Did it 5 years ago, gained 5kgs (11lbs) in 3 months under a brilliant personal trainer so I know I can make above-average gains if I do things right.
This time I'm following the regime created by Tim Ferriss in his recent book, The 4-Hour Body. The plan is to follow his weight programme for a month while using the heavy-duty diet for hard gainers that worked successfully for me 5 years ago.
The idea behind it all is that you work the muscles to total failure with a single set of 7-10 very slow, controlled reps of carefully chosen compound exercises. This encourages the muscles to grow as much as possible so you must make sure to feed them enough that they can respond as fully as possible to the growth stimulus of working out to failure. And by failure, we mean, if there is the remotest possibility that you can squeeze another centimetre of movement out of that last rep then you ain't there yet. And when you think you are, hold it for a bit and then see if you have just a little more.
Haven't taken any body part measurements, can't be bothered. Nor any "before" photos. I'm not trying to prove anything to anyone but myself and the goals set out below are enough for me without pictures or any other measurements. I actually find measurements counter-productive: to work for months to find that my biceps are an inch bigger or whatever, is deceptively small a gain in my mind and so I'd rather not know. But to know that my bench press has improved by say 30%, and I can feel my old t-shirt sleeves getting tight around the new biceps, that helps!
Here's my starting stats:
Height: 168cms (5'6")
Weight: 71.25kg (157lbs), weighed at 4pm wearing gym gear
Body Fat: probably over 30% but haven't measured it properly.
Pant-size: 34 inches.
Goals: drop at least one and ideally two pants sizes with improved sense of well-being as I gain fitness. Improved fitness will be seen in being able to drive, or work in the garden/around the house, or dance, for extended periods.
Here's the daily eating plan, designed by a personal trainer for my metabolism; it's a high fat, high protein diet with just enough carbs to keep the body out of ketosis (fat-burning mode, as used in Atkins-style diets) as that is not compatible with building muscle. For American readers I give the non-metric quantities as well, but I find it easier to measure everything precisely in metric units on my trusty kitchen scales.
- 700grams (a touch over 1.5 lbs) of meat, fish or poultry
- 7 Jumbo eggs (works out to about 470 grams, a little over a pound of eggs a day)
- 75 grams macadamia nuts or almonds (mainly macadamias, I don't like almonds as much but they're ok for variety every now and then)
- 30 mil (one ounce) of flax seed oil for all the good omega-3 and -6 in it
- 300grams (10 ozs) potatoes (that's the carbs)
- 90 grams protein powder taken in the form of two shakes per day. I put one of the eggs and half the oil into each shake, makes the shake taste better and is the easiest way to get the oil down as well as an easy way to get in some of the eggs
I'll be eating every 2-3 hours so the body doesn't starve and start burning muscle protein for fuel instead of building up the muscles. For a hard-gainer like me that's important, as is avoiding aerobic exercise that, again, would simply burn fuel and deprive the muscles of the nutrients they need to grow.
Yesterday, July 8th, was the start of this magnificent experiment. Here's how I did in the gym:
First workout:
close-grip supinated pull-downs: 8reps x 35
shoulder press: 9reps x 20
Next workout, on Monday after a two-day rest interval to allow the body to grow the muscles I've just worked, will be bench presses and leg presses. These are my old faves and looking forward to seeing what I can do with them.
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