The biggest part of the general health and fitness industry is focused on losing weight by melting off body fat. This is for good reason, since so many people suffer from obesity and simply do carry too much additional adiposetissue on their frame.
However, there is another group of people that have the exact opposite problem. While the majority of people out there are worrying about losing weight, there are a ton of people who actually stress out about being too thin!
Most people facing this problem are men with frail builds who can eat anything they want and stay skinny, despite having a huge appetite. They get frustrated that no matter how much they eat, they simply stay slim and frail and don’t see any improvement in the mirror regarding muscle gains.
In the fitness world, these people are called hardgainers. A special breed that can devour anything in sight without gaining an ounce of either fat or muscle. Some call them blessed, since they have so much freedom in their food choices. They themselves however feel like they’re cursed, since achieving that ideal, muscle packed physique seems out of reach due to their genetics.
Hardgainers, do not be afraid and don’t give up! There is hope for you! With this article I will help you solve your problems and I will dispell the myth of the hardgainer. Yes you read that right. The hardgainer does not exist and is simply a myth.
Follow this advice and I guarantee that you will easily pack on muscle to your frame and will completely transform your physique, no matter how bad you think your case of ‘hardgainitis’ may be.
THE MYTH OF THE HARDGAINER
As I just mentioned before the hardgainer is someone who is able to devour any food source in sight and not gain an ounce of weight either from muscle or fat. People call these people blessed because they are jealous of them, yet hardgainers themselves see it as a curse.
The good news is that hardgainers do not exist. Be mad at me for all you want, but I’ll say it again. Hardgainers do not exist and what we think of as hardgainers is just a myth.
When I listen to people who claim to be hardgainers, they always tell me the same story. They tell me that they have a furocious appetite, eat huge meals on the regular till the point where they feel really stuffed and are tired of eating. They put the blame for ‘their extremely fast metabolisms’ and lack of size on their genetics and fear that there is nothing they can do to change it.
I have both friends and clients who claim to be hardgainers. When I spend time with my self proclaimed hardgainer friends, there’s one big thing I notice… They eat like a bird! Shocking!
When I spend time out eating with these guys I can’t help but notice their eating habits. It’s no surprise to me that they have a hard time gaining weight. What they consider to be huge portions of food, are actually really small portions of food and/or they tend to eat mostly really low calorie foods, which in huge quantities won’t make you gain weight.
During coaching sessions with hardgainers where I ask them what they eat on a regular basis, they tell me the same thing. They tell me that they eat big portions of a frequent basis. When I evaluate what they’ve eaten in the last couple of days and calculate their calories, I’m not surprised why they stay so skinny.
Most self proclaimed hardgainers simply do not eat enough. When calculating their daily total intake of calories, most of them barely even reach 2000 calories a day. Both my hardgainer friends and clients eat an average of 1400 to 1800 calories per day. They feel stuffed after eating one cookie or a small sized meal. Their perception of a huge portion of food is totally different from someone who actually eats a big portion of food.
I’ve witnessed this so many times over the last years with both men and women. People who claim they have extremely fast metabolisms or who are genetically blessed, are pretty much always people who simply don’t eat a whole lot of calories on a regular basis.
Their problem is not genetically determined. Their problem is simply a lack of consuming enough calories.
HOW ‘HARDGAINERS’ WILL GAIN WEIGHT AND MUSCLE MASS
The number one solution for hardgainers to gain weight is to eat more. Managing your weight is all about calories in vs calories out. The simple reason that you have a hard time gaining muscle in because you’re not providing your body with enough calories to actually gain weight.
In order to gain mass, you need to be in a calorie surplus. You need to give your body more calories than it burns as the additional energy will be used to create new muscle tissue. I highly suggest that you start keeping track of the amount of calories that you consume, since that is the most accurate way to confirm if you get in sufficient calories. This can easily be done with calorie counting apps on your phone.
The first thing you need to do is to calculate your maintenance level of calories. You can do this by using an online calorie estimator or use the simple formula of multiplying your bodyweight in pounds by 15.
Once you’ve determined your maintenance calories, it’s important to eat an additional calorie surplus to fuel to muscle building process. Start with a moderate calorie surplus of around 300 – 500additional calories a day. This will allow you to build new muscle mass while minimizing fat gain. Even if you’re skinny right now, there’s no point in packing on just any amount of weight. If you gain a bunch of fat, you’ll look even worse than you are now. It’s better to focus on gaining quality weight coming mostly in the form of muscle mass and glycogen so that you achieve a sharp and athletic look, rather than to go from one extreme to the other and go from a marathon runner’s physique to a sumo wrestler’s physique.
For example, a 130 pound guy will need (130 x 15) about 1950 calories to maintain his weight. To gain weight, he will start by adding 300 – 500 calories to his diet, which will bring him to 2250 – 2450.
This is a good starting point to start your muscle building journey. After a couple of weeks you will notice that you will have stopped gaining weight. This is due to a process called metabolic adaption, which means that your body has now adapted to the new calorie intake and makes use of all the energy its given for its bodily processes. Amongst those are muscle gains, replenishing glycogen stores, fat storage and increased NEAT (non exercise activity thermogenesis). If this is the case and you don’t see the scale gradually going up for 3 to 4 weeks, then it’s time to bump up your calories again with another 200-300 calorie surplus.
Continue this process until you reach a point where you are happy with the amount of size you’ve gained and to the point where you reach the line of what too much body fat is for you. I suggest that you bulk up slowly till the point where you’ve gained a good amount of muscle mass and have come to the point of between 15-18% body fat maximum. Going beyond that point will only make you look chubby. At 15-18% body fat, it’s time to cut down and trim off the fat by going on a cutting phase. Once you’re fairly lean again, between 8 and 12%, you can start lean bulking again.
What concerns macronutrients, don’t worry too much about those. Just make sure that you get in an adequate amount of protein to optimize muscle protein synthesis and the muscle building process by consuming about 0.8g of protein per pound of bodyweight. The rest of your calories should come from a good mix of carbs and fats.
I always recommend people to consume around 80% of their daily calories from quality food sources that will have a positive impact on your health. 20% can come from treats such as chocolate, ice cream or whatever treat you love to eat. However, in this case I may make an exception. While this may seem absurd for people who are overweight and who are trying to lose weight, some people really do have a problem with eating a lot and feel absolutely stuffed after eating only a small amount of calories.
If this is you, eat as much healthy food as you can to reach your calorie target. I’m talking full fat yoghurt, eggs, avocado, adding olive oil or butter to your potatoes, dried fruits, dark chocolate. If you’ve consumed a couple of decent meals of let’s say meat, potatoes, veggies and fruits and you feel absolutely stuffed, while not being anywhere close to your daily calorie target, then don’t be afraid of more calorie denser foods and fill up the rest of your calories with whatever food that will allow you to reach your daily calorie target. Supplement your main meals with a little ‘junk food’ until you reach your daily calorie requirements. Yes, that means chocolate, ice cream, cookies and chips if the necessity calls for it.
Just always make sure that you do consume the required amount of protein you need to optimize the muscle building process.
HARDGAINER TRAINING
Another common problem of hardgainers is that they claim that even if they do eat enough, they can’t seem to gain any significant amounts of muscle mass. Again, this can be easily explained.
When I evaluate what they do in the gym I see 2 big problems: they focus on fluff exercises and they don’t train hard enough. They focus on mostly isolation exercises for the bulk of their training and don’t train with the proper intensity.
Want to get the most bang for your buck and stimulate as much muscle mass as possible with only a handful of movements? Then stop wasting time on the vanilla exercises and center your workouts around big compound movements that will make you a man.
I’m talking about focussing on mass builders such as bench press variations, chin up and pull up variations, squat and lunge variations, overhead press variations, rows variations and deadlift variations.
These exercises stimulate a lot of mass due to the fact that multiple joints are being involved. They are going to make you bigger, stronger, better looking and a healthier, more athletic human.
Does this mean that isolation exercises are useless? No, but isolation exercises are the cherry on the cake and are meant to supplement the big compound lifts, not the other way around. They are meant to bring up lagging areas that need a extra attention or to provide more volume for big muscle groups without creating excessive overall fatigue.
Whatever type of workout you do, always prioritize compound movements over isolation movements. Doing compound movements alone will already give you an amazing body if you train intense enough.
When I say training intense enough, I’m reffering to taking your sets close to failure. There are just too many guys that don’t train with the required effort to gain muscle. I see lots of people simply going through motions and hardly breaking a sweat. If you’re one of these people, I probably don’t have to tell you that you’re wasting your time chasing suboptimal results.
To optimally stimulate muscle growth, aim to end your set within 2 reps shy of failure. This will stimulate maximum muscle growth on a set per set basis. Yes, this requires hard work and pushing through difficulty, but it will make you strong, it will teach you what hard work is and believe it or not, but after a while, you’ll love it.
Make sure to focus on progressively getting stronger over time. In the beginning, you’ll notice fast strength gains. Over time, things will slow down, but you still have to make sure to repeat your lifts with either heavier weights, or more reps with the same amount weight. Do this consistently for long enough and without a shadow of doubt I promise you that nobody will believe that you once were a skinny guy.
FINAL WORD ON HARDGAINERS
Hardgainers do not exist. The correct explanation for a hardgainer is someone who is quickly satiated while believing that he eats large amounts of food, while in reality, he quickly feels satisfied after eating only small amounts of foods.
They don’t have extremely fast metabolisms. The real cultprit is simply not getting in enough calories and the solution is just that, eating more calories on a consistent basis. This will require some effort concerning keeping track of calorie intake, since intuitive eating will result in not getting in enough calories to gain weight.
Eating more calories and protein combined with a smart training approach, which focuses primarily on getting progressively stronger on big, compound exercises, is what’s going to transform a skinny guy into a musclar athletic guy.
This will require paying attention to your calories, hard work in the gym and being consistent, but if you really want it you can do it! After being consistent for a while, going to the gym and eating properly will become a habit, which means you’ll unconsiously make it part of your lifestyle and there will be no more skinny guy looking back at you in the mirror.
Kevin Mahjoubi