Archive for January, 2009

hardgainer
aznballa asked:

I’m a hardgainer, and currently the main things I really want to exercise are my forearms and biceps.

What are the most effective exercises, sets and reps should I do and how many times a week? Thanks.

Muscle-Build.com

hardgainer
ethro500mg asked:

In 7 months I have gained 13lbs all muscle, I’m 6,1 and 152lbs . This is the lunch I bring to school, Prtn bar snack 10:00 and Apple, banana, Peanut Butter sandwich and a Turkey sandwich or tuna 1:00.

Muscle Building

5 Day Course on Building Muscle for Skinny Guys

I just discovered a really great resource, John Berardi’s Scrawny To Brawny – Building Muscle Without Steroids 5-day ecourse.

It covers body types, training, nutrition, supplements, corrective exercises, as well as determination and social support. In 5 days, you’ll likely learn more than you’ve learned over the past few years reading the muscle mags.

This course tells it like it is, with no BS, no filler, no fluff. Of course, Dr. Berardi wants to sell you his books and training, so he hopes to entice you to his wares by delivering awesome content in this course, and he delivers!

Achieve Steroid Like Results With These Muscle Building Secrets

Jeff Anderson has written a book entitled Optimum Anabolics.  The writer of the book has earned the nickname “muscle nerd” because of his obsession with writing everything down that happened in the gym.  You might be asking if this is the person who can help you with your body, and the answer to that question is yes.This “Muscle Nerd” can definitely help you to realize your goal of body building because he knows every fact and detail of mass building. He has dedicated an enormous amount of effort and time to study everything on mass building. He shares this secret information with you in Optimum Anabolics.  While you’re reading it, you too like Jeff will come to know everything relating to the topic of gaining muscle. Jeff not only shares all that he knows with you but will also teach you to understand it all.

This is a very unique book. It is animated and brought alive by a character Joe Hardgainer. Who is this: “Joe Hardgainer”, you ask? It is you (well not literally) but you will surely see yourself in him. He’s a guy who wants to desperately gain muscle weight. He has hit the gym, spoken to the biggest guy, tried the much-hyped supplements, scanned the muscle magazines and the professional bodybuilders for help. He is remotely successfully in his endeavour, but is still fighting those plateaus unsuccessfully. He has not been able to pull across the plateaus that constantly stall the progress of the most dedicated trainers.

The author of the book knows who you are and displays this knowledge with the character in the book.  The book is very well written and shows an understanding of what you may be going through in your efforts to gain mass.  You will have to be very motivated and determined to find results from this program.  You will have to be very disciplined to follow the diet and the workout program.  There are some points that must be followed to get the kind of rewards that are possible.  You should be prepared for the hard work that will come with this program.

The book presents the eight anabolic principles that are at the root of your weight and muscle gain.  You will find that they are what the entire program is based on and will be very effective if you apply them in the correct manner.  The program is available in MP3 format so that you can take the program and listen wherever you are.  The points that are delivered are all about the tempo and frequency of your workout along with the diet that must be followed.  When you get to the heart of the program, you will learn about Hyper Adaptive Cycling and how it can work for you.

His technique is workable, reasonable and detailed not only on breaking down plateaus but prevents them from happening in the beginning.

You might be wondering how the program will work for you.  It is with an understanding of how the body grows muscles.  When you learn how this occurs in the body you will understand how effective Hyper Adaptive Cycling can be for you.  Someone who is just starting out in bodybuilding will understand how difficult it is to break through a plateau.  It happens when your body starts to understand your efforts to add muscle and stops responding to the workout. The short explanation is that your body no longer requires added muscles to get through the workout.

You must find a way for your body to react to the workout and continue to grow muscle.  This is the main reason that a bodybuilder will continuously change his or her workout so that the muscles keep responding.  You have to prevent your body from being comfortable with the workout.

Hyper-Adaptive Cycling = Massive change

With the program, you will learn how to use the principles of the body to gain new growth.  You have to learn how to reprogram your body so that it responds to your workout by using the defense mechanisms that are responsible for new growth.

All in all, it’s a sound program.

Gain Muscle With HIT Training

Hardgainer

The HIT hardgainer workout makes massive gains in just 15minutes a day.

High Intensity training has been around since the early years of strength training, being made especially popular in the 1970’s by Mike Mentzer. Mike was controversial in his training approach and stressed that training sessions had to be as brief, infrequent and intense as possible in order to obtain the best results in the shortest possible time, sometimes advocating a 6 minute leg workout and only 15 minutes on the upper body. HIT hardgainer workout routines have now become established as one of the many weapons in a bodybuilder’s arsenal for gaining maximum mass in the shortest possible time.

These workouts were also meant to be far more infrequent than a normal split routine. But how do we define infrequent? How often can we work out and still get great gains? The answer lies in how you manipulate your routine so that you can be training very briefly, very intensely but yet still get into the gym 3-4 times a week without overtraining and burning out. A standard HIT training regimen involves working the entire body over one training session then taking several days off before hitting the entire body again at the next session.

A hardgainer workout HIT routine might look something like the following with only one set performed per exercise with 8-10 reps:

  1. Squat/Leg Press or Deadlifts
  2. Pullover
  3. Military (or DB) Shoulder Press
  4. Seated lat rows
  5. Bench Press or DB press
  6. Biceps Curl or Hammer curl
  7. Triceps Extension
  8. Regular Chin-up
  9. Parallel Dip
  10. Calf Raise
  11. Abdominal Crunches

Typically you would perform a routine like this on, say, Monday and then follow it up with the same routine on Thursday. Many trainees have also opted to change to a 2 day split program where by half the body is worked on Monday and then the other half on Thursday. This gives more recuperation time for each muscle group and allows for the elimination of some of the overlap involved with doing the whole body routine. This type of splitting is fine as long as the volume is kept very low, somewhere around 12-15 sets per workout or about 30 sets total for the week. This is definitely enough work IF you are taking each set to failure, a practice that true HIT devotees take very seriously indeed.

With that in mind why is it that most hardgainer workout HIT trainees assume that this is the only way to train? What stops them from further dividing their program? After pondering this thought for some time I decided that I had to try it out. With the above listed routine in mind I began tearing it down into several workouts of 2-3 exercises each. Since the volume would be very low I decided I could afford to pick all the best exercises and incorporate them all into the schedule while still making sure there was very little overlap between days of training. With that much in mind here’s the routine I recommend:

Monday:

    1. Deadlift 1 x 20 (5 seconds rest after each rep)
    2. Shrugs (DB or bar) 1 x 10
    3. Chins 2 x 6-8

      Tuesday:

        1. Bench Press (DB or Bar) 2 x 4-6
        2. Shoulder press (DB or bar) 1 x 10
        3. Lateral raise 1 x 15

          Wednesday:

            1. Squats 2 x 4-6
            2. Leg curls 1 x 15
            3. Calf Raises (seated or standing) 2 x 15

              Friday:

                1. Close Grip Bench lockouts 1 x 6-8
                2. Pushdowns 1 x 10
                3. Barbell curls 1 x 10
                4. Incline Dumbell curls 1 x 6-8
                5. Crunches 2 x 15

                  That’s the entire routine. Each day’s training takes no more than 15 minutes IF you are training intensely. I could usually complete my workout in about 10 minutes. With this in mind I can honestly say there is not a single soul out there who can’t manage to get the body that they crave.

                  Obviously even on the most rigid of schedules there is a way to get in some kick ass training and build some solid muscle. Sometimes bodybuilding is about finding a routine that matches your lifestyle as much as it suits your goals. Massive muscles in 15 minutes a day and less than 20 sets per week — Who can argue with that?

                  Important notes for hardgainer workout HIT training:

                  1. Training intensely under a HIT regime involves slow reps (2 seconds down, 2 seconds up) with perfect form to complete failure. Rest between reps as long as necessary to complete the full set.
                  2. It is important to note that many people still passionately debate long after Mike Mentzers death the actual number of sets, with many trainers advocating 1-2 lighter warm up sets, to get the ‘mind to muscle’ link working properly, followed by the intense and serious super slow final set.
                  3. Taking each set to failure is used to describe, taking your last rep to total failure, this means that however hard you push or pull you cannot achieve another repetition. If you are truly going to failure and in the event of certain exercises, like the squat or Bench press, you would need a spotter to prevent the bar crushing you, unless of course you had the use of a power rack. If you want a true ‘total failure’ set, then you would ’strip the bar’.

                  This is done as follows; say your heaviest bench press is 100 kilos (40kg on each side + 20kg for the bar) for 10 reps. You would load the bar up with 10kg plates on each side (40kg total). As soon as you cannot squeeze out another rep, you would immediately put the bar in the rack and remove 10kg from each side and lift again to failure. At this point again you would immediately put the bar in the rack and remove 10kg from each side. You would keep doing this until you are just literally able to lift the bar itself. Done properly for something like squats you would probably need crutches to walk out of the gym, your legs so exhausted that they’d need at least a full week to recover.

                   Page 3 of 3 « 1  2  3