The majority of us can stare at a piece of bread and we start to put on weight. There is however, a percentage of people who are hardgainers. For the record, putting on muscle is hard for ANYONE. Your body doesn’t want to put on muscle unless it is given a damn good reason to do so. Having muscle is calorically expensive, and having too much muscle was never ideal for survival. The majority of us need to be sending the right stimulus in the gym, and eating a surplus of food outside of the gym to get any kind of true muscle growth.
Never Gaining Weight
The easiest way to tell if you are a hardgainer, is if you have been putting time in the gym and eating a lot of food and can’t seem to gain weight. You might even be on the slender side, feeling like after years of training you don’t have much to show for it. This can become super frustrating because these people will find more times than not everyone else seems to do similar things as them and gain so much more weight. This results in those individuals giving up on bulking and lifting altogether feeling like it has become a dead end. I have great news. It doesn’t have to be.
The Solution
While I can totally understand that frustration of putting in all that effort with not much to show, some very simple tweaks can help nudge you in the right direction.
Eat In A Surplus
Start tracking your food. WAY too often I’ll ask a hardgainer how many calories they are eating and they have no answer other than “Dude, I swear I eat a lot”. Here’s the thing. As a hardgainer your metabolism is way faster than most people’s. To give you an example, I will start seeing my scale go up if I break 2600 calories. All my hard gaining friends and clients have needed to START at a minimum of 3500 calories, with most having to get up to 4500+ calories just to see the scale budge! Think about how much more that is than what I need.
The solution is that simple. Even though you may be eating a lot, it’s still not enough to gain weight. By definition, you need to take in more calories than your body burns. Given this information, one other issue I run into with these hardgainers is that it becomes a second job. 4000 calories is no easy task. If you don’t have a huge appetite you are going to need little hacks to help get the food down. I suggest making whole food based high calorie shakes filled with nut butters, whey protein, oatmeal, and other foods that blend well so you can get the calories down quicker and easier.
Train Hard, But Not to Failure
Another problem I see with lifters who struggle to gain weight in general, is they think they need to go to failure all the time. You actually don’t. The science shows as long as you are training within 2-3 reps shy of failure, you will still get all the muscle building adaptation without the risk of hurting your joints, or getting injured. If we train to failure all the time, it can become easy to burn out and go backwards. We want to send a signal to grow, not underrecover.
You don’t, and probably shouldn’t be doing a typical bro body part split. By splitting it up into 3 full body days (doing 1-2 exercises per body part, 3 sets each), you get to send a muscle building signal to each muscle 3 times a week versus one in a bro split. Every time we train a muscle it maximizes a muscle building signal. That signal comes down after 48-72 hours. Our best bet then is to be able to maximize that signal by reactivating it when it comes down.
Focus on compound exercises first (squat, deadlift, bench press, overhead press, rows). These are the best bang for your buck exercises, and the ones that allow you to use the most weight and stimulate the most muscles. You can still add in more isolated exercises like curls, but make sure to prioritize the compound lifts first.
If you follow this advice consistently, I guarantee you will be adding muscle in the next 6-12 months. If you want more help on bulking, check out my article on the Best Way to Bulk Up If You are a Hardgainer.
