By Brandon Cook
Now I know what I’m about to say in this blog post is somewhat debatable, at least according to those people who believe the Earth is flat, only 2,000 years old, and is still the center of the universe! However, I’m going to say it anyway. 
Modern scientists estimate the age of the universe to be over 15 billion years old. The Earth itself is over 4 billion years old, while Modern man, as a species evolved a little over 200,000 years ago.
There I said it… yes I believe in evolution, it just seems to make sense. Yet, I still consider myself to be a spiritual person and believe in God… maybe not your God, but a higher intelligence none-the-less.
Now before you close the browser because you think I’m about to get all controversial on you; calm down, take a deep breath and open your mind to what evolution can teach a hardgainer, like yourself, about building muscle and getting the body and life you’ve always dreamed of.
(The devolution of modern man thanks to Mickey D’s)
Survival of the Fittest (Understanding Your Primal Purpose)
If there is one goal or purpose that every species on the planet has in common on a primal, fundamental level- it is the ability to SURVIVE and to pass on its genes to the next generation. Humans are no exception.
Your body is an organism that has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years and during that time the human body has become quite accomplished at doing so (surviving that is.) Muscle mass and strength definitely have a role in our survival but it’s not as big of a role as one may think. In fact, the human body has little need or desire to build muscle mass beyond the demands of what it needs to survive in its specific environment.
Did you get that? That last sentence is crucial to understand if you ever hope to pack any mass onto your ectomorphic frame. It’s so important that if you simply grasped this truth alone you’d be well on your way to an awesome, muscular physique. Don’t worry; I’ll repeat it in a slightly different way:
THE BUILD UP OF MUSCULAR MASS IS A NATURAL RESPONSE TO THE ENVIRONMENT IN WHICH YOUR MUSCLES HAVE BEEN PLACED.
Let me explain!
Muscle is a calorically expensive tissue to maintain for the body. It requires a constant influx of calories to sustain and even more calories in order to increase in muscular size. The body doesn’t care how beautiful and sexy muscle is (only you do.) It only knows that muscle is costly, requiring lots of energy that could be used for more important matters… like keeping your skinny butt alive!
You know the cliché, “If you don’t use it, you lose it.” Well this applies directly to lean muscle mass. If your body has little need for excess muscle, it will break it down and use it as fuel so that it can be a more efficient survival machine.
This is especially important to consider for us hardgainers.
Remember, a hardgainer’s metabolism is so fast that the body gobbles up calories at a higher than normal level. This forces our body to sacrifice our muscle tissue in the process to meet any caloric deficit caused by a lack of food intake. This is one of the reasons why you are so skinny!
Now here is what you need to know. If the demands on the body are such that the body feels that what it needs to survive IS more muscle, then by all means it will expend the energy necessary to build and maintain it. However, it will do so only if certain conditions are met first. We’ll get to those in a minute.
The key principle to grasp at this point is that you must convince the body that its survival is at stake and that the only way for it to survive is to build more muscle. You must create an environment that DEMANDS the need for more muscle.
You will do this by gradually lifting heavier and heavier weights in a few basic exercises like squats, deadlifts, bench press, barbell rows, pull-ups, dips, and overhead presses.
Notice I didn’t say barbell curls or triceps kickbacks, or any of the other isolation exercises you see most people doing in the gym. That is because isolation exercises that involve only one joint do not put enough demand on the body to threaten its very survival. Not like compound exercises do. Compound exercises use several joints and stimulate multiple muscle groups at the same time.
Did I mention that they are a lot harder?
That’s why most people would prefer to do tons of isolation exercises even though they are practically doing nothing for them and they look the same month after month. Don’t get me wrong, isolation exercises have their place, but not for skinny guys trying to build a solid, muscular foundation.
In fact, with just two of the hardest compound exercises on that list (the squat and the deadlift) you can stimulate over 70% of your body’s musculature and kick in the survival response, which will stimulate your body to produce more muscle all over your body. Throw in a couple sets of bench presses and barbell rows and you’ve just hit your entire body hard.
Three Conditions for Hypertrophy (Muscle Growth)
There are three basic conditions that must be met before your body will expend the energy to undergo muscle synthesis, which is also know as muscular hypertrophy. We just discussed the first one, but let’s take a closer look at all three together:
1. You MUST create a physical stimulus effect on the body that will be perceived as a threat to its very survival… without (and this is important) actually killing yourself.
2. You MUST create an internal anabolic environment that provides your body with all of the water, macro- and micronutrients that it needs to synthesize muscle tissue.
3. You MUST create an external anabolic environment that allows the bodily systems (muscles, nervous system, skeletal system, etc.) just enough time to recover from the physical stimulus that was utilized.
In simpler words you must lift some heavy a$$ weights, stuff your face with some quality food and water, and get enough rest and sleep to recover before repeating the process. Simple huh?
Well not so fast there buddy, here’s the catch… every body is unique. Each person will have to determine for him or herself what is the right amount of stimulus? What is the right amount of food? What is the right amount of rest?
This is the reason why some workouts will work for some people and not others. This is the reason why some people can train six days a week and others require only two or three days. This is why certain diets may work for you, but not for others. This is why people on steroids and with great genetics cannot help you achieve your goals if you’re training naturally. What works for them, will most likely not work for you. You’re different. You’re unique. Never forget that.
Even though everybody is unique, certain somatotypes (link to last blog) have been established to classify people into three distinct categories. From these categories we can determine where we fit into the puzzle and what training, nutrition, and recovery methods will be most suitable for our specific body type.
This is why if you are an ectomorph you would do best to find a trainer who knows and understands the principles of ectomorphic training, preferably someone who is an ectomorph himself. That way you can get on the fast track to getting huge by using the principles that work best for your particular genetics.
Look at it this way; if you’re an ectomorph… you’re definitely on the right website!
With that being said let’s dive a little deeper into how you can meet the second condition for muscle growth.
Feeding the Beast (The Hardgainer’s Biggest Dilemma)
Once you have stimulated your muscles through heavy weight training using compound exercises; a couple things have happened.
• You have drained your body of its energy (glycogen) stores,
• You have damaged the muscle fibers causing microscopic tears in them, and
• You have stressed your joints, ligaments, and nervous system to the max.
After you drag your tired butt out of the gym… your body is in shock and broken down and going into repair mode. You’re probably getting a little hungry by this time, which is your body’s way of saying… “I need energy to repair these systems.” Even if you’re not hungry, you’d be quite wise to eat a mix of protein and carbohydrates at this time. The food and nutrients you eat throughout the day and especially after your workouts will be the ultimate determinant of whether you gain muscle, lose fat, or look the same.
Why is nutrition so vitally important to gaining muscle?
To answer this let’s use a metaphor. For instance, let’s say your house was in a hurricane. The roof blew off and was damaged badly and is in dire need of repairs. Just like you can’t rebuild your house without the necessary building supplies of wood, bricks, mortar, nails, shingles, etc., your body cannot rebuild itself without the proper nutrients. With me so far? Good!
Let’s also say that you decide to add a screen porch onto your house as well, since you would like to have a bigger, better house than you had before. Well, in that case, you’re going to need even more building supplies to make that happen. This is all pretty straight forward.
Well, your body is the same way. If you want to repair your muscles, and then grow even bigger, better muscles; your body is going to have to have a surplus of calories (building materials) at its disposal. If you don’t supply the correct amount of building materials to make this happen, don’t be surprised when your house and screen porch doesn’t look the way you want it to.
That’s just reality. You can whine and complain all you want, but you cannot build something out of nothing.
Now here’s the hardgainer’s biggest dilemma. Someone who has an ectomorph body type has a super fast, rapid metabolism. They can typically eat, and eat, and eat and never gain weight. “Oh you’re so lucky” is what they commonly hear from most people, but to the hardgainer… They don’t feel so lucky. In fact it feels more like a curse, especially if they’re goal is to get huge.
When you have a hyper-metabolism your body is burning calories left and right. It’s like you’ve supplied plenty of building materials for your house, but in the middle of the night thieves are creeping onto the scene and ganking your precious building supplies. “Bad thieves”, you yell, but they don’t care about you or your dream house. And to make matters worse the cops ain’t coming either. (insert smiley face)
Thus, for the ectomorph “feeding the beast” is a rather daunting chore, plan on eating more food than you’ve ever eaten before in your life. To determine your basic caloric requirement multiply your bodyweight times a factor of 20. For example if you weigh 150lbs, multiply that by 20 and you’ll get 3,000. Thus, you’ve determined that you need to eat at least 3,000 calories a day. This is a fairly simplistic method of approach to this, but it is a good starting point and you can adjust the amount of calories based on your results or lack thereof.
Here are a few nutrition tips to get you started in the right direction:
1. Eat 6 meals a day (eat a meal every 3 hours)
2. Eat protein and carbohydrates at every meal
3. Make sure you include healthy fats like olive oil, flax seeds, fish oils, etc.
4. Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables (the more the merrier)
5. Get at least 1-2 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight a day
6. Drink at least a gallon of water each day
7. Take a daily multi-vitamin
8. Drink 2-3 cups of green tea daily
The best approach to quality nutrition is to use natural, organic whole foods whenever possible. However, it can be difficult to use whole foods for every meal and that’s were some people choose to use supplements like meal replacements, protein powders, and nutrition bars. This is fine, to an extent. Yet please remember that supplements can never replace whole foods, so you’ll want real food to make up the largest majority of your calories. Whole foods are more bioavailable, contain more vitamins, nutrients, phytochemicals, antioxidants and all of the great stuff that your body needs to grow bigger and stronger.
When I refer to whole foods, I’m referring to foods that have been around for thousands of years and typically stuff that grows in the ground, on top of the ground, or lives on the land, or in the ocean. Remember, anything that is man made is practically stripped of most of its nutrients due to processing, pasteurizing, and other manufacturing methods. This includes most (if not all) fast foods, T.V. dinners, stuff in boxes, cans, and all the fancy packaging you find lining the shelves of the supermarkets. The makers of these products don’t care about your health, only about your money. Nature knows exactly what the body needs and doesn’t have a profit motive, so she is a better choice 99% of the time!
Become more conscious of what you put in your body, after all your life depends on it. Stick with fresh fruits and vegetables of all kinds (a wide variety is very important), whole grain bread, pasta and other grains, chicken breasts, turkey, salmon, tuna and other fish, lean beef, nuts, seeds, beans, brown rice, cheese, milk, yogurt, olive oil, eggs, etc.
The thing I’ve learned is that the closer your diet resembles the diet of a caveman or cave woman, the better off you’ll be. These are the foods that humans have evolved and survived on for thousands of years. Also, make sure to buy organic and natural foods whenever possible. It’s not only what you eat, but what your food ate and/or how it was grown and processed.
If you have trouble getting in your daily allotment of fruits and vegetables, consider buying a juicer and making fresh, natural juices at home (and NO, pre-packaged juices do not count.) It can get a little expensive buying all of the produce, but it is well worth it. You can make great tasting blends of fruits and vegetables that will provide your body with all of vitamins, minerals, and nutrients that it is craving. I even came up with a super testosterone boosting juice that blends, garlic, brussell sprouts, purple cabbage, broccoli, carrot, tomato, apple and half a lemon. Sounds nasty, but it actually tastes quite good.
Continue to read, learn, and educate yourself about what it means to eat optimally and maintain quality nutrition. Alas, if you don’t feed the beast… you cannot grow!
The Sleeping Dragon (Your Excuse to Be Lazy… Well not exactly!)
It has become almost a cliché in the bodybuilding world that “Your muscles do not grow while you’re inside the gym, but after you leave the gym.”
It’s quite true! What you do over the next 24-72 hours after leaving the gym will be the ultimate determinant of whether your muscles repair themselves and grow bigger, simply stay the same, or worst of all… get smaller.
Your intense workout (the first condition for muscle growth) is nothing but the stimulus that sends a message to your brain “Whoa… that was tough, we need more muscle in case we ever have to meet that challenge again.” Your body goes to work repairing the damage and if you’re lucky overcompensating by building new muscle tissue.
Now, you know from reading this article that your body cannot grow new muscle unless you give it the quality nutrients (the second condition for muscle growth) that it needs to make this restructuring process happen.
Alas, we’ve come to the final piece of the puzzle: your muscles and they’re correlated systems (i.e. nervous system, joints, ligaments, etc.) must be allowed to fully recover before you repeat the process by working out again.
In a sense your muscles become like a sleeping dragon. The last thing you want to do is disturb a sleeping dragon before it gets its beauty sleep. “Why?” some idiot always asks. ? Duh, because disturbing a sleeping dragon is not going to help you accomplish your goals in life. Disturbing a sleeping dragon is a sure fired way to get burned, and it is very detrimental to your health and safety.
Well, the same thing applies to your muscles. If your muscles and other systems do not fully recover before you train them again, you short-circuit the muscle growth developmental process. Not only have you stopped your muscles from recovering, repairing, and growing larger, you’ve also put yourself at risk of overtraining. Overtraining can lead to burn-out, injury, and even muscle loss.
In other words, like waking a sleeping dragon, working out again before your body has recovered will not help you accomplish your goals in life (which I assume is to build muscle). It is also a sure fired way to burn-out (from overtraining) and it is very detrimental to your health and safety (by putting you at risk of overuse injury.)
This is especially important for hardgainers and ectomorphs to understand, because our body type has poor recovery capacity and is exceptionally prone to overtraining and injury. Therefore, once you have worked out and hit your muscles with a short dose of high intensity training, recovering becomes your main mission.
Depending on how well your body recovers from intense training you will need to allow 48-72 hours before training with weights again. Yes, some people can train every other day, but it all depends on your genetics, how intense your workouts are, and the recovery methods you incorporate into your training.
In case you may be wondering how pro-bodybuilders are able to train two times a day, six days a week… it all comes back to super genetics and a small pharmaceutical lab they have going on for them. Anabolic drugs allow someone to train and recover at super-human speeds. Intense weight training everyday is suicide for the natural hardgainer.
Here are a couple tips and methods you can use to aid in the recovery process and guarantee bigger, stronger, better quality muscles:
1. Get at least eight hours of sleep each night.
2. Get a massage, use a foam roller, tennis ball or massage yourself.
3. Use ice and heat therapy on your muscles. Ice is a miracle healer.
4. Take contrast showers. Alternate cold/hot water for several cycles.
5. Use meditation, tai chi, and other healing modalities.
6. Take a mineral bath using Epsom salt or other mineral salts.
7. Get in the hot-tub or sauna.
8. Take a power nap during the day.
9. Limit cardio and other extracurricular activities.
10. Spend time stretching and lengthening those muscles.
Just remember that you are the one that wants to have big, strong, sexy muscles. Your body could care less. Its goal is your survival. If you want it to build muscle you have to work with your body and your genetics, not against them. You have to create a demand for muscle that the body cannot ignore. Then you have to feed your body so that it has the nutrients it needs for protein synthesis and cellular restructuring. After that, you just have to allow your body the time that it needs to grow, repair, and recover. Now get to it!
To Your Success in Training and in Life,
Brandon Cook
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About the Author:
Brandon Cook is creator of The Awakened Warrior Blog, and co-creator of HardgainerMuscleBuilding.com, a website specifically designed to teach the hardgainer the laws and scientific principles for building a classic, muscular and functional physique.
HargainerMuscleBuilding.com features a free email class covering the basic principles of training naturally, eating a nutritious, muscle-building diet, and understanding the truth about supplements. The website is filled with free articles, videos, and the programs you need to create your ideal body.
Please visit us at http://hardgainermusclebuilding.com
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