Practical Tips for the Hard-Gainer
I am in the process of writing a book, specifically for those of us who find it almost impossible to gain muscle at the same rate as most guys. The truth is, that your genetics will largely dictate whether or not you are going to have good potential to build size and mass. Luckily, us humans have become apex predators through our ability to adapt to our circumstances. This should give hope to the hard-gainer. You simply have to adapt your approach, to maximize your god-given potential.
So What is a Hard-Gainer?
Ectomorph, naturally thin, greyhound breed, built for endurance sports, etc. A natural endurance hunter, designed to run many miles and to differentiate yourself from the pack, based on your sheer indefatigability. However if you train in a way that is not your natural inclination, you will be spinning your wheels, and leaving a lot of gains on the table.
Be Mindful of Intensity
For years now, the lifting community seems to be obsessed with proving that strength training is just as effective at building muscle, as the good old 8-12 rep range, high volume style of bodybuilding training. Yes, if volume is equated. But for an ectomorph, you simply don’t have enough Type 2 fibres to recover effectively, to achieve high enough volume over weeks and months.
Strength training is amazing for your health, posture and movement. But if your priority is to build muscle, you are leaving the two biggest weapons in your arsenal, on the table; volume and frequency.
An endomorph or a mesomorph can recover quite well from strength training. Whereas a hardgainer; AKA ectomorph, has a greater distribution of Type 1, slow twitch muscle fibres. Thus strength training should make up a very small portion of a hardgainer’s training program. For example, hitting each of the four major lifts once per week. It might look something like this:
Day 1: Bench Press - 3x3
Day 2: Deadlift - 3x3
Day 3: Overhead Press - 3x3
Day 4: Squat - 3x3
The rest of the training week will play to the hardgainers’ advantages, focusing more so on volume and frequency.
Truth be told, I’ve been sucked into the notion that more intense forms of training like strength training, are just as effective as building muscle many times over. In fact, I’m at the strongest on the bench press, I’ve ever been, but also at the skinniest I’ve been in a long time.
Strength training has helped me to move and feel better, so it most definitely has its place and deserves respect. But in the arena of putting muscle on a skinny guy, sorry but no. Just no. I can’t even count the amount of forever skinny guys I see joined to powerlifting and crossfit gyms, who do not gain any appreciable muscle, despite training in a very intense manner.
Volume
The concept of high volume training being ideal for maximising muscle growth (hypertrophy) is nothing new. However, as discussed previously there is a trend to try and reinvent the wheel as of late. When COVID lockdowns hit in Ireland, I had been doing strength training in the gym, and simply bought some at home equipment for what I thought was going to be a maintenance period. I could only lift in the 8-15 rep range, given the dumbbells I had to hand, in combination with an incline bench. A set of 12.5KG dumbbells for smaller muscle groups, and a set of 25KG dumbbells for larger ones.
What followed was the best physique progress I have ever made in my life.
I define training volume as weight x sets x reps x time under tension (TUT). More is not necessarily better, but in my opinion, a hardgainer is definitely better suited to a high volume, low intensity, high frequency style of training. Imagine a 5-6 day split with each workout being 6-8 exercises in length. With the lifts discussed in the previous section, occupying just four training days, there is much more time left for what will yield the biggest dividends for a hardgainer. More reps, more sets, more TUT.
As with everything in life, the law of diminished returns remains true, and there is an upper limit, but yes, higher volume, will be more important than doing sets of 3-5 with long rest periods of 2+ mins. You instead want sets of 6-15, with shorter rest periods of about 60-90 seconds, leaving more time for more sets, and more exercises.
My lifts, at the time of my lockdown progress, looked something like this:
Day 1&3 - Push Day
Incline Bench Press: 3x 8-12 reps
Dumbell Lateral Raise: 3x8-12 reps
Push ups: 3x AMRAP
Goblet Squat: 3x 8-12 reps
Bulgarian split squat: 3x 8-12 reps
Dumbbell Fly: 3x 8-12 reps
Dumbbell SkullCrushers: 3x 8-12 reps
Bodyweight bench dips: 3x 8-12 reps
Weighted sit ups: 3x AMRAP
Day 2&4 - Pull Day
Dumbbell Bent Over Row: 3x 6-12 reps
Seated Overhead Press: 3x 8-12 reps
Incline Dumbbell Row: 3x 8-12 reps
Dumbbell Romanian Deadlifts: 3x8-12 reps
Dumbbell Curls: 3x8-12 reps
Dumbbell Hammer Curls: 3x8-12 reps
Reverse Crunches: 3xAMRAP
Day 5 - Optional. Repeat Day 1 on week 1, day 2 on week 2, etc.
Frequency
As you can see, from the above, I advocate for four days minimum. Reason being, us thin guys can handle multiple rounds, just not very intense ones. 5 days is probably the ideal, with each muscle being trained a minimum of twice per week.
There have been training cycles where 3-4 intense strength sessions completely knock me out, and are quite difficult to adhere to. Whereas I can handle 5-6 less intense sessions, no problem, and achieve better results.
To summize, I am not anti-intensity, or anti-strength training. I just wouldn’t prioritise them in the same way as is trendy right now, when it comes to training very thin guys, who are itching to put on some size.