How To Build Muscle For Hard Gainers

The term hard gainer refers to any individual, typically in athletics, who has difficulty gaining muscle mass or body weight. Building muscle for hard gainers can be both challenging and frustrating. There are several reasons you might be or become a hard gainer. First, you are training hard and are expending a large amount of calories. Next, you may not be consuming enough calories to meet the energy requirements for putting on muscle. Typically, you need an additional 500 calories each day, over maintenance, to build an additional pound of lean tissue. Also, you have not compensated for previous increases in body mass with additional calories. This means that you have gained weight and did not increase your caloric intake. Finally, you are not working out hard enough to stimulate muscle growth.

Step 1

Adopt a hard gainer's approach when trying to put on muscle mass. This means you must follow these steps every day for optimal results. The first thing you must do each morning is eat. Breakfast is one of the most important meals of the day for a hard gainers because you practically starve yourself during the eight to 10 hours you sleep each night. This means you should make this meal your largest of the day.

Step 2

Eat again two hours later. Eating at frequent intervals allows you to eat more over the course of the day and ensure that the body is meeting its caloric needs.

Step 3

Work out two hours later. Your hard gainer workout needs to be intense with focus on muscular hypertrophy or growth. This means you should perform three sets of each exercise, with a repetition range of eight to 12. Emphasize compound movements since they boost your natural testosterone production. Perform at least eight exercises, with five coming from the following list: barbell squat, pull-ups, barbell bench press, barbell lunges, push press, weighted dips, barbell deadlift or hang clean.

Step 4

Eat again right after your workout. For the first 30 minutes after a workout, the body is in prime repair mode, so you must fuel the body with the nutrients it needs to build and repair muscle tissue. This meal should be high in sugar and protein content and little fat for quick absorption.

Step 5

Eat again three hours later. Food consumption must increase beyond your normal dietary needs to spur muscle growth. Prepare meals ahead of time and carry them with you to meet your eating window times.

Step 6

Eat your last full meal of the day three hours later. Include carbohydrates, fats and proteins in this meal so that digestion is slower. The calories will be slowly released in the body, leaving energy level distribution through the night higher.

Step 7

Go to bed two to three hours after the last meal. The body continues its muscular repair and growth at night so a full night's rest is a must for maximal muscle growth.