A hardgainer is someone who is consistently lifting weights and eating a lot of food but still struggles to put on weight. This person will feel like they are doing exactly what everyone else is, but still remain thing, struggling to put on any size worth noticing. While this isn’t super common, it does happen.

Eat MORE!

The biggest issue is hardgainers run on VERY fast metabolisms. They burn through such a high amount of calories the rest of us only dream of. They are your friends who could eat an entire pizza and not gain a pound the next day. Muscle for anyone is calorically expensive to have. Your body needs a good reason to keep it on, and it needs lots of calories to maintain it. Add that on top of the fact a hardgainer burns a lot of calories even without any of that muscle and it starts to make sense why putting on size is so hard. The biggest advice I can give to you is to eat, eat, eat!

My body has pretty average genetics. I can easily put on weight off of 15 calories per pound. A hardgainer usually needs about 24 calories per pound. That’s a huge difference. Even if you weighed 150lbs, that means you’d need at LEAST 3,600 calories to even see the scale move, and this is the main problem. If you ask a hardgainer how much they eat, they couldn’t give you an exact number. They’ll most likely just tell you they eat a lot. While the rest of us can just eat, and most likely grow because the surplus is so small, a hardgainer needs to start tracking calories to make sure they're hitting their high intake.

3,600+ calories is not easy. The biggest complaint I’ve had with any hardgainer is when it came to hitting their food each day, they complained it felt like a second job. A lot of them also didn’t have big appetites. If you want to get big, and you fall into this category, you are going to have to eat more food. If fullness is the issue, I recommend creating super high calorie shakes. This could mean mixing protein powder, bananas, oats, peanut butter, and other higher calorie foods that blend well to get your calories in. If you want to obtain an above average physique, you’re going to have to eat above average.

Progressive Overload and Compound Lifts

The other biggest piece of advice I can give is make sure you are having quality gym sessions. This means focusing on compound lifts that stimulate more than one muscle group at a time, and allow you to add significantly heavier weight. I have found lifters across the board somewhere down the line end up avoiding this because they want to focus on aesthetics and think their best bet is to do bicep curls and tricep pushdowns. While those exercises are great, they are only targeting one muscle which is also a very small muscle comparatively speaking.

Each week, instead focus on adding 5 more pounds or 1-2 extra reps on your squat, deadlift, shoulder press, bench press, and rows. I guarantee if you do this for 3-6 months in conjunction with a proper surplus of calories, you WILL gain size. It’s going to take patience, and consistency doing both of those things. No one ever gained muscle undereating and underperforming in the gym. Those of us with average genetics can “get away” with it because it’s easier to eat in a surplus of calories and see the scale go up.

Don’t feel the need to go to failure either. Stay 2-3 reps shy of failure. You can still do the arm and shoulder workouts afterward, but make sure to start with 1-2 compound lifts at the beginning of each workout. If you really want to optimize your workouts, try switching to a full body workout, doing one exercise per body part, so that you can hit each muscle 2-3 times a week and really maximize the muscle building signal in the gym.

If you want more help with your nutrition or workouts be sure to check out my article on the Best Way to Bulk up if You are a Hardgainer and The Best Workout Routine for Beginners.