Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1342: The Top 4 Mistakes Skinny Guys (Hardgainers) Make Working Out

Episode Date: July 23, 2020

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin discuss four mistakes that hardgainers make that are preventing gains. What is a hardgainer? (4:21) Why this is NOT just a male problem. (6:55) The top 4 training mistakes hardgainers make while working out. (9:23) #1 – Chasing the “pump.” (11:07) #2 – Relying on machines. (18:30) #3 – Falling in love with a phase or rep range. (28:44) #4 – Following a body part split routine. (40:15) The MAPS muscle-building philosophy. (56:01) Related Links/Products Mentioned July Promotion: MAPS Strong ½ off!! **Promo code “STRONG50” at checkout** Hardgainer Webinar Visit Four Sigmatic for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “mindpump” at checkout  Top 4 Mistakes Skinny Guys (Hardgainers) Make Working Out – Mind Pump Blog Best Exercises for Skinny Guys – Mind Pump Blog Getting a Great Body for Skinny Guys – Mind Pump Blog Nutrition Advice for Skinny Guys Who Want to Gain Muscle – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1282: The #1 Key To Consistently Building Muscle & Strength (Avoid Plateaus!) MAPS Fitness Products Mind Pump Podcast - YouTube

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of Mind Pump the World's Top Fitness Health and Entertainment Podcast, we tackle a subject that we think doesn't get enough attention. We talk about the hard-g gainer, the ectomorph, the person who is skinny fat, the person who has a difficult time

building strength and muscle, maybe that's you. Maybe you follow the same routine as your workout partner, your friends, do everything right, or at least you think you do everything right. Nothing happens, you don't build any muscle. It's hard for you to gain any muscle mass. Even when you eat more food, nothing seems to happen. So in this episode, we tackle the four biggest workout mistakes that hard gainers make with their training. And then we give you the solutions for all of those.

Now, if you want more information, because in this episode, it's all focused on training, if you want more information on things like nutrition, sleep, supplements, lifestyle, if you wanna hear more about my personal experience, training hundreds and hundreds of hard gainers, and myself, I'm also a hard gainer. I'm giving a free class, it's actually a hard gainer class. So I'm going to sit there and break everything down that you need to know to get your body to finally build muscle and strength.

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Go to mapsstrong.com and use the code strong50. That's STROMG50, no space for the discount. A lot of stuff has been going out via the web from Mind Pump and Sal in particular about hardgainers. Now, I've been getting a lot of DMs. We've been getting messages related to topics around this and you just wrote a really good blog that I think we should talk about. You know, it's interesting about that topic. So, hardgainer first off this to find that for people hardgainer somebody that really struggles to put on muscle mass or weight. And now building muscles tough for everybody by the way, so

I want to be clear it's not like if you don't gain 10 pounds of muscle a month, you're a hardgainer, but a hard gainer is somebody that seems to put on muscle much slower than the people around them. They eat more food than the people around they don't gain weight. It's just a struggle. They're naturally very skinny or maybe even skinny fat. And now the problem with this is that you're not, you don't have a lot of representation

in the fitness space because the fitness space, it's a market, right? And it responds to market demands. And most people are interested in losing weight. Most people have a weight loss problem or they need to lose weight. And so mostly information that's out there is written about that or people talk about that. So if you're somebody that's sitting around saying,

look, I don't have an issue with that, mind's the opposite. I can't add muscle mass to my frame or I can't add curves to my body. It's hard for me to do it. I follow the programs that the people around me follow. I work out, I work out partners. I seem to eat more than the people around me. Nothing is happening or it's happening at an insanely slow pace, like what's going on. Well, that's a hard gainer. Back in the day, they classified, I forgot who did this.

So I believe it was a psychologist who created categories of somatotypes for humans. They've been largely discredited because people don't fit neatly into the categories of this person created. It'd be nice if they did. It'd make life a lot easier. Right, right.

But I will say this, people who are true hard gainers, they tend to fit in the ectomorph category. If you look up what an ectomorph is, and if it resonates with you, then that might be you. And the question is, do you need to train differently? Are the things you need to focus on a little bit differently? And I'd say yes, generally speaking yes,

that ultimately there's individual differences between people that are most important. But generally speaking, if this is you, there are some things that you want to focus on. And here's the interesting thing about this too, Adam. This was something that I thought we would hear mostly from guys, skinny guys or hard-gainer guys. I'm getting a lot of messages from women, a ton. We're saying, yeah, we're saying, I'm not gaining the muscle I want,

I'm not gaining the curve that I want. My legs are my glutes or my delts, just don't seem to be responding, I'm not getting stronger. And they seem to also be very interested in this topic. I mean, this is not just a male topic at all. I think in the past, it was targeted towards men. And when you hear that term, hardgainer,

right away you think of the skinny, 17 year old boy who's been lifting weights for four or five years, which I identify with and couldn't build muscle and struggle. But you're right, like, a girl who is trying to shape or build her butt and struggles with that falls in this exact category. The formula, the recipe for her success is exactly the same as the 17 year old boy and the same pitfalls are very similar to the things that will address as far as the four mistakes that they tend to make are exactly the same.

Even though it's a different sex, the same struggles apply. The whole semano-type thing that you're talking about, really the only reason why it was discredited is because it was originally set around just bone structure. If your bone structure was like this, then you're this semano-type. Why it's been discredited is because there's so many other variables that make up why somebody is really, really lean. So somebody who has like a smaller bone structure like myself, yeah, it can be harder to build muscle because it just simply because my friend, but it's

also because of my behaviors that tend to go with that too. I happened to also be somebody who's active and moving around. I don't eat, I didn't eat a lot, especially when I was younger. There's other reasons why that is. The same is true on the opposite in the spectrum when you talk about an endomorph who, as a larger bone structure, tends to also eat more, maybe as a little more sedentary in comparison. There's other variables. That's why I think why it was discredited when there's a lot of truth to it There's a lot of we can we can typically look at a client and and look at their behaviors look at their bone structure

And I can put you in one of those categories that you probably Identify most with and so I think there's still a lot of truth Yeah, and more of other challenges around this revolver on the training advice that people tend to get when it comes to building muscle, the people who tend to get the most attention or the most muscular, strong, built people, which is not necessarily bad, except for the fact that these people tend to not have a lot of experience training hard gainers. They train themselves and they are often in a different category. If you see a bodybuilder work out or somebody who's got this really impressive standout type of physique,

they tend to not be the hard gainers. They tend to be people who respond very easily. And so their bodies just respond differently. So their advice is usually targeted to people like them. But if you're a true hardgainer, some of that advice doesn't really work for you. I remember doing this myself. I started working at it at a young age. I would say I was definitely in this hardgainer category. And I remember reading the advice I would get out of bodybuilding magazines and books and publications around this topic. Knowing what I know now, looking back, I can say with 100% certainty, that information was not for someone like me. The information that I read was for somebody whose body responded pretty well, or maybe just even average, whereas my body responded maybe below average.

So what I wanna focus on in this episode really revolves around the training mistakes. Like the big ways that hard gainers or people have a tough time packing on muscle and strength, the ways that they tend to screw up. And what they can do instead of, you know, the common mistakes. Well, the first thing that comes to mind for me

or that I remember is chasing the pump. I remember, you know, seeing the before and after, I think you've talked about on the show before, like the ultimate orange. And when that was popular, and the was it the super pump 250 super pump 250 and how they would Show the before and afters and it's hard because you read the magazines They recommend all the the super sets the compound sets and these these exercises that would you know Increase the amount of blood flow in the muscles you get this massive pump and you see yourself

Yeah, and then you look at yourself in the mirror and you like gain inches instant, like almost immediately. Right. Because of all this fluid that's pumped in there. And so it's hard to not think that that isn't helping you grow, which it does play somewhat of a role, but you can get trapped in chasing that because that, you know, for many, many years, I trained that way because of the visual effect that it gave me instantly versus thinking like more of a

long-term building muscle. And I got trapped in the chasing. That's 100% correct, because you know, if you're somebody that's insecure about your body, you're not building muscle, and then you do an exercise and you get a really good pump, it's going to feed that, right? You're going to look in the mirror and be like, oh my gosh, I look bigger, even if it's for 30 minutes, and then it do an exercise and you get a really good pump. It's gonna feed that, right? You're gonna look in the mirror and be like, oh my gosh, I look bigger, even if it's for 30 minutes. And then it goes away. Oh my gosh, I want that every time I work out.

Let me do that every time I work out. Plus you feel it, you feel that, that, that bigness. I would think too, from a female perspective, like doing a lot of wraps, like they really get connected to, you know, those muscles they're trying to shape and to define. And so, you know, psychologically, it just feels like they're get connected to, you know, those muscles they're trying to shape and to define and so, you know, psychologically, it just feels like they're on pace

to really like show off the spot and grow muscle. Well, that's the other point to the chasing pump where that's a fallacy is because you feel this burning sensation and you feel it working so much because you're doing so many reps and so much blood, the lactic acid is being pumped through the muscle, that you're going like, oh my God, I'm really working this.

I'm honing in on this. So I'm really working this muscle. And I'm glad you brought up the female side of this because I see this all the time in the gym where, obviously I know the girl is doing all these blood exercises and she's going like a circuit. It's jumps, quads, lun's jumps, squats, lunged, body weight lunges, you're keeping the booty band on the entire time.

Yes, all these moves and they're just done consecutively with no real rest. And they're getting a burn and they're getting a pump. Yes, and they feel it. And so it's hard to communicate this message to somebody who's like, I mean, I feel it though. I feel it in my butt and I can see it too in the mirror. I can see it all pumped up.

Well, here's the bottom line. And I'm going to simplify it a little bit, but this is totally true. Muscles really basically do one thing. They contract. They create force. Bigger muscles contract harder. Now, there's a lot of other factors.

There's technique that's involved in strength. There's a central nervous system that contributes to that. But when we just look at the muscle, a bigger muscle contracts harder. So at the end of the day, ultimately, at the end of the day, strength is what you should aim for. Strength getting stronger consistently, done properly with good nutrition will

always ultimately result in more muscle, especially for the natural hard gainer, for the skinny person who's not taking steroids. Almost every, if you just focus on strength and get stronger, muscle is going to follow. This is not true with the pump. Now the pump can contribute to muscle growth, but the signal for muscle growth from the pump is much smaller. It's still important, but it's much, much smaller.

And you can really train and get great pumps all the time and build no muscle. And I've seen this happen time and time again. Not true with strength. If you get stronger, if you add 50 pounds to your squat and 20 pounds to your bench press and 20 pounds to your barbell row, you're going to get bigger. If you get a better pump, it has to. Your body has to overcome the successive amount of load now that, you know, places more demand

on these muscles. The demand itself is, you know, it's really teaching and it's telling the body that, hey, we need to now build, you know, an excess amount of tissue to, you know, overcome this, this amount of demand that's that you're placing on it. So I want to, I want to address the, the mental hurdle that you'll go through with this also though is, and I remember, I remember when I started to piece this together, like, oh, I need to do more heavier lifting and I should be building strength. And then what happens is you train those workouts and you don't feel the pump and the burn the same way. And then you get discouraged. It's hard for you to stay in that phase.

And to stick with the program and go like, okay, I know that I need to build strength. I know that I need to build muscle. You know, I heard on my pump, I trust the advice that I'm getting. So you start following it and you get four or five, maybe six workouts deep into a strength training type of protocol and you're just not seeing the same pump visually that as you were when you were doing all these superset high rep exercises, you're not feeling the burn,

the same way that you were, and it's hard to break through that mental hurdle of MI actually building that muscle as much as I was before. And I remember going back, I would do a little bit of it, and I would always revert back to the thing that I felt or saw the difference immediately, and it's a definite challenge for you to break through. Here's what you can expect, okay,

when you're building strength. Typically, this is what it looks like. You'll get a little stronger, get a little stronger, get a little stronger, get a little stronger. Boom, muscle size. Then you do it again, get a little stronger. It's usually like that. It usually doesn't look like this.

It's like climbing a ladder. Yeah, it's like stronger and muscle. It typically is like, I'll add five pounds, I'll add 10 pounds, I'll add 15 pounds, and then boom, I notice more muscle, this is true for clients as well. Nothing else consistently builds muscle than building strength.

Nothing. Now, other things can build muscle, they're just not nearly as consistent. I've done workouts where my strength didn't necessarily go up, but I looked a little bit more muscular, I looked like I built maybe some more muscle in the mirror or whatever, but with strength, it was always consistent. If I got stronger, I built maybe some more muscle in the mirror or whatever, but with strength it was always consistent.

If I got stronger, I built more muscle. If all you focused on was getting stronger, especially for those of you who are intermediate, beginner, intermediate, or beginner advanced, hard-gainer lifters, if all you focused on was getting stronger, you'd be way ahead of the game. And not even worried about the pump. That happens sometimes and it'll happen on its own, but don't even necessarily worry about that. Don't chase that. Focus on getting stronger. And here's the cool thing about it. It's a very objective metric. Here's the problem with getting a pump and looking the mirror, am I bigger? Am I not? Sometimes you're weight fluctuates or holding more water,

you're holding less water. maybe I'm more hydrated, the lighting is better, maybe more of a pump this time than last time, am I really gaining weight, muscle, all the scale looks like I gained weight, but is it really lean body mass? When you're stronger, you're stronger. Yeah. There is no denying it, you add 10 pounds to a lift,

you are stronger, and that results in more muscle, every, and that's why that's the most important thing. That's what you should be chasing over everything else. Well, speaking to the beginner novice lifter, the other thing that comes to mind when I think about the challenge or struggle that I had as a hard gainer is the overuse of machines. And I think there's two main reasons why I gravitate

to the one, that easy for again, getting the pump. I would superset exercise, I'd bring a pair of dumbbells right over to a preacher curl machine and I'd do some preacher curls, go right into hammers. I would do things that would get this massive pump and using the machines. It was a very easy tool to do that. And then the other reason was because I was more nervous to do the movements that I found challenging or difficult or didn't think maybe I knew how to do them very

well. And I didn't want to look silly in the gym. So I gravitated towards all the machines where I could look at the side and see the picture of the image of where I should feel it. And it's got me in this strict form. So you can't really mess it up very much. And so I think that also is what's killing a lot of people that are trying to build size, shape the body, is they gravitate towards the machine exercises because they're easier. Yeah, and machines just don't build as much muscle.

Look, if I ran a study with 100 participants and took 50 of all hard gainers and took 50 participants, and all I had them do was barbell squat, deadlift, bench press, barbell row, overhead press, five exercises. You could pick 50 machine exercises for the other group. And we just went forward with that, I would win. My group would win every single time. Barbell exercises and dumbbell exercises are just more effective at adding muscle, especially

if you're a beginner or intermediate lifter, especially for those. Also, the strength gains that you get with free weights translate to more muscle when the weight is controlled for. So what I mean for that is if you add even a compound machine exercise, even one that's considered better than other machines, let's say a leg press, right? A leg press machine exercise, I would put it near the top of muscle building machines, but it's still a machine, right?

Add 20 pounds to your leg press, compare that to someone adding 20 pounds to their squat, who's gonna build more muscle? The person with the squat every single time. Somebody who adds 20 pounds to their cable row Compare them to somebody who adds 20 pounds to a barbell row or a bench press versus a machine press or Standing overhead press versus a machine overhead press go down the list Free weights just build more muscle. There's a few reasons for this one is you requires more control

Balance and stability the second one is you requires more control, balance, and stability. The second one is machines are fixed. Your body has to follow the machine versus the other way around. Freeway, it's follow your body. It's a much louder signal. I mean, yeah, like you said, you have to stabilize with so many more muscles in order to just keep your body in a certain position as you're going through the movement. So you have that isometric component where there's three different factors to this, where you have your concentric where we're trying to move the weight and then we're also trying

to stabilize the weight with the isometric part of it and also decelerating it in the eccentric part. So your muscles are fully expressing its potential while also involving a lot more muscles throughout your body. So it's just a really large signal to account for which provides that level of growth versus taking a lot of those components out and making it a bit easier. It's also the learning curve. Because it's such a challenge, these compound lifts are so challenging to get good at,

that also means that there's lots of room for you to improve, grow, and see adaptation from. If you choose things that are really simple, the body adapts to it really quickly. If you choose things that are more challenging for you to figure out. A lot of room. A lot of room.

And that's a good thing. So I know there's a lot of people that hear you list off all those compound lists and they're like, yeah, but what if I can't do those? What if I can't perform a squad or what if I don't know how to deadlift? It's not gonna build as much muscle for me. That's wrong.

It part of the process of learning how to do it. That in itself is gonna build a lot of muscle. And then when you finally learn how to do it pretty well, then there's a whole bunch more muscle that you're gonna build from that. I remember, so we started my pump about five years ago, and when we started, Adam was towards the tail end of his competitive professional career

as a professional physique competitor. So that's like one level under body builder. He was obviously very muscular. He had a pro card and experienced, been training himself and clients for, you know, over almost two decades. Very experienced, new what he was doing, okay? So leading up to this, you know,

Adam's, you know, back exercises involved lots of cables and some dumbbell stuff and some barbell stuff and pull-ups and that kind of stuff, not bad exercises, all very good. Wasn't doing heavy deadlifts a lot. It had done them but never really pushed the deadlifts. Well we start the podcast and we start having these great conversations. One of the things I love about Adam and Justin is I can learn so much from them and they're

also open to learning things from each other and from me. What I mean by learn is trying different things out. That's a good point. At the point, at that time, I was deadlifting very, very heavy and I remember we would have these conversations on the podcast and I would challenge Adam and say, hey, you're a pro. Why don't you start deadlifting? We'd have a lot of fun and kick it around.

So Adam loves that kind of stuff, loves the challenge. Decided he was going to deadlift and see how strong he could get. The goal was to get strong at deadlifting. The goal was not to develop a better physique for pro competition. That's the truth. What happened to your back? Yeah, no, no. The most impressive transformation I made in that year compared to the 15 years of lifting. And that's why too, I think, I get fired up

when I see the fitness professionals that try and challenge deadlifts as a back exercise. Because it is a hip hinge movement, and it's primarily legs and hips that are getting worked, but a lot of development happens in the back from heavy deadlifting. And it was simply something that I just didn't do.

You know, if I deadlifted, I rarely ever deadlifted something that I couldn't do 10 reps with. It was intermittently put into my routine because I understood the value of it, but it was like, I'm a bodybuilder. I'm not really trying to be the strongest deadlifter. So it wasn't a focus. And Sal, you're right. I had already achieved my pro card. I was already at a place where I built a physique to prove that I could hang with

the top in that class. So I wasn't really trying to go after deadlifting because I thought I would shape my back better or look more impressive. It was really more about how strong could I get it and could I catch up to where you were deadlifting. As a byproduct, what ended up happening was I built the most impressive back that I've had in my entire career and it was literally in a year's time. And I remember telling you guys, as I mentioned this on the podcast a few times,

if you've listened for a long time, I stopped doing a lot of the fundamental exercises that I'd done forever because I wasn't concerned about it. I'd, again, competing career was pretty much on the tail end. I wasn't really worried about that. All I wanted to do was get stronger. Couldn't I catch Sal and his deadlift if I really focused on it?

And that's what I was thinking about. And what ended up happening was I stopped doing a lot of like cable rows and any sort of machine exercises for my back. And when I came back to all those after a year of like just mainly deadlifting, I was stronger in all of those lifts, on top of having the most impressive back

that I'd ever had. I remember when I was 15, I was at a family function. And we were playing volleyball, and I remember I fell and twisted my leg, and dislocated my kneecaps. I had this kneecap injury. Luckily nothing was torn, but I was injured twisted my leg and dislocated my kneecaps. I had this kneecap injury. Luckily, nothing was torn, but I was injured in my leg. I had to wear a brace.

And then part of the rehab was strengthening exercises with a physical therapist. And I remember when I was done with that, I just wasn't satisfied with how stable my knee was. And at the time, I was really getting into resistance training. So I went to the gym and I knew nothing about squats. I knew there was, that was an exercise, but at the time reading was really getting into resistance training. So I went to the gym and I knew nothing about squats. I knew there was, that was an exercise, but at the time reading the magazines,

I thought, oh, I'm gonna, if I wanna build my legs, I'm gonna do leg presses and haxquats. So that's what I saw on the magazines. And so I did. Now, when it comes to my physique, I'll say I'm somewhat of a hard gainer, but if there's one part of my body that responds well, it's my legs.

My legs grow the easiest that of anything else. So I did leg presses and hack squats, and I did get them stronger and build more muscle. I remember being really, you know, satisfied with my gains or whatever. Well anyway, one day I'm working out, and there's a group of power lifters doing squats, these big massive dudes, and I was looking up to them,

like, wow, one day I hope I can be strong like them or whatever Anyway, I started talking to one of the guys and they see how hard I was working. I said why don't you squat? Why are you doing a hack squat and leg press? I'm like well, you know, I'm not a powerlifter I just want to get bigger legs and they laughed and they said you should be squatting and I did my first real Barbell squat workout with them and I was convinced after that that I'm gonna stop doing all these other machines and Just Barbell squat Now this is no this is no exaggeration that summer I gained 13 pounds of lean body mass Mostly my lower body from doing barbell squats and deadlifts my legs

I got stretch marks on my legs from how quickly they responded to an exercise and it was just as intense my workout before was intense I had good programming the difference was I went from machines to free weights. Free weights are just more effective. Now if you're super advanced, you've got great connections, you're mostly want to add volume and you want to get fancy, throw some machines in there, nothing wrong with that whatsoever. But if you're a hard gainer, especially if you're beginner to intermediate, or you've been working out for a long time and your body still isn't responding so you're advanced in terms of experience,

but maybe not advanced in terms of results, stick to free weights, get basic with them, and then combine what we just talked about, get stronger at free weight exercises, watch what happens. The muscle will come when you do those two things. So the other thing I think of when you say that is, and I remember having these epiphanies

when we were training where you started to do something and I was like, oh my God, and you had this summer or this year where you put on this mask. This brings me to the third mistake made with training and that is falling in love with a way of training. And on many times that is like a rep range or a specific area. Yeah, you see the change.

Somebody got through to you. Or whether it be a bunch of buff power lifters who said something or an article you read or a study that you came across or a friend who got you to try something different, you do it, you see the most gains you've ever seen before and now you're married to that and you're now stuck into that. So I was really bad about phasing my workouts and moving out of rep ranges. I would learn something new. I would program it. I would see the

change results and then I'd be like, oh my god, that was the answer. You have to stay with this. Yeah, this is it. This is where I wasn't doing this before. Now I'm doing this and now my body is responding. So then I would get stuck in it for years of kind of following the same type of routine because it's, I saw so many gains. And then again, I would be at this massive plateau for months or even years. Yeah, this happened to me. There was an article in Flex Magazine about, it was like the top advanced principles for

gaining mass or something like that. I don't know what year it was, probably mid late 90s. On the cover of the magazine, I can remember the cover of the magazine. Mike Mato-Razzo was on there with his huge arms. He's a spotty builder in those days. He passed away, but he had just, he's incredibly, incredible arms. And in there, one of the main principles that said was, do low reps to build mass. Yeah. And they said, you know, you know, six reps, no more than eight reps to build mass. And so that was it. That's all I did. All I did was I never went above like seven or eight reps.

And it worked in the beginning, but then after a while, you know, your body plateaus, things kind of stop working. It's very frustrating trying to figure out what's going on. You know, at this point, I'm a late teens or whatever. I'm buying different supplements. Maybe that's the key.

Maybe I'm not taking the right supplement. Then I read an article by a body builder who's physique, I really admire. The thing is, his name was Frank Hillabrand. He also passed away away by the way. Anyway, he wrote an article about how he got great gains from training in the 15 rep range.

And he made a really good case for it. And I thought, what have I got to lose? I'm gonna try doing higher reps. Let's see what happens. And I remember that day, I remember, I went to my workout, I cut the weight way down because I had no way I could do 15 reps with what I was doing six and seven reps with.

And I did that for about a week and gained muscle. And then I did what Adam said, which was, this is the way, this is all I'm gonna do now. And it worked great for about five, six weeks. Slowed down, stopped working, but like a stubborn, I was a very hard working kid and also very stubborn So I'm like well, I'm just gonna stick to this and it stopped working and then I switched back to low reps later on Got the results again

It actually took me a long time to realize that I should phase My rep ranges here's what studies show by the way, okay? When they compare rep ranges People always like to pull up studies and say, well, this study shows that 8 to 12 built a little bit more muscle. Oh, wait a minute. This study says that 15 reps builds just as much muscle if you go to failure. Oh, this one shows that low reps builds muscle, whatever. So you get all these arguments about which rep range builds muscle, but they're missing

one constant, consistent point in all these studies. They're the most important point. All of those rep ranges build muscle. All of them build muscle. Every single of one of those rep ranges, I would say between one in 30 builds muscle and every one of them can result in a hard plateau and the lack of results. Yes.

If you stay in it too long. Yes. All of them build muscle, none of them always build muscle. No, it's funny because the eight to 12 rep range was like the golden goose. Like this is, you know, the study that I've member seen a million times. And like, if it's hypertrophy,

if I'm trying to build muscle, like that's where I have to live inside. That literally is programmed in my brain from school and from, you know, these classes I took, because, you know, we're just going off the information that we had at the time, which was very thin. In terms of kinesiology and our study of the human body, it's really progressed quite some bit over time, but it was pretty weak back in the day.

That was like, I lived in that rep range to try and build muscle. What took me out of that was finally introducing, you know, other methods like going in a power phase, like, you know, going in a low rep range, like, you know, like it really took that to get me out of where I was totally stalled, didn't realize, like, I was just spinning my wheels. Well, so the key and the answer to this is, is seeking out what's most novel. You want to, and whatever that is, get good at it, right? You want to spend enough time in it

That you do get good the body adapts it learns it's so you now add more load and you can then go Oh, let's find something new and novel again and move out of that rep range and that took man It took me many times before I would say it wasn't until like seven eight years of like you know because, because like you, I had a similar story, Sal, where, you know, we were, and I remember being a member vividly conversations with my workout partner and I, you know, we literally thought, you know, if you did 15 to 20 reps, that's like girly stuff. Yeah.

That was girly, you know, the girls do 15 to 20 reps with lightweight. That's for toning. Yeah, exactly. That was my thought, and I'll never forget, you know, finally coming up, there was this, there was this one trainer in the gym that we worked out that just had this incredible physique. He looked like he competed for sure. We were in our early 20s, and I remember walking up to him and asking him.

And obviously he was a good trainer, because when we asked him, you know, what, what are you doing or what do you do? I think we were actually asking about arms at that time. What did you do to get your arms so impressive and stuff? And instead of just giving us an answer of exercises or do this or do that, he asked us, what are you doing? And I said, well, and we kind of laid out

our workout program, and at that time it was heavy. And he never did anything over six reps at that time. And he goes, oh man, you need to do some like 15, 20 reps, do some super set of, and we're like, what? That's what all the chicks are doing. He's like, now you, and I remember doing that. And our, and I got stronger and built more muscle over that summer than I ever had before. But then again, getting stuck there for years before somebody else told me, oh, I need to move over. And then, and then it finally like clicked about the third time that I had done that where I had moved in and out and realized, oh wow, okay, what I need to do is

I can't stay in this rep range for very long. And what's tough, and you mentioned it, or alluded to it, is all the different studies. This is where it gets where everybody gets, it's really confusing and very nuanced for somebody who's trying to learn this, like, yeah, but I heard this, This trainer is touting this study and this train over here is touting this study and which one's true? Well, the answer is they all have truth to them. And the most important thing is that you learn to stay in one of those phases for about three to six weeks to get good enough at that rep range and then move on out of it, but never allow yourself to be there much longer

than about six weeks. Because once you hit that six week mark, it really starts to fall off. And that's why when you look at, if you unpack all of the programming on all maps programs, that's one of the staple philosophies that we've built around. We never allow someone to stay in a phase longer than three to four weeks. And the reason why three to four and we don't stretch it to six is because we know that at that point, most people will see the best results before they phase out. It doesn't mean that somebody couldn't stretch it one more week or two more weeks and see

great results. We just have found that that's enough time for the body to start to adapt to that rep range that they have already seen good results from them. And then when we move them to another phase, they're going to start this. If the body will recognize that as novel and responding. Yeah, one of the best ways to get around a plateau is to avoid plateauing completely. So staying in a rep phase until you plateau, that's more difficult to back out of than switching before the plateau even happens.

So this is why I tend to recommend people three to four weeks in a rep range and then move out. Even if you're ahead of it. Yeah, even if you're like, oh, but I'm still getting great gains, move out of it. You don't want to get to the point where you're like, hard plateau, nothing's happening.

Now I'm gonna switch, because sometimes that requires a couple of weeks of like stepping back with the intensity, allowing the body to catch up a little bit. So about three to four weeks in a rep range is good. And each rep range has its own value. It requires a little bit of a different skill. You know, a set of 15 reps and squats, very different feel and different concentration than a set of four reps with a squat. So there's a lot that your body's learning. There's a lot of central nervous system adaptation that you get from each of them.

One might give you a little bit more strength endurance and stamina. The other ones may be more power and grinding strength. All of them, here's the key though, all of them build muscle. So you should train in all of them. And the best way to do it is focus on one rep range for a few weeks, move to another one, rather than switching rep ranges all over the place. Because when you do it that way, by the way, it never really gives you time to solidify the technique, the feel of the movements by practicing just that rep range

for at least a few weeks if you're moving them all over. If you're really, really advanced and you know your body really well, then you can move through different rep ranges throughout the whole week. It's just hard to measure that way. It's hard to, because you're just throwing everything at it at the body and that's another one of the studies

that gets touted all the time. And that's where the whole, remember the muscle confusion, kick, I mean, I was on that kick for a long time too. My philosophy for several years was, I never duplicate a workout. I'm every workout is so novel and so unique. I'm constantly confusing it. Every workout has so novel and so unique. I'm constantly- Keep the body guessing, right? Yeah, I'm constantly confusing it.

You know, every workout has every rep range in it. Every workout has different exercises. And you know, that was enough to like, I would consider myself, I was a very fit person at that time. And if that was just your goal, is to be good at doing lots of different exercises and just overall fitness, health, that's fine.

But when you are looking to shape sculpt, change body composition, there's a much more methodical way to go at it, and it's more important than to stick to a rep range focus on that in your entire workout. So you can measure and you can see, and then you can change out of it. And what you'll see, and this is where it's important,

because there is such an individual variance, because everybody is unique. There is going to be somebody who just every time they go to a phase one in MAP Santa Ball, their body just responds. And the opposite is true. Every time they go to phase three, that person, their body just responds. And so you want to make sure that you lean into that a little bit more. So, and like, that's why I tell people to, like, the programs are moldable.

So if I have somebody who responds extremely well to the higher rep range, we might spend four or five weeks in that rep range because of how great their body is responding. And we may only do three or four weeks in a strength phase. You don't know this until you are consistent with tracking and you stick with a type of rep range or types of exercises so you can measure that for yourself. You'll be much better at programming your own program when you do it this way. Yeah, versus just mixing them up.

Right. Now, the last mistake that hardgainers make, this one is the, I'd say one of the last things for me to figure out because it required me to question, you know, what had become common knowledge in the muscle building world. Now, common knowledge refers to things that are so accepted as truth, then nobody even questions them. It's just, it's so, it's so much common knowledge that you don't even consider questioning that. You question everything else but that. And that's the following, that body part split routines

are just not effective, especially for hard gainers. They're just not as effective for building muscle. Now, when I first started looking at this, there wasn't a single modern muscle building guru or fitness expert that recommended anything other than body parts splits It was all body parts splits all muscle building routines were breaking the body up into body parts and You know one day you do chest and shoulders and Tuesday you do back and biceps or whatever They were all like that. Nobody was talking about working out full body

You know three days a week nobody recommended that for muscle building And so I didn't even consider it and so I followed split routines forever forever forever until out full body, you know, three days a week. Nobody recommended that for muscle building. And so I didn't even consider it. And so I followed split routines forever, forever, forever until one day, you know, I don't know exactly what sparked my interest. I think it was, I was on a forum and somebody had talked about a book called Dinosaur Training

and, you know, how much muscle they built on it or whatever in the principles. And I bought the book and I was really enthralled with it because it was old and it was old techniques and advice. And I thought, wow, you know what? I wonder if there's some old wisdom that I can learn. I remember having experience like this about martial arts too. I remember being in grappling.

And I remember going to the Louvre Museum in Paris. And I saw these sculptures. And there was this one like 3000 year old sculpture and there were two wrestlers and one of them was doing a move that looked like one I had learned like the week before. Remember thinking like, I wonder if there's some, I mean, there's some ancient wisdom here,

stuff that might apply to my grappling. Well, I kind of applied that to building muscle, I thought I wonder if these, like the old, the old timers, the guys who lifted weights and built muscle before steroids were around, before supplements were around, then it started to make sense to me, wait a minute, they might now more than the guys today

because they didn't have those things. All they had to rely on was exercise technique and a diet. Maybe they have better information. Especially for your average person. Especially for the average person. Especially for the average person. That wasn't getting talked to at all. Like all these programs that were out there, all these PDFs, and we're just shot down

from these bodybuilders who have built this incredible physique, but it was at their level, their volume, their intensity. And it was basically almost, it was a part where the person that bought the program felt like, they could never achieve that level of workout. And that became the thing. It was like, can I withstand this workout and it was almost like a bragging rights of even being able to get through it?

Well, they didn't have anything in common with me. I'm looking at Doreen Yates' routine or Ronnie Coleman or other body. They have nothing, their bodies have nothing in common with me, you know, I'm looking at Doryn Yates's routine or Ronnie Coleman or other body, they have nothing, their bodies have nothing in common with mine from a muscle building perspective, plus on anabolic steroids and all that stuff. So I went back and did some research. And what I found was incredible. First off, these men and women were extremely impressive. You know, you have guys like, first off, the way they looked, John Grimich,

look up a picture of John Grimich or Steve Reeves or Bill Pearl back in the day. These guys were muscular, you know, looking, incredibly muscular, looking individuals, okay? And again, this was before widespread use of anabolic steroids. Then you look at some of the strength feats

that they would do, like Eugene Sandow, right? He would, you know, one arm bent press, 300 pounds above his head. I thought, okay, let's see how they worked out. So I started doing some research. I got some of their workout routines and I noticed one thing in common with all of them. They all trained the whole body.

None of them did a body part split type routine. None of them did a routine where today I'm just working my shoulders. It was always all full body. I thought, you know, I used to think that that was just how you train when you first started and that wasn't really good for muscle building, but. Let me give this a shot and I'll never forget. You know, at this point I had a lot of experience working out and at this point, you know, if I did a workout, I could tell pretty quickly if it was, gonna work for me. And I remember that very first week, doing a full body routine three days a week, and watching the weight go up on my exercises each time that week. And I thought, this is, this is crazy.

Well, I think it just detured from that because of the way that the gym was structured with all these machines and all these different sections like devoted to specific body parts. And so, you know, people started to try and organize these programs around like going from machine to machine and, and, you know, body part splits make sense for that environment. But it's still like if you go through for your average person, it's just not as effective as compound lifts and working the body, the total body and doing three days a week. I don't think it's that so much as it is. You know, what you're, what none of us are touching on right now that I think is so important

to this conversation was something that we, they didn't have back in the 50s and going way back to like old time, like strength, is they didn't have all in the 50s and going way back to like old time, like strength, is they didn't have all this research and controlled studies that they were, that they were very, that they were influenced by this. They weren't influenced by that. All they had was talking to each other,

looking at results. It actually works. Right. And this is another area. This is a beef that I have with trainers that tout studies so much, is what we know is if you take a group of people and they are running a body parts split

and you take a full body routine and both groups for six months follow that. And they both hit the body parts the same amount of times. They both hit buys three times a week, tries three times a week, legs three times a week. What you'll find is that it's even. It pretty much is even. It'll be similar. It'll be very similar. It's splitting hairs. And so why that there's a problem with that is it doesn't take into account behaviors. And that was something that took me a long time over years of training clients to recognize. And myself, and I, because I ran body parts splits for a very long time.

If you run a body parts split and you actually do it to hit two or three, hit a muscle two or three times in a week, you've got to be running a six to seven day week routine in order to do that. Okay. So in order to do that, I've got to be training consistently six to seven times a week, which was fine. I love going to the gym, but like life happens, even for a gym rat like myself, and one week would be four times. You know, and maybe I missed one week.

And what ends up happening in a body part split is that week that the some muscle suffer, and what it always ended up for me suffering when the muscles that I didn't like working very much the ones that needed the attention the most to build my body and to be more symmetrical. I always gravitated towards the things I liked doing. If I fell off or missed a day or I had to restart my routine, my body part split, I always gravitated right back to my favorite day back in the gym to help myself get momentum back in the gym again. And what ended up happening was that one or two or three parts of my body was not getting

the same attention as some of the other ones, where in a full body routine, that doesn't happen. If even if you miss a day or two in the gym, you're hitting full body. So they're always equally getting touched all the time. And that was a factor that these studies don't play in. That it's just normal behavior with 90% of the population. If you're a steroid bodybuilder and it is your job to show up on when I was competing, I didn't, and for almost three and a half, four years, I didn't

miss a workout. It was my job to show up on stage and look better than what I did last time. And I took it like a job. That's not most people. Most people have another job. They have a life. They have other things and life happens. And when life happens, you might have a week

where you don't get those consistent workouts in. And guess what? When you do a full body routine, you make sure you address everything. The body doesn't ever get neglected. It's easier to be consistent three days a week than it is five or six days a week. Right.

That's a big point. Now here's the other thing, okay. So yes, a full body routine tends to result in more frequency of hitting the body parts. First off, why is that important for the hardgainer? We know we can measure muscle, the muscle building signal, roughly,

by measuring something called muscle protein synthesis. Muscle protein synthesis when it spikes, when it goes up, it means your body's adding new tissue. And we can see this after you work out muscle protein synthesis levels go up. And then maybe, you know, 48 hours later, they tend to drop down. Now my hunch, and we don't have any studies to prove this yet, but my hunch is that a hard gainer's muscle protein synthesis levels spike and then drop faster than the average person.

They need to hit a body part more frequently than somebody who has average or above average muscle building genetics, someone who's not a hard gainer. So the hard gainer probably needs to hit their body more frequently. It doesn't necessarily mean they need more volume for the week, they just need to hit their body more frequently during the week to maintain that elevated signal. And a full body workout encourages this because three full body workouts is three,

you're hitting each body part three times a week. So there's that part, but there's this other part that I like to talk about. When you lift weights, when you work a body part, most of the muscle, the vast majority of the muscle building signal goes to the muscle that's being worked. So if I work my bicep, my bicep is largely going to get the strength and muscle gains. But there's a little bit of carryover to the whole body.

We've seen this in studies. They've actually done studies where people will train just their right arm and yes, the right arm gains most of the muscle, but the left arm gains a little bit too. We have, I have tons of experience with clients where we'll work on their legs, their squat will go up and mysteriously their overhead press or their bench press will also go up. There's also, although there is a localized, the cute muscle building signal that happens to the muscle you're working, I believe there's a systemic overall anabolic signal that gets sent to the whole body. Which one is going to send the biggest general systemic muscle building signal, a chest and shoulder workout or a whole body workout, right?

A whole body workout is going to send a very loud full body, hey, we need to get stronger and build more muscle. And this is what I noticed with full body routines. I've done splits where I hit my whole body three days a week. I've done that. I've done the five day and six day splits where I do that. I still build more muscle doing a three day a week routine and I think it has to do with the big, loud,

full body signal that we send. Here's the other thing. When you're working your full body, you don't really have time or space for exercises that are not as effective as the effective exercise. Like if I work my legs three times during the week, I'm less likely to do things like leg extensions and leg curls.

I'm more likely to throw in, because I'm only doing maybe five or six sets for legs. I'm more likely to do barbell squats, front squats, you know, maybe a good morning or remaining deadlift. I'm gonna do the more effective exercises more frequently than the less effective exercises. Versus when I'm doing a body parts split and I'm doing all 15 sets and one workout for my legs,

I'll do squats, but then I'm gonna throw in some leg extensions and some CISC squats and some leg curls, all of a sudden stuff because there's no way you're gonna be able to do the most effective exercises or at least not an effective way for 15 sets, but I can do that for five or six sets. So when I would look at clients who would follow

body parts splits versus clients who would follow full body workouts, when I would just compare the frequency of the most effective exercises that they did, even if the sets and everything else was controlled, I noticed that my full body clients were doing more bench presses, more overhead presses, more barbell rows, more squats, more deadlifts,

and my other clients doing the splits were doing more machines and cables and isolation exercises. And there's an extra benefit to that. We talked earlier about one of the things is exercise selection and doing the exercises that are more valuable. Now you're getting to practice those compound exercises that have that larger learning curve.

So if you're working towards exercises that have a larger learning curve have more room for adaptation, more room for building more muscle and you're practicing them more frequently, it's obviously gonna build more muscle. Yeah, I'll tell you one more study. I've told this a few times in the podcast, but, you know, Doug, our producer, I first met

Doug because he was a client. He actually came and was referred to me by his chiropractor. He had some back issues and wanted to train with me. Now, Doug came to me fully believing he was a hard gainer. In fact, I believe that was the word that he used when I asked him questions. He said, yeah, I have a tough time gaining muscle. I'll gain body fat, but I won't gain muscle.

And I asked him about his exercise history. Doug was not a novice or a beginner at all. He'd been lifting weights on and off, but relatively consistently for a very long time, since he was in his 20s at the latest. And Doug is the kind of person, if you know Doug, he's smart. He likes the research and read. He was far more educated than the average new client that I had.

He followed Body Parts splits, he did Body for Life, the Bill Phillips routine back in the day. He did all the Flex Magazine and muscle and fitness magazine routines. He understood all the exercises for chest and back and shoulders and thighs. He was a hard gainer with a lot of experience who'd been working out for a long time with body parts of the routine. So he came to me, told me, I'm a hard gainer, but I will gain body fat easily. I've done all this exercise in the past.

Oh, by the way, I believe in his mid to late 40s at this time. So past whatever you call a muscle building prime. And we sat down and I, luckily, am convincing. And I convinced him that he needed to lift weights twice a week. You know, Doug, I know you've been working out four or five days a week doing all these body parts splits or whatever. You're gonna train me two days a week

and we're gonna work the whole body. And I'm just gonna get you strong. We're just gonna focus on getting you strong. Deadlifts, squats, bench presses, you know, all these, oh I thought those exercises are bad for my back. Remember, Doug came to me with a bad back. They're not bad for your back. We're gonna work on mobility, slowly build up your strength.

And in fact, you're gonna reach a point where your back will no longer become an issue because those exercises are phenomenal, when done properly for your back. Here's what happened. Doug got in the best shape of his life. His strength went through the roof to the point where after training him for about a year, we laughed at the fact that he called himself a hardgainer.

Here was a guy that weighed 150 pounds who was deadlifting 400 pounds in his late 40s. He came to me with a bad back two days a week, full body routine. I didn't move dog to a three day week full body routine until about a year, over a year of consistent two day week training, making phenomenal gains that whole time. No joke. I'm not exaggerating ladies and gentlemen. If you're a hard gainer and you're having a tough time building muscle, the vast majority of you will build the most muscle you've ever built with a two to three day week full body routine focusing on compound lifts, just

getting stronger, of course, with a good diet, it'll really blow you away. And look, we put our money where our mouth is. If you have our maps, programs, what we're talking about is displayed in all of our programs. We rely very little on machines in our programs. Even our advanced bodybuilder routines, they're still a majority, free weights. This has actually been great for us with all these gym shutdowns. A lot of people with home gyms can still follow our routines. If you look at the programs, you'll see the phasing of the reps. You'll see the focus on strength.

All the things that we're talking about are present in all of our programs because they just plain work. And here's the thing, I have never met a hardgainer that couldn't put muscle on their body without following the muscle-building principles that we talked about this episode

and other ones that have to do with diet I've never met one that didn't build a an impressive amount of muscle just by following those things So there is hope you're not stuck. I promise you look mine pump is Recorded on video as well as audio so come join us on YouTube mine pump podcast You can also find all of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at mine Pump Justin, you can find me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam. 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 MindPump Media dot 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 transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, The RGB Superbundle is like having Sal, Adam and Justin as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money bag guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump!