This episode is all about hardgainers and bodybuilding. If you’re hitting the gym and you’re just not growing., you're going to want to listen to this! We cover nutrition, how not to train and so much more.
Muscle Talk - Bodybuilding podcast by International Protein
If you want your own questions answered on our bodybuilding podcast, then join our private Facebook Group and share your ideas, https://www.facebook.com/groups/muscletalk
If you'd like to learn more about International Protein, visit https://www.international-protein.com/product/heavy-weight-protein/
A Thinkroom production.
https://www.thinkroom.com/
This episode is all about hardgainers and bodybuilding. If you’re hitting the gym and you’re just not growing., you're going to want to listen to this! We cover nutrition, how not to train and so much more.
Muscle Talk - Bodybuilding podcast by International Protein
If you want your own questions answered on our bodybuilding podcast, then join our private Facebook Group and share your ideas, https://www.facebook.com/groups/muscletalk
If you'd like to learn more about International Protein, visit https://www.international-protein.com/product/heavy-weight-protein/
A Thinkroom production.
https://www.thinkroom.com/
Ash Horton:
Welcome to Muscle Talk, where you'll get world champion advice about nutrition and stacking on muscle. Our host, Christine Envall, she's a three-time world champion bodybuilder, an IFBB professional, a food scientist, and a founding co-owner of our podcast sponsor, International Protein.
Ash Horton:
In this episode, we chat about hard gainers. If you're hitting the gym and you're just not growing, you're going to want to listen to this. We cover nutrition, how not to train, and various resting frequencies that might be helpful.
Ash Horton:
Okay, Christine. Today, I want to talk about training for hard gainers. I know nothing about this, as you can tell by my physique. Quality specimen.
Christine Envall:
Well, I thought you were a hard gainer, but just on our little chat that we were having there before we started recording, I actually realised that you're a non-trainer. So we haven't determined if you're a hard trainer or not yet, or if it's just that you don't train, so-
Ash Horton:
Oh, we're going into this, are we?
Christine Envall:
We've gone into it, but I won't make that the basis of this. But all I'm saying is that I guess what that means is that a lot of people who are hard gainers, or classify themselves potentially as hard gainers, aren't actually doing sufficient training. Like, they're not actually following a proper program to gain muscle. And I think that's really the key thing that I see, where training to gain muscle and training to bulk up are obviously a combination of diet and training, but it's a specific type of training.
Christine Envall:
People talk about going to the gym, and again, in our conversation before we were talking about things and you mentioned the rower, and you said, "But it's at the gym." It is not a staple muscle-building exercise.
Ash Horton:
It's just a warmup, come on.
Christine Envall:
Five minutes on the rower for most people is a pretty solid dose of cardio. Even at F45, people are like, "Ah no, not the rowers," because they are a very high-cardio, very taxing thing. So they're definitely not in the muscle-building regime. Obviously, I have a high level of fitness and I can do the rowers and I have incorporated them as part of my cardio routine, separate to my weight training routine. So I guess the point I'm making is that-
Ash Horton:
You're just enjoying laughing at me. This is what this is.
Christine Envall:
Always. But you like being laughed at, Ash.
Ash Horton:
I do.
Christine Envall:
So, [inaudible 00:02:27] up. But yeah, the problem of not being able to gain muscle often is that people just aren't training correctly, and obviously sometimes they're just not eating correctly, not realising how many calories they need to support the muscle growth. But when it comes to a training program, and again for hard gainers, the first thing-
Ash Horton:
Can we just define what the term hard gainers means?
Christine Envall:
Yeah. It's someone who doesn't gain size easily. So someone like myself walks into a gym, does an exercise, two weeks later, you can generally see the difference from that exercise. So not necessarily now, heading towards my late forties, but when I was in my peak I could change an angle on an exercise or pick up a new exercise, and you would see the development change very, very quickly. I gained weight very, very easily, and particularly muscle weight. So just coming back to body types, and I'm going to do that little thing which you keep getting annoyed at me, where I say, "There's a mesomorph, endomorph, and an ectomorph," and you say, "I don't know what those are.”
Christine Envall:
So obviously, the mesomorph is a person who is naturally more muscular. They gain size easily, and it's generally lean mass that they gain. So the perfect body type for bodybuilding is obviously that mesomorph. So Meso, think muscular. As a kid, the person probably showed some muscle definition, probably pretty athletic, and stayed quite lean. So then you have your endomorphs, which are easy to gain weight, but generally it's not muscle weight. It tends to be more fat weight. They kind of have that rounder, softer kind of a look. As a kid, might've just looked... Might've actually even looked thin as a kid, because then it's only as you've gotten older that metabolism slows down and that people take on that kind of softer look, or they may have been overweight as a kid.
Christine Envall:
And then you have your ectomorph, and that's your hard gainer. So they are generally a thinner build, maybe even have a smaller frame. They seem to eat a pile of food, but don't really gain weight. They go to the gym, if they do gain muscle, it's generally looks more like an endurance-type athlete. It doesn't look rounded and bulked, it's kind of like a stringier, or it's kind of small muscle. They may actually also be quite lean with that, but they don't get that massive size that the big guys seem to get. They look skinny, and people do tend to associate it with endurance-type athletes. You know, probably a lot of the basketball players you would say are more-
Ash Horton:
Soccer, football.
Christine Envall:
Football, so rugby versus football.
Ash Horton:
Oh, when I say football, I'm talking the British version of football.
Christine Envall:
Oh, soccer.
Ash Horton:
Yeah, soccer.
Christine Envall:
To be honest, I don't look at that too much-
Ash Horton:
We have an international audience, remember? No one calls it soccer.
Christine Envall:
In Australia, we do. To be honest, I haven't looked a lot at their bodies, so I don't really know, but I actually think they're kind of mixed. Because I would say, like if you look at a... And again, you have a basketball player like Zion, and he's definitely more mesomorph, but you'll have someone like Kobe, who was quite ectomorph. Like, he was muscular, but lean and didn't have a lot of bulk behind him. So that's kind of more the definition of a hard gainer, would be the body type which doesn't gain size very, very easily. You know, two people go to the gym together, they follow the same training program, and one does grow a lot quicker than the other. They may or may not be strong, and that's the other thing. It's not strength, and that can actually be what make it so hard for a hard gainer, is that they may actually be strong, and they might be pushing a lot of weight in the gym, and that's just not following up with a lot of muscle bulk.
Christine Envall:
How do those people train? So I guess the first thing is we've got to look at the program and say, "Are they actually doing a weight training program that's going to be conducive to growing weight?" So they might be doing too many reps, or they might be, again, not giving themselves enough rest between the reps, because those people can also tend to be quite, I guess, fast-paced people. They're not the kind of person that sits around, they're always kind of on the go and seem to have a lot of that nervous energy. And those kind of people are always kind of moving, so they're burning a lot of calories, and for weight training, obviously you have to kind of pace yourself. So it's got to be the right amount of rest, the right amount of reps, not too many reps, but giving yourself that ability to push the weight up.
Christine Envall:
So, first thing we would address is are they training the right way? Are they following a program where they're doing progressive overload? Are they doing about three to four sets per exercise, doing three to four exercises per body part, depending on the body part? And not trying to do a 30-second rest between each set, but they're actually giving themselves enough time for their energy systems to recover and then get into the next set, and then that allows them to push their weight up heavier and heavier. If they're following a program like that, the next thing I'll assist them to look at their diet.
Christine Envall:
I mean, I know we're talking about training for hard gainers. The thing is, it's finding the right balance, because a lot of people, if they are highly sporty and active and they want to gain some muscle, but they're already doing a lot of other things, they don't want to necessarily drop those other activities. Which does obviously create a problem, because how do you fit it all in? So if they have enough time, they should probably allow about a 45 minute to an hour, no more, because they will burn those calories too much, and just do sort of a more short, sharp weight training session. Probably don't focus on too much volume, try to really sit it to those three to four sets per exercise, and no more than about three to four exercises per body part. And then potentially look at training each body part once a week or one and a half times, like creating a cycle where they're not doing it twice a week, because again, for a hard gainer that may be too frequent.
Christine Envall:
They probably do need to experiment with their own body, and I would suggest that they start off by setting a program where they might train, say, four days a week, but it takes them, say, five days to actually complete their full body. And rotate that around, and stick on that for a six-week period, and see the results that they get from that, and then flip it around and do that four days, but do every body part twice a week, and just see which one they get the best results from. Because again, everybody is going to be different. And because I will assume that they are doing their cardio along with it, it has to work. You don't want to compromise one thing for the next, but if someone's saying, "Okay, I'm giving up all my other cardio, I just want to focus on my weight training," then I would probably try to push their weight a little bit heavier and make that the focus, and also focus on resting. Which we haven't really talked about, but obviously the sleep and the rest and the recovery is also very important.
Christine Envall:
So taking it down and making sure that they are getting that good seven or eight hours sleep per night, because that's the other thing. We haven't talked about it a lot, but when you start to analyse someone's routine, and you see why they're not growing or they're not recovering properly or why they kept getting injuries and things, then you might find that it's actually a combination of not getting adequate sleep, thinking that five-and-a-half, six hours is enough, potentially their nutrition is off, they're not getting the right protein in or they're not eating frequently enough, or the training program is still more cardio based and they think it's a weight-training based program. So there's always a lot of factors involved.
Ash Horton:
You're laughing at me again, aren't you?
Christine Envall:
I am. I'm laughing at you because I know that you don't sleep enough, you're trying to eat better and your focus is on cardio, and then you're saying, "Oh, I'm not growing any muscle.”
Ash Horton:
You caught me eating chocolate the other day, too.
Christine Envall:
That's right. Which, you know, nothing wrong with that in moderation.
Ash Horton:
Just the quantities, yeah.
Christine Envall:
Yes. Yeas, just the quantity. But yeah, I think like with anything, and weight training is such an individual thing, I am very, again, very fortunate that I don't... No, I work hard, but it shows very quickly, so I know when something's working for me or not working for me. So a lot of the time, I guess, we've trained a lot of different exercises over the years, and it's not necessarily one exercise which has been the make or break of everything. It's more that consistency, so it's sticking at it. And I think that when you don't see the results as quickly as what someone else does, then that's what makes it hard for people to stick at it, and they maybe miss more days than what they realise.
Christine Envall:
So again, for a hard gainer, keeping a journal of what days they do actually train versus which days they plan to train and then didn't train. And this goes for everybody, not just a hard gainer, but as anyone. Be realistic. You may have a five day a week program, but if you're only hitting three of those five days, you're doing a three day a week program. That goes for anything. It's what you're actually doing versus what you have in your plan, likewise with your eating or anything. But your training is actually adhering to that, and then tracking your weights, because your size gains are going to come from that gradual progressive overload.
Christine Envall:
As I said, hard gainers often will be stronger than what they have size, so sometimes they can push up quite heavy, but that's where you would start to experiment for them with whether maybe they really are sticking to like an eight-rep range, like sticking to a lower rep range and saying, "Okay, can I push even heavier for that?" I'm going to say that's probably more likely where they're going to get their gains from, because I think the ability of their muscle to have good endurance for strength is why they're a hard gainer, because it will be able to handle that type of work. So for them, doing more and more reps, they can probably do that, but that's where the size doesn't come from. The size is kind of coming in that lower rep range in there. But I would be definitely looking at different resting frequencies and experimenting with that type of program.
Christine Envall:
But the main thing is that they do actually have a program that they follow, and that they measure and monitor and make sure that they are tracking the size gains, but backing it up with eating. And I'm not talking about you, Ash, but there is a young guy that trains at F45 and he keeps wanting to gain size, but again, he's so athletic, and I think comes from a dance background, and he's always jumping around and moving around and doing explosive type of movements. And he's very lean, but he struggles to keep his weight on because he's doing so much other activity, and I dare say that his focus is probably more on that than what actually needs to be done to grow the muscle.
Christine Envall:
So it is discipline to the program, monitoring the program, checking off that you're actually doing it, and then backing it up with your nutrition and your sleep, and of course, your supplements. And that's where things like the Extreme Mass come in, because the struggle is the food and getting that volume of food in. You know, we've talked about in other podcasts, it can be uncomfortable eating a higher amount of food. So being able to have something which is highly concentrated in calories like the Extreme Mass, putting that with full-cream milk instead of skim milk or water all the rest of us people do because we don't want the extra calories. They need to be able to put as many calories in as possible in a small volume so that it doesn't fill them up too much.
Christine Envall:
And again, increase the calories over a slow period, because you can't just suddenly slam your body with all this extra and then actually be able to stick to it. So adding a little bit to each meal, just increasing each meal a little bit slightly, a couple of extra mouth mouthfuls that you don't seem to notice, and then slowly, slowly you will able to be able to eat more, is often a way more successful way of doing that than just trying to add a whole extra meal in, because if it doesn't fit into your routine and you haven't digested the last one, it's very demotivating to keep on trying to fit that in. But just having like an extra 20 grams of cereal at your breakfast, or an extra 20 grams added to your meat portion at each portion, an extra 20 grams of rice, and it all adds up over a period of time.
Christine Envall:
But I think the thing is to be consistent. Stick at it, measure, monitor, be willing to adjust if something's not working, and don't be afraid to try other things. Just because you're a hard gainer doesn't mean to say that it's the same for you as what it is for everybody. So many factors do influence it.
Ash Horton:
So you're picking me as a hard gainer?
Christine Envall:
I actually aren't, Ash, because you haven't actually trained to know. So you may actually not be, it's just that you haven't, just from... We never really talked about it, but just in talking about it before, you say you go in the gym, but one exercise, three sets is not a program. I don't know what that is, especially if you're not using heavy weight, that's just like a... That's playing.
Ash Horton:
One day, we're going to have to publicly challenge me on this podcast.
Christine Envall:
We will.
Ash Horton:
Not today, but one day.
Christine Envall:
It'll be a video podcast. We'll get you to the gym and we'll put you through an actual program, but not once, but on a six week... We'll have to put you on a six week program, Ash, and see what happens.
Ash Horton:
And we'll see what happens, yeah.
Christine Envall:
Because yeah, you may not be a hard gainer.
Ash Horton:
I'm up for that, but I'm not committing to it today.
Christine Envall:
Why not?
Ash Horton:
No, not today. I've got other priorities, but I will do it.
Christine Envall:
Sounds like an excuse to me.
Ash Horton:
Yeah, I know. Anyway, that was really interesting. Is there anything else to add?
Christine Envall:
Again, I just wanted to add, if anyone does have any questions or wants to share what they found might work... Because again, I'm not a hard gainer myself, so I can talk the theory, but I can't obviously talk to practice of what it is like to be someone who does struggle with keeping the weight on, gaining the weight. So if people have questions, comments, or want to share their experiences, then jump into the Aussie Muscle Guru Facebook page. We would love to hear, and then obviously we can add that to our bank of knowledge and share with other people.
Ash Horton:
Awesome. Thanks so much, Christine.
Christine Envall:
Thank you, Ash.
Ash Horton:
Words of wisdom. If you like what you've heard, recognise that these tips are free. So show your support by becoming a loyal International Protein customer, by jumping online, hunt our product down and hit that buy now button. So once again, like, share, and subscribe to our podcast so we can continue to bring you these episodes from our one and only Aussie Muscle Guru, three-times world champion, Christine Envall.