Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1092: The 3 Things You Must Do if You are a Hardgainer

Episode Date: August 8, 2019

In this episode, Sal, Adam and Justin reveal the three things you must do if you are a "hardgainer" and are having difficulty putting on muscle. How the fitness industry shows NO LOVE for the hardgainer. (3:19) #1 – EAT MORE FOOD + The strategies you can implement TODAY to gain size the RIGHT way. (10:43) #2 – HAVE THE PROPER WORKOUT ROUTINE + The concept of leaving ‘two in the tank’. (19:27) #3 – PROPER SLEEP AS A TOOL TO GAIN MUSCLE. (39:55) The importance of tracking your ‘volume of training’ to avoid plateaus. (46:11) Why you MUST be consistent and NOT get discouraged by the scale. (51:32) Don’t get stuck in a particular rep range. (54:13) People Mentioned Stan "Rhino" Efferding (@stanefferding)  Instagram   Related Links/Products Mentioned August Promotion: MAPS Prime/Prime Pro ½ off!! **Code “PRIME50” at checkout** How to Determine if You are a Hardgainer – Mind Pump Blog Top 3 Mistakes Hardgainers Make When Trying to Build Muscle – Mind Pump Blog How To Eat If You Want To Pack On Muscle – Mind Pump Blog Skinny Guy 'hardgainer' Bundle | MAPS Fitness Products - Mind Pump Hardgainer Guide | Mind Pump Media The time course for elevated muscle protein synthesis following heavy resistance exercise. FLEX bodybuilding muscle magazine/MIKE MATARAZZO How Many Times Per Week Should You Train Each Muscle Group? - Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of Mind Pump, we are talking to a segment of the population that gets oftentimes ignored by the fitness industry. Now, I know most people are looking for advice and information on how to burn body fat and lose weight, but there's those of you out there that have trouble gaining weight. You want to pack on muscle size. Maybe if you're female, you're really skinny

and you want to build curves. You want to add a bigger butt. You want to build more shoulders. Guys out there who may be skinny. I was like you, you know, I was a six foot, 130 pound kid. I was a, you know, I was a coat rack and I wanted as much information as possible on how I could just transform my body and build muscle. So this episode is for all of you hard gainers out there. And we talk about the three things you have to do to build muscle, especially if building muscle

is really, really difficult for you. So we talk all about nutrition, training and sleep, and strategies within those to get your body to build muscle. Now while you're listening to this episode, you may hear Adam crack up a little bit and break a little bit. So when we record a lot of these episodes, Justin loves to mess with us. And so sometimes he'll put on a funny hat or he'll make a face or he'll draw a picture

of something crazy. And the goal is to get a really super child to laugh. And if we laugh, we have to buy him lunch. And we never break. But today, I think Adam and his weakened dad state. He cracked. No, this thing's ridiculous. He laughed and so for the big guns today. So if it doesn't make sense to you when you listen to the podcast, you can actually watch

the video version of this. We're going to actually put clips of this on our Instagram channel MindPump Media and you'll see what Adam is laughing at. But other than that, this entire episode is all about how to build muscle and gain weight if you're a hard gainer. I also wanna tell you guys that this month, for the first time ever, we've never done this, maps prime and prime pro are both 50% off. Now maps prime teaches you how to individualize

your warm up priming session before your workout. Now this is important because how you prime your body will dictate how effective your current workout is. If you prime properly, it'll make your workout much more effective, regardless of what you're doing for your workout. So I don't care if you're running, lifting weights, doing crossfit, whatever,

proper priming will make your current workout much more effective. Now, maps prime pro, that's correctional exercise. It's all correctional in nature. So if you have any extra pains or if you want to avoid injury or dramatically improve your mobility, Maps Prime Pro is for you. And if you're a personal trainer,

these two tools are extremely valuable and will help you become a better trainer for your client. So both these programs are 50% off. Here's what you do to get the discount. Go to mapsfitnisproducts.com and use the code prime50 that's P-R-I-M-E-5-0, no space for the discount. So that's it. Here we are talking about how to not be a hard gainer anymore.

The other day I was writing about a topic that I think does not get enough attention. You've been writing some fire blogs lately. It's good to see you back on that. I know we have a rotation of people that write for us, but I know that you're, we want more sound. Well, I write a lot of these and then we set them up and release them at a particular time.

So I know that we have a lot in the hopper, but for a while, that was writing on this one particular topic, which for me, and I know also for you, Adam, and maybe even you too, a little bit Justin. Just a little bit, not so much. A little bit. It's a topic that is- Oh, skinny ones.

Yeah, near and dear. And I remember how frustrated I was as a kid, trying to find information on this topic because let's face it, the vast majority of information in the fitness and health space is geared towards what? Weight loss, right? Fat loss and weight loss. Most people- That's the majority. Most people have a problem with being too overweight or too heavy or, you know, are struggling with losing weight or losing body fat.

But there is- No love for the skinny guy. No love for the hard gainer, you know what I'm saying? And I remember as a kid, you know, trying to lift weights, trying to gain muscle, and just nothing's working, and I would complain to family members, be like, eat everything, and they would make fun of me. Because he'd be like, oh, I wish I had your problem.

Because everybody else was dealing with gaining weight or with too much weight. So I think we should do a whole episode on the struggles that people have with trying to pack on muscle and size and gain weight because it's just as difficult when you're on that end. I remember I lived the whole thing. Do you remember how old you were when you made

the kind of the transition when you think started to kind of come together? I know that there's things along the way, like when I think back like that I started to piece together. And I'd say probably around like 25 or 26 was when it all kind of came together for me. When I started to realize all the things that I was kind of doing wrong before.

And I was like this, I had like multiple aha moments along the way, because I remember from 17 to like 23, I mean, just fighting and just scratching and fighting for three pounds. I mean, it was like so scratching and fighting for three pounds. I mean, it was like so hard to get. I remember even being a trainer and going like, man, if I could just be 185, 185 would be so awesome. And it took me years just to get to 185. And it seemed like 200 would be like the pinnacle.

Like one day I'll grow up and be 200. That's how I felt. Because I would lose, I would gain five pounds and then lose six, you know, just that was like the story of my life. It was really, really hard. And it is really hard when you this person because people keep telling you, eat more food, lift weights, and you're like,

I am lifting weights, and I'm eating what feels like a lot of food. I'm eating more than I think I should, and yet I'm not gaining any weight. And I remember going through this. And I had a few clients like this. In fact, Doug, when he first hired me, he told me he was a hard-gainer.

And he had been someone who had experienced training on his own for years. The guy was far more educated on exercise and nutrition than the average client. He'd followed workout programs and routines. I think he did body for life at one point. He'd followed routines in the bodybuilding magazines. And he's like, I just don't build muscle very easily.

And once I applied what I had learned to work for hardgainers on him, he went from somebody who had issues building muscle to somebody who, for all intents and purposes, if you look at him, you'd think the guys got great genetics for building muscle. And there's that famous picture that I posted on my Instagram a long time ago of his, it was like his before and after. And you, in the guy, I think, in the picture, you were like 47 years old, Doug, or something like that? Like, age seven. 47.

That's 47 years old. No, he got 74. Shredded with muscle, but it was because we applied the right things and got the body. Well, you were old and wise by that point. You've already put this all together. Like, I remember, I even remember the order of like when things started to come together from the very first big hurdle or thing that I figured out was, I was a kid who I love sports.

So I played basketball, baseball, football, snowboard, wakeboard, I mean, I was active as fuck. If I wasn't playing video games with my buddies, I was for sure outside, running around and playing games. And when we played games, it wasn't like, I played a little bit of basketball. I played for like four hours a day, five hours a day. Like we played nonstop, so you just burning energy.

Yeah, burning energy like crazy. And so I know that was one of the biggest things for me was that I just could not, I could not keep up with the amount of calories that I was bringing. And I didn't really know this until later on because we didn't have the tools, that's why I always tell people today,

so I think this is where these types of tools like the Fitbits and the Body Bugs and Apple Watches and man, those are such useful tools. Cause so, and I know we get caught up sometimes being like, oh, it's not very accurate and people tear them apart, but it's like, man, before that, I had to guess. I had to guess what I was burning. Like, oh, based off my weight, my age, all the books are telling me I'm somewhere around here.

And to be honest, they were extremely off. They were more off the estimations in the books than when I actually got one of these wearables and I started wearing them way back with the very first one that came out. And I was like, holy shit, I'm burning like five, six thousand calories on a normal day. It could be higher than that when I had these crazy days where I'm playing sports all day.

And what it was was, sure, I might have one day where I crushed a bunch of food and had, you know, McDonald's and super size and ice cream and all this shit and everything like that that piled up to 7,000 calories, but I couldn't keep that every single day. And then the next day, I don't want to be able to eat 2000 because I'd be so oversaturated. So for me, the first big thing was understanding that, you know, when I'm doing all these sports that I love to play and do, and that I'm also trying to build this muscular physique,

that these are kind of conflicting signals that I'm sending to my body and something's gotta give. No, that's a good misdirected energy. I think I'm actually wondering if like hard gainers are truly like genetically hard gainers or if it's just like, you know, misdirected energy. They're not putting their resources in one honed in direction where they can get the maximal amount of, you know, get the results from what they're

trying to do. No, I think, and we should talk about what, you know, what a real hard gainer kind of looks like. But Adam, you make a good point. I think if you're somebody who's having issues, building muscle and you're struggling to get stronger, but you're also very, very active, okay? Then the first thing you should do is reduce some of your activity. Now, what does that mean very, very active? I would consider somebody who is doing 10,000 or more steps a day and

an additional hour of activity every day to be quite active compared to the average person. You might want to cut that down a little bit. You might want to bring that down. Now, if you're doing three hours, four hours, a basketball a day, for sure, cut that down because at the end of the day, there's one thing that we can't get around. If you want to lose a weight, you have to take in less calories in your burn. If you want to lose weight, you have to take in less calories in your burn. If you want to gain weight, you have to take in more calories in your burn. There's two things you have to work with there, which is reduce your caloric output in terms of burn and increase your caloric intake, which is the food that you eat, which takes me

to one that I think is most important for hard gainers to consider when it comes to the calories equation, which is you're just not eating enough. Now, this is a hard thing to hear when you're, you know, eating a lot of food and you're feeling full and stuff. It feels like a chore. And people are like, you're not eating enough food. Okay, just like when I take someone who wants to lose weight and I ask them how many calories are eating,

and they radically underestimate their calories, hard gainers do the opposite. They tend to radically they radically underestimate their calories. Hard gainers do the opposite. They tend to radically overestimate their calories. I learned this firsthand. I remember trying to eat lots of calories, trying to gain weight. Once I started tracking, I realized I was eating less than I thought I was. I just felt full and stuffed because the foods I was eating were making me feel so full and bloated and stuffed.

So that's number one. You're not eating enough. If you're not gaining weight, you're making me feel so full and bloated and stuff. And so that's number one, you're not eating enough. If you're not gaining weight, you're just not eating enough. And so I would say, just like I tell somebody who wants to lose weight, first figure out how many calories you're eating every single day. Track. You have to track to start with to see where you're at. Once you get that number, let's say you're averaging 3,000 calories a day and you haven't gained weight on 3,000 calories a day,

but that's what you've been eating. I want you to add 1,000 calories to that. Now normally, I would tell somebody to add 500 calories to that to get them to gain some muscle. But if you're a true hard gainer, it needs to be closer to 1,000. This is what I would have to do. I would always aim for about 1,000 over my My maintenance and that was really when I would start to see the best gains in terms of body weight and size on the scale

Well now within that too There's some strategies that I started to pick up later on also so early on when when eating and knowing that I need to eat a lot of calories I would just eat you know like breakfast was the ego waffles with peanut butter and syrup and, you know, I was eating donuts and bagels and, you know, fast food like I mean I would just I would take in the way I looked at it as I need a calorie so I kind of understood that to a point But like you said when I actually sat down and tracked it because they might have I'm going like oh man I had this you know, ago ago waffle peanut butter syrup thing that had to have been thousand calories right there. And you know, later on at night, I had a McDonald's Big Mac and Super Size fries

and Nuggets, there's another 2,000 calories there. And then I looked at all the other little snacks or bars or shakes in between. I was like, shit, I'm still only eating about 4,500, 4,000 calories. And for a guy that was burning 5,000 plus, I'm still in a chloride deficit. So the tracking piece is huge,

but then I also learned something about myself personally that I've shared with other people and it's unlocked this piece for them. And that was, I actually did what I thought would have been the opposite idea, which was I ate a lot of leaner foods early on in the day. And what I found that this made so, for example, like now my breakfast was like oatmeal, you know, and blueberries and like fruit, like stuff like that, or for lunch instead of having a togo sandwich

and chips and a soda or something like that, I was eating, you know, chicken thighs and rice and vegetables. Like what I found was my body digested that food really quick and used it and I was ready to eat again like two hours later. Yeah, so with people who want to lose weight, we talk, I talk a lot about trying to avoid hyper palatable foods or foods that make you want to eat more. When you're trying to gain weight, it's actually a bit of a reverse. You're trying to avoid palate fatigue. And this is extremely frustrating. Again, I remember trying to eat more food to gain weight and feeling like I was force feeding myself. Like,

I couldn't swallow another bite, but I knew I had to consume another 500 calories. It was very, very difficult. One strategy that I employed and that I would recommend to other hard gainers is to A, what Adam's saying. E-foods that digest easily because my son actually experienced this the other day. He's starting to think about trying to put on some muscle and he went to the mall with his friends and he comes home and he ate lunch at like 12.30, he comes home 5 o'clock, dinner's ready and he's like, I'm still full from lunch. I'm like, well, what did you eat?

And he tells me what he ate, and he just, he feels bloated and full. And I'm like, listen, I know you're trying to increase your calories, but you have to eat things that feel good too, because you're not gonna wanna eat again for another six or seven hours. You're not gonna be able to get the amount of calories. So you wanna look at palate fatigue

and look at those things and say, okay, what is going to, how am I going to be able to eat more food? Now, for me, if I left the tastiest or most enjoyable food later, then I was better off than eating that early on. So if I'm eating a big plate of, you know, let's say I'm eating steak and rice and vegetables or whatever, I'm going to leave the thing that I know I like to eat the most last, because I know at the end, even if I'm a little full, I'm gonna find room. If I leave the food that I have the difficulty eating,

last, by the time I get to it, after I've already eaten some food, I'm gonna look at it and be like, I don't have any more room to eat that food. So that leads me to another point that reminds me of something that I unlocked later on also, which being a guy that's six, three over 200 pounds, like getting enough protein for me was really challenging.

Like, if you start breaking down like a six ounce chicken breast and a piece of steak that's eight ounces, I mean, you're only talking about 35 to 45 grams of protein. And if you're somebody who needs 180 to 220 grams of protein, that's quite a few meals that have to be, and that's a protein-heavy meal, right? If you have a big ol' piece of steak or a big ol' piece of chicken, I mean, that means you gotta have that in five or six meals

throughout the day to hit your target. So I found that really challenging also is making sure that I was getting adequate protein. So I made it a point to make sure, one, early on in my day, that I was on track. If I found myself, if it was new in our one, and I only had 20 grams or 30 grams of protein in for the day, then trying to catch that up later on would be really, really challenging.

So I'd start to pay attention to where my protein intake was, and I would target that first to your point what you're making right now. And then I would pile on the starchy carbs and the things that I enjoy, because like you said, really easy to eat the rice or the potatoes or the things like that. After I get my chicken or I get my steak

or I get my turkey or I get my meat that I need. This is also where eating small meals throughout the day actually may help. If you're trying to eat 3,000 or 4,000 calories, it's kind of hard to do it in three meals, but doing it in five meals makes it more doable. In fact, I think this is the origin of the small meals throughout the day thing. I think this was bodybuilders and strong men who were eating five and six thousand calories a day who found that it was easier if they'd split the meals up rather than sitting down and having a feast, you

know, two or three times a day, which makes it, you know, far more difficult. Yeah. And two, I mean, like for me, it was all about trying to drink the calories and trying to get, you know, more to get more of the way protein and loading that in with egg yolks and everything else all in the morning. And then that would just make me Cassie blow it. It was terrible for me to try and digest

all that throughout my day. And then it was really hard to cram in those extra meals. So it is important how you stack your day to kind of lead into your performance in the gym and then how it's going to affect, you know, just eating the rest of your meals throughout the day. I will say this, there are some little simple tricks and techniques to add calories, quality calories to your food, olive oil on all your vegetables. That's a very easy thing to do.

If I, if, if, and vegetables are delicious with olive oil, they're also delicious with butter. You can put butter on them. Your rice, you could cook your rice in bone broth. We've talked about this in the past, or you can add butter or olive oil to your rice. You can also choose fattier cuts of meat to give you more calories.

And then here's a great one. If you're one of the lucky people that has easy time digesting dairy, now I'm not one of these people. I can't have dairy bothers me. But if you can have dairy, a glass of milk at the end of your meal or with your meal, it's a very easy way to add an additional two to three hundred calories. And 10 grams of protein. Yeah. And once you're doing these things, you'll find that your calories will get high enough for you to start gaining body weight.

But I will say this, just because you're a hard gainer doesn't mean that you won't gain body fat. Not necessarily bad thing. I want you to not be afraid of gaining body fat. If you're a real hard gainer, you're probably pretty skinny and already naturally pretty lean, don't be afraid of gaining body fat. But ideally, we do want the weight that you gain to be muscle. Here's where the biggest factor, in my opinion, comes into play, which is the right workout

routine. Almost like clockwork, nine at a 10, the hard gainer's ever worked with. I look at their workouts and their workouts are wrong. I change the workouts, everything starts to work again and they start to build muscle. Almost every single time, in fact, this was the only thing that I changed with Doug when I trained Doug. His nutrition was fine. It was just the workout that we changed that made us

start to grow. This is also why I feel like I pick on a lot of the famous Instagram kids that are competitors that post exercise videos. Because in the bodybuilding community, it seems to be really popular to post creative exercises, using a machine and doing a sideways chest press or doing some weird cable sideways machine.

And so I remember being a kid and seeing these types of things and being attracted to that and then going to the gym and then doing all these different types of exercises and neglecting the ones that later on in my life would put on the real mass and size. And so that's when I speak out on those types of posts or those people that are posting me with that, the reason why I have a problem is it reminds me of when I was 18, 19 years old and looking up to somebody who has this incredible physique that's a pro bodybuilder or men's physique type of athlete,

and then seeing the exercise that they post and show them. You rarely ever see them show a squat or a deadlift or a head press or a bench press because it's boring, right? Everybody's seen it. So everybody wants to put this creative, these creative exercise other well. When you're an 18, 19 year old kid

and you don't really understand programming and exercise design, you see that and then you go mirror it and you go do those exercises all the time in the gym and they just don't take you anywhere. But you want the loudest signal possible and that's what those exercises like your back loaded squat, your dead lifts, your bench press, those multi-joint type movements, that's going to give you the loudest signal, that's going to help you know, produce that building signal that you need. No, barbells and dumbbells should be your friends.

I, this was, this was my story. I remember I was, I don't remember all of it, it was 15 or 16. I go to the YMCA, I was just finished rehabbing my knee, I had dislocated it, so I was doing, for the first time really doing good leg exercises, like leg presses and haxt, squats and leg extensions. And there was a group of power lifters

that were squatting in the squat cage. And these guys, I would see them, I've seen them work out before. And they were just these massive, strong men. And you know, to a kid who wants to build muscle who's skinny, they were like gods to me. And I was watching them. And one of the guys came over and asked me,

you know, what I was doing. And I said, oh, I'm trying to build some mass in my legs and trying to build some muscle. And he goes, you shouldn't be here, you should be over here with us doing these squats. I'm like, well, you know, I read in the Bodybuilding magazine that leg press is a good mass builder for legs. And I did, I had read Flex Magazine.

It said top leg mass builders. And leg press was near the top. And I thought it was just as good as a barbell squat. And the guy's like, no, you gotta be squatting over here. So they take me through a squat workout, which I've talked about in the past, which was just, it was epic and monumental, and I was like, in such awe of these guys.

And then the guy told me, he says, look, he said, I'll tell you what, if you could bench press two plates, squat three plates, and deadlift four plates, I promise you, you'll be impressed with your physique. Now he's saying this to, I think it was a 15 or 16 year old. He was 100% right. From that day forward, I focused solely

on trying to get stronger at those lifts. Now I didn't train necessarily like a power lifter. I trained kind of like a bodybuilding sense that my reps were always, you know, between six to 10 reps, and I still did the auxiliary type work, but you better believe the focus was, bench press, squat, and deadlift, and he was right that summer,

I gained 15 pounds of weight, and most of it was solid muscle. And why? Because I avoided all the machines. I avoided all the cable exercises, and mainly what I did was squat, deadlift, and bench press. And I didn't necessarily get to those targets, although my deadlift got up to that weight,

but my remember my squat got pretty high, my bench press went up, and I remember going back to school and everybody was like, what heck happened to you? Well, I just recently shared on an episode that I did a workout that was primarily machines. Talking about this topic right now, it makes me think back to what did my routine look like in my early 20s and what does it look like in comparison today. One of the things that stands out to me just having this conversation is, I used to maybe

do one, maybe two exercises that were dumbbell or barbell, and then the rest were like all these machine cable exercises. That was like a normal routine. And then in fact, I could have multiple days in a row that was like all machine cable, and like no barbell or dead, a barbell or dumbbell type exercise work today.

Now it's like, I'll go days, sometimes weeks, and never do any machine stuff. You got to buy one. You got to buy one for that one. Fucker. You got one. Yes, do finally you got one. That's the good.

It took a minute. It's fucking ridiculous, bro. All right, so. So, you got to spice it up. Oh, you're scingering, bro. Too much, right, so Spice it up. Oh, I'm going bro. It's too much right. Yeah It's ridiculous. What is that thing? I don't know. I found it. I thought Sound appreciated Carnival yes, oh my god

You know the rave that so you were saying you went you now you go weeks. Yeah, so my point was that this is another thing that I feel like probably a lot of younger guys and girls that are listening that are hard gainers probably fell and fall into a similar trap of, you know, doing all the cool machine and cable exercises and neglecting to do a lot of the hard stuff, the barbell and dumbbell type work, and that was definitely me. I've definitely gravitated to all the cool exercises and the cool machines in the gym, but I knew enough like, oh, I gotta do bench press

and oh, I gotta do some of the overhead press. I gotta do some of these, you know, barbell dumbbell exercises. So I made sure to throw them in there, but it wasn't like the core of my programming where it's completely the opposite now. The core of my program is all dumbbell, barbell, and the only time I really utilize machines is like when I need to actually deload a little bit, when I need to lay off, because I know that I'm like, I've been hitting the weights so hard that I'm feeling it in my joints a

little bit, or I overreached a little bit and so I'm sore. And so that's like what I just talked about the other day. I deadlifted like 450, it's been a long time since I pulled that kind of weight. My low back was completely sore for two, three days afterwards. It was time to do legs again. I had scheduled squat, front squats. But I'm like, man, I'm still fried from that.

So then you found me on the leg press and leg extension doing these exercises that we typically kind of talk trash about because we know they don't put a lot of muscle and size on, but that's where I find them beneficial today where totally opposite what I was young. No, and I noticed this as a kid, and this is actually quite true, especially if you are, again, if you're that hard gainer,

you're that skinny person who's really struggling to put on weight. If you focus on getting stronger, here's what'll end up happening. And I noticed this early on, and this is actually quite true. And now, after a certain point, once you've put on a certain amount of size and you've built a good base or whatever, this isn't as, it's still important, but it's not as important, but it's extremely important when you're starting out, you're skinny, you're that hard-gainer kind of person, it's very important to focus on strength, and here's what happens. You'll get stronger, you'll get stronger,

you'll get stronger, boom, muscle will come on your body. You'll get stronger, you'll get stronger, you'll get stronger. Boom, muscle will come on your body. I remember this, like it was yesterday, like I would be building up my squats and I'd go up five pounds, I'd go up five pounds, I'd go up five pounds, I'd go up 15 pounds, boom, quarter inch around my legs. It was like clockwork.

If I got stronger consistently enough, the muscle would pack on. So that's rule number one with your training is, if you're a hard gainer and you're lifting weights and you're going back to the gym and the weights aren't moving up, that's gonna be very difficult to pack on muscles. It's gonna be very, very hard. If you're going to the gym and your weights aren't moving up, that's gonna be very difficult to pack on muscles. It's gonna be very, very hard.

If you're going to the gym and your weights are going up consistently, be patient, muscles gonna come on your body, especially if you're feeding your body adequately. Now, that all being said, I will say this, here's something that I've known. Now, this is for true hardgainers now. Again, this is for people who really don't seem to build muscle as easily as the average person.

I think one of the big problems is that they require a more frequent muscle building signal than the average person. In fact, I think the genetically gifted people that are out there, the bodybuilders, the people who just seem to build muscle like crazy. One of the reasons why they do that is when they lift weights, I think their muscle building signal just stays elevated for much longer. Now we know when studies, and we can measure this signal, we measure it with something called muscle protein synthesis, and it spikes after you lift weights.

What that means is your body is using protein to rebuild and build tissue, so we can measure this. What we found in studies is that the average person, this signal will spike and it'll stay elevated for about 48 to 72 hours and then it starts to drop off pretty quick. I would surmise that the genetically gifted people out there, that signal probably stays elevated for two or three times as long. And for people who are genetic hardgainers, I bet that signal goes down faster than the average person. And so when I take the genetic hardgainers, I bet that signal goes down faster than the average person. And so when I take the typical hardgainer,

who's like, man, I'm doing a body part split and I'm working out and I'm not getting strong, I'm not building muscle, I take their total volume of the workout and instead of having them do, you know, chest one day a week and back one day a week or whatever, as I take it and I divide it over three workouts and I say, okay, we're gonna do, we're gonna hit your whole body three days a week

We're gonna hit each body part three days a week same amount of volume just more frequency and that seems to be like magic For hardgainers almost everybody me included I if I hit a body part once a week I don't care how great my work. I is it's just not gonna build as much muscle is when I hit more frequent We'll also considering, you know, the proper application of intensity with that process too, because, you know, going from like beast mode and doing your split routine to then having to spread that out throughout the week, you got to be really mindful of not like going for that max out lift in order to then rebound it and come back and be able to be effective in your next workout. going for that max out lift in order to then rebound it and come back and be able to be

effective in your next workout. And so it's a totally different mentality and also, you know, applying the proper amount of rest period. So, you know, your body is able to then adapt and gain and build that muscle. So that's a really good point and reminds me of like another like pivotal moment in my hard gainer career, right? Trying to get build muscle was, I would do the same thing, Justin.

I would... The things ridiculous. Of all the things that you've done so far, I can't even fucking look at you today. So look at me so ridiculous. The intensity thing was something, though, this is a really important point that I want to reiterate that you just said, because this is a really important point that I wanna reiterate that you just said

because this was a challenge that I had because I was, I fell in that category of the kid who hammered the fuck out of a muscle one day a week and then would try and rest it because I was all about, you know, when you come in the gym, you do the damage there and then when you go home, you rest, you recover. So, and the more to the damage, the better.

Right, yes, I would want to do as much damage as possible. And then I want to want to eat and rest for as long as possible before I would come back and hit it again. I never really applied the frequency principle. That was just something that I neglected. I was all about intensity, I was all about volume. And when I made that transition to starting to

hit muscle groups more frequently, I had a really hard time with that old school mentality of hitting blasting it, because now I was just blasting it twice. And I'm like, I wasn't getting the results that I should be getting. I really had to learn to back on. Now this is where the two in the tank thing came for me. I didn't, I never used to talk about that. That was not a thing for me until later on and when I was trying to add frequency of a muscle group, I started to realize, I can't go to failure on this muscle. If I'm gonna try and go hit it two days later again,

because I'll be so damn sore, I won't be able to lift hardly any way. So this was the two- the tank method that completely changed the frequency game for me, which ended up building some of the most muscle that I ever put on my body. Same here. 100% same here. It was, because what we were told was beat up the muscle, cause a lot of damage, and then rest because it's the healing process that your muscles build. And so I would do the same thing.

In fact, I remember, I literally remember the exact magazine, if you don't believe me, look it up. I know I'm right on this. I believe it was, I wanna say 1995 or 2006 Flex Magazine, the cover was Mike Mauterato and it said, it was like, what kind of, you know, shorts was he wearing? He wasn't, it was just his arm. And it was, it was like a green flex, it said. And it was like, what kind of, you know, shorts was he wearing? He wasn't, it was just his arm. And it was, it was like a green flex, it said.

And it was like a Vainy. Mass building strategies or techniques or something like that. And then when you flip open the magazine in there, it had advanced mass building techniques. And what did they listen there? Four streps going to failure. Stripsets, drop sets, heavy negatives. It was all partial reps.

It was all these insane intensity builder techniques. Now, as a kid, what do you think I did? All of it at once. I did all of them. So then I'm like, this is it. This is why I'm not building muscle. I'm not causing enough damage. So then I would go work out and my cousin and I would lift

and we would do, we would go to failure, four straps, do partials and then do negatives. And not only did I not progress, I actually started to regress and I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on. But the message that we were being told was beat up the muscle, leave it alone, let it rest, recover a week later, it'll be stronger, more you tear, the more you build. Not true at all. This is an important thing for a hardgainer to understand, and so this is why I want to make this point.

Healing and adapting are two different things, okay? So when you cause a lot of damage to your body, your body is healing. It's trying to heal that damage. It's also simultaneously thinking of, or trying to adapt, so that next next time the same stress or the same insult doesn't cause the same level of damage. Your body is aiming to become more resilient and stronger,

but here's the problem. If you over apply too much damage, your body will only think about healing. It can't think about adapting. It's too much damage. We're just trying to heal. Now the reason why we think healing and adapting are the same thing is because they tend to happen simultaneously.

We get sore, we heal, and then we come back and we're stronger. And so like, oh, it's the soreness and the damage in the healing of that that makes it stronger. It's not. It's the adapting that happens. That's the thing that you need to focus on. So instead of beating the absolute shit at yourself and getting stuck in this recovery, healing trap or you break muscle down, you get it to heal,

go back to the gym, break it down, get it to heal. Meanwhile, there's no progress. Think about adaptation. So what I did later on, which was a total game changer, very similar to what you're saying, Adam, is I stopped going to failure. I obviously didn't do partial reps and forced reps and negatives. None of that stuff. is I stopped going to failure. I obviously didn't do partial reps and forced reps and negatives. I did none of that stuff.

And I stopped going to failure. I stopped about two reps short of it, one to two reps short of it. And then I just started training more frequently. And it was like a light switch one off. My body just responded. Well, what you find when it ends up happening when you do that, like let's say a typical body part split where you hammer the body. And let's just say we'll use chest as an example. Maybe you do incline barbell chest press and some,

you know, flat bench dumbbell. And then the next like four exercises you pick are cable crossovers, the hammer strength machine, the peck deck. It's like all these machine exercises that are a lot easier to do because you're fucking hammered from the first two exercises. That's right. But when you start to split it up over three days, what I found myself doing or doing all the big lifts in it, I was able to train the exercises that were giving me the biggest bang for the buck because I was separating it out over three days. To me, that was like probably one of the biggest reasons why the frequency thing was such

a big deal. Totally. Think about it this way. If you're going to do, so the average amount of total sets per week, so this is per week, per body part, that people will respond to and studies back this up, but I found this also as a trainer, is roughly anywhere between nine to 18 total sets per week. Okay. This is what the average person will do well responding to. So that's nine to 18 total sets. week. Okay, this is what the average person will do well responding to. So that's 9 to 18 total sets. Now, if you hit your legs on Monday,

and you're doing 9 to 18 sets, I can guarantee you, you're doing barbell squats, and then the rest is the easier stuff. There's no way you're not gonna do 18 sets of barbell squats, leg presses, Bulgarians, blitz, dance squats. You're not gonna do those exercises. Unless you squats, leg presses, Bulgarians, blitz, stance squats. You're not gonna do those exercises. Unless you're stan efforting.

Yeah. The rhino. Probably the only person who does like, 20 sets of squats. And it'll completely fry you. It'll completely fry you, destroy you, and it won't be productive. So what it's gonna look like is, maybe barbell squats,

but then it's gonna be leg extensions, leg curls, some other machine, whatever. And now you hit your 9 to 18 sets. Well, instead of doing them all in one day, like what Adam's saying, what if we took those, you know, let's say we did 15 sets for the week, just in the middle between 9 and 18.

Let's say we did 15 sets. But now we're working out legs three days a week. You know what that gives me? Five sets each workout. Yeah, of good exercises. You know what I'm- Front squat, a back squat, a deadlift, something like that. I'm gonna be doing barbell squats, maybe every time.

I'm gonna be doing front squats, maybe every time. I'm gonna be doing the best exercises, the best muscle building exercises every single time because I was able to split it up. And I avoided, and now all those other exercises aren't worthless. They're just not as valuable when it comes to building muscle.

If you were to give exercises a score on one to 10, 10 being the best muscle builder, one being not the best muscle builder, or the least effective muscle builder, barbell squats for legs, deadlifts for backs, overhead presses for shoulders. Like those are all 10s. Those are all 10 exercises.

If I look at like, let's look at shoulders, overhead press at 10. If I go to like a cable rear fly, well that's probably like a two or a three. It's nowhere near what an overhead press is gonna do just in terms of sheer muscle building potential. Well, if you split your workouts up, not only are you sending the muscle building signal

more frequently, but you also have the ability now to do only the most effective exercise. Now, I feel it's important, even though this we're really targeting the hard gainer, the kid who's trying to build muscle right now in this conversation, but I think this is a good segue to talk about the girl who's trying to build her butt in the gym too, because that's still a muscle,

and there's still, I know there's women right now that are listening to me that would consider themselves a hard gainer with their butt, like they want to build their butt, and that's a muscle. And so I see a lot of this, you know, jump lunges, dog pee exercises, glute kicks, super setting it with lunges,

and all these other, and they just bands between everything. Which is the same thing as the young kid who is you know skinny boy who's trying to build his biceps and he's doing you know bicep curls like crazy every single day and hammer him to failure it's the same concept like that that person is applying the same over intensity and the wrong exercise is that the muscle the that build that muscle. The irony is, by the way, all of the lessons that you are hearing in this episode about hardgainer, if you apply some of these to, even if you just wanna lose weight, they will boost your metabolism faster

because they build muscle more effectively. So in reality, much of this advice is what I give most people when I train them. But a lot of it you learn through training people whose bodies just don't seem to respond well to lifting weights, the A.K.A., the hardgainer. Here's another one that's really, really big. I have yet to work with a hardgainer who gets adequate sleep. Almost every fucking time, they are the five or six hour night wired, you know, person. It's not even a consideration. I know.

You know, especially in that age group, I remember like, yeah, you would just stay up, you're invincible at that point. Like everything you do, like something works as a result. Like, yeah, to be able to kind of focus in on sleep is something you really have to sell that idea to a college-aged kid that's kind of struggling through, you know, trying to build muscle. Oh, especially for the kid who had like a mantra of sleep is overrated or sleep is for pussy, right? That was my mantra all through my tw- I mean, I literally said that. Play video games till like three in the morning.

All the time. I'll sleep when I die. Yeah. That was nice to say. Yeah, I mean, it's cool to say that when you're 20. And then you start to realize how important it is for us to get into that state where we can actually recover and rebuild. That was probably another big game. That didn't come to a way later for me. I was probably one of the last pieces of the puzzle for me of like putting this

together like how I can just turn switch my mind. And I don't know about you guys, but I'm now, you know, and obviously we're older. I'm not as active. I'm not playing as many sports. But when I make that switch now, I can I can turn it on like nothing because I put up I apply all these things that I was banging my head against the wall for so many years. It's about efficiency. Right. If you line everything in that direction all at the same time, you're gonna get a much better result in a shorter amount of time. And that's the thing. It's sleep is a major component in the process of being able to build muscle. We just forget about that, I think. And supplements, I would say this, supplements,

probably they can benefit the hardgainer more than almost any other category. Now, I am not saying supplements will solve your hardgainer problems. They won't at all. That's a diet, training, and sleep thing. But supplements can have more of an impact on a hard gainer than people who want to lose weight or...

Oh, especially when you're talking about shakes and creativity. That's what I'm exactly. Because those two, I think, have the greatest application. Yes, we've talked about the other benefits of creating for everybody. Yes, the average person who's not getting enough protein in the diet for sure, but somebody who is having a hard time putting weight and size on protein, not getting enough protein

has to be one of the major offenders, I would think for sure. Yeah. Aim for one gram per pound a body weight. That just overshoots a little bit of what you'll need. But if you aim for it, one gram per pound and you miss it just a little bit, you'll have adequate amounts. And that's where shakes can come in handy because protein is very satiating. And so when you're trying, now I do wanna be clear, if you can get it from whole food, that is,

yeah, that's ideal. There's nothing better than that. But if you're at the end of your day and you're tracking, you're like, damn it, I need to eat 150 grams of protein, and I'm at 100, a 50 gram protein shake, you know like, damn it, I need to eat 150 grams of protein and I'm at a 100, a 50 gram protein shake, you know, it's kind of easy. And you can blend them up with high calorie liquids like coconut milk or whole organic dairy

milk, both of which give you a lot of those extra. So this is me last night, literally. So right now I'm in the process of trying to build right now, not needing to aggressively and I can easily put on, start to put on size, but last night, it's like nine o'clock at night, and I've only had about 130 grams of protein for the day. And I had some really hard training sessions

the last two days, so I know that I need some extra. And I could use the additional calorie. So last night I have a peanut butter, nutella, papanana, milk, protein, shake that I need some extra. And I could use the additional calorie. So last night I have a peanut butter, Nutella, Pippinana, milk, protein, shake that I make at night. And I throw, it's like an 800 something calorie drink that I have with 40 something grams of protein. Like it's such a great way. And it's so delicious and I can eat it after a meal if I'm still under. So that was one of the things you just and you brought up, you know, avoiding the protein shake early in the morning and not doing it then. I always have my shakes at the end of the night, almost always. I mean, it's, you might catch me occasionally when we're over

at club sport because I like their shake. I get one after a workout every now and then over there. But for the most part, my shakes are at the end of the day. And it's only because I didn't get it through whole foods. I didn't get calories. I didn't get enough calories and protein all day long, which is always my goal. I'm targeting that. Oh, shit. It's nine o'clock at night. I just had dinner. I'm still under on calories.

I'm still under on protein. Here we go. I'll have my 800 calorie shake that I love to have. And it's like a dessert for me. Exactly. I win. If you have, if you can have dairy, whole milk, some way protein, throwing some berries, Gordon some honey, tablespoon of peanut butter, you've got a mass gaining

shake right there. And it's quite palatable. And what I used to do is I would sit, this was after eight, just like you're saying, Adam and I'm like, oh, I didn't have enough food. I'd sit down on the couch at the end of the night and I'd watch some TV and I'd sit on my high calorie shake. Crayotein is the other supplement, I would say. Crayotein will speed up the muscle building process. It is not magic, it's not gonna blow your mind, but it is the one supplement that'll put on some muscle. And you'll gain about two to three pounds on the scale,

just from intracil, you'll notice a little bit of. A lot of performance, benefits to it when you're going through those less. I remember the ones that would struggle the last one or two reps when I started to create a team that felt as if those were a little more achievable after that. So I wrote a whole guide for hard gainers that really breaks down what we're talking about and kind of helps it in detail. And lists out all the different things like,

you know, eat a thousand calories over maintenance, learn how to track your food, how to get those foods that talks about adequate protein and take carbon fat, which we haven't touched. Like what are the amounts that you want to kind of aim for those? It actually gives you a sample workout, a very basic, good mass building muscle building workout

that should work on most people in terms of building muscle. I talk about sleep in there and I actually outline a sleep routine if you're somebody that has issues with sleep. I will make sure it's free, by the way. I'll make sure it's in the show notes. So that when you go on our website, mindpumpmedia.com and you look up our podcast, if you click on the podcast, there's a show notes and then you'll be able to click on

and get the free hardgainer guide. So one of the things, like everything we've talked about as far as, like, tips for a hard gainer, I think, are all, like, the foundational things. And then there's one last piece for me that, and this is what really took me in the competitive world. I had to go to this level if I was going to compete with some of the best in the world as far as building a physique, an aesthetic physique, right?

H show I need to come with more muscle, more muscle, looking better, looking better. And that was, and it's really similar to the calorie hurdle and the food hurdle that most young kids have with the hard-gainer thing is just tracking and paying attention and realizing what you are or not consuming. I found the same thing with tracking volume of training.

So what I realized was what happens to the average person is we go in these waves of, I'm super motivated. You know, I've got Vegas in two weeks. So what do you think happens the two weeks leading to Vegas? I mean, it's the most consistent I am. I get the longest workouts, the hardest workouts because I'm two weeks. So what do you think happens the two weeks leading to Vegas? I mean, it's the most consistent I am. I get the longest workouts, the hardest workouts because I'm two weeks out from Vegas. And you see some nice gains and change in your body.

And then you come back from Vegas and your lethargic and you're kind of getting back into the rhythm and you kind of have like a half-ass week or two. Which what people don't realize, if you don't track the volume, it's the same thing like somebody who has a good week of eating high calories, and also, they're eating a colorect deficit for a week or two. The same thing goes for volume in your training. If all of a sudden your training volume is, and let's just use hypothetical numbers for

argument's sake, you're doing, you know, 50,000 pounds of volume, you're moving consistently per week, and then all of a sudden you dip to 30,000 pounds Well, you send the signal to the body that it doesn't need as much muscle as it needed for the guy who was pushing 50,000 pounds of volume the week before so how you track volume it's it sets times reps times weight and you total it up now I would split that on the muscles that I'm training right so if So if I chast, I would total up my total volume, my shoulders, my total volume, and I would track that in a week,

and then my goal week over week, especially when I'm in contest mode, was to just inch the volume up a tiny bit. But what I wanted to make sure I didn't do was reduce the volume. I don't want to go back, which I think is the most important piece is, and what I think is the most common thing that people do.

The most common thing I see is we have great weeks, volume is high, training is consistent, and then naturally busy the next week, maybe you don't get in the gym one time, maybe you didn't feel like pushing that hard, or you stopped the set or an exercise early, and naturally the volume just comes down and you just kind of have this ebb and flow and that's what sometimes keeps people on these

hard plate toes where they're like, man, I'm training, I'm in the gym, I haven't not been in the gym for six, seven months, I'm eating pretty good, I'm hitting adequate protein, why is my body not changing? Well, that's because when you look at it over the course of three months, you're averaging exactly the same amount of volume and you're not progressively increasing that over time, that was a game changer for me when it came to, can I change my physique and improve it and build more muscle month over month over month

was understanding that. Now I want to add this though. If you, let's say we have a hard gainer who's already doing a shit ton of working out in volume. No, it's great. The opposite could be true. 100% reduce your volume and watch those gains come up. Now, I had, I mentioned this earlier

and I want you to, I want to say this again, studies will show that between nine to 18 sets per week per body part seems to be right around the sweet spot for most people. If you're in the upper ranges, if you're 15, 18, 20 sets per week, back down and see what happens a little bit. Now, I always tend to get people to back down first before we go back up.

Because it's good news, if you back down and then your muscles grow, boom, you're on it. If you just start to add and you're already doing too much, oh boy, that could be a tough one. Well, you have to know your audience. You have to know who you're talking to and who's listening right now. I would just say that the consistent,

not a lot of people, I think, were at your level where you were the 17 year old kid who read Arnold's book and actually took all the exercises and applied it and did all of them for an hour and a half. I think most young people that are trying to build muscle fall in the category as the same. They watch in Jewish schools. Yeah, and exactly.

They're doing the wrong exercises. They're not doing enough volume. They're consistent for a week or two and consistent the next week after that to them. It seems all the same. It's the same approach with the calories and the food. They think they're eating a ton because they have a 2000 calorie meal one time, you know, or they have three days

in a row of gorging on food, but then the next three days in a row, they have really low calories. And then when you look at the average, it's still at maintenance or a little bit lower than the training. The same thing goes with the training. So I think that's most common, but I 100% agree with you, Sal, that there's going to be a selection of people that are a ton of volume, and you're doing 30, you're doing the Joe Donnelly workout, right? If you're somebody who's following him and trying to keep up with his, what does he do? 50 sets of workout. If you're

that kid and you're trying to gain and you're following what he's doing, yeah, backing off and doing some good luck. Yeah, way less volume. Good luck. You're trying to gain and you're following what he's doing, yeah, backing off and doing some other. Yeah, way less volume. Good luck. You're gonna see a big difference. You also mentioned consistency. That's a big one. You need to eat more calories every day.

You need to train consistently because things tend to average themselves out. This was a big one for me. I would be really good about my calories and my food intake, day in, day out, day in, day out, and then I'd have a couple days where I forgot to eat breakfast and lunch and just had dinner. Add it all up and average it out and you'll find

that those two days kind of screwed you up a little bit. That's a really good point too and to not get discouraged, we didn't really touch on this, but I remember struggling with this as a kid, is allowing the scale to discourage me on like what if I was doing the right or wrong thing. Like if you're somebody who's trying to gain, typically you want to see the scale go up, but there's a lot of things that will dictate

what the scale says in the morning. Especially daily. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So you could have had a perfect day of eating, you tracked your food, you know you were at a thousand calorie surplus, you had a great training session, you get on the scale the next day and you're down one pound on the scale and you freak out.

And then also you make all these adjustments, but you were doing just fine. What you didn't realize was, oh, you had a little less sodium the day before because you ate all your own meals versus eating out and you didn't have that extra half a gallon or quart of water. And now your body's got way less water that you're holding so that shows a pound of, you didn't lose a pound of muscle. No.

I used to think that and that would fuck with my head a lot and then it would make me make bad decisions the next day with my eating or training. I would go crazy hard again and I'm like, oh my god, I want to hell hard and then eat way too much. I recommend you weigh yourself no more than once a week and And I recommend that to people who want to lose weight too, because it can really mess with you. In fact, if you're super obsessed about trying to change your body, whether you want to gain or lose weight,

you'll end up doing things in tricking your own self. I used to do this. Like, I'd weigh myself with my clothes on. I'd make sure to weigh myself before I'd go to the bathroom so that I could be as heavy as possible. I'd weigh myself at the end of the night because I knew at the end of the night, I'd be the heaviest.

I know it's true, right? Oh yeah, no. I weighed everything. I weighed naked, clothed, right after every meal, before morning, night, everything. I was weighing six, seven times a day. Exactly. So, so obsessed with this.

No, get away from the scale, maybe once a week at the absolute most, so that you don't drive yourself crazy. And then it, again, it'll drive you, if you do it too frequently, it'll drive you to make stupid decisions. You know, I found that if I ate pizza, I gained a couple pounds. Well, I beat pizza super high in sodium and made me bloated.

So I thought pizza was the greatest muscle building, you know, food on the plate. And so only, you know, I wish. It's probably one of the reasons why I can't eat pizza anymore Yeah, I killed myself, but but no that's that's a very here's another one by the way this one's a big one for me The low reps and getting stronger. Yes, that should be your focus, but don't get stuck there Because the all those rep ranges anything under I'd say 20 to 25 reps all all those rep ranges, anything under, I'd say 20 to 25 reps, all rep ranges within there, all build muscle. Now, if we compare them head to head,

which ones build more strength, the muscle, sure you'll find some that shine more than others. But at the end of the day, you're gonna be working out for a year, two years, three years, play in all of those rep ranges. If you get stuck too long in the six to eight rep range, that's a good point. Yeah, you get stuck in that six to eight rep range, which is a great mass building rep range. Don't get me wrong, but if you get stuck too long in the six to eight rep range. That's a good point. Yeah, you get stuck in that six to eight rep range,

which is a great mass building rep range. Don't get me wrong, but if you get stuck there, it becomes a not so great rep range. And it doesn't take very long. I think that's something you have to point out. Like if you're in that six to eight rep range, you've been in it for a couple of months. It's already too long.

That's it. Yeah, you need to be moving in and out of that on a monthly basis. So you don't want to go much longer than four to six weeks tops before you transition out of that on a monthly basis. So you don't want to go much longer than four to six weeks tops before you transition out of that rep range. This is another area that I think I struggle with it. And I see this very common too,

because we tend to gravitate towards the things that we're good at. If you're the person who has a lot of endurance and you're good at the supersets and exercise after exercise, you tend to do that all the time and you do that type of a workout. If you're the guy or the girl who's really strong and you can pull a lot of weight or squat a lot of weight, one to three reps, you tend to hang in that area.

The idea is that you move out of those in phases, which is how all the programs are waiting. That's why we wrote every program. Every program has like three programs built into it when you think about it because they're broken up in these different phases versus what you see before, at least personally, I haven't seen a lot of programs out before maps that are like this where we actually phase it. Most programs are just one part of our phase.

Would it be like, oh, here's your mass builder and it's all six to eight reps and that's all the program offered. I used to go through the cycle of like, I would, you know, like when I trained with those power lifters, you know, he recommended that I train in like the five rep range and I just built all this muscle. So I was like, sold that that was the rep range

and I did that forever. And then a year and a half later, my body obviously isn't progressing anymore. I read an article in muscle and fitness and I don't remember the body builder's name. I can picture his face though and he's like, oh, I train in the 12 to 15 rep range. And I find that it builds the most muscle.

And for whatever reason, I like this guy's physique. And I thought, I'm gonna try this out. And of course, because I changed it to 12 to 15 reps, my body responded and I started building muscles. So what do you think happened then? I became sold on that. Yeah, I became sold on that. No, no, no, it's the novelty.

We'll get your body to respond the best, but you got to stay in a phase long enough to reap the benefits and, and really gain the control of that rep range. So whatever rep range you're in, what, once you get into it, I would say stay in it between three to six to eight weeks and then move out of it, out of it into a different rep range, because all those rep ranges build muscle. If you get stuck in one, I don't care who you are, your body will start to plateau and you'll start progressing. And if you feed yourself more and more food,

here's a thing, by the way. You know, we talked about food a lot in this episode. You could eat more and more and more food if you don't send the right signal to build muscle. It ain't gonna happen. It's like getting a bunch of bricks and having no brick layers. The house ain't gonna get built.

You'll have all the bricks, but you'll have no house. So it's gotta be all of these things combined. It's gotta be the sleep. It's gotta be good exercise workout programming, probably hitting your body parts through two or three times a week, total volume per week per body part, nine to 18 sets.

And you gotta eat anywhere between 500 to, in my recommendation if you are a hardgainer a thousand calories Over maintenance about one gram of protein per pound of body weight break up the rest of the calories Between fats and carbs and watch what happens. I guarantee you with science You will see some muscle gain you will see some progress and you'll realize that you're probably not as bad of a hard gainer as you thought you were. And with that, go to minepumpfree.com, that's where you can go directly to get the free hard gainer guide that breaks this all down,

and that's it. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance. Check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically

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