Bodybuilding For Hard Gainers
If you struggle to build muscle and put on weight then you are what is called a hard gainer. There are however things you can do to get yourself through sticking points and once again start building muscle. This article will look at some of those things.
Training Regime
If you are a hard gainer you are very likely to be overtraining - most hard gainers do. They get the workout bug and before they know it they are training six days a week for two hours a time.
The trouble is, you can get caught in a trap and when you are not gaining you think what they should do is to train more, but that is exactly the wrong thing to do. A hard gainer should certainly not train more than five times a week and three or four workouts per week is probably enough. Workouts should then be completed in 60 minutes or less. You need to be doing fewer exercises, fewer sets and also keeping the reps down to about 4-8 reps.
It takes discipline to drop the workouts right down after a long spell of overtraining but in almost every case it will benefit the hard gainer.
An effective bodybuilding workout is all about intensity rather than absolute numbers of reps, sets and exercises. As a hard gainer you still need to take your muscles to failure like anyone else but you do so with fewer reps and heavier weights, and then you need to allow your body to recover properly before your next workout. The muscles do their actual building during this recovery time. If your workouts are intense you will find that you can achieve much more with shorter workouts anyway and this is no bad thing even if you are not a hard gainer.
So train less often for shorter workout periods.
Get The Eating Right
As a hard gainer you need to ensure you are consuming plenty of calories to fuel your muscle growth. This means eating like there is no tomorrow! If you can eat a healthy and balanced diet then all the better but the most important thing for the hard gainer is take on plenty of calories.
You also want to try and keep your body in an anabolic state as much as possible, which means that more smaller meals are better than fewer big meals. Better still, keep eating your big meals and just add in some extra ones! Most bodybuilders will eat at least 5 or 6 meals a day.
One of the main dietary requirements for people who wish to build muscle is protein, so make sure you are consuming 1-1.5 grams per pound of bodyweight. Protein supplements are a useful way to get a quick protein boost but try to get as much protein as possible from your food. Things like creatine malate will also help you gain muscle bulk.
Rest And Recuperation
Make sure you get plenty rest too. Try for a good 7-8 hours sleep a night and make sure each muscle group is rested properly before it is trained again.
If you are trying to gain muscle bulk then keep your aerobic exercise to a minimum, so no marathons between workouts!. There is nothing wrong with being super fit like this of course if that is what you want, just do not expect it to help you pack on muscle!
Conclusion
If you are a hard gainer you need to eat more, train less and supplement intelligently with things like protein and creatine malate. The most important thing though is to persevere. The muscle gains will eventually come if you keep at it.
Tags: bodybuilding, building, bulking, creatine, gainer, hard, malate, muscle
