This post is for all you guys that have a hard time achieving Hypertrophy or in simple terms muscle growth. It is one of the most desired things we strive to achieve in our fitness lifestyle. lets face it who doesn't like to have big arms and a nice V-Cut back. Muscle growth tho is not an easy thing to achieve, and it is especially not easy for those of us that are hard gainers, i am going to provide a list of 5 steps that you can follow to help you get to your goals.
Step 1- Come up with a goal to stay motivated
the first step may seem simple but this is where a lot of people go wrong right at first and that can screw them up later on in the process. the majority of guys will set a goal of gaining 15 pounds of muscle in 3-5 months. that is just not a realistic goal to set unless you don't care that you add tons of fat too! Go to a grocery store and pick out 15 pounds of beef and imagine that distributed on your body. that is a ton of weight! a realistic goal would be 5 pounds of muscle in 3 months that might not sound like a lot but it is a great deal of muscle, and also when you have a small goal like that, the chances of gaining fat are not a lot at all and thats a great thing! so come up with a realistic goal to keep you motivated and stick to that goal do not change it. stick to the plan.
Step 2- Focus on nutrition more so than the workouts.
you might be thinking that nutrition comes second to weightlifting when gaining muscle but you could not be more wrong. Nutrition is key! to gain muscle you have to eat at a calorie surplus. you can not gain muscle while eating at a deficit, you will lean out when eating a deficit but not gain muscle. also eat 5-6 meals daily (around every 2-3 hours). so how do we determine how much calories we should eat? read this post first and it will explain how to calculate things. here is an example of a 150 pound guy that is 6 feet tall; his Daily active Burn is 2700 calories and he wants to gain mass so i add an additional 500 calorie surplus and that gives us 3200 calories that he should shoot for. after a few weeks ask yourself how you are feeling and how have the results and gains been, if you need to then you can adjust the calories accordingly, another easier way you can find your starting level is multiply your body weight by 20, it's not as accurate but it will give you an idea at least, in this case if you did the math (150 X 20) that gives you 3000 calories which is 200 calories lower than what the Harris Benedict Equation Gives you but it is still a good starter. now the next question I'm sure you are asking yourself.......
What Macronutrients work?
-when gaining muscle carbs are your friends not the enemy. when the goal is muscle gain the body will need a high amount of carbs to fuel those heavy lifting sessions. shoot for 40-50% of your daily calories coming from good carbs. no this does not mean you can just eat whatever carbs you choose, make them healthy complex sources.
-Next is protein you may be thinking that you need a ton of protein but once again your wrong lol shoot for 1 gram at minimum of your body weight and 2 grams maximum of your body weight. a good one to follow is 1.5 grams of protein X your body weight in pounds. so a 180 pound guy would eat around 270 grams of protein, a 150 pound guy would eat around 225 grams- you get the idea. protein should be from 30-40% of your daily calories.
-Last but not least we have fat. this is where you have to be careful. as you know i am all for a diet that is higher in fats but when your taking in a high amount of carbs you cannot take in a high amount of fat at the same time or that fat will be stored as fat. you may be thinking that "but shawn i have read studies that eating fat does not mean it will turn to fat in the body" that is true if your carbs are low then yes lots of fat is fine but if carbs are high your body will be using carbs as fuel not fat. so how much fat should you have? i suggest shoot for half your body weight in grams so a 150 pound person would eat 75 grams of fat daily. keep fat from 20-30% of your daily calories.
So a typical Total for this 150 pound guy would be
3200 calories (35/45/20) (P/C/F)
280 Grams Protein
360 Grams Carbs
71 Grams Fat
Step 3- Adjust your workout schedule to your goals
so many of us are used to training hard all the time and bringing tons of intensity into every workout. well when your goal is to gain muscle you have to adjust this. when hypertrophy is your goal you can't be doing tons of cardio. you need a lot more rest also to recover properly, a good key to remember is give a muscle 48 hours to recover before you train that muscle again. here is a good layout you can sub workouts into (keeping in mind the 48 hour rule)
Monday- Resistance (upper Body)/ Abs
Tuesday- Short session of HITT Cardio (40-45 mins max) (Asylums- Speed and Agility, and Vertical Plyo work great for this, also the month one workouts of insanity achieve this too. stay away from the insanity Max workouts tho, those will shred the hard earned muscle you are working on building)
Wed- Resistance (upper Body)/ Abs
Thursday- Yoga/ Foam Rolling muscles you have worked so far this week
Friday- Resistance (lower Body)/ Abs
Saturday- Resistance (upper Body)- use this workout to work one of the same muscles you have worked already in the week, focus on the muscles that come hardest for you personally. for me i like to work my shoulders and chest 2 times weekly as i feel those need more work. this will very for everyone.
Sunday- Rest Day and Foam Rolling
Step 4- Time to make adjustments to the exercises you are doing
P90X is great! and all the exercises are great! but if your goal is muscle gain you have to intensify some things. here is a list of exercises to modify.
Pushups- Slow Count, usually when doing pushups you just go fast and don't really pause, well now you should do a 2-1-3 count. 2 on centric, 1 on isolation, and a 3 count on eccentric, what that means in simple terms is count to 3 on the way down, pause for a second, then count to 2 on the way up. If your used to doing 30-40 reps for pushups you can kiss that goodbye when doing this lol your 30-40 reps will turn into 12-18 reps when done right.
Pull Ups- Use the same format as pushups (2-1-3) (reverse because you are working as you pull up instead of down)
During all weight moves keep your weight up and shoot for 8-10 reps for all exercises.
Step 5- Recovery!
This step is so important! that so many people overlook. to gain Hypertrophy you need to recover, that means shoot for 7-8 hours of sleep every night. i understand that is difficult for some of us. i only get 6.5 to 7 hours on a really good night, but i try my best to always get as much sleep as possible and i always sleep in on the weekends to give my muscles extra recovery and make up for some of the sleep i lost during the week.
So There it is! a 5 sep plan for you to follow when gaining lean healthy mass. as always if you have any questions feel free to contact me. I always get back with my people :)
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