Hi. Im just really confused about the Hardgainer philosophy i read about. I spend some time online looking at and reading training articles and every now and then i come across an article on hardgainers. The training routine they suggest is completely different than the training routines here at T-mag. I just wanted to know if someone could clarify that up. Those articles say that 90% of people are hardgainers which is the majority of the population. So i don’t get it. Does that mean that all the other workouts like the 5x5 method and the 10x3 approach or the “hypertrophy’” training approches are just for the other above average 10% of the population? Someone please tell what’s up with this. Thanks a bucnh.
I think you have it backwards. From what I remember, I think someone at T-mag said something like “90% of the people that think they’re hardgainers aren’t, they just don’t know how to eat”.
The term hardgainer in my opinion is usually used as a marketing tool to suck in frustrated people. “If I am not making progress I must be a hardgainer!”
It’s BS that 90% of the population is hardgainers. More like hardLosers.
So eat right, train right… and you’ll put on some quality mass.
I’ll make this real simple, hardgainers are very few and far between
I you wanna gain some mass then look up the get big diet for bodybuilders (not as good as massive eating but easier to follow) and a good training routine like “train long not hard” or Staley’s EDT or CT’s OVT.
Chow down for 2-3 months and train hard and then see what your opinion is on hardgainers. I guarantee that you’ll probably put at least half a stone on if you give it an honest try.
There are people in this world for whom a high metabolism makes gaining weight difficult. To add a lot of cardio training and high-volume weight training to that makes the training itself counterproductive to the goal. That is why you see a lot of press devoted to low-volume, high-intensity stuff geared towards these people. Is it really 90% of the population? Doubtful. Maybe 25%. If most of those people who thought they were hard gainers really got their eating in order, they’d probably find themselves more average. But if you put those people on the standard training fare offered by the mainstream muscle mags, of course they’re not going to gain anything (they’re not on the 'roids that the pros are using).
How can 90% of the population be “hardgainers”? Wouldn’t that make them normal, and the other 10% “easygainers”? Just having fun.
And no, the programs you mentioned aren’t just for the “easygainers”. (They really don’t need much help, if they truly exist.)
Eat enough. Lift heavy things. Sleep enough. That’s how most people go about putting on size.
This is a way for pussies and losers to make excuses as to why they arent making gains.
Hardgainers do exist, but it just takes a little more work. The advandage of being a ‘hardgainer’ though is that getting cut is relatively easy.
Lets put it this way, I could not break 150# bodyweight even on 3000+ calories a day, until I had ‘help’, if you know what I mean. I was under 130# when I graduated High School, and didn’t break 140 till I was 22. I was doing everything, including 1000+ calorie shakes 4x a day. If I dropped below 3000 calories, my weight would begin to plummet.
On the other hand, once I hit my late 20’s, being a hardgainer was a thing of the past. I can easily put on good weight now, and dropping fat is a little harder, but I can still cut relatively easily.
Before mags like MM2k and T-mag came out and told people the truth about steroids, many people thought they were “hardgainers” because they didn’t look like the pros even though they trained hard and ate right.
The truth is that most of these so-called hardgainers were simply normal guys with normal genes and no steroids.
Sometimes I go back and look at Mr. Universe pics from the 1930’s or sometime way back then. Makes me realize that I’m in great shape. Looking at today’s muscle mags I sometimes get disappointed - then of course I realize that I don’t use roids, synthol, growth hormone etc. so I feel better.
Anyway, I think a bell curve applies here with most people being normal gainers and very few being at either extreme.
The most disappointing discovery for me was that Arnie, Zane, Franco, etc. etc. were all juiced to high heaven too. (Ahhh, newbie days…)
I knew the modern pros were just freak experiments, but for some reason I, in my youthful ignorance, didn’t think it was that way “back in the day”. Even Steeve Reeves was juicing, and that was a LONG time ago!
Dah well. I’d look to modern ‘natural’ competitors for motivation, if I wasn’t so skeptical as to how “natural” they really are…
(And more on-topic: most “hardgainers” I see are the people who seem to exclusively trail biceps, with the occasional bench [ on monday, of course ] and don’t even make the slightest attempt at all to fix their diet)
Goldberg, soon as I read this post My first thought was “Man Goldberg is going to chew on this guys Ass” Too funny…
You achieve what you believe you can achieve. If you think you are a hard gainer you probably are, if only in your mind.
I used to be a “hardgainer”…then I started eating enough and eating properly.
The war of bodybuilding isn’t won in the gym with the barbell and the dumbell. It is won in the kichen with the knife and the fork.
“I started this gangsta shit. And this the motherfuckin thanks I get?”
Well, if you look at it like ‘it takes hard work to gain muscle’ then maybe 90% of the population are hardgainers.
But psst T-mag has broken the code. Unlocked the hardgainer’s potential. It’s radical, it’s extreme. Are you ready?
squat, eat meat, repeat.
OK got it. Thanks for your time everyone.
echoing Brider and chrismcl, most “hardgainers” are people blessed with a fast metabolism–I thought I was a hardgainer when I was starting out, and got sucked into the HIT training BS for a while
then I discovered T-Mag, and especially Massive Eating–went from 175 to 195 in a year (after training for 2.5 yrs prior)–a little 4AD (Androsol) helped that process be mostly muscle so that at the end of the year my body fat remained unchanged
now, I tell clients who think they are hardgainers that they just aren’t eating properly, as the T-Mag staff says repeatedly
Goldberg is right, too, it’s all in how you perceive yourself
–Bill