I had a theory that I might have been over training because the type of Volume (reps and sets) and Intensity were simply not right for my body type. I made a slight change by going heavier with less sets got the same training stimulus and didn’t feel burnt out after my last workout.

So far so good. Now I need to put this method to work. Expect a full write up on Fiber testing within the next week. I think I’m on to something big because Hardgainers have historically had the same physical traits, what if I was able to determine the most optimal way to train them.

Hmmmmm….

Anyway I had a great workout today. Today was my “Arm” workout here what I played with:

Barbell Curl 3 sets x 8 reps x 55lbs

Zottman Curls 3 sets x 8 reps x 20lbs

Single Arm Cable Curl 3 sets x 8 reps x 25lbs

Lying Triceps Extension 3 sets x 8 reps x 45lbs

Triceps Press down (Straight Bar) 3 sets x 8 reps x 80lbs, 90lbs, 100lbs

Total workout time: 1 hour 8 minutes, got distracted today should have taken 45 minutes

Nothing Scientific today, very straight forward workout

Hang tight it will be worth it.

I’ve been struggling with over training symptoms after workouts for the past couple of years on and off.  In case you didn’t know over training is termed as excessive frequency, volume, or intensity of training that results in extreme fatigue, illness, or injury. Depending on what stage of over training you’re suffering from, common symptoms can range from Increased resting heart rate and blood pressure to altered immune functioning resulting is being sick and catching colds very easily.

As I mentioned, I’ve been suffering from over training symptoms for the better part of 2 years.  Part of the problem is that fact that I’m a highly stressed individual. Excessive stress levels have put my body in a state of constant shock which is equivalent to working out to hard too often. I’ve also been training at the wrong volumes and intensity for my body type.

Surprisingly enough there is evidence that shows that depending on your muscle fiber ratio specific types of training protocols can induce over training symptoms as well as lower muscle strength and hypertrophy. I spent the weekend testing to see what types of muscle fibers I had and it turns out that my body is primarily made up of fast twitch fibers.  This is a major breakthrough because I’ve been training the complete wrong way for my body type.

The Rule of thumb when it comes to muscle fiber types and how they should train is:

Fast twitch dominate hardgainers will benefit most from:

• Very low volume of work
• High acceleration exercises
• high load exercises

Slow twitch dominate hardgainers will benefit most from:

• Very high volume of work
• long duration sets
• slower eccentric tempo

I’ve been training as if I were a slow twitch dominate hardgainer and my body has had a hard time coping with the stress. I’ve begun to make adjustments to my workout routine in the hopes that I can correct this problem. I”ll definitely let you know how I feel tomorrow.

I’m going to post an article later on this week on muscle fiber testing, I recommend you test yourself out to figure out what type of training is most optimal for you.

The Workout:

Sled Drags 3 x 205lbs x 25 yards (Absolutely brutal but I got an amazing blood pump to my legs)

Split Squat 3 x 8 x 35lbs each hand

Horizontal Leg Press 3 x 8 x 250lbs

Leg Curl 3 x8x 150lbs

Body Saw 3 x Body Weight to failure

Total workout time: Just over 1 hour

Just to note: The Body Saw is one of my new stable abdominal exercises its absolutely challenging and it works the entire core. Take a look at the video below to see what I’m talking about.

1. Failed Understanding of the Calories in vs Calories out concept – there is some truth to the saying that hardgainers or those with ectomorphic traits have high metabolisms.  To combat this your diet must have an adequate amount of calories per day that will not only sustain your body needs at rest but also have a surplus that will count towards the formation of new muscle tissue. If your goal is to put on 1 pound per week at the end of each day your goal would be to have a surplus of at least 500 calories from your diet. At times simply reducing daily activity (such as giving up that game of pick up basketball for a while) will actually serve you best while bulking up. When it comes down to it, you need to be eating if you want to put on weight. If you aren’t getting enough calories into your system you’ll only make it harder for yourself to create new muscle tissue.
2. The Flat Tire Phenomenon – This is one we’ve all experienced at least once. You plan all your meals for the week, have all your works outs planned out, supplements are all paid for and ready to be used. A couple of weeks go by and things are going great until you mess up once, this can be a cheat meal gone wrong, missed meal, or a bad workout. Instead of picking up from where you left off you get frustrated and begin to repeat bad habits, you keep on telling yourself that you’ll start all over again on Monday but that day never comes. You eventually give up and try again months later. This cycle can continue for months and even years at times. You need to mentally prepare yourself for a marathon and not a sprint. If you are a Hardgainer there will be nothing “easy” about gaining muscle. Stay focused on your long term goal, plan correctly and move at a pace you can maintain for a long period of time.
3. Doing Too Much Too Soon – Our goal is unique from other fitness goals because we need to create an environment within our bodies for growth through extreme methods. Our diets are at times 2 to 3 times what a normal personal would eat, our protein intake hire than most recommended intake, and our workouts routines at times drive our bodies to the point of absolute exhaustion just to stimulate new muscle growth. Although I understand these things are necessary to get to where we need to be often times instead of gradually working ourselves up to eating 4000 or 5000 calories per day or building outrbodies up to handle the burden of squatting 222lbs pounds or more we rush right into it expecting great results. From my estimation the average time it takes for a hardgainer to drop out or give up on a program is about 2 weeks. Unfortunately most of these hardgainers get tips from bodybuilding magazines or friends with different body types and thing that its going to be a piece of cake. They overwhelm themselves with too much too soon and give up before even getting started.

The Hardgainer Project is going to be designed to give an accurate picture of  what it really takes to break out of shells to attain the type of results we want. Be sure to subscribe to this website to get the latest updates on the project as well as helpful tips that will help you get closer to your goal.

The Problem: There are many people who identify themselves as hardgainers. They struggle to put on quality muscle mass and blame their troubles on poor genetics, fast metabolisms and a host of other poor excuses.

My Proposal: To come up with a program that will give hardgainers the upper hand in their struggles to gain quality muscle mass.

Hypothesis: If I diet, sleep, supplement and eat correctly I will be able to attain adequate results even though I am a prototypical hardgainer.

What will I record? My workout routine, Diet, and Supplementation. I will also comment on X factors such as stress and sleep habits.

What do you guys think? Is there enough data? Do I need to record more variables?

At the beginning everything was going my way. I was relatively injury free, full of motivation, and excited at the challenge of getting to 205lbs.

Then the setbacks started to happen. One after the other something impeded my progression and hindered my goals. Each time beating my motivation levels down to a new low.

To give you an idea of what kind of struggles I’ve been thought I’ll list a few of the complications in my life:

• I have a herniated L4-L5 disc (I guess that back injury I had months ago was a lot more serious)
• Tendonitis in both both shoulders which has led to some impingement
• Tendonitis in my right elbow
• And to top things off I just recovered from the flu which effectively has knocked off over 10lbs officially setting me back to where I first started

Fun times right?

I don’t know what my next move is. I’ve obviously started physiotherapy for the herination but have been told that exersises such as heavy squating and deadlifting to elimited from my routine permantley.

What am I to do now?

There is a possbility that I will make a 100% reovery but only if I put in the work.

At this point I’m so worn out from all the set backs that finding the motivation to countinue seem impossble.

Do I quit? Should I continue? Is this the end?

There are a few things that I’m going to have to take care of before I get started. I’d like to first get a check up with my doctor and get a Physical. My doctor knows I like to workout and that I’m pretty active but I haven’t talked to him about what I have planned for the future. My diet is going to be changing dramatically over the next few months so I want to make sure that my bodily systems are in fine working order.

In addition to having a check up I’d like to have my physiotherapist  check me out. I haven’t worked out for almost 2 weeks due to chronic pain from my current injuries. My back, elbows and shoulders are messed up and its about time I start taking care of myself.

I’m gonna keep you guys posted on my progress, Hopefully all goes well.

If I’m seriously going succeed in this challenge I need to break down all the aspect of Training, Nutrition, and Supplementation into parts that are going to be easy for me to carry out.

This leads me into today’s article which will focus on how I’m going to Ease into a Bodybuilding Diet.

Eating all this food might not be such a good idea

Incremental Change is the name of the game

In the past I’ve always rushed head first into changing my diet and workout regimen. And every time no matter how well I was doing I eventually quit due to injury, lack of motivation, or plain laziness.

This time around I’m going to take a step back and slowly change my diet at a speed that will allow me to maintain the drastic changes I’ll be making.  The goal is to be 100% set in my ways in about 8-10 weeks. Every two weeks I’ll set a new goal and focus primarily on that goal. Hopefully if all goes well by the start of November I’ll be well on my way to putting on 30 pounds for next years bodybuilding show.

Week 1 -2 (September 1st – 14th) – Cutting bad Fat from my diet

The first couple of weeks are going to be pretty easy because I don’t really have a high fat diet to begin with. What I will do is make the right choices when it comes to food preparation. I’ll avoid eating fried foods more often, I’ll make sure to be more aware on whats on labels and I’ll do simple things like taking skin off chicken before I eat it.

Week 3-4 (September 15th-30th) – Eliminating refined sugars from my diet

This is probably be the hardest thing for me to do. I am an admitted sugar fiend. I love to eat candy so giving sweets up is going to be hard. But I think I can do it. In addition to giving up candy I’ll be staying away from drinks that are high in sugar and avoiding using pure sugar in my coffee.

Week 5-6 (October 1st-14th) – Making Water the main beverage in my diet

Another hard challenge. I more of a juice guy over water but this is a change that my body really needs.

Week 7-8 (October 15 – 31st) – Making sure my Caloric intake is controlled and having multiple meals a day.

At this point I’m not going to focus in on how much protein vs carbs I’m eating. The main objective is to be eating a lot of food over different periods of the day. I’m going to try to maintain anywhere from 3500 to 4000 calories a day and we’ll see how my body responds.

Weeks 9-10 (November 1st -14th) – Macronutritonal Management

At this point the majority of the hard work is over. I just need to make sure that my macronutritional ratio are in order. I’m probably going to be eating close to a 40:40:20 (Protein:Carbs:Fat) split but I might eventually decide to go heavy on the carbs since I”ll be bulking.

In Summary…

So there you have it that’s my nutritional plan of attack for the next 10 weeks. Its going to be hard but with your support I know I”ll be able to pull through.

Hey guys,

On September 1st 2008 I started with website with the hopes and dreams that it would someday be the most respected hardgainer specific website on the net. Although we had some growing pains I’m very satisfied with how the year went.

I want to thank all of the old and new readers for being very supportive and I’d like to encourage you to post more frequently on the message boards and send me messages when you have questions.

If you haven’t yet make sure to subscribe to the site to keep up to date with that’s going on with My Transformation.

Once again I”d like to thank all of your for all the love and support and lets try to continue to grow as a family as we move on forward.

Cheers,

Brian

BUT at the same time there is going to be a lot of scarf ice, pain, suffering, sweat, blood, and tears. I’m not sure if I’m not sure if I have what it takes to aggressively bulk up to 205 pounds and then cut back down for a bodybuilding competition.

For my new readers (and old), in case your wondering what I’m grumbling about, I’ve been thinking about getting into bodybuilding for sometime now. Even though I’m still skinny and working on mastering techniques for hardgainers, entering a bodybuilding show with only a year of preparation would be an amazing accomplishment. It would set myself, our hardgainer community, and this website form all the other hardgainer specific websites that have recently come up.

How many sites have actually had a normal guy document his progression from the very start all the way to the end.

I think I’m going to do this…

What do you guys think?

The purpose of this workout routine is to increase the body’s muscle mass levels  through an intra-celluar increase of energy substrates and water.

Its a Hypertrophy Specific workout that attacks the muscle from different angles in order to activate many different muscle fibers. Many Old School Bodybuilders such as Arnold Schwarzenegger used this method.

The reason why this method works is because when muscle is worked through all its ranges of motion (mid range, stretched, and contracted ranges) muscle fiber recruitment is maximized.

As always choose a weight that  allows you to perform the exercise with good form for the required amount of reps. The last rep should be challenging but not impassible.

This routine uses a lot of Supersetting.  A superset is when one (or more)  exercises are done directly after the other with no rest in between. For example a superset could be a Chest Press followed by a Dumbbell fly.

Monday – Chest, Back, Traps, Rear Delts

Superset #1

Incline Bench Press – 3 sets 6-8 reps

Wide Grip Pull-up – 3 sets 6-8 reps (If you are not strong enough to do pull ups do Wide Grip Pull downs with a Lat Pulldown)

1 minute rest and then repeat

Superset #2

Chest Dips – 3 sets 6-8 reps

Close Grip Chins – 3 sets 6-8 reps

1 minute rest and then repeat

Superset # 3

Cable Incline Flies – 3 sets 10-12 reps

Low Pulley Rows – 3 sets 10-12 reps

Dumbbell Pullovers 2 sets 10-12 reps

1 minute rest and repeat

Superset #4

Stiff Arm Pulldowns – 2 sets 15-20 reps

Bent Arm Bent-over Rows – 2 sets 15-20 reps

Upright Rows – 2 sets 15-20 reps

1 minute rest and repeat

Tuesday – Hamstrings, Calves, Abs

Superset #1

Hamstring Leg Press – 4 sets 6-8 reps

Hanging Leg Raise – 3 sets 10-15 reps

1 minute rest and repeat

Superset #2

Dumbbell Stiff Legged Deadlifts – 4 sets 10-12 reps

Bicycle Crunches – 3 sets 15 reps

1 minute rest and repeat

Superset #3

Lying Leg Curls – 4 sets 10-12 reps

Crunches – 3 sets 10-15 reps

1 minute rest and repeat

Superset #4

Donkey Calf Raises – 4 sets 10-15 reps

Standing Calf Raise – 3 sets 8 reps

1 minute rest and repeat

Thursday – Biceps, Triceps, Delts

Superset #1

Close Grip Chins – 3 sets 6-8 reps

Close Grip Bench Press – 3 sets 6-8 reps

1 minute rest and repeat

Superset #2

Incline Dumbbell Curls – 3 sets 10-12 reps

Overhead Dumbbell Triceps Extensions – 3 sets 10-12 reps

1 minute rest and repeat

Superset # 3

Concentration Curls – 3 sets 15-20 reps

Triceps Kickbacks – 3 sets 15-20 reps

1 minute rest and repeat

Superset #4

Seated Military Press – 3 sets 8 reps

Incline one Arm Laterals – 3 sets 10-12 reps

Lateral Raises  – 3 sets 15-20 reps

1 minute rest and repeat

Friday – Quadriceps, Calves, Abs

Superset #1

Squat (medium stance) – 4 sets 6-8 reps

Hanging Leg Raises – 3 sets 10-15 reps

1 minute rest and repeat

Superset #2

Sissy Squats – 4 sets 10-12 reps

Bicycle Brunches 3 sets 15 reps

1 minute rest and repeat

Superset #3

Leg Extensions – 4 sets 10-15 reps

Crunches – 3 sets 10-15 reps

1 minute rest and repeat

Superset # 4

Donkey Calf Raises – 4 sets 10-15 reps

Standing Calf Raises – 4 sets 8 reps

1 minute rest and repeat

This is a great Hardgainer Specific Routine that you would use for about 4 weeks before taking a week off for active recovery. If you’d like to learn more about similar effective Hardgainer Specific Workout Routines check out Hugo’s book.

Additionally if you need any help with the routine just leave a question in the comments sections and I’ll be sure to get back to you.