also classify as an ectomorff body type. So you've got that the small skeletal system, you have a hard time putting muscle mass on. Now, I say that's how we classify it, but there's all kinds of studies that have came out now that, you know, is there really such thing as Ectomasid and endo, and you know, we can definitely get some out of types and add some flaws. Exactly. There's something to say of that. We can get into a whole other episode of talking about different body types and what we thought we generalized before and they're coming out with stuff saying that that's not true.

But a hard gainer, somebody who has a hard time putting muscle mass or putting weight on period, they just struggle with getting enough food, they would think it's a fast metabolism. And more often than not, I think it's less of a fast metabolism and you just have trained yourself over years to not consume as much food. And that is very close to home for me because most all of my life I had struggled with putting

size on. I graduated high school at six foot three and 163 pounds. You were massive. Yeah, I used to actually think I used the dumbbell heavier than that. When I first started personal training, I used to use that as my transformation picture. I used to show people my high school graduation. It was on a beach and I'm drying off the towel. And I've got the towel lifted above my chest and you could literally see every one of my ribs. Like detail.

So I was pretty skinny and mind you, I was lifting weights at that time and trying to build mass. So I was trying to grow, I was trying to put weight on. And I just felt like I could never eat them, eat enough, you know. And there's a lot of things that play into that. Well, you know, I'm the same category. So I was very, very skinny grow up. That's actually growing up.

That's actually why I got into lifting weights. But when you classify hard gainer, as I've become a trainer, as I've been in this industry now as a fitness professional for a long time, I used to think a hardgainer and the classical term is just a skinny person, right? But I've seen people who are overweight that are hardgainers. And so I like to narrow it down and say someone who has a tough time building muscle with the traditional paradigm. That's the terminology I use.

So somebody who follows the magazine's recommendations, the bodybuilding magazine recommendations for building muscle, and who has a tough time putting muscle and strength on would call themselves or consider themselves a hard gainer. Now through the years what I've discovered is more often than not, it's not that necessarily they're a hard gainer, it's that they don't respond well to the common paradigm, the one that people promote,

that they need a different approach. And this is now, I was able to build a lot more muscle once I changed my approach. I found other people, other clients in the same category who couldn't do the same thing, put on more muscle just by changing their approach with resistance training and with nutrition. But nonetheless, genetics do play a role, right?

There are some dudes that just, man, I used to have this trainer years ago, I'll never forget, my first club I managed, as a general manager, I was 19 years old, and there was this trainer that worked for me. And this dude, man, pre-workout meal was a pop tart. He would have like two cheeseburgers a day, and that's it, like he ate almost nothing.

And this dude was doing skull crushers with like 225, you have the 245s on your side, the big straight bar. And he had like, you know, 17 and a half inch ripped arms. He was natural, and I know this because we were very close. He didn't take any steroids or anything like that, but he just built muscle. I mean, it was was insane and I'm sure you guys have known people actually yeah. I can count a couple of. Oh, actually, oh yeah, definitely. And it's just like that too. I have the same exact story. Somebody who ate Jack in the box twice a day or

like that and they would go in or they touch weights. Shoot, we have a buddy. I'm sure those of our listeners, if you don't know who Neil Maddox is, good buddy of mine. He's also a top, top guy in CrossFit. Well, that guy's always been yak. Yeah, no, no. We worked together for a long time. Now mind you, I've seen Neil eat very, very clean and dial. He is very, but I also seen the guy like have not worked out

for like two or three months going the gym one time, touch weights and look like hercules overnight. Yeah, that's not fair. And he's been a natural freak for as long as I've known him. And I'm just guys got super, which is also why the guys in his, what, mid to late 30s. And he's competing in the, the, the elite level on CrossFit games, which is, we all know how intense that is. It's ridiculous.

Yeah. It's pretty, and all natural, all natural in late 30s. And you're considered top 10 in the world and CrossFit. Yeah. It's really hard. Well, so I think a lot of people compare themselves to people like that, and then they say, oh, I'm a hard-ganner.

But the funny thing is, if you took just randomly, took 50 dudes off the street, just average guys, you know, just picked them off the street, I bet you, all of none of them would come close to the type of, you know, genetics that some of these top athletes have, right? I mean, it's like one in a, you know, one in 10,000. So I think a lot of guys actually consider themselves

hard games. I mean, how many guys have you guys seen it? You know, we've been in gyms a long time. Well, I think that's a very good point because we're you're, I'm not sure of this where you're going with this, but you know, someone who claims they're hard game because they struggle to put muscle in well,

it's actually, it's quite challenging to add muscle if you don't understand nutrition and- And proper challenging to add muscle if you don't understand nutrition and proper exercise. If you don't understand proper exercise and you don't truly understand nutrition, yeah, everybody could be followed to that. And that's why I think so many people think they're hard gainers is because they just don't totally understand what they're doing. I mean, I have to say even myself. So when my approach when I was trying to build muscle when I was a kid and I didn't have the education and the knowledge and experience I have now was eat anything inside, garbage,

whatever, high calorie foods that didn't matter, I needed to grow and lift weights heavy, as hard as it is as I possibly could, and that was what was going to get put size on me. And a couple of things that I learned later in line if that like were huge that were just counteractive counterproductive for myself was one I was extremely active I was always playing basketball on the side plus I was left away doing all this stuff like that I was go go go non-stop so I was super super active which you know when it comes down to somebody who's trying to put weight on put cal extra calories you know the more you move the it's kind of counterproductive to what you're trying to do back then I guarantee you weren't really paying attention.

Like, look how many calories I'm really moving and expending every set. It's like, you can't even, you're probably doing like, how many would you get? I would guess 4,500 to 5,000 calories, because if I'm usually way more active back then, and I know that's what I burn. I burn close to 4,000 now, especially on a day,

like today, Tuesday or Thursday, I'm at 4am. I've on my feet working for four or five hours and I go train super hard, do a little bit, I mean, easily up to the 4,000 calorie. So, you know, I've got to eat a lot of food to put size on because muscle doesn't build, a lot of people think that when you go in and you lift weights, you build the muscle. That's not necessarily how it works. And if you don't feed the muscle, what it needs, it won't grow. It doesn't, it doesn't work that way. You can stimulate all you want and break down all you want in the gym. But if you don't feed it properly and understand what properly is, then you, you can't. And so when I was younger, I used to eat all this stuff. Well,

a couple of things I learned one, I was moving way too much too. I also found out that when I ate, like let's say after a hard workout, I go have like a cheeseburger, fries, or whatever, a slam milkshake, whatever I could get my hands on, right? Well, I learned like how much saturated foods that are high in saturated, high glycemic, how much they satiate me,

and how much harder it was for me to eat another meal, two, three, or four hours even later I wasn't hungry for another five or six hours because I ate all that high saturated fat high glycemic foods Whereas I could eat you know eight ounces of boiled chicken breast and a cup of brown rice shit I'm hungry 45 minutes later. That's an interesting point Yeah, a lot of people don't consider that you know the high fatty high fatty diet, like how much you're satisfied and then you don't, you're not really motivated to, you know, consume all the amount of nutrients you actually need because, you know, I'm full.

I got my food so therefore, you know, I don't need to keep, you know, eating. Well, I have, you know, I'm gonna propose a different take on this. Because if you took, let's say you took the average guy who's working out and he's a hard gainer, right? And he's eating the whatever amount of food that he's eating and he's having a tough time building muscle.

Let's say you change nothing. You don't change his routine. You don't change his diet and you give him some testosterone. You give him, you know, you put him on some steroids. Will he add muscle? Yes. He will. So a lot of it, a lot of it and this is missed by most people. I think common, you know, a lot of times everybody's like, he will. So a lot of it, a lot of it, and this is missed by most people.

I think a lot of times everybody's like, eat more. It's the signal you're sending the body. Just because you broke muscle down does not mean your body is gonna build. It just means it wants to recover. Recovery and adaptation can totally be separate things. True. And this was the big thing that I noticed with myself

and with some of my quote unquote hard-gainer clients. And let's the big thing that I noticed with myself and with some of my quote unquote hard-gainer clients. And let's also, let's look at the facts here. Most people fit kind of in the middle. You have some up on the upper ends, which is a very small percentage, and then you have some on the very lower ends that really genuinely do have a tough time building muscle. And most people are somewhere in the middle. If you send the right signal, the right training stimulus, and you really hit it properly, they're gonna start building muscle.

And honestly, how many extra calories or grams of protein does it take to gain a pound of muscle? Really, how many grams of protein does a pound of muscle contain? It's like 50? 50 or something like that. So if you send the right signal, and so I think if you're having a tough time building muscle, examine your program. You're a probably working out too hard, and

I swear to God, that's the truth. A lot of these guys are going to failure on every set, and they're just, you know, 20 sets for their chest, you know, on Monday or whatever. They're not focusing on building strength. So they're not getting stronger in a regular basis. They don't know how to periodize their workouts where they do de-loading, you know, like one week they train lighters, they let their body kind of rest a regular basis, they don't know how to periodize their workouts, where they do de-loading, like one week they train liders, they let their body kind of rest a little bit and then come back and hit a little harder. And they're not focusing on the most effective exercises,

your squat, your deadlift, your overhead press, your pullup. Well, there's something to say for frequency, but there's also something to say for overwhelming your body with stress and sending that same stress and it'll never allowing for proper recovery, for overwhelming your body with stress and sending that same stress signal, never allowing for proper recovery to build and adapt and send that signal. So, yeah, obviously hormones play a big factor in that.

Well, I see people use the word genetics as, and I hate to say it, they use it as an excuse. That's a crutch for you. Like people who are obese, right? You have a lot of obesity and people will say, oh, it as an excuse. That's a crutch for you. Like people who are obese, right? You have a lot of obesity and people will say, oh, it's my genes, it's my genetics. Like here's a newsflash, okay? There are no genetics that exist that make you,

and there are in extra super rare cases, but there are no genes that exist that will make you 100 pounds overweight. They just aren't. Have you guys seen pictures? If you guys go online and look at like circus freaks or circus, you know, like the circus fat person who, back in like, you know, early 1900s, they could walk the streets today and totally blend in.

And yet, it's back then they were considered so big that people paid money to look at them. Well, I'm sorry to say, but we had probably, and I could count two guys that were probably obese. And I went to school with. And so, you know, this is just something new that I think has developed and like, I haven't even thought of it like that. I can't remember reading. Right.

Right. And it's not to, it's not to come down on, you know, people for being overweight and whatnot. Obviously, there's a lot of factors that led up to this point, but to be fair, we really didn't see that growing up. I literally had probably two people in school I knew that were significantly overweight. Yeah, and they're blaming genes.

We don't evolve that fast. It just doesn't happen that way. And so I think a lot of guys say, I'm a hard-gainer because it's an easy explanation. Like, oh, I can't build muscle. And must be because my genetics don't let me build muscle. And I don't know, I'm sorry. Most of you aren't building muscle

because you're not doing something right. I'm not saying you're not working hard. I'm not saying you're not being focused. I'm just saying, change something. Change something. Right. That's why you get to experiment, right? That's it.

I think a lot of people are so focused on and Materials that are common like you know from magazines are from you know, just you're your local guy at the gym that you see that's huge and You probably shouldn't listen to that guy. You don't listen to God. Don't listen to that guy But anyway like it it it's a process to Like I've found, even with my own evolution of understanding of nutrition is that people are so different. Like you cannot take one plan and duplicate that and pass it along to your friend. Oh, no.

Please don't do that either. Like if you have something that works for you, let's say it's Atkins, let's say it's, you know, whatever paleo you feel in the blank and you had, you experienced great results. You have better energy, blah, blah, blah, you know, your body responds to it differently. You just have to know that your friend, like standing right next to you, like, is going to have all kinds of different factors, going to have thyroid things going on.

Well, not just physical, psychological. Yeah. Psychological factors as well. I mean, a big part of obesity is also, as huge part of it is psychological. It's the comfort of food. It's the unrest or I'm bored. Well, that's the real issue that like a lot of times doesn't get addressed, right?

And you sometimes see that like on these shows, like they try to bring in like a psychologist and have them have a sort of council session. And they cry. And they cry. And then you know, it's like, oh, we've made this breakthrough and then there's still eating the Snickers.

Yeah. Yeah. It's probably the most addicting food, we've talked, you know, in the past, we've talked about it. It's probably one of the most addicting things. It's highly addictive, yeah. But I mean, genetics do play a role, absolutely, but they're not the be all end all.

Well, not only that, but you can also say that, so let's say genetically, because this is true, genetically somebody could be more likely to put or carry a higher body fat percentage than another person, right? You can say that. We all agree on that. But the person who is more likely to carry a higher body fat percentage, no, I'm not 100%

sure about this, but I'm pretty damn sure that that same person is more likely to build muscle than the person who is... Could be. ...so... And for every pound of... Well, it's also bone structure. You kind of alluded to a little bit of like some out of types and stuff. And I know that there's some controversy with that. But at the same time, it's pretty clear

that people have different bone structures. It's pretty obvious. Like if you look at somebody else that looks like they're carrying more muscle mass, like a lot of times like you see in the family, you see these same broad shoulders, you see this like sort of power like, even with the women. Oh, yeah. Right. And so, I mean, there, there are those factors there that, so that, and that's where the, the genes they know, with those same, like I said, those same people, which in, in my case, were probably trained thousands of people I know, and I've sat down

with somebody who's extremely overweight and I've ever asked them, like, you know, have you ever tried to build muscle or have you tried to lift weights before? And anyone that I've ever told me, any of them that I've ever told me they have have experienced that they put, they build, you know, that they put weight on, they put size on, they put muscle on. You have two factors with that. There's actually a few things.

When they look at the difference between people who call themselves or say that they have a fast metabolism versus people who say they have a slow metabolism. So they take people and they say, you know, they take a group of people and, you know, raise your hand if you think you have have a fast metabolism versus people who say they have a slow metabolism. So they take people and they say, you know, they take a group of people and, you know, raise your hand if you think you have a really fast metabolism, raise your hand if you think you have a really slow metabolism. They find that people with fast metabolisms

tend to be people who are fidgeters. So they sit, that they're sitting at their chair and they tend to rock their foot. They tap their foot. They tend to move more. They call it restless leg syndrome. But you end up burning 150 calories extra a day. It doesn't sound like much,

but over the course of a year, that turns into pounds, right? They also find that the digestive systems, like the small intestines, large intestines, tends to be longer in people who tend to be obese. So the food stays in longer, and they utilize more of what they're eating. They also find differences in gut flora

So like the gut bacteria in people who are obese But let's also look at this fact, right? If you weigh right now, Adam, if you if you were 30 pounds if you had 30 or 40 pounds of fat on you on top of what you already have You're walking around with more resistance. You're probably going to carry more muscle. Right. So you're yeah Your legs are going to carry a lot of that love you're going to carry more muscle And in fact when you look at people who've been obese for a very very long time They have bigger ankles bigger bones and the lower and the lower extremities because they've been carrying this It'd be like walking around with a barbell across your back

Well, yeah, if you've ever and I have done that you've had a somebody who's 300 pounds Taking their body fat test He hasn't seen the inside of a gym. He's been eating dark garbage food for, and that goes back to your last point that you just made. This is so true. He hasn't lifted any weights in 20 years or ever in that case. He's 300 something pounds in garbage food.

And then if we test his body fat in mind, he actually has more lean body mass than I have. And I've been busted in my ass in the gym for 15 years trying to, right? So, and my whole point of bringing that up was that there's pluses of both. Just because you have this, what you think is a slow metabolism,

well dude, you guess what? You can build muscle at a much faster rate than the average person who's got a fast metabolism or would classify themselves as a fast metabolism or a hard gainer. So, if for every pound of muscle that you put on your body, your body burns an additional 60 calories a day.

So, you know, your maintenance calorie at a caloric level for the guy who's 300 something pounds is already higher than mine. He can actually get away with eating as much or more food and still lose weight. So, I mean, if you look, I mean, he looked like like the average, not everybody actually very few people can look like, you know, you know, you know, you know, Mr. Olympia or very few people can look like the dude on the cover of mental health because those guys have the not only

they work hard and eat right and do all that stuff and some of them take anabolic, but they also genetically predisposed to. Yeah, you're predisposed to. But everybody can dramatically change how they look with their own gen- whatever genes they have, they can- anybody can dramatically change how they look and feel. Let me ask you guys this, then, as far as being a hard gainer is concerned, and I know that, like, so my brother fell into this category where I actually was the opposite. I actually responded really well to taking in a lot of protein shakes and I lifted really heavy weights and that was just my answer and all of a sudden boom it happened. But for him, how would you say he should have approached gaining more muscle? Whereas all I did was increase my calories and lift heavy weights and boom more muscle. Whereas, all I did was increase my calories and lift heavy weights and boom, it happened.

So I think, Sal and I both have different answers on this one. We kind of answered it in both roundabout ways. I think, and in my personal experience, the biggest thing that I could have made or done different was, I learned to feed my body what it needed first and get it as clean as possible. And then if I could handle piling on more calorie, additional calories, I would. And that was what gave me the extra calories surplus. It's what it made that I made sure I got the essential amount of protein for my body and stuff.

And then whatever extra was extra. And you know, since I didn't have a problem with putting that much fat on, I wasn't putting on a ton of weight. Now mind you, being older now, I'm now, I have to actually reverse diet out of a competition because I have built this mass, I have created this, it took years though. I had to create that appetite.

I didn't have, I used to be able to, I was that kid who used to not eat till noon or one for my very first meal. So I remember to this day, I'll never forget when I first started actively making decision like I'm going to train myself to You're so I had to get up in the morning and I really started with a whipped yo-play 130 calorie whipped yo-play and it was like forcing it down at like eight in the morning Yeah, I had no appetite and then I went from that to half of a bagel from a half a bagel to like some egg whites on there And like I just slowly kept forcing more and more and eventually got to

point where as I started to build a little bit of muscle, a little bit of time, like eventually I started to create this right now. Your body craved it. Yeah, I started to create this right then it got to put now, oh my god, you don't feed me by eight or nine, I'm a bear. Yeah, well I mean, the recommend the thing I would sell your brother was I'd say, you know, lift weights three days a week, focus on getting stronger on your barbell squat, your deadlift, your bench press, your overhead press.

Probably do a variation of each of those, each time you work out, don't train to failure, but lift heavy, and feed yourself. Feed yourself until you start getting muscle, and if once you start getting body fat or too much body fat, then bring it down a little bit. But until you get to that point, eat and focus on food. And if you can't eat enough in between meals or before you go to bed, make yourself a high calorie shake with some whole milk and some peanut butter and some protein powder or some ice cream.

Absolutely. How about this? You just said it right now. How about this one? It's only work out like three days a week. See, I was working out seven days a week, double days. I was thinking, in my mind, when I was younger,

I was thinking, okay, I want to build muscle. Got a ticket more aggressive. Yeah, more aggressive when after, it mathematically, it wasn't computing that, wow, all I'm doing is burning some more calories that I've got to intake. Well, even that, yeah, that said, doing more endurance and sprinting and running

and there was this misconception even in my own head that that's gonna help me build more muscle and to some degree it will. But for me, just if I was a hard gainer, I would just completely focus on lifting heavy weights and then see how I responded. And then... Well, I literally remember,

I remember this like it was yesterday. I was maybe 15, I think it was 15 years old, and I was playing volleyball with some friends, dislocated my kneecap, okay. First time I've actually done it a few times, but I dislocated my kneecap, bad injury, I had to wear this long, this big leg brace. So I still went to the gym and it worked out my upper body.

Now up into this point, I rarely touched my legs. I rarely worked out my legs like most guys that worked on the beach muscles, right? So my legs. For girls. Yeah, girls for the girls. So, you know, the physical therapists was doing the rehab and if you've got, if anyone you've ever been a physical therapy, they did a great job in the beginning, but then after that, you don't really get any better because they don't use progressive resistance. So I got really frustrated. I went to the gym one day, I got pissed off

and I started using leg press. Well, while I'm doing this, there was these power lifters working out in the gym, these big fuckers. And they're looking over at me and one of the guys says, hey, what are you doing over there? Hey kid, what are you doing over there? I'm like, oh, I'm trying to build strength in my leg. I just look at my knee and I need to get built some mass.

And he goes, get off that fucking machine. He goes, get over here and squat with us do some barbell squats. I'm like, why what's the difference? I'm working my legs out. He starts laughing. He's like, there's a huge difference. So I did my first squat session with these power lifters. And I will never forget. So this was during the summer of my, I want to say my freshman year maybe or maybe before my freshman year, I can't remember which probably freshman year say my freshman year maybe, or maybe before my freshman year, I can't remember which probably is freshman year

into my sophomore year, started doing squats that summer, I gained 16 pounds. And most of it was muscle. And it's because I started barbell squatting and deadlifting and I learned how to do it from these, and I remember distinctly, my mom having to buy new jeans for me because I looked ridiculous. And now, if any of you guys follow me on Instagram, at Maps and Obolic, you'll see pictures

of my legs and you'll see that my quads actually develop. I had zero legs when I started lifting weights. My knees were bigger than my femur. But I started squatting at 15 years old and I learned from powerlifters, had a squat with low bar squat and squat for strength and power. My legs exploded and I've done it there. So yeah, barbell squat. If you want to gain weight, do some squats and some dead lifts, watch what happens.

But that's why it's so crucial though, especially when you're an impressionable, younger person to get proper coaching. Oh, absolutely. Oh my god. Like, because, you know, that I just think of like even my wife had had a ex football player pro football player teaching her volleyball team and then loading all you know a ton of weight and they're doing back squats and forever and ever her back is screwed up because of it. So because the form was bad. The form was Yeah, well, I'm sure it wasn't managed and in plus the the weight itself wasn't managed properly, right? So you know didn't put the proper loading on there. So you know, just make sure like that

especially if you're listening to this and you're you know kind of coming up of age and like you're like okay You know, I want to gain muscle. I want to gain size and Make sure that you attach yourself to somebody knows what they're doing and can properly teach you technique because that's gonna Last you the rest of your life. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, there's a book I want to recommend to some of the younger lifters. And I'm looking it up right now.

I believe it's called Starting Strength. And I think it's by Mark Ripto, if I'm not mistaken. It is one of the best books. If you're starting off in liftee weights and you want to build muscle, I'm looking it up right now. Let me see here. Yeah, Mark Riptoe, starting strength. It focuses on the basic lifts.

It teaches you biomechanics. If you can't afford a personal trainer, buy this book and you will build more muscle following this than you will from any bodybuilder routine that you'll see in Flex Magazine Muscle and Fitness or on BodyBuilding.com. The other book I'll recommend is called, I think it's called Dinosaur Training.

And I can't remember the name of, let's see, dinosaur training. I think it's by gentlemen. I'm not quite sure with who wrote this book. Oh, Brooks Kubik, dinosaur training talks again about strength training. And there's some odd lifts in there as well. But you read those two books and you kind of follow what they say in there.

You'll be way more muscle than if you follow like the fill heat. Muscle muscle fit. Muscle fiction way more freaking muscle. And I've had kids that have come to train with me and then stop because they can't, you know, the personal training tends to be expensive. And I've recommended these books to them and I'll see them a year later. And these kids freaking look amazing, man.

They like big legs and backs and like, oh, fucking hell. He's like, oh, I can deadlift 400 pounds now. You know, it's just so, it's really cool. Right, I wish I had a mentor like that when I was a kid. I, boy, I banged my head all the way into my 20s, dude. I tell you what, like, chase. Nope, that don't work. Nope, that doesn't work, nope.

I have to say, like, I wish I had experimented but do it, like, you know, with some sort of like, bass. Yeah, that's true. You got the internet now. We didn't have the internet. That's true, that's true. That. Yeah, that's good. Well, you got the internet now. We didn't have the internet. That's true.

Oh, that's true. That's why we talked about that. Oh, I hate the reference in another podcast with that. But, you know, we've talked before together about how, you know, the, how accessible everything is now. And like, you know, back then, you know, I had to read three bad articles to get it one good article. Yeah.

You know what I did. I had Arnold Schwarzenegger's encyclopedia of body bodybuilding. The original in that. And I'm going to say this right now, it was it's one of the best books I've ever had from this standpoint, the exercise demos in there and the pure, the amount of exercises in there are awesome. However, don't follow the routine. I follow the Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know, you know, where you work out twice a day and you're doing all these crazy body parts split, and you know, it's just you just

fry the fuck at yourself. And of course, as an impressionable kid, not only did I follow that routine, but I'd go through like the section on chest and do every exercise that was listed, I mean, literally every exercise you can imagine that can be done with dumbbell barbells I did for each body part.

And I fried the shit, I don't know how I even got me stronger doing that. I fried the hell out of myself. So don't make that mistake. I think that's a really good point. And it's, once again, it's kind of like circling back around what we said about, you know, sometimes less is more.

And I think that's important, especially with the hard gainer to understand in so many aspects. And my, I wish I had a sexy story, like very hard concept. For when I first added 15 pounds in a year, but my experience was down there, I'd never forget. Mine was similar in the fact that I had an injury.

I rolled my ankle from playing basketball. Well, at the time, I literally played basketball at least five to seven times a week. I mean, I just, even if it was just for fun, but I'd play for an hour, sometimes three hours at a time, like every once every day. That was my thing. I loved the workout.

I loved to play basketball. And, you know, when I got hurt, you know, I went back to what's kind of rehabbing myself, and I was a trainer at the time already. And because I had eliminated basketball, I was like, you know, I'm not going to play for a while. I'm going to focus on weight lifting since I really can't, because I hurt myself anyways. And I just started noticing I was putting weight on, so I was going, I'm going to keep doing this. And I realized, wow, just by simply cutting all that activity level out, how much I started to put size on me. So, and I noticed that with especially with a lot of young kids

who consider themselves, hardgainers that come to me and ask for help, it's the very first thing I ask you to play sports, what are you doing? And, you know, it's like, I'm just doing a ton of stuff. Oh yeah, I skateboard, I snowboard, I play football, I play soccer.

You know, I swim everyone's well with my buddies and you know, we play some knee football out of it. But two times people put on 15 pounds, you said right, Debbie. You said, doing a million things. Exactly. And one of the best things you could do is tone down the workouts.

They don't need to be super intense. You not have to be beast mode when you work out. Like Sal said, live some decently, have moderately heavy weight, but moderately, it's not something you're maxing out. You don't need to be doing one to three rep max stuff right now, it doesn't, there's no need. So don't train to failure.

Progressive resistance is what builds muscle. Not going to failure. So if you lift 135 pounds and you did it six reps today and a month from now you're doing eight reps, you've gained something. And that's the progressive resistance. Don't lift until you can't move anymore. I know it's sexy and it's fancy

and it looks awesome when someone writes an article about, I worked out so hard. Here, I'll tell you guys a story. Let me tell you about a bad story. So that was an awesome story. Here's a fucked up story. I read an article that, again, this is Arnold and I fucking love the guys, one of my idols.

But again, bad advice. He wrote this article about how him and some of his buddies would take a barbell and take gallons of like jugs of milk And they'd go out into the woods and they would just squat all day and they and they and they I gained an eight I would I swear I would gain an inch on my thighs within two days. So I'm like this sounds awesome This sounds fucking awesome. I'm doing this tomorrow. I took a barbell and two 10 pound plates And I walked about a quarter mile to this elementary school by my house and as a kid. And I dragged along a jug of milk with me.

So it's kind of a pain in the ass walking all the way with all this equipment. But I made it there and I squatted and drank milk. Now number one, I'm lactose intolerant. And first problem. And number two, and number two, I didn't know how to squat properly. But anyway, so I lasted a whole,

I mean, I squatted for like a whole hour and a half while drinking milk. I almost puked twice. I couldn't make it home squat properly, but anyway, so I lasted a whole, I mean, I squatted for like a whole, you know, hour and a half while drinking milk. I almost puke twice. I couldn't make it home. Yeah, what else was happening in your body? Yeah, I said, no, no, I couldn't make it home. I couldn't make it home. I literally tried to walk and my legs didn't fucking work.

I remember thinking to myself, and I almost started crying. I'm like, I'm 14 years old or whatever, and I'm sitting there and I'm almost sitting on the sidewalk, and I want to cry, because it's getting dark. You know, I don't have a cell phone, right? I was like fuck what am I gonna say? Like I'm gonna go and then my dad came looking for me to pick up truck Pick me up, brummy home, and I missed like three days of school because I was so fucking sore

From squat things Arnold Thank you for listening to Mind Pump for more information about this show and to get valuable free resources from Sal Adam and Justin, visit us at www.minepumpradio.com. Until next time, this is Mind Pump.