The Get Bigger Guys

‘Part 2’

Welcome back to your guide for putting on size. Obviously if you’re reading this, size isn’t something that comes easy to you. You have to claw for every lb you gain and fight even harder to hold onto it. In this article we are going to look at 2 ways that you can make massive improvements to your physique in your quest for size! One of the most common misconceptions people have when it comes to working out is that more is better. More sets, more reps.

“Force your muscles to grow.”

FALSE!

Quite often this is why you aren’t putting on real size. Let’s break this down. Gaining muscle is done by you stressing your muscles with new stimuli (working out) and then eating more calories then your body needs to recover from the workout so that the excess can be used to grow new tissue. It’s pretty simple. If you don’t have an excess you won’t have anything to grow with.

5 days a week with 1.5 hour workouts may work for the pros and the genetically gifted but for us, that’s not going to do it. Our metabolisms just don’t leave enough calories to handle that much stress, that often. Well there’s a two step approach to this.

STEP 1: REDUCE YOUR WORKOUTS

The first is to reduce your workouts…. I know, I know that’s blasphemy to most and goes against everything you’ve heard, or read, …. or seen. But remember that “more is better” approach hasn’t been working for you, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.

Ok now that you’ve settled down we can move on. The first thing to reduce is the duration of your workouts. Your workout should take no longer than 45 minutes. Certainly no longer than an hour. Doing so leads to one of two things:

Over training: because if you were to lift at your maximum for that long your body would not be able to properly recover from the stressors placed on it. That’s right your body can only handle so much.

Under training: because let’s be honest, if you want to last that long in training your going to pace yourself and when it comes to building muscles you need to be lifting more weight, not less.

So what you want is for your workouts to be shorter but more intense. Lifting your maximum ensures the most stimuli, while keeping the duration shorter ensures that you can lift at your maximum for the duration of the workout. Think of it this way;

A sprinter would not get faster at running the 100 meter by running a 15 k and your bench will not get heavier by lifting less for a longer duration!

Still with me? Good! The next thing to do is reduce the amount of training sessions per week. I like to cut mine down to 3-4 times a week on a 1 day on, 1 day off program. The reason being, that you get plenty of rest between workouts, which you will need to maximize your growth, but I’ll get into that later when we get into the nitty gritty of the actual workout.

STEP 2: EAT MORE

I can already hear you, “But Matt I already eat so much!” well maybe but I’m not talking about gorging yourself on one meal and then being a vegetable for the rest of the day. I’m talking about eating large meals full of protein, carbohydrates and fats 2-3 hours a day at least 5-6 times a day. This is the only way to ensure that your muscles get the steady stream of nutrients they need to maximize the growth time. This is just an average number and we will go into greater detail about the specific numbers for your body type/size but aim for at least 40 grams of protein per meal with at least 80 grams of carbs and 20 grams of fat. Yes I know everyone is different but as far as starters go this is a good bench mark. If you aren’t gaining weight then add more if you are gaining too much weight subtract some. It’s that easy.The key to overcoming your fast metabolism is to not be afraid of gaining fat. If you are gaining a little fat that lets you know that your are eating enough to fuel your workouts and that there is enough excess to grow your new muscles and that there is a little bit left over that gets stored as fat. Don’t worry you can always shed these few extra lbs once you have achieved some size!

Well that concludes our article for now, stay tuned for the actual workout that you will use in your quest for new size and strength and check out other articles for tips and strategies to maximize your calorie intake!

-Matt Willis-