Let’s face it – Having big guns is one of the main reasons people enter the gym in the first place.

My name is Troy Adashun and in this collaboration with the Weight Gain Network, I’ll reveal to you the most powerful weapons in my arm training arsenal.

For me, it seemed that my upper limbs were ALWAYS lacking…

My biceps, my triceps and my shoulders were perpetually weak, compared to other upper body muscle groups.

Most of us would blame it on genetics and just put up with this “fact”.

Well, truth is that genetics do play some role, but they are not the primary factor.

You CAN develop YOUR arms to their BIGGEST potential.

Doing so doesn’t involve any sort of magic, but rather understanding the muscle growth mechanisms and applying certain principles and methods.

Let’s get right into it.

Upper Arm Anatomy

As you can see on this visual, the upper arm is made up of the deltoid, the biceps and the triceps.

In the near future we’ll dedicate an article to shoulder (Deltoid) training, but for this specific one, we’ll tackle biceps and triceps training.

Let’s briefly see the biceps and triceps in-depth.

Biceps

The word “Biceps” is derived from “Bi” and “Ceps”, meaning “Two” and “head”, respectively.

This simply implies that the biceps is made of two heads – The short head and the long head.

The short head is located on the inner portion of the biceps and accounts for the thickness of the arm.

On the flipside, we have the long head, which is located on the outside of the biceps and accounts for the “peaky” look of the arm.

The activation of each head depends on a number of factors, such as elbow and wrist position.

Triceps

Following the terminology from above, we can say that the “Tri-Ceps” is a muscle that has three heads.

Those are the lateral, medial and long head of the triceps.

It needs to be noted that the triceps is in fact a massive muscle, meaning that focusing solely on the biceps is a no-go, if the goal is having well-shaped arms, overall.

This is exactly why, we’ll focus on ways to blast the triceps and especially its long head.

Brachialis

In the middle of the biceps and triceps, we have the brachialis.

This often neglected muscle actually pushes the bicep peak up, giving a more prominent, peaky look of the upper arm.

The brachialis is mainly targeted by utilizing neutral (hammer) & pronated (Palms down) grip movements.

Do NOT neglect this muscle – It really gives a different look to the arm.
Now that we have basic anatomy in check, let’s see the training principles we can use to maximize arm growth.

Training principles and methods

There are 3 factors to muscle growth – Mechanical tension, metabolic stress and muscle damage.
Solely focusing on just one of them will lead to suboptimal gains.

This is exactly why we need to focus on optimizing all three.

To do so, we’ll use the following training principles and methods:

Time under tension

Ever seen a guy in the gym do curls like he’s been attending swing dancing classes?
Yeah… Don’t do that. Or at least, not right off the bat.

The time under tension (TUT) principle implies using a controlled pace for the most part of each exercise.

A controlled pace allows us to get MAXIMUM tension through the working muscle, which grants optimization of growth rule #1 – Mechanical tension.

Swinging and inertial movements can be used to go beyond failure, once we have reached an inability to continue with proper execution.

Supersets & drop sets

The more prolonged, intense work we do, the more energy we use.

Energy is simply the substance in the muscle that the body uses upon demand.

To be precise, the energetic substances that the body uses in a workout are three:

1. ATP (Adenosine triphosphate)
2. CP (Creatine phosphate)
3. Glycogen (End product of carbohydrate metabolism)

As those energetic compounds breakdown upon use, there is an accumulation of byproducts (Metabolites).

This is the so-called metabolic stress.

Supersets & drop sets allow us to do just that – Do prolonged, intense muscle work and hence, optimize the second law of growth – Metabolic stress.

Now, especially for the arms, supersets are KILLER! (In a good way)

This is because the biceps and triceps are attached in the same joint and are “Antagonists” (Opposing muscle groups).

Antagonistic muscle groups are known to interact in a very interesting way.

When the agonist (contracting muscle group) receives a contraction signal and shortens, its antagonist (opposite group) receives a relaxation signal and stretches.

What this does is it gives us a sort of “Active rest” and helps both muscle groups recover quicker in-between sets.

Oh and did I mention the insane pumps you get by using this?

If we don’t go overboard with supersets & drop sets, we’ll also be able to maintain good training intensity (weight) and cover the third rule of growth – Muscle damage.

Biceps exercises

Having massive arms is one of the things that will scream “I lift”, even when you’re wearing a shirt.

Below, I’ll give you my top picks to target the Long & short head, as well as the brachialis.
Let’s have a look.

Long head exercises

Having difficulty developing those bicep peaks? Worry not – I will give you my TOP 2 long head exercises, that will squeeze the hell outta your peaks.

Here’s the secret to peaky biceps – Wrist supination and/or keeping the elbows behind your back line.

Try it out for yourself – By just rotating your wrist outwards (supinating), your biceps shortens.

In doing so and also avoiding forward elbow motion, you will massively engage the long head of the biceps.

Exercise #1 – Dumbbell waiters curl

• Sets: 3
• Repetitions: 12

I preach one thing – Activation before overload.

This simply implies engaging as many muscle fibers as possible before going extra heavy on the more intense movements.

The dumbbell waiter curl is perfect for this goal, as it keeps your wrists supinated and takes a lot of tension from the forearms.

Execution:

1. Grab a dumbbell with both hands and stand up straight
2. Keep torso straight and head looking forward
3. Place elbows closer to the body
4. Curl up in a controlled pace, contracting the biceps
5. Hold peak flexion up top
6. Go down slowly on the eccentric portion of the movement

Note that you should avoid moving your elbow forward.

Exercise #2 – Barbell drag curls

• Sets: 2
• Reps: 10
• Rest times: ~90 seconds between sets

We’ll use this next exercise, to utilize the second peak-building method – Keeping the elbows behind your torso.
Note that the drag curls are an intense movement, so don’t fear going up on the weights used after activating with the waiters curl.

Execution:

1. Grab the barbell with an underhand, shoulder-width grip
2. Stand straight with feet at shoulder width
3. Look up and avoid slouching
4. Keep elbows behind the body
5. Maintain a bar position close to the torso
6. Curl up and powerfully contract the biceps up top
7. Briefly hold peak flexion and return down slowly on the negative

Note that maintaining a static wrist position is recommended – Otherwise, flexing the wrist will cause the forearms to take a lot of the work.

Short head & brachialis exercises

Having a big biceps peak is nice, but it is nothing without a properly developed short head & brachialis, that will give you that thick look and also push the peak up.

This is exactly why I have some good stuff here for you!

Below I have my TOP 2 picks out of the 5 exercises you can see in the video above.

Let’s have a look at how we can utilize wrist position to maximize short head & brachialis activation.

Exercise #1 – Iso lean hammer curl

• Sets: 2
• Reps: 10-12 repetitions
• Rest times: ~75 seconds between sets

With this exercise, we will utilize a neutral (hammer) grip, and we will also do it unilaterally, meaning that each arm will be worked on its own, in a separate set.

Execution:

1. Grab a dumbbell and keep it by your side with a hammer grip (palm facing torso)
2. Lean with the opposite hand on a wall
3. Keep torso straight
4. Maintain a position of the upper arm closer to the torso
5. Hammer the dumbbell up, contracting the biceps
6. Hold peak flexion briefly
7. Go down slowly on the negative

Note that you can also apply a more prominent tricep contraction at the bottom to further achieve active rest.

Exercise #2 – Pronated spider curls (EZ-Bar)

• Sets: 2
• Reps: 8-10 repetitions
• Rest times: ~75 seconds between sets

Generic barbell curls are nice, but for this one, we’ll use a bench for chest support, an EZ bar and a pronated grip (Palms down).

All of this together will grant maximum arm tension.

Execution:

1. Set up an incline bench to a 45-degree angle
2. Grab an EZ-bar
3. Hold it with a pronated grip and at shoulder width
4. Set yourself up on the bench, utilizing chest support
5. Step stably
6. Curl the bar up, contracting the upper arm & forearms
7. Hold peak flexion for a second
8. Go down slowly

Feel like those exercises are not enough? Check out these 20 biceps exercises for bigger arms!

Triceps exercises

You should know by now that the triceps makes the bulk part of your upper arm.

With just a well-developed bicep, your arms will look funny to say the least.

In the video above I have 11 amazing triceps exercises, but below, I’ll give you my two favorites.

Again – 1 activation movement and 1 compound movement.

Exercise #1 – Unilateral rope pushdowns

• Sets: 3
• Reps: 10-12
• Rest: 30 seconds between sets

This is perhaps one of the best activators of the triceps, which we can utilize before moving on to the heavy, compound movement.

Don’t really try and go too heavy here, the goal is simple – Maintaining a constant pace, good time under tension and optimal contraction at the bottom.

Execution:

1. Set up a rope on the cable machine
2. Grab the rope with an overhand grip
3. Keep upper arm at a 90-degree angle and close to the torso
4. Push down, extending the elbow
5. Contract the triceps at the bottom and hold that peak flexion for a second
6. Go back up slowly
7. Once done, do the same on the opposite arm

With the relatively high number of reps and low rest times, the triceps should be well-activated and filled with blood.

Let’s look at the second movement.

Exercise #2 – Dumbbell overhead triceps press

• Sets: 4
• Reps: 8-10
• Rest times: ~75 seconds between sets

This one uses both arms and it allows you to go pretty heavy, granting that vital intense stimulus, required for growth.

What I like about this movement is that the long head of the triceps gets BLASTED.

Execution:

1. Grab a dumbbell and sit down
2. Place the dumbbell on your shoulder
3. Grab it with both hands comfortably
4. Lift the dumbbell above and behind your head
5. Keep elbows in without flaring them
6. Maintain straight torso position
7. Let the dumbbell go down and behind your head, until a straight angle is formed
8. Push up explosively
9. Apply a careful elbow lockout up top (Don’t explode into it)

Note that going down too much might do damage to the triceps’ tendons – Go down just enough to get a good range of motion.

This exercise can be done either with or without a backrest – Do as you feel it better, just maintain a straight torso position.

How to structure the workout

The numbers of sets and repetitions for each of the exercises presented is based on the nature of the exercise.

Some of the exercises are meant to activate and fill up your muscles with blood, which is why we have higher repetitions and lower rest times.

Other exercises are made for you to go full-on intensity, which is why we have lower repetitions and more rest times.

Ultimately, you should do the following:

1. Pick 1 activation movement for the biceps and 1 for triceps.
2. Choose 1 compound movement for the biceps and 1 for triceps to go heavy on.
3. Get in at least 1 long head exercise and 1 short head & brachialis exercise for the biceps exercises (Short head pronated movements grant enough brachialis work).
4. Make up for a total of 2-3 warm-up sets and ~8-10 working sets for the biceps and the same amount for the triceps.

How to apply drop sets, supersets & time under tension

On the heavy, compound movements like the drag curls & the dumbbell overhead triceps press, do a drop set on the last working set.

That would imply doing the above-mentioned number of repetitions, then reducing the weight 20-30% and doing the same number of reps.

Don’t overdo drop sets, as they will take away from intensity, which is a no-go for muscle building.

For the supersets & TUT, pick two relatively light, preferably isolating movements.
Do those one after the other with no-rest in-between the exercises, right at the end of the workout, when you are done working each muscle separately.

Pick a relatively light weight that will allow you to do 30-45 seconds time under tension.

Bottom line

Getting big arms is not that big of a deal, you just need to use the correct approach and stay consistent with it.

Here’s a summarized version of this article.

1. For the biceps, we pick 1 activation movement, 1 long head and 1 shorthead movement.
2. The triceps, we blast with 1 activation movement, 1 compound movement and one finisher movement (Check the video for an abundance of triceps exercises).
3. We aim for 2-3 warm-up sets and 8-10 working sets for both the biceps and the triceps.
4. Do a drop set (20-30% weight reduction) on the last working set of each compound, heavy movement.
5. Implement 2-3 supersets done with 30-45 seconds time under tension (on each exercise) at the end of the workout. For this, make isolated exercises a preference, as you might not have energy for compound movements.

All in all, we’re looking for the optimal ratio of intensity, mechanical tension, metabolic stress and muscle damage.

This usually occurs in the 8-12 rep range, utilizing 65~85% of our maximum strength capabilities.

If you liked this article and would fancy more awesome content, check out our platform – www.superhumanyou.net

The post How I Grew Big Arms As A Skinny Guy first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

Today we’re discussing how to get bigger shoulders using the “F-5 Method” to force shoulder growth. If you want wider delts, use this method, because it uses a scientific approach to growing your shoulders.

Your deltoid muscle has 3 different heads: The anterior deltoid, lateral deltoid, and rear deltoid. And within each of the shoulder heads is a specific muscle fiber ratio. The unique thing about your shoulders is that they contain a higher ratio of slow-twitch muscle fibers to fast-twitch muscle fibers than most other muscle groups. In other words, the majority of muscle fibers found in the deltoid are slow-twitch.

In this video we’re going to explain the top “activation exercises” for each head of the deltoid. And we’ll also get into the “X-Factors” of shoulder growth including post-workout nutrition, and another method that’s going to force more oxygen and blood into the recovering shoulder muscle.

The “F” in the F-5 method stands for “force” since we’re going to use 5 methods to force muscle growth in your shoulder workout. The first step is forcing anterior deltoid growth. In most cases, your front delt will be more developed than your lateral and rear deltoid. In order to get that boulder shoulder look it’s important to hit all 3 heads of the shoulder. The best way to develop this is with a heavy overhead press using a few different grip positions and angles.

In F-2 we’re going to focus on the lateral head of the shoulder. According to a study done by Bret Contreras the top shoulder activation exercise for the lateral deltoid head that created the highest mean and peak activation was the rope face pull. So this exercise should absolutely be added to your workout to increase shoulder size. The second exercise to include is a lateral raise in the 10-12 rep range.

In F-3 we’re going to talk about rear delt muscle development. This muscle is often neglected and underdeveloped in amateur weight lifters. If you want to get wider shoulders then paying attention to your rear deltoids is a must. And the best way to train shoulders while giving your rear deltoid the attention it needs is by incorporating rope face pulls into your workout routine. Yes, this exercise is not only superior for activating your lateral delts, but also your rear delts. Which makes this a hidden gem exercise to get bigger shoulders. And if you want to get bigger shoulders with dumbbells, another great exercise to hit your rear delts is the dumbbell rear delt fly.

The F-4 step is my “2:1 Factor.” To get bigger shoulders fast, you need to be in a calorie surplus. For maximum muscle growth you should shoot for a 2:1 ratio of carbs to protein. I recommend that you take in 2x your bodyweight in grams of carbs, and 1x your bodyweight in grams of protein. For example, if you weigh 200 pounds, you’d take in 400 grams of carbs per day and 200 grams of protein.

The F-5 step is using “Feeder Workouts.” This concept was popularized by Rich Piana, and involves pumping fresh blood and oxygen into your shoulder muscles right before you go to bed. And important point here is you’re not actually damaging the muscle. The goal here is to speed up and optimize recovery of the muscle. A great way to do this is using resistance bands to do shoulder lateral raises. Watch the video for all the details.

You can find an advanced shoulder workout for mass in the Weight Gain Blueprint program here: http://www.weightgainblueprint.com

The post How To Get Bigger Shoulders (F-5 Method) first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

Today you’ll see how to get more out of your back and biceps workout by using these advanced supersets.

These workout tips will help you get that v-taper physique, a wider back, and bigger biceps.

These are tips I’ve learned from elite bodybuilders over the past couple of months for maximizing the thickness and width of your back, and also making your biceps grow faster.

We’ll be doing exercises like lat pulldowns, underhand grip seated rows, underhand barbell row, along with multiple bicep supersets.

We’ll also be incorporating some advanced muscle building techniques to really build your arms and back including supersets, tri-sets, mechanical overload supersets, and metabolic stress supersets.

We’re going to go heavy on most these exercises. Pay attention to the video because I also explain the common mistakes that guys make with each of these exercises.

Try this workout for bigger biceps and a wider back!

The post 3 ADVANCED SUPERSETS For Bigger Biceps & Wider Back first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

This is episode 2 in Troy’s “Science Of Getting Bigger” video series. In this video Troy covers the 5 mass building exercises you’re probably not doing… But should be!

These exercises are going to help you look bigger, build up major muscle groups, and help you with common weak points that many guys suffer from, like shoulders, lower back, hamstrings, and abs.

Your challenge is to do 10 total sets of these 5 exercises over the next week.

The post 5 Mass Building Exercises You’re Not Doing | The Science Of Getting Bigger Part 2 first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

Today, Troy Adashun joins us to talk about the science of getting bigger. This is part 1 of the series.

Troy shows us how regardless of your genetics; there are only 3 things you have to get right to build muscle mass fast.

In this video, he covers these 3 major points, which are:

– The 3 main ways to train to build muscle

– Your anabolic calorie surplus

– The X-factors to maximize anabolic hormones

He also takes on a trip to BodySpec in Los Angeles, CA to use the famous DEXA scan (DXA scan) machine to measure all kinds of cool stuff, like body fat percentage, lean body mass, total mass, fat tissue, lean tissue, bone mineral content, etc…

Troy shows us his total body weight, along with all of his DXA Scan measurements, so he can put his muscle-building protocol to the test and see how much muscle he can pack on over the next few weeks.

The post The Science Of Getting Bigger (Part 1) first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

Do you find it hard to eat enough food to gain weight?

Today, Alain Gonzalez shares his 1,000 calories homemade weight gain shake recipe. This recipe is perfect for skinny guys who want to bulk up fast, and find it hard to eat enough food.

Alain used to weigh just 107 pounds when he was in his early 20’s.

This mass gain shake was one of the things he added into his diet that helped him consume enough calories to transform his physique.

This recipe is great for packing in a ton of high quality calories and micronutrients to help you add size to your skinny frame.

The great thing about this shake is that while it packs in a ton of calories, it will be easily digested and you’ll find yourself getting hungry again sooner than if you just ate a solid whole food meal. This is just another way this shake will help you consume more overall calories throughout the day.

The post Best Homemade Mass Gainer Shake Recipe For Skinny Guys (1,000 Calories) first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

Alain Gonzalez shares his “Monster Oatmeal” recipe that packs a solid 800-calories into your weight gain diet.

Not only is oatmeal a high quality food for gaining weight, but this particular recipe contains the optimal amount of protein, carbs, and fats for building muscle.

It includes oatmeal of course, but Alain also throws in more muscle-building ingredients like peanut butter, Greek yogurt, protein powder, and more.

This makes for a recipe that’s perfect for skinny guys who want to gain weight!

The post 800-Calorie Peanut Butter Oatmeal Recipe To Gain Weight first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

In this video I take you through a full chest workout for mass. This workout will help you sculpt an aesthetic chest. To have an aesthetic chest, you need to work on every part of the chest including the lower, middle, and most importantly, the upper chest.

The upper chest will help you look aesthetic, and helps you develop what I call the “Zeus Circle,” which is the circular area where your traps and upper chest are visually seen from the front.

This aesthetic chest workout incorporates a lot of unique shapers and hits the pectoral muscle from a variety of angles.

Try this on your next chest day and you will build an aesthetic chest! This is perfect for any mass building chest routine.

You can do this workout up to twice per week to speed up your chest gains!

The post Full Chest Workout For Aesthetic Muscle Gains first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

Why aren’t those quads growing, bro? I bet you’re making 1 of these 3 “quad-killing mistakes!”

In this video I’ll go over one of the most horrible habits that has savagely taken the fitness industry by storm: Skipping leg day.

If you want some “quads from the gods” then make sure you’re following the 3 most important essentials to thick and muscular quadriceps. This quad workout will nail your legs from every angle and focus on the front of the leg, aka the quadriceps. This is the key to having tree trunk legs.

This workout and the x factor’s you will learn in this video will get you bigger quads, and bring you one step closer to making your legs huge!

Let me know in the comments below what you think of the video!

The post Why Your Quads Aren’t Growing (The Truth About Growing Huge Legs) first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

Here’s what I got at the grocery store today for my bulking diet… I went to Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and Vitamin Shoppe. Watch the video to see everything I got!

You’ll also get to see my entire bulking diet for gaining muscle mass as I show you my full day of eating.

Getting big starts with the right approach with diet, so I thought it would be cool to switch things up and take you through a full day of eating on my mass building diet.

Make sure you pay close attention to the grocery shopping section in the beginning because I share everything I bought at the grocery store to get you swole.

I got Quest protein powder, canned Atlantic salmon, veggies, white jewel yams, peanut butter, apple cider vinegar, pasta, seasoning, Fage yogurt, basmati rice, chicken breast tenderloins, turkey, carrots, and more.

You need a great bulking diet to pack on mass quickly, and I’m confident you will learn a few valuable mass gaining diet hacks from this video.

Let me know in the comments below what questions you have about a proper mass gaining diet, and I’ll make sure to cover it in an upcoming video.

The post Grocery Shopping For Mass Gains + Full Day Of Eating first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

Today we’re in the kitchen making protein pancakes! Follow along as Troy gives you his delicious muscle-building pancake recipe.

Below you’ll find the complete recipe so you can make these yourself.

Complete Protein Pancake Recipe:

– 3 Sweet Potatoes
– 8 Tbsp Oatmeal
– 2 Tbsp Coconut Flour
– 3 Scoops Protein Powder (75g. protein)
– 3 Whole Eggs
– 1/2 Cup Liquid Egg Whites
– Stevia (to taste)
– Vanilla Extract (to taste)
– Cinnamon (to taste)
– 2 Tbsp PB2

Watch the video to see exactly how to make these pancakes!

Want a complete step-by-step workout program for gaining mass? Even if you’re a hardgainer? Go here.

The post Protein Pancakes Recipe For Muscle Gains first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

Today I’m going to simply show you what a typical “lean bulk” day in the life is so you can see the tricks and tactics I use with both my diet and workout plan to speed up results and stay in a calorie surplus.

If you want to see it go down with every meal go here to be taken to the YouTube video, but on this page I’m going to share my strategy behind each meal so you can get an insider look at my lean bulking strategy.

If you are struggling to put on consistent weight and feel like you can never eat enough to stay in your surplus on a busy schedule this article will guide you to the finish line.

Here’s my AM to PM lean bulking guide.

 Morning Lean Bulk Day In The Life

My typical lean bulking calories are between 3,300 and 3,700 depending on the goal of the day and what muscle group I’m training.

This is a pretty large amount of calories to consume on a busy schedule so I will usually start the day with a high calorie meal.

Getting in a quick 700-1,000 calories is a great way to start the lean bulking day the right way.

My 2 favorite ways to start the day are a high calorie egg scrambler type of dish or a high calorie oatmeal recipe with a side of chicken and eggs scrambled together.

This way I cover all of my healthy fats, protein, and carbs and am off to a flying start.

Here is a quick review of my favorite high calorie lean bulking meals:

Option 1:

• 1 cup rice or potatoes
• Combine with 4-5 ounces of lean protein such as chicken
• Crack 3-4 eggs over it
• Add olive oil, coconut oil, and/or sliced avocado for more healthy fat

That’s a quick and easy calorie blast!

Option 2 is to have a high calorie oatmeal bowl and combine it with eggs and chicken.

My favorite high calorie oatmeal recipe is:

• ½ cup oats
• 1 banana
• ½ cup blueberries
• 2 tbsp. almond butter
• 3 tbsp. chia seeds or hemp seeds

Late Morning Snacks

I’m a big fan of portable and convenient late morning snacks since I’m typically on the go at work during this time.

One of the easiest things you can do is bring a protein shake with you in a shaker cup and also take a small bag of nuts to get in a super combo of protein and healthy fats!

Another option is take some Tupperware with you and combine some grilled protein, carbohydrates, and sliced avocado.

Adding avocado to your protein and carbs is not only delicious but really high in calories!

Lunch (My Pre Workout Meal)

Lunch is usually my pre workout meal.

I always make sure to combine about 75-100 grams of carbs from either brown rice, oats, sweet potatoes, red skin potatoes, or whole grain pasta. These are all very starchy carb sources and make it really easy to get in a lot of calories.

Of course the natural pairing is more lean protein, usually around another 40-50 grams. I like sirloin steak, grilled chicken, or white fish as my pre workout protein.

If I’m extra hungry or its leg day I’ll throw in a few tbsp. of almond butter on top of celery, carrots, or rice cakes for healthy fats.

Post Workout Meal

Since we are lean bulking and its essential to be in a calorie surplus on a lean bulk I typically save any type of “cheat meal” during this time that is high in calories or carbs.

One thing I do when I’m lean bulking is I will have a post workout shake with whey protein and fast digesting carbs.

This shake usually contains about 40 grams of protein and about 70 grams of carbs.

Then about 30 minutes after this I will pack in my high calorie post workout meal.

Carbs are the holy grail of your post workout macros as the insulin spike is highly anabolic and will help pack on more mass.

Sometimes I eat whatever food I’m craving for my post workout carbs (my guilty pleasures are pop tarts and cereal)

Other times I’ll keep it cleaner and go white rice, brown rice, whole grain pasta, or sweet potatoes.

I’m pretty boring with my protein choices and typically don’t deviate off of lean grass fed meats, wild caught fish, chicken, or turkey.

A good rule of thumb is that between your post workout shake and your post workout meal you want to get in at least 80 grams of protein and 150 grams of carbs.

Dinner

Dinner is once again a combination of lean protein and healthy bodybuilding carbs. (See a theme here yet?)

It’s important to get in quality calories before you go to bed as this will prime your body for growth and recovery overnight when you go to sleep.

My personal favorite high calorie dinner is:

• 6 ounces wild caught salmon topped with sliced avocado (super high in healthy fats and protein)
• 5 cups quinoa with lemon juice and olive oil
• Broccoli with garlic and coconut oil

This is a really clean and high calorie meal that has about 1,000 total calories!

High Calorie Lean Bulking Snacks

Of course we need more portable snacks on the lean bulking diet for later in the day.

One of my recent guilty pleasures is power crunch bars and once in a great while Lenny and Larry cookies, although the macros are a little dirty as they are loaded with carbs from enriched flour.

Another one of the things I do when I’m super busy is simply eat almond butter straight out of the jar. Just 2 tbsp. is 200 total calories and is loaded with healthy fats and protein.

At night I’ll snack on brazil nuts, almond, cashews, and occasionally fry up some eggs in coconut oil.

Make sure you check out the YouTube video so you can see my complete day in the life on a lean bulking diet!

The post Lean Bulk Day In The Life: Full Day Of Eating first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

This clean bulking meal plan will show you how to gain muscle without gaining much (if any) fat.

There is a ton of information on this topic so I want to break it down and make it really easy for you to stay on track with your muscle building goals.

Your diet is actually even more important than your workouts when it comes to building muscle mass quickly, so here is the complete guide to building muscle without any fat.

How Many Calories?

Since I am not personally coaching you and I don’t know your metabolism and exact situation, we are going to use a method that I call “guesstimate and check” to figure out how many calories you need to be eating to gain muscle without gaining any fat.

Since your activity level, metabolism, and hormones fluctuate each day we are going to make a very educated guesstimate.

The first thing I want you to do is take your body weight and multiply it by 15.

If you weigh 150 lbs. take this number and multiply it by 15 to get:

• 150 x 15 = 2,250 calories

This is a guesstimate on our maintenance calories, but we have to be slightly ahead of maintenance to be in a prime muscle building state.

The trick is to stay in a surplus so all of the extra calories go to muscle building, and none are stored as body fat.

This takes some guess work and some testing of course.

Next we are going to take the 2,250 maintenance calories and add between 500 and 1,000 to that number.

If you know you are super active and have a very fast metabolism add 1,000 to this number.

If you pack on body fat a bit easier, you should add closer to 500 to this number.

Most importantly, track your calories and weigh yourself at the same time each week.

If you are training like a monster and your calories are on point, you should be gaining between 0.75 – 1.25 lbs. per week.

If you are gaining drastically more than this you are eating too many calories and are storing body fat.

Your body simply cannot build 2-3 lbs. of muscle per week regardless of how hard we train, so the 1 lb. per week guesstimate will keep you on track with your calories so you can gain muscle without fat!

Macro Breakdown

Now that we have our total number of calories figured out let’s dive into the macronutrient breakdown!

Hopefully by now you know you need to have a variety of protein, carbs, and healthy fats to build muscle, but have you ever thought to yourself how much of eat do you need?

Let this guide you!

• Protein: 1 – 1.2g per lb. of bodyweight
• Carbohydrates: 2 – 2.25g per lb. of bodyweight
• Fat: 25-35% of total calories from fat

Let’s use the 150 lb. guy eating at around a 750 calorie surplus for this example.

150 lbs. x 15 = 2,250 + 750 calories = 3,000 total calories.

Protein: 150 x 1.2 = 180 grams. (720 calories from protein).

Carbs: 150 x 2.0 = 300 grams. (1,200 calories from carbs).

Fats: Remainder of calories. 3,000 total calories – 1,920 = 1,080. Since fat is 9 calories per gram we divide this number to see we need to eat 120 grams of fat.

This comes out to about 36% of our total calories, on the high end but great for maximum hormone production on a muscle building diet.

Macronutrient Timing 

There are only a few rules of thumb that I want to cover when it comes to macronutrient timing and best macro choices.

I don’t want to overwhelm you, and these simple rules will keep you on track and give you the best results.

1. Carbohydrate timing

The most important time of the day when you want to load up on carbs is going to be pre workout, post workout, and breakfast.

These are the times of the day when your body is going to be the most “catabolic” – and since the goal is to build muscle without storing fat I highly recommend you get in at least 70% of your daily carbs during breakfast, pre workout, and post workout!

2. Protein spread out

Other than carbohydrate timing, the only other rule is that you should be getting in a healthy amount of protein with every meal and snack.

Since the goal is muscle building you should never eat a snack that is NOT high in protein.

For example, peanut butter on celery with raisins only contains about 5-10 grams of protein, and a lot more fat and carbs than protein.

A much better snack would be 4 ounces of grass fed beef topped with sliced avocado, which is loaded with protein and healthy fats.

Macronutrient Choices

Here is a quick list of the best macro choices that I recommend to build muscle and keep the fat at a minimum!

Protein:

Grass fed beef, grilled chicken, lean turkey breast, white fish, salmon, sardines, shrimp, scallops, egg whites, whole eggs, Tofu, soy beans, whey protein, cottage cheese

Carbohydrates:

Sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, brown rice, quinoa, lentils, fruits, vegetables, oats, steel cut oats, black beans, etc.

Fats:

By product from eating wild caught fish and whole eggs, avocado, nuts, coconut oil, olive oil, chia seeds, hemp seeds

Obviously there are more choices but this list is super clean and will give you epic body transformation results!

If you enjoyed this content please drop me a line on YouTube and let me know what types of videos you want to see next.

The post Clean Bulking Meal Plan: Gain Muscle Without Fat first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

Today I want to get into my favorite strategies to get bigger muscles. I’m going to unveil my 3 favorite training strategies to get big and strong fast, and if you want this to work optimally you need to do all three!

These 3 training principles combined will give you the maximum strength and aesthetic results.

Here are the three steps:

Compound Progressive Strength (Part 1 of 3)

This one is first for a reason. You absolutely need to start tracking your compound lifts if you want to get huge in a hurry.

Compound progressive strength means that you are making small and incremental improvements to the most important compound lifts each and every single workout!

Oh my how easy and important this is, and yet so few guys actually consistently do this!

The beauty of compound progressive improvements is that it guarantees you will get bigger and stronger. Increasing all of the major lifts by a good 50 lbs. in 3 months will no doubt yield tremendous size gains.

What I do is a keep a workout journal and I make sure to track all of my compound lifts each and every workout. Then the next time I go in the gym and perform the same lift I look at my little workout log and make sure that I try to add another rep to my regimen with the same weight, or even better yet I add 5-10 total lbs. and do the same reps I did last workout.

As you start to push yourself it will get harder and harder to improve each workout, but the important thing is that you are TRYING to improve each workout and get stronger and you know exactly how much you have to lift to do this.

You will be surprised how hard you can push yourself with this strategy!

So what are these magical lifts you need to track? Here is a short list of the “must track” lifts, but ideally you should track your entire workout including machine work and aim to improve each workout.

• Bench press (Barbell and dumbbell variation)
• Incline bench (Barbell an dumbbell variation)
• Barbell squat
• Front squat
• Deadlift
• Weighted pull-ups
• Overhead press (Standing)
• Dumbbell shoulder press
• Heavy row exercises (Barbell, dumbbell, 1-arm, etc.)

Those are the big ones and I recommend doing all of these at least 1 time per week for maximum strength and size gains. These exercises work your largest and strongest muscle groups and will be amazing for progress.

Time Under Tension (Part 2 of 3)

Now that we got the heavy lifting underway its time to maximize another crucial component for muscle growth and that is “time under tension.”

My favorite strategy to get both big and strong is to follow up the heavy compound lifts with some type of “time under tension” training as it’s the perfect compliment to compound lifting.

I notice that I can get the best muscle pump and squeeze doing time under tension training with a machine, but you can also do TUT with dumbbells and barbells.

If I do a workout with 2 compound exercises I try to match that with 2 exercises TUT training.

This gives me the best of both worlds. The lifting strategy here is a little different however as you want to make sure you are going at least 30 seconds under tension and the muscle is firing away the entire time (meaning you aren’t resting at the top or bottom of the movement).

Some of my favorite time under tension exercises include seated row machine, pectoral fly machine, lateral pull-down, triceps rope extension, ez bar curl on the machine, and seated dip machine.

X Factors (Part 3 of 3)

The third category is what I call the “x factors” to getting big. This one won’t necessarily get you stronger on the compound lifts, but we already cover that the best way humanly possible with part 1.

The x factor is doing some type of resistance band or isometric training at night. This is what pro bodybuilders are famous for as they flex and pose the muscle they trained late at night before they go to bed.

There are actually 3 ways to work a muscle group. Holding a flexed position and feeling that deep burn in the muscle belly is called “isometrics.”

I will do resistance band and isometrics of the muscles I trained that day at night for a little extra jolt of growth!

For example, if I do a heavy back and biceps workout full of compound lifts and time under tension, then that night I will pump up my arms with the resistance band and do some isometrics for my biceps and back.

This is one of the best X factors you can do for visual aesthetic results and the great thing is hardly anybody does this.

These are my top 3 training hacks for getting both bigger and stronger. Let me know what you think of these and feel free to share your thoughts in the YouTube comments! I read every single comment.

The post How To Get Bigger Muscles: My 3 Favorite Training Strategies To Get Big And Strong Fast first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

When it comes to clean bulking its essential to always be one step ahead of the game and have a never ending supply of meals to chow down on. If you are completely out of food in your fridge you are going to end up making very poor food choices.

Now I’m not against eating out while on a clean bulk, but it can get very expensive and it’s also inconvenient.

I wanted to put together a great resource for your clean bulking needs, because I know you’re in the kitchen making some serious gains during this time of the year.

I see you guys commenting and I know cooking and meal prep is a big sticking point for many of you during bulking season.

The beauty of this meal prep is that it will only take about 1-hour max in the kitchen and you’ll have food for the entire week!

I’m going to break this down by macronutrient because it’s easier to prepare if you break it down like this, and then combine everything into individual meals later.

Protein Meal Prep

Protein always needs to be on hand during a bulking period and if you are a lot like me you always seem to be running out of it.

Here are a few things that I do to make a ton of delicious and clean protein sources for bulking season.

Step 1: Bake 3-4 lbs. Of Chicken

In a minute you’ll see how you’ll have everything going to work in your kitchen at once. Your oven, microwave, and frying pan will all be utilized during this meal prep.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees and throw in a ton of marinated chicken breasts (I prefer olive oil, garlic, and pepper for the marinade) and let them cook for about 35-40 minutes while you are doing everything else in the kitchen.

Just make sure you set a timer so you don’t burn the bird!

Step 2: Pan Fry Your Protein

While the chicken is cooking, grab a skillet and add 1 lb. of grass fed beef and 1 lb of turkey.

The turkey is really plain and boring by itself so adding it in with the beef gives it a good flavor.

Toss it in your favorite cooking oil such as olive oil or coconut oil and throw in some additional seasoning.

Another thing you can do to give this dish more flavor, protein, and healthy fat is cook 6-8 eggs over the ground meat. This is an easy way to get in additional fats as well.

This all can be done while your chicken is cooking and shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes.

So if you have followed those 2 simple steps above you have over 5 lbs. of pure, and clean protein for your clean bulk.

No need to overcomplicate your meal prep. This was knocked out in a matter of 40 minutes and should last you 4-5 days.

Carbohydrate Meal Prep

I’m a huge fan of multi-tasking during my meal prep so for the carbohydrates we are going to cook these while we are cooking the protein.

If you followed the steps above you have the chicken baking in the oven, and more protein on the frying pan.

Now I want you to take out a big pot and fill it with water so you can boil some potatoes.

Don’t worry about the potatoes tasting plain as we are going to toss them in olive oil and other seasoning after they’re done cooking.

Boil the water and throw in 3-4 lbs. of sweet potatoes, red skin potatoes, good old russet potatoes, or a combination of all three.

Potatoes are the perfect carb source for lean bulking and will help you pack on muscle mass. Adding olive oil to your potatoes will give you additional healthy fats and make for a really nutritious meal.

While the potatoes are cooking, fire up the rice cooker. If you don’t have one you can purchase one for as little as 20 dollars and it will be a life saver when it comes to meal prep.

If not, you can always cook your rice the old fashioned way in a pot of water on the stovetop.

At this point we should have 4 things going at once:

1. The beef and turkey is in the frying pan
2. The chicken is in the oven
3. The potatoes are boiling
4. The rice is in the rice cooker

See how easy it can be to do a clean bulking meal prep?

All it takes is a little strategy

Healthy Fats Meal Prep

The great thing about healthy fats is that the healthiest fats for bulking season don’t require any cooking and can simply be added to your meals for enhanced flavor and nutrition.

Since fat is 9 calories per gram it will be vital that you eat a lot of it to reach your lean bulking macro goals.

Here are my favorite healthy fats during bulking season that require zero cooking, and how to utilize them appropriately.

Avocado: Slice this up and toss them on pretty much every type of protein and carb dish. My personal favorite is to add it to my ground meat and rice bowls!

Almond Butter: I eat this straight out of the jar or put it on celery

Peanut butter: Same as the almond butter!

Cashews, Brazil Nuts, almonds, and walnuts: Eat these plain for both healthy fat and protein.

Olive oil: Add this onto any of your meals, and use it as a cooking oil

Coconut Oil: Add this onto any of your meals and use it as a cooking oil

Hemp Seeds: Sprinkle on your protein and carbs

Chia Seeds: Sprinkle on your protein and carbs

See how easy it is to create a full clean bulking meal prep for the week? Follow these easy steps to make your lean bulk a breeze!

The post Clean Bulking Meal Prep For The Week first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

Are you ready for a full body anabolic assault? Today I want to talk about the power of including a “full body” workout routine into your regimen at least once per month.

I know I talk a lot about proper bodybuilding splits, but one of the best ways to shock the body into growth is to do something really outside your comfort zone and incorporate every large muscle group into 1 workout.

Your body secretes hormones and grows muscle out of demand – and when you put your body through the gauntlet of a full body regimen it will be forced to secrete more hormones and grow thick slabs of lean muscle mass.

While it’s not beneficial to work out your entire body each workout, I have found it to be a great asset to throw into my routine once per month.

A few of the benefits you will get from this “once per month” workout routine.

– You will secrete more anabolic hormones from this full body assault.

– You will shock your body into growth by doing something your body isn’t used to.

– You will challenge yourself mentally, and set a new tone for “how hard” you really have to train to make great gains.

I know for me the last one is very important as its really key to remind yourself that you can go in the gym and kill it like a beast.

I was having a bad few weeks of workouts last month and then one day I decided to do 8 sets of squats and 8 sets of deadlifts in the same workout.

Just doing something super intense like this pushed me far outside my comfort zone, and it gave me a huge rush of adrenaline and testosterone.

I want you to experience the same thing so without further ado here is the insane once per month workout routine!

Exercise 1: Chest Tri Set

This first exercise is an insane “tri-set” and will blast the upper chest and triceps. Part one will be switching off between 3 reps of dumbbell pullovers and 3 reps of dumbbell press ups with a focus on squeezing the chest and triceps during each repetition.

Your goal should be 10-12 reps of each exercise until you are 100 percent fatigued – and then you will be jumping immediately to the side of the flat bench for some incline upper chest push-ups.

On the very end of this tri set you need to go until 100 percent muscle failure and squeeze your upper chest during reach rep!

Try 3 total tri-sets to start off this workout with a vengeance.

Exercise 2: Close Grip Weighted Pull Ups Superset With Bicep Burnout

This one is a classic burnout exercise of first the lats – and then the biceps. I want you guys to start off by doing any form of weighted close grip pull ups (either with a chain like I show in the video, or with a weight belt or dumbbell between your feet.)

Next put the rope cable machine at the lowest position and do a high repetition burnout of the biceps. This one should be killer immediately after doing close grip pull ups which put a huge amount of overload on your biceps.

The goal with this exercise is to do between 20-25 reps with a light weight that you can control and get a massive squeeze on the biceps.

Pro Tip: Bring those palms out and hit the outer head of the bicep muscle (aka Bicep Peak)

Exercise 3: Bicep Peak Finisher

Start this one off with an incline bench around 45 degrees, and grab a straight bar or an EZ-bar with a close grip.

This will work the bicep peak much better than a wider grip on the bar and after you hit 10-12 reps I want you to grab a resistance band and put it between your feet for a high rep finisher!

The resistance band is one of the best tools to utilize that nobody uses! Try using this when you are fatigued, as it will keep the tension on the biceps the entire time!

Exercise 4: Shoulder Tri-Set (All 3 Heads Of The Shoulder)

Did you know that you have 3 heads of the shoulders? You have the front of the shoulder, side of the shoulder, and rear head of the shoulder. If you want those cannonball shoulders, you need to hit all 3 heads!

Part 1: Anterior Delt Raises

Bring a straight bar straight up and slightly out to hit your anterior deltoids – and go for about 10-12 repetitions with a fairly heavy weight. You should be close to failure at the end of all these sets.

Part 2: Incline Lat Raises

This is all about hitting the lateral head of the deltoids with the 45-degree incline lat raise.

Once again, go for high repetitions and do not worry about picking a heavy weight. This one is all about mind-muscle connection and you will get much better results when you pick a weight you can control.

Part 3: Rear Delt Raises (Seated)

This one is self-explanatory. Grab some light dumbbells and blast those rear deltoids with a huge mind-muscle connection on the posterior deltoid muscle!

Make sure you do about 10-12 reps on this one and get a good squeeze!

Exercise 5: Tension Squats

This is my favorite lower body exercise of all time because it forces you to put all of the tension on the hardest part of the barbell squat – the lower half.

I want you to pick a weight that is about 50 percent of your 1 rep squat max – and stick the repetition at the very bottom “ass to grass” for about 5 seconds. Next subtly raise up but only about half way and do about 8-12 repetitions without going up all the way.

This will engage your hip flexors and force you to maximize your “weak point” muscle groups on the squat.

So that was my “insane once per month” workout regimen. Do you want more full body once per month workouts to unleash the anabolic beast? Let us know in the YouTube comments.

The post INSANE “Once Per Month” Workout For Muscle Mass (For Skinny Guys & Hardgainers) first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

FST-7 training is a special type of training that both Mr. Olympia winners Jeremy Buendia and Phil Heath do in the off-season to bring up lagging muscle groups.

It was created by a muscle building mastermind by the name of Hamy Rambod – and the science of it is pretty genius.

By doing high volume and short rest time training, you are able to stretch the fascial tissue on top of the muscle giving it a greater potential for growth.

The more “stretchable” your fascial tissue is on top of your muscle the bigger that muscle can get. Now this is largely genetic of course, but with FST-7 style training we can actually stretch out the fascial tissue even more to yield bigger lean muscle gains!

“Fascial stretch training” is a great type of training for any naturally skinny guy to bring up a lagging muscle group.

I have found that this style of workout is ideal for biceps and triceps so I wanted to give you a complete FST-7 style arm workout so you can get some python arms!

Let’s get right into it…

FST-7 Style Training Rules

Before I get into the actual FST-7 arm workout its important that you learn how to execute this style of training.

FST-7 training can be categorized as “mind-muscle” connection training, as the goal should be to keep maximum tension on the muscle throughout each set.

Think of FST-7 training as the polar opposite of “ego lifting.” You are going to pick very light weights, and you are going to focus on squeezing the muscle throughout each repetition so you can break down the maximum number of muscle fibers and stretch the fascial tissue.

Every FST-7 style exercise in this workout I want you to follow this protocol.

• 7 total sets
• 8-12 reps per set
• 45-seconds rest time MAX between sets
• Flexing and static holding of muscle between sets

This means that you are going to be putting your arms through the gauntlet during this workout.

Are you ready to begin?

Underhand Grip Drag Curls

The start of the workout is going to be all about blasting those biceps! The underhand grip drag curl is a unique motion to train your biceps and will give you a massive pump in not only your biceps but your lats as well.

Make sure to keep the bar really close to your body for the entire repetition, and focus on channeling that “mind-muscle” connection in your biceps.

This is an easy exercise to mess up the tension, so make sure you keep the focus on your biceps so you can reap the benefits of sleeve tearing arms!

In between sets I focus on squeezing the biceps with very light weight and getting a huge pump on.

Make sure you watch the video so you can learn how to do this!

Underhand Grip Triceps Pushdown

Here’s one of my favorite triceps exercise of all time: The underhand grip triceps pushdown.

The biggest tip I can give you with this exercise is to make sure you don’t go “too high” on the way up, and you keep all the tension on your triceps and away from your shoulder joints.

In between sets I recommend doing some intense “isometric holds” of the triceps muscle go pump more blood into the muscle between sets.

Single Arm “Jerk Off” Curls

I know, I know very weird name! I learned this one from Greg Plitt on one of his famous exercise tutorial videos.

This is a great way to get a different type of bicep pump because the majority of the weight will be dispersed on the bottom of the straight bar giving you a unique pump.

Squeeze your biceps and come all the way across your body on this exercise and you will feel the burn of a lifetime.

Switch arms and rotate back and forth from using the left arm and then the right arm.

Dumbbell Triceps Kickback

This is a classic exercise and a great way to develop those horse-shoe triceps. Dumbbell triceps kickbacks FST-7 style are a great way to ensure that you aren’t picking too heavy of a weight and you are focusing all of your efforts on the “mind-muscle” connection of the exercise.

My recommendation for this one is to pick a weight that is lighter than you normally do, and keep your elbows in very close to your body.

Squeeze the triceps and rotate the palms outward on each repetition, and you will start to see (and feel) the results very quickly.

Single Arm Curls (Straight Bar)

Time for another bicep blaster to finish the workout strong. Think of single arms curls a lot like dumbbell palms-up curls except with major instability throughout the movement.

Single-arm curls with the added instability is a great way to work the little muscle fibers surrounding the biceps muscle, and get fuller skin tearing bicep muscles.

Make sure to keep your rest times short and switch between the left and right arms with zero rest time so you can optimize the fascial stretch potential of the single arm straight bar curls! 

Dumbbell Overhead Triceps Extension

The dumbbell overhead triceps extension is a great way to build mass in the triceps. You need to make sure you keep your elbows in throughout the movement on this exercise or you risk injuring your shoulder.

In between sets on this exercise I like doing a “triceps incline push-up” to force blood into the triceps and get a stronger mind-muscle connection between sets.

This is one of my favorite triceps mass builders and incorporating this into your FST-7 arm workout is a great way to get bigger arms.

Remember that over 60 percent of your arms are made up of your triceps!

That is the complete FST-7 style arm workout! Make sure to watch the video on YouTube so you can see precisely how to execute this awesome workout.

Have any questions? I’d love to hear from you in the comments section on the YouTube channel!

The post FST-7 Style Arm Workout: Biceps and Triceps Fascial Stretch Training first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

If you’ve hit a clean bulking plateau, then this is for you. I’m going to show you how you can not only stay leaner during bulking season, but also speed up your strength and size gains while boosting testosterone at the same time.

The reason you’d want to incorporate “mini cuts” into your bulking season is very simple. You are no doubt going to pack on a lot of body fat during your bulk and if you end up bulking for 16-24 straight weeks like a lot of guys, then you are going to have a ton of body fat to lose.

Throwing in a “mini cut” for 1-4 weeks throughout your bulking cycle can help you in the following ways:

• Lose a lot of body fat in a very short period of time (mini cuts are more aggressive).

• Increase your testosterone during bulking season because the leaner you are, the higher your T levels are. This helps to increase strength.

• Help you “stay ripped” even in the middle of a bulk.

In the following sections I’m going to break down the exact definition of a mini cut, as well as the ideal length of time, calories on a mini cut, and last but not least the “x factors” that will help you get optimal results.

What Is A Mini Cut?

A mini cut can be defined as a shorter and more aggressive cutting period where you can lose the optimal amount of body fat without causing metabolic damage in the form of a sluggish metabolism like you do with traditional cutting diet’s that run 12-16 weeks long.

Think of a mini cut as like robbing a bank – you’re in and out before any damage occurs!

When you implement a mini cut, the total calorie restriction is more intense than a traditional cutting diet, so you burn as much fat in a period of say 1 month than you normally would in a period of 8-10 weeks.

This shorter and more intense “mini cut” is perfect to throw in during a bulk because you can shed several unwanted lbs. of body fat, and you won’t mess up your metabolism along the way so you can go right back into your bulk with a vengeance and start putting on slabs of lean muscle!

Length Of Time And Calories On A Mini Cut

Now we need to talk about the length of time and the number of calories on a mini cut.

The length of time you stay on your mini cut will vary depending on how much body fat you’ve gained and what your individual goals are.

If you want to reap the maximum fat loss results without messing up your metabolism you can do a “mini cut” for a period of 4 weeks.

If you want to just do it for a very short period of time and you aren’t that concerned with packing on extra body fat I recommend you do a mini cut for about 1-2 weeks.

Another thing to consider is how lean you want to get in the spring and summer time. If your goal is 5-7 percent body fat you absolutely have to keep your body fat levels around 10-12 percent during your mass-gaining phase, so you can use the power of the mini cut accordingly to stay around this percentage.

For me personally I am going to start incorporating the “mini cut” every 6 weeks for a period of 2-3 weeks until I start my aggressive cut.

So what do your calorie numbers look like on a mini cut?

I recommend that you eat your total bodyweight x 10 on a mini cut if you want “aggressive results” – and if you are a serious hard gainer without much body fat to lose you can take your total body weight x 12.

Here would be an example for a 190 lb. guy:

• 190 x 10 = 1,900 calories

• 190 x 12 = 2,080 calories

Pretty simple math, right?

Now that we know what a mini cut is, and the amount of calories and length of time, we need to cover a few “mini cut x factors!”

X Factors On Your Mini Cut

Okay, here are a few tips that will take your mini cut to the next level.

Tip number one is going to be intermittent fasting, as this will make it really easy to get into an extreme calorie deficit, and it also has powerful testosterone boosting benefits.

Intermittent fasting simply means that you have an “eating window” for only 6-8 hours per day, and the other 16-18 hours you are fasting. This gives your body a chance to improve its metabolism, and also secrete more Testosterone and HGH.

Another X factor to consider is that you need to eat enough protein so you don’t lose muscle mass. This means about 1 gram of protein per lb. of body weight.

One last tip is don’t completely eliminate carbohydrates on your mini cut. You want to consume some carbs around your workouts so you can maximize your workout intensity and not put your body in a catabolic state.

By eliminating carbs altogether your body will tap into its amino acids and protein and you will start to lose size and strength.

That is the power of a mini cut in a nut shell! Have any questions? Make sure to watch the video to get all the details, and I’d love to hear from you in the YouTube comments!

The post Lean Bulking Tips: “Mini Cuts” To Gain Muscle Faster! first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

Today I have a true story about how I almost broke down and took anabolic steroids. I think a lot of you will relate to this and it could even be something that you’re going through yourself.

Why in the world (after all my years of all-natural training) did I take anabolic steroids?

Curiosity?

Lack of patience?

Frustration?

First I’m going to dive into my story, and then I’ll share a new strategy I’m using to “force muscle growth.”

Why Did I Almost Take Steroids?

The last month was a very stressful and challenging one for me on many levels. Work demands were through the roof and I had a lot more “personal stress” than what I am accustomed too.

As a result of all of this my cortisol levels were through the roof and my workouts suffered. I imagine a lot of you guys have felt like this at various times through your life… When school gets stressful, relationship problems occur, or even increased work demands.

For the last 6-8 weeks my workouts have been awful. I’d go in the gym and give it my all but it actually felt like I was going backwards and not forward.

I don’t know about you but when I’m really stressed out and have a lot of things on my mind it’s really hard for me to get in a good workout.

They say that working out is a great stress reliever but for me playing sports like basketball and tennis is a lot more rewarding when I am super stressed.

The thing about the last few months is these are the “prime months” for lean bulking season and making epic gains in the gym. It frustrated me beyond belief to waste a few months of training without any strength or size gains in the middle of bulking season, so I did what a lot of guys who are frustrated with their results do and looked to the Internet for anabolic steroid information.

I spent a good 2-3 weeks on the forums and doing a ton of research on steroids and anabolic hormones. There is a ton of things to know about steroids and this isn’t something that you should just “jump into” as you can mess up your testosterone and estrogen levels, which will cause major side effects.

Did I mention buying steroids is illegal, dangerous and very shady? (especially from the Dark Web!)

So after 2 weeks I knew exactly what I was going to take, and then I searched the forums for a reliable “source” for getting them.

BOOM! I had everything ready to roll… I was going to purchase my Test-E cycle and I bought my estrogen blockers.

I was about to send the steroid dealer my money and then I was on my iCloud going through some old pictures of myself.

I landed on this picture from a trip to Barbados about 2 years ago when I was eating really clean, training hard, and going “all in” on my fitness with 100 percent dedication.

I looked at that picture and I really liked how I looked. I looked big, athletic, ripped, and like an athlete.

2 years have gone by and although I have a little more body fat than what I had in the picture, I’m actually way stronger on all the compound lifts and have more lean muscle mass.

I realized that with a proper diet and training plan for 2-3 months I could actually look way better than I did in that picture!

Believe it or not, simply seeing this old picture of myself is what caused me to abandon the steroids and dedicate myself back to training.

I decided that steroids, with the massive acne, potential hair loss, and emotional side effects associated with it just aren’t worth it to me.

I’ve put 10 years of all natural training in so far and I’m not about to ruin that just because I had a few months of stress that caused me to lose some gym progress.

Do you guys have a similar story? Let me know in the YouTube comments!

Now that I’ve shared my “close call” with steroids, I want to show you a natural way to jump-start your muscle gains if you’ve been struggling for a while.

How To Force Muscle Growth

This sounds gimmicky but I have a really interesting growth strategy that I want you to do in each workout for a lagging muscle group.

Say for example your chest grows really slow and you want to bring up those pecs.

You will have 3 workout strategies in each workout:

1. Heavy Eccentric Overload Training

2. High Rep Lactic Acid Training

3. Fatigued Isometric Holds

Heavy eccentric overload training means you are going very heavy sets in the 4-6 rep range and you are going down for a count of 3 seconds on each repetition.

This helps to break down more muscle fibers, as the “lowering portion” of the movement is where the magic happens with micro tears.

Try to do 3-4 heavy eccentric overload sets, especially on a compound exercise.

The second component to your workout should incorporate a shaper exercise for 20-25 repetitions per set to unleash the “lactic acid” portion of the training, which releases more growth hormone and helps you get shredded.

Try doing 3-4 sets of a chest shaper like a low cable fly, pectoral fly, or even weighted push-ups!

The third workout strategy is isometrics when you are fatigued! This means you are tensing and holding a muscle group between sets, or immediately following a workout.

Tense and hold whatever muscle you are training for a minimum of 30 seconds when fatigued and you will incorporate the third growth factor to your training.

The combination of all 3 of these elements in each workout will force muscle growth into whatever muscle group you are training!

Try it out on your next workout and I promise you will be very sore. Let me know what you think in the YouTube comments and I look forward to making gains with you in 2017!

The post I Almost Took Steroids + How To Force Muscle Growth first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

Today I want to discuss something a bit “negative…” But I’m positive it will help you so much!

Part of trying to become an expert in anything is that you are going to make a lot of mistakes along the way, and I surely made some huge muscle building mistakes when I first started working out.

To make matters worse, I made some huge mistakes in and out of the gym for as long as 5 years!

I want you to have much faster progress than me so I want to tell you the top 3 muscle gaining mistakes that cost me AT LEAST 20 lbs. of muscle. I think I could have reached my current physique about 3 years sooner if I had known what I’m about to tell you right now.

Like the old saying goes, “Everybody should learn from mistakes, but nobody ever said they had to be yours.”

Mistake #1: Not Enough Lower Body Compound Exercise Focus

I get so envious when I see young guys in their late teens or early 20’s absolutely crushing it on the squat rack or deadlift. I didn’t get in the “flow” of doing heavy lifts with my lower body until the last few years, and I’ve since fallen in love with lower body compound lifts.

My mentality when I was young was that I was all about the upper body! Seriously, I would get so excited to try and add 5-10 more pounds onto my bench press, when I should have been putting equal if not more energy into improving my squat max and my deadlift max.

There is a big difference going into the gym to train a muscle group and go through the motions without much enthusiasm, verse going in the gym with a razor like focus like you are on a mission to improve your lifts.

When I walk into the gym now I get so excited to hit a new PR on the squat and dead-lift. Back when I was 18 I was scared to squat in front of a bunch of guys because deep down I knew it was my weak point.

This lack of enthusiasm for lower body compound lifts gave me some huge weak points in my back, hamstrings, and quadriceps that I am still trying to make up for to this day.

If you want to reach your maximum potential, you need to hit those lower body compound movements with peak intensity! Even if you don’t care what your legs look like, hit them with intensity knowing that it will bring your entire physique together and actually help you secrete more anabolic hormones as well.

Moral of the story? Don’t skip leg day! In fact, embrace it and LOVE IT!

Mistake #2: Taking Too Many Supplements

Yes, you read that right! Taking too many supplements easily cost me lbs. of precious muscle mass. The thing is, I thought that supplements would compensate for an average or below-average diet.

What was my diet like when I was 18 years old?

Let’s see… After school I headed to subway for a 12-inch subway club sandwich, then I took 2 scoops of Jack3d, then I had some BSN protein after my work, and ate a bag of chips.

Later that night I took some fancy testosterone-boosting pill or nighttime recovery “miracle blend” that some pro bodybuilders said they were taking.

What I really should have been doing was feeding my body full of muscle building whole foods like…

• Organic eggs
• Grass fed meats
• Wild caught salmon
• Red skin potatoes
• Sweet potatoes
• Fruits
• Veggies
• Nutrition boosters like hemp seeds and chia seeds

This is my current diet and it’s no surprise that it’s way more effective for building muscle mass than a shitty diet full of processed foods and protein shakes.

Your body would much rather get protein and carbs from wild caught salmon and sweet potatoes than a whey concentrate and maltodextrin powder.

You’re far better off eating a plate of organic eggs with avocado at night than downing a casein protein shake and taking a “recovery supplement.”

There are a few supplements that can be important and serve a purpose, but in no way shape or form will they compensate for a poor diet. If you think an expensive supplement stack and a poor diet is going to give you better results than sticking with whole food you are a fool! Don’t make the same mistake I made.

Mistake #3: Not Understanding What “Mind-Muscle” Connection Means

This one is huge so let me explain. When you are training a small muscle group such as say your biceps or triceps, you need to put a huge emphasis on “putting your head exactly in the same spot you are trying to train” and squeezing all of the tension on that exact same spot.

For years I thought that doing dumbbell hammer curls was going to give me bigger arms, but if I focused on where I actually felt the tension, I would have realized that there was just as much tension going on my anterior deltoids as my biceps.

Now when I work out my arms I have a huge emphasis on a very close grip because that is where I feel the tension the most on my biceps peak, which is the portion of your arm muscle that will make your bicep appear “taller.”

By channeling my mind-muscle connection I immediately know that if I want bigger biceps a close grip EZ-bar curl is going to be much more effective than a dumbbell hammer curl.

Let’s take this a step further because this needs to be further explained. Many exercises that build the most muscle are actually machine exercises or slow motion compound lifts where you are forced to go down very slow and controlled. When you lower the weight slow and controlled you are actually creating more healthy micro-tears, and have more potential to grow that muscle quickly.

When you are young you usually lower the weight as fast as you can because that is what you see everybody else doing, but by channeling your “mind-muscle connection” and lowering the weight slow and feeling that maximum tension, you are able to grow the muscle so much faster.

The types of training that I have seen the most results from are slow motion, eccentric overload, and FST-7. All three of these training styles require a ton of time under tension to be effective and this means you have maximum “mind-muscle connection.”

The post These 3 Muscle Gaining Mistakes Cost Me 20 Lbs. Of Muscle first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

Troy here and I’m really excited to share with you my take on clean bulking vs. dirty bulking.

I know it’s the time of the year where a lot of you guys are hitting the weights and buffets hard in hopes to pack on some bulking season gains, so I thought it would be an appropriate topic to dive into the pros and cons of clean bulking and dirty bulking.

To be quite honest, I have done my fair share of both clean bulking and dirty bulking in the past and I have a few opinions on each.

This was not a simple answer, so I invite you to sit back and take some notes throughout this article because the answer on if clean bulking or dirty bulking is right for you depends 100 percent on your goals and current fitness level.

The Pros and Cons Of Dirty Bulking

Dirty bulking has some good and some bad. Here is a quick list of things that I thought were really positive about “dirty bulking.”

Dirty Bulking Pros:

• A lot more fun to pig out on pop tarts, ice cream, and your favorite snacks.

• Much easier to enter a calorie surplus due to many “dirty foods” like pizza, donuts, and ice cream being more calorically dense.

• If you don’t let it get out of hand and follow the 80/20 rule you can still make great progress without storing too much body fat.

• Works best if you are a beginner to the gym (less than 2 years of training).

• If you don’t care about gaining body fat along the way this is likely a better strategy for you.

So those are the pros that I thought of in regards to “dirty bulking.” The thing about dirty bulking is that it works awesome if you are a super hardgainer in the first 2 years of your training career.

I know guys who are rail thin that tip the scales at 110 lbs. and actually want to gain some body fat. This means that they have to sometimes eat 5,000 calories per day to have a radical weight gain, so eating food like pizza, sub sandwiches, and milk shakes can be a great strategy.

The best of both worlds of course is to follow an 80/20 rule in regards to your dirty bulking, and that means just 20 percent of your total calories are “dirty.”

What makes a food “dirty” you probably are thinking? Basically it just means that it is processed, high in fat and/or sugar, and is very low in nutrients. Think fast food, pizza, fried foods, dessert foods, etc.

Dirty Bulking Cons:

• Could lower your anabolic hormones (especially if you are past the age of 30).

• If you have a sensitive stomach you are likely to upset it even further with “dirty foods.”

• Clearly not the best option for your long-term health.

• You will gain much more body fat.

• Energy levels will likely be lower due to poor quality food and lack of nutrition.

The Pros and Cons Of Clean Bulking

Clean bulking is my current choice for a very specific reason. I am striving to compete in a fitness competition sometime in the next 9 months, and I have to be careful of how much body fat I pack on.

I’m only going to give myself 12-16 weeks max to cut and I want to ensure that my body fat levels hover around 10-12 percent at the peak of my bulk.

There are also a few other reasons I prefer a “clean bulk” which can be summarized by the pro’s that I came up with:

Clean Bulking Pros:

• Your natural hormone levels like HGH and testosterone will be much higher if you’re in a “clean calorie surplus.”

• Your energy levels will be much better and you will have an easier time digesting your food.

• You won’t pack on as much body fat and can actually eat MORE food in terms of total volume and still stick at your calorie goal.

• A far superior strategy if you are a fitness competitor or just want to get very lean during the summer time.

• If you have been lifting for more than 3 years and already experienced your “newbie gains” this will be a much better strategy for you.

As you can see I’m a big fan of eating clean for optimal hormone secretion. Right now I have my testosterone levels soaring because I’m eating a very clean calorie surplus.

There is a huge difference in how your body functions when you have a calorie surplus consisting of organic and grass fed meats, olive oil, red skin potatoes and broccoli vs. eating Pepperoni pizza and ice cream.

You may hear of bodybuilders eating foods like this in the off-season, but keep in mind they are on steroids and have an unfair advantage!

I simply feel much better physically and have higher energy levels when my diet is mostly clean. This doesn’t mean that I won’t cheap every once in a while – but I probably keep it closer to 90/10 to ensure that my body fat stays relatively lean.

Keep in mind that I have been in the gym for 10 plus years, and have aspirations of competing in a fitness show.

Clean Bulking Cons:

• Makes it harder to get into a calorie surplus if your diet is ONLY clean foods.

• If you’re a serious hard gainer and need to eat 5,000 calories to be in a surplus a 100 percent clean bulk will be a ton of food and you will find it difficult.

• It’s rather boring, and can get mundane since the list of “clean foods” is much shorter than the list of “dirty foods.”

What do you think? Is a clean bulk or a dirty bulk right for you? Share your thoughts below and I look forward to hearing your bulking game plan!

The post Clean Bulking vs. Dirty Bulking: Which One Is Best? first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

One of the biggest X factors to shocking your body into growth is incorporating new forms of resistance and training.

If you are like me and have been solely doing gym workouts for the last 12 months, it might be time to try out some crazy bodyweight workout routines.

On top of needing to change up your workout routine, bodyweight workouts are an excellent way to get in a workout anywhere.

The first time I tried out this chest workout routine I was in vacation last week in Los Angeles. I was traveling for a convention, and needed to get in a chest workout but the hotel gym was a joke.

I decided to change things up and head to the beach and do a bodyweight workout. I actually had one of the best chest workouts of my life! My body was so use to just lifting heavy weights in the gym, and the combination of hitting new muscle fibers and doing higher rep + short rest time training was just what the mass gaining doctor ordered!

My new favorite way to train is a combination of doing heavy weight (because its just FUN lifting heavy weight, and doing high repetition + short rest time training.

With this type of training you get the best of both worlds. I got a massive upper chest pump with this workout – which was precisely what I was striving for. Most guys are lacking an upper chest, and doing bodyweight exercises is a perfect way to target these muscle fibers.

Next time you are on vacation and need a sick chest workout – or simply anytime you want to change up that boring chest day routine try this workout!

Too early to tell if it helped boost my bench press max (I’ll be doing chest day next week again in the weight room) – but my upper chest felt an amazing pump so I know it was working.

Remember – if you want to pack on serious mass you need to train like a bodybuilder and that means a powerful MIND-MUSCLE connection. This means you are focusing in on the muscle you are working and SQUEEZING the hell out of it.

Let’s dive into this chest workout routine!

The Chest Workout Routine You Can Do Anywhere!

Let’s blast through this workout! You can do this literally anywhere and when I say ZERO EQUIPMENT I mean absolutely no equipment. (unless you count the floor.)

Exercise 1: In-Out Push-Ups

Start with your hands about shoulder width apart and go down for a regular push-up. On the way up explode off the ground and land with your hands just outside shoulder width apart. You will be going back and forth placing your hands inside and then outside.

Go hard on this exercise and make sure to explode off the ground and contract those pectorals.

Exercise 2: Eccentric Shoulder Tap Push-Ups

This chest exercise sounds simple enough but gives you a great pump across the center of your chest. Start of in regular push up formation, and go down slow and controlled to a count of 3 seconds (hence the “eccentric” part of the push up). Next you are going to come up and tap your left shoulder with your right hand on the first rep. on the next rep you are going to switch this up, and tap your right shoulder with your left arm. Continue on until you are fatigued!

Exercise 3: Chest Tap Push Ups

Next up we got the chest tap push ups. This is very similar to the shoulder tap push ups except you won’t be going down in an eccentric fashion, and you will be tapping your chest instead of your shoulders. This works a different portion of your chest and is a great way to change it up right after the shoulder tap push ups.

If you feel like a beast try doing the chest tap push ups with 2 hands (as in tapping your chest with both hands at once instead of alternating)

Exercise 4: Eccentric Diamond Push-Ups Superset With Upper Chest Isometrics

This is a killer upper chest finisher. Eccentric diamond push ups superset with upper chest isometrics is the best upper chest shaper on this list.

First of all, you will place your hands together in a diamond formation, and go down to a count of 3 seconds. By putting your hands closer, you target the upper pectoral muscle fibers. Directly after you go until failure on this movement, you want to do an isometric hold targeting the upper chest.

Make sure to watch the video so you know how to pull this isometric hold off!

Try out this chest workout routine and let us know in the comments what you think! What muscle group should we feature next for a bodyweight routine?

The post Chest Workout At Home For Men (Build Mass Without Equipment) first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

What’s up my bulking bros. I’ll be quite honest – I have a love/hate relationship with bulking season. I’m a huge proponent of “lean bulking” – but even the few extra lbs. of fat I gain as a result bother me as I love being shredded.

I’ve switched my mindset during this bulking season however – and am looking in terms of long term with my physique. Going through a 4-6 month bulk is going to help your physique come together flawlessly for 2 very important reasons:

1. You can only go on a major calorie deficit for so long. After a while your metabolism slows and your workouts become lethargic and you don’t gain lean muscle mass. Increasing your calories will increase your motivation and take your workouts to the next level.
2. The muscle you gain during bulking season will increase your resting metabolism, so when you cut down you will have new gains to show off and can get by eating more calories during “cutting season” if you aspire to get more shredded than a julienne salad. (My favorite line from the movie, “Tropic Thunder.”)

So now that we got the mental masturbation covered for bulking season, lets talk about macros baby! I know a lot of you guys are struggling to get in enough calories. Many of you underestimate just how many calories you are burning each and every single day with a fast metabolism.

There are really only three components to building lean muscle mass, and the third one is the one that messes up most guys (ATP/energy).

This is fancy talk that means your body needs enough carbs and healthy fats to build muscle or it will tap into your amino acids (aka protein) for energy and you need that protein for muscle building.

You’re not choking down that boring chicken breast for energy, you are eating it for gains – so make sure you eat enough carbs and healthy fats during bulking season or you will not budge on the scale.

I know a lot of you guys have given us some heat for making these insane high calorie shakes, but the fact is they are the easiest way to get in a calorie surplus, especially if you require 4,000 plus total calories per day and you are very active.

Have you ever tried eating 4,000 total calories of chicken, rice, and potatoes? Its not easy, and its pretty damn boring!

Without further ado, let’s dive into the 2,700 calorie Pina Colada recipe!

Mass Gainer Shake (2,700 Total Calories)

Alright, time for the good stuff. You are going to grab your blender and find the following items from your kitchen, local grocery store, or local Amazon Drone Delivery Boy (I suggest you become friends with an Amazon Drone ASAP lol)

Make sure you watch the video so you can see my aesthetically pleasing face, but just in case you don’t want to look at me I completely understand! Here is the recipe.

• Whole coconut milk (630 Calories)
• 2 cans of pineapple juice + Chunks (280 Calories)
• Half of an avocado (150 calories)
• Pineapple fruit yoghurt (140 calories)
• 2 scoops vanilla protein (240 calories)
• 3 tbsp. chia seeds (200 calories)
• 1 banana (120 calories)
• 4 tbsp. MCT Oil/liquid coconut oil (480 Calories)
• 4 tbsp. all natural peanut butter (480 Calories)

Let’s talk about these ingredients. Actually, before we do that lets first go into some pro tips so you can ensure success with this recipe.

• Don’t use chocolate protein. It just won’t taste right, and it will completely ruin the integrity of the pina colada flavor. Use unflavored or vanilla protein powder with this shake.
• If you don’t have chia seeds, Hemp seeds are even better. If you don’t have these at your local store I suggest you buy them on Amazon for fairly cheap.
• If you want this to be extra creamy, make sure the banana is frozen.
• You can substitute almond butter OR cashew butter for the peanut butter. Cashew butter is probably the best choice for this recipe.

Muscle Building Benefits + How To Drink This Beast

I forgot to mention this in the last mass building smoothie recipe. You don’t have to drink this all in 1 sitting! In fact – I recommend you split this up into 3 different shakes that you consume throughout the day.

The best strategy would be in the morning for a quick breakfast, post workout, and in the evening for a surplus of anabolic fuel.

This Pina Colada shake is the perfect muscle-building recipe because it contains the following:

1. High amounts of “clean protein.”
2. Slow digesting and fast digesting carbs giving you a mix of ATP/energy.
3. Healthy fats, and energy boosting MCT.
4. High in omega 3’s, which are crucial for growth and recovery.
5. Loaded with vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients (seriously, between the avocado, pineapple, chia seeds and banana you probably don’t even need to take a multi vitamin.)

Want to see more crazy mass building smoothie recipes? Make sure you let us know in the YouTube comments, and I’ll talk to you guys soon!

The post Mass Gainer Shake, 2,700 Calories! (Pina Colada Flavor) first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

I’m not too proud to admit that I am a culprit of skipping leg day. Back in my college days all I really cared about was what my biceps, abs, and chest looked like.

Boy was I dumb back then!

Little did I know that going hardcore on leg day was the X factor to sculpting an incredible looking physique and helping you achieve the body of your dreams.

For the last 2 years I have become obsessed with leg day and I’m proud to admit that I have hit well over 400 lbs. on the dead lift, and over 350 lbs. on the barbell back squat. Not bad for a guy that was afraid to squat more than 135 lbs. in college!

So far, so good… But the problem is that my leg workouts are 100 percent dominant on my quads and hamstrings. Even up to this day it is really hard for me to stay consistent with working out my calves.

I really can’t pinpoint one single thing about it – but for whatever reason its really hard to stay consistent with your calves’ workouts.

I tell myself I’m going to do them on leg day, but after 8 sets of squats and a few grueling sets of dumbbell walking lunges I just don’t have the energy.

I’ve decided to go about this in a much different way recently and I want to inspire you to do the same.

This calves workout that I’m going to share with you is intended for you to do at the end of your upper body workout up to three times per week.

I set up this workout so you only have to do it for about 15 minutes to get in an awesome calf pump!

Let’s inspire each other to not skip leg day and especially not skip out on calves workouts, because the end result is something that looks like chicken legs!

Here is “The Chicken Leg Destroyer Calves Workout For Mass.”

Exercise 1: Leg Press Calf Raise Superset With Isometrics

This is my all time favorite for getting an epic calf pump. The key with this exercise is to push off on your big toe and not the outside of your foot. If you remember that tip with every exercise you will develop thick and powerful looking donkey calves!

I like to place a ton of volume on my calves during this exercise with very short rest times between sets. I find this to be the most effective way to train the calf muscle into muscular development.

The movement is a very subtle one, and all starts with flexion in the ankle joint. Make sure you watch the YouTube video carefully so you can see precisely how to do this movement.

Sets: 3

Reps: 12-15 + Isometric hold for 30 Seconds

Rest Time: 30 Seconds

Exercise 2: Seated Calf Raise With Hold @ Top

This is a classic calf exercise that you will see at most gyms, but sadly a lot of guys don’t do it properly.

Drop your heel and perform this exercise by channeling your mind muscle connection on the lower part of your calf muscle.

This is the best calf exercise for really targeting the lower portion of that calf muscle and developing thickness.

When you are almost at failure hold the position at the very top with your toes elevated as high as possible and keep that isometric hold for at least 10 seconds.

Sets: 3

Reps: 12-15 + Isometric Hold

Rest Time: 30 Seconds

Exercise 3: Standing Calf Raise (Smith Machine)

This is exactly like the donkey calf raise machine, so if you are fortunate enough to have this machine in your gym you can perform this exercise on there.

This is the standard standing calf raise, but once again you should make sure you are pushing off on your big toe and keeping the motion slow and controlled throughout.

Another tip is make sure you have a full range of motion on this exercise so you can emphasize the top portion of your calf muscle.

Sets: 3

Reps: 10-12

Rest Time: 60 Seconds

Exercise 4: Dumbbell Squat Jumps

Although this one works your quads and hamstrings a ton – once your calves are already fatigued you will feel this one a ton in your calves! Seriously – this is one epic calf pump and is also one of my favorite fat burning exercises of all time.

Try doing this at the very end of your workouts if you want to boost your fat burning hormones and pump up those calves.

Simply grab a dumbbell at your side and jump up and down as high as humanly possible. You will feel a lower body burn, especially in your calves.

Focus on jumping from your heels and pushing your butt back as you go down and are prepared to explode back up, similar to doing a traditional barbell squat.

Sets: 3

Reps: 10-12

Rest Time: 60 Seconds

No Pain, No Gain

That’s all she wrote! You don’t need to hit the calves with any more volume than that. Remember that just like with any other muscle group, focusing on improving your weight and reps with this exercise will help grow the muscle.

In the words of my boy Mark Wahlberg: “No Pain, No Gain.”

Let’s keep pushing ourselves to an epic mass building transformation!

The post Calves Workout For Mass: No More Chicken Legs! (Weak Point Training Ep. 1) first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

Not to brag, but I get the most amount of compliments on my shoulder development.

While I have a lot of weak points that I openly talk about on the YouTube channel and work my a** off on each week, my shoulders have always been overly developed. I attribute this partially to genetics and partially to my unique way of training them.

The problem that I see with a lot of shoulder workouts at the gym is a lot of standing around. I see so many guys on shoulder day that spend more time talking about girls and fantasy football than they do actually working out!

Another problem is most guys only perform the basic movements which put a ton of stress on the rotator cuff and other ligaments in the shoulder, and doesn’t hit all three heads of the deltoid muscle.

You have three portions of your deltoid muscle – which we will quickly go over before getting into the article.

First up you have your anterior deltoid, which is the very front part of your shoulder that even gets in work when you are hitting the bench press, or doing any type of chest movement.

Then you have the lateral deltoid, which is the large middle portion the deltoid muscle that gets blasted during most shoulder exercises like the lateral raises.

Last but not least you have the rear deltoid muscle, or posterior deltoid muscle group, which seems to get the least attention, but is extremely important if you want an aesthetic looking physique.

Why I Came Up With This Workout Strategy

Like I said in the intro, the two biggest problems with most guys’ shoulder workouts is a lot of standing around which kills workout intensity and motivation, as well as not targeting all three heads of the shoulder workout.

This insane shoulder workout tackles both of those issues! We are going to be incorporating one of my favorite shoulder exercises of all time in this workout, and using it as a pre fatigue strategy before we hit a specific muscle in the shoulder.

What we are going to do is before each set we are going to be doing a set of dumbbell farmers walks with our shoulders tensed as a pre fatigue. This means that you will be grabbing a pair of heavy dumbbells and walking around your gym with your deltoids and traps tensed. This puts an incredible amount of fatigue on your deltoids and is the perfect pre fatigue exercise to blast your delts!

Before each shoulder shaper you will be doing a set of these farmers walks, and by the end of your workout you will be drenched in sweat like you had been doing a leg workout!

I find that adding in some type of dynamic exercise into a traditionally boring workout without much movement gives you a chance to boost your workout intensity and make some serious gains.

I’m excited for you to try this workout! Make sure you let me know in the Youtube comments what you thought about it!

Here is my “Insane Shoulder Workout for Mass…”

Exercise 1: Dumbbell Farmers Walk / Dumbbell Rear Delt Fly Superset

Start off with the dumbbell farmers walk and go heavy since this is the very beginning of your workout.

Use straps if you have a weak grip so all of your focus can be on the deltoid muscles. Immediately after putting the dumbbells down after the farmers walks grab a light pair of dumbbells that you can control and perform a set of dumbbell. rear deltoid fly’s for about 10-15 reps.

Perform this superset for 2 total sets with about 75 seconds rest between the supersets.

Exercise 2: Dumbbell Farmers Walk / Deltoid Tension Row Superset

Just like the last one – start off with the dumbbell farmers walk until failure with a goal of getting about 30 seconds under tension.

After this grab a pair of light dumbbells and do the deltoid tension row superset, focusing on putting maximum tension right on the lateral deltoid muscle.

Exercise 3: Dumbbell Farmers Walk / Dumbbell Shoulder Shapers

Just like the last one we are going to be going until failure on the farmers walks, but then we’re going to transition into dumbbell shoulder shapers.

Shoulder shapers are a great exercise for putting a ton of overload on both the anterior and lateral deltoid at the same time.

This is one of my favorite aesthetic bodybuilding exercises for the shoulders, especially if you are able to flare out your elbows at the right angle to channel the squeeze in your deltoids. Make sure you watch the video so you can see the perfect form on this exercise!

Exercise 4: Dumbbell Farmers Walk / Close Grip Upright Row EZ Bar

I think you get the farmers walks by now – so I’m going to head straight to the EZ bar row exercise. Just remember with all of these sets we want to be 30 seconds time under tension on the farmers walks.

The EZ-bar upright row allows you to really focus on the anterior deltoid muscle – but you have to make sure that you keep the bar away from your body. If you are doing the upright row to close to your body you will target the traps muscle which is NOT what you want to do.

Watch the video for a detailed breakdown of this exercise.

Exercise 5: Dumbbell Farmers Walk / Dumbbell Lateral Raise Superset

This time we are going to superset our farmers walks with the traditional dumbbell lateral raise, placing all of the focus on the lateral head of the deltoid muscle.

Make sure that you are not resting your deltoids at the top or bottom of the movement and keeping 100 percent of your focus on the contraction of the shoulder muscle.

Exercise 6: Komodo Flares

This was inspired by the most alpha animal of all time: The komodo dragon! Lol…

Komodo flares are a cross between a halfway seated dumbbell lat raise and seated dumbbell shrug… and will give you the deltoid pump of your life!

I like to use a light weight on this (about 50 percent of the weight I would normally do dumbbell shrugs with) and focus on the contraction on the lateral head of the deltoid.

This caps off an epic shoulder workout, so feel free to push yourself and knock out 3-4 sets of the Komodo flares!

Let me know what you think about the insane shoulder workout in the comments below and I will talk to you soon!

The post Shoulder Workout For Mass (Insane Workout Series Ep. 2) first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

I think that the hamstrings are the most underrated muscle group in the body.

I grew up playing basketball and realized very quickly that weak hamstrings correlate to a lot of injuries. On top of putting yourself at risk for injuries, your hamstrings are the muscle group that is most responsible for explosive movements like running and jumping.

If you are a football or basketball player your hamstring development will make or break your level of athleticism in these sports.

In terms of bodybuilding bringing up your hamstrings will help you skyrocket your dead lift and barbell squat 1 rep max.

As you know – when you are performing the dead lift one of the main exercises that is engaged is your hamstrings. Ever since I started dedicating half of my leg workouts to my hamstrings my dead lift has gone up over 100 lbs. the last two years. Its no coincidence that I can still dunk a basketball too! (White men CAN jump lol).

Many guys who have trouble improving their squat have weak hamstrings as well. When you overdevelop your quadriceps (front of the leg) and under develop your hamstrings (back of the leg) you are making it impossible to maximize your lower body compound lifts, which can cause injury and slow muscle development.

Do you want a workout routine that will help you pack on mass to your hamstrings and help you skyrocket your 1 rep max on the squat and dead lift? Of course you do! Besides from being an anabolic beast in the gym there is a major reason you should be training this muscle group with intensity frequently.

Your hamstrings contain the most “fast twitch” muscle fibers of any specific muscle in your body.

Your fast twitch muscle fibers are the “explosion” muscle fibers and are what is specifically engaged when you are sprinting, jumping, and doing compound lifts at heavy weight.

This proves that your hamstrings are the most important muscle group in your lower body for improving lower body strength and explosiveness.

I know you are jacked to train those hamstrings to perfection – so let’s dive into my favorite mass building hamstring workout.

Hamstring Workout For Mass And Explosiveness

This hamstring workout can be set up a few different ways. If you want a complete lower body leg workout you could stack this onto your let day workout. Many leg exercises that are staples on “leg day” work mostly the quad muscles like the leg extension, leg press, and squats that are not performed deep.

If I had to audit the average guys leg workout I would say that 70-80 percent of it is spent on the front of the leg. If you wanted to do some sets of squats, lunges, and leg press and stack this onto the end of your workout that would be one killer leg workout.

Another thing you could do is treat this as its own workout and hit it with even more intensity and do your quadriceps workout (aka squat day) on a different day so you are training your legs twice per week instead of just once.

Either way just make sure you are performing this hamstring workout at least once per week and track your weight and reps for non stop improvement. Just like any other muscle group training for progressive overload is the winning formula.

Stiff Leg Kettle Bell Dead Lift

This is an awesome hamstring exercise because it is an “iso-lateral” movement, meaning you are working on 1 side of your body at a time. The key is to really push your butt back and channel that “mind-muscle” connection so you feel the squeeze in the hamstring you are working on instead of your lower back.

When you bend your body your hips should move back only a little bit. Bend slightly around your hips, letting the shoulders go forward slightly. Keep the tension on the hamstrings for the entire duration and challenge yourself to maintain perfect form throughout the movement.

I like staying in the 8-10 rep range on this exercise as putting to much weight in the stiff leg deadlift position can open you up to back trouble.

Note: you can also use a dumbbell for this exercise if you don’t have access to a kettle bell. In fact it works just as well!

• Total Sets: 4
• Reps: 8-12
• Rest Time: 2 Minutes

Hamstring Ball Curl (High Rep)

Hamstring ball curls bring me all the way back to my high-school days, are are awesome for hitting the center of the hamstring muscle. I want you guys to go really high repetition on this exercise and go until failure.

See if you can beat my high score from the video. I believe I did about 45 reps. The key to this exercise is you need to start off with your heels on the inflatable swiss ball and push your butt up in the air so your body is in a straight decline, almost as if you are in a floating decline bench position.

Keep your butt off the ground for the entire duration of the movement, and bring your heels into your butt while focusing on squeezing the hamstrings throughout the movement. You will get a killer pump on this one, and it’s a great way to end your leg day workout!

• Sets: 3
• Reps: Failure
• Rest Time: 2 Minutes

Smith Machine Tension Hamstrings

The smith machine is a great tool for working your hamstrings because it allows you to place tension on them the entire time without involving much of your lower body or other muscle groups.

This exercise is pretty similar to the stiff leg deadlift except you will never go all the way up to the top position and lock your knees – which keeps tension the entire time on your hamstrings. Make sure you keep your chest up and if it may help to wear a weight lifting belt so you don’t feel any tension in your lower back.

This is a bit more of an advanced movement so if you aren’t comfortable with it start off very light.

Another trick is you want to make sure the bar is as close to your body the entire time and you bend your knees ever so slightly. Watch the video for a better breakdown on form!

• Sets: 4
• Reps: 10-12
• Rest Time: 90 Seconds

Prone Hamstring Superset

This is my favorite exercise for directly hitting the hamstring muscles. Are you ready for the hamstring pump of your life? This is how you are going to do it.

Start off on the prone hamstring curl machine, also known as the lying hamstring curl machine.

Go fairly heavy on the first portion of the superset and perform the reps with traditional form curling the weight all the way to your gluteus and back down to the starting position. Go slow on the eccentric portion to recruit more muscle fibers.

The second portion of the prone curl is a unique movement. First you will drop the weight to about 30 percent of what you just did. Then you will scoot yourself up on the bench, and bring your hip flexors and upper body off the pad. You will brace yourself up with your hands on each side of the bench.

This places a totally different angle on your hamstrings and will force you to recruit your muscle fibers deep in your hamstrings.

The goal for this one should be about 10-12 reps on each portion of the superset, with very little rest time between sets.

• Total Sets: 4
• Reps: 10-12 (each superset)
• Rest Time: 90 Seconds

The post Hamstring Workout: Best Hamstring Exercises For Mass (Weak Point Training) first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

If you guys thought my mass building smoothie recipes were insane you haven’t seen anything yet! I’m about to shock your body into some straight up mass building gains with my epic 3,100 calorie chocolate covered bacon cheeseburger recipe.

This recipe is a cross between epic meal time and anabolic greatness, as it contains a huge mega dose of calories that will make your bulking season gains effortless.

Back a few years ago I went to the Wisconsin state fair and saw this epic meal: A chocolate covered bacon cheeseburger on a Krispy Kreme doughnut!

I thought this was the most clever culinary creation I had ever seen, so I wanted to try and make a healthier version of this for you guys to enjoy during bulking season.

By the way, If you want to see what I ended up doing with the recipe after I got done cooking it make sure you watch the video (The gains went to a good cause!)

Believe it or not this recipe follows my principles and that is 80 percent healthy and 20 percent unhealthy during a “bulking” period.

If you want to make serious progress in the gym and have peak energy levels you should follow the 80/20 principle as well. While it makes it easier to eat a ridiculous amount of calories following a “dirty bulk” – you will also pack on a ton of body fat along the way.

So keep the “dirty” foods to under 20% of your diet.

3,100 Calorie Bacon Cheeseburger Muscle Building Recipe: The Ingredients

Here is what we are going to need for this recipe!

• ½ lb. grass fed beef (I used 90%)
• 1 package of bacon (Yes, an entire package!)
• 4 tbsp. cooking oil (to cook the beef and bacon, I suggest olive oil and/or coconut oil).
• 8 tbsp. dark chocolate chips (to coat the crispy bacon in).
• ½ cup smashed avocado or guacamole.
• 4 pieces of large whole grain bread.
• 4 tbsp. of sweet chili sauce (or whatever sauce you like).
• 4 slices cheddar cheese (or whatever cheese you enjoy).

As you can see, we have a vast array of ingredients in this delicious mass building recipe!

Let’s talk about why I included each ingredient.

Grass Fed Beef – This is my favorite mass building protein source as it not only contains high quality protein but also a ton of healthy fat, CLA, creatine, Iron, and Zinc. If I had to declare the “Batman and Robin” of muscle building protein sources, it would be grass fed beef and salmon!

Bacon – Bacon is loaded with fat, but fat is necessary for optimal hormone levels during bulking season. Some research has indicated that a diet high in saturated fat correlates to higher testosterone levels.

Dark Chocolate Chips – There is a method to my madness! Dark chocolate chips are actually really high in antioxidants, which are crucial for muscle recovery. They are also really high in calories and extra delicious on top of crispy bacon! This is one helluva culinary treat!

Avocado – Avocado is a perfect fat source for any guy looking to pack on mass. It’s very high in calories and also loaded with nutrition and contains over 15 essential vitamins and minerals! It also makes for a perfect compliment to the cheese and chocolate covered bacon in this recipe.

Whole Grain Bread – Slow digesting carbs are essential if you are looking to build lean muscle mass and gain weight. They will be your main energy source when you are working out, as your body needs a certain amount of glycogen in the muscle to perform optimally. In this recipe we are using 4 slices of whole grain bread.

Olive oil/coconut oil – these are two of the healthiest oils in the world and are a great way to add in extra calories to your diet. We will be cooking the beef and bacon with this oil. Olive oil is also listed as one of the best healthy fat sources for boosting those T levels!

Sweet Chili Sauce – This isn’t exactly a healthy sauce and has absolutely ZERO health benefits – but it is quite delicious and goes with my recipe!

Cheddar Cheese – Once again, cheese is fairly low in nutrition but it does contain some extra protein and fat, and makes this recipe a whopping 3,100 calories!

Chocolate Covered Bacon Cheeseburger: Total Calories: 3,100!

How Do You Make It?

Here is a quick summary on how I made this recipe.

1. Cook the ½ lb. beef patty in 2 tbsp. olive oil until it is done medium or medium well.

2. Next up we need to crisp our bacon, so cook the entire package of bacon in 2 tbsp. oil on medium heat. I suggest cooking it until it is extra crispy.

3. Take the bacon off the pan and pad the oil off. Next up add the bacon in the melted dark chocolate mixture and let is cool off so the chocolate shell can harden.

4. Wait about 15 minutes for the chocolate to harden a bit and we are ready to make our burger!

5. Toast 2 slices of bread (we will be using 2 slices of bread toasted on the outside, and 2 not toasted on the inside so its easier to eat).

6. Place the burger on the toast, and each of the 4 layers of bread place as much avocado, cheese, bacon, and sweet chili sauce as you can. I like to evenly distribute the ingredients for an optimal taste!

7. Enjoy and devour!

Believe it or not I found something better to do with this burger than eat it myself… Check out the video if you want to see what I decided to do with it.

The post Muscle Building Recipes: 3,100 Calorie Bacon Cheeseburger first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

I see it in the comments on our YouTube videos all the time: “I just can’t gain weight!” I was doing a lot of online coaching in the last year and creating custom meal plans for guys looking to gain mass as fast as humanly possible, and almost everyone was surprised by how many calories and how much food they needed to eat for mass building.

I’m a firm believer in lean bulking myself and I figured out for my 190 lb. frame that I would need to eat about 3,500 calories to gain muscle mass efficiently.

This may seem like a lot of calories and food to eat, but when you have a few tricks up your sleeve it becomes extremely easy!

Today I’m going to disclose my top-secret weight gain protein shake recipe that contains a whopping 2,400 total calories!

That’s right… a 2,400 calorie mass building shake that will turn you into an anabolic machine. Even if you have to consume 4,000 total calories per day to gain weight, knocking out almost half of those total calories in 1 shake make it pretty darn easy!

If you are a serious hard-gainer this shake recipe is for you. Back when I was struggling with my weight gain I was about 130 lbs. and I thought that I was eating a calorie surplus, but BOY was I wrong.

If you guys want to take your gains to the next level, you really should invest in some calorie counting devices like a food scale and “My Fitness Pal” app. These are good tools to ensure that you will be at the proper calorie surplus which will create that anabolic environment.

Curious how in the world I am able to pack in 2,400 calories into one shake? Let’s get right into it!

Weight Gain Protein Shake Ingredients

Let’s first take a look at the total ingredient profile for this weight gain protein shake and talk about how each ingredient will help you build lean muscle mass.

Chocolate Almond Milk (2 cups = 240 calories)

Almonds are a great natural muscle builder and are loaded with magnesium. When you are in a calorie surplus it can be difficult on your stomach to consume a lot of dairy so we are using chocolate almond milk for a calorie laden liquid base in this shake.

MCT Oil (4 tbsp. = 500 Calories)

MCT Oil is one of the best natural energy boosters in the world and will give you a great surplus of calories without causing you to pack on body fat.

MCT Oil is very similar to liquid coconut oil – and if you are trying to stay lean while getting in the perfect amount of calories for maximum muscle building MCT oil is an amazing addition to get more calories.

Bananas (2 bananas = 240 calories)

When you are training like a beast in the gym trying to make all kinds of gains you need to ensure that your body has a surplus of electrolytes and simple sugars for optimal recovery and growth.

Bananas are loaded with fructose (the simple sugars in fruit) – and are also really high in potassium. Two frozen bananas in this smoothie make for a perfect treat that adds flavor and texture.

Peanut Butter (6 tbsp. = 600 Calories)

Peanut butter is a skinny guys best friend as it contains a high amount of calories, protein, and healthy fats.

Protein is crucial for muscle growth, but if you are a skinny guy struggling to get in enough calories to enter a prime muscle building surplus, adding in healthier fats is the easiest way.

Six whole tablespoons of peanut butter add in about 600 total calories!

Complex Whey Protein powder (2 scoops = 240 Calories)

Two scoops of a high quality complex whey protein powder add in a perfect array of slow, medium, and fast digesting proteins. This is great for muscle growth and recovery so your muscles get drip fed anabolic fuel over the course of several hours – instead of all at once.

By combining some forms of egg and casein protein that digest slower – this shake helps you pack on gains all day long.

Honey (4 tbsp. = 240 Calories)

Honey is a natural antioxidant and adds in some simple sugars that will boost the flavor of this shake. Honey has more health benefits than simple white table sugar which is processed – so this makes for a sweet and decadent addition to the smoothie recipe.

Dark Chocolate Chips (6 tbsp. = 360 Calories)

Dark chocolate chips are a perfect mix in to this smoothie recipe as dark chocolate is loaded in calories and muscle sparing antioxidants.

Believe it or not dark chocolate (especially the stuff above 70 percent) – makes for the perfect antioxidant treat.

Dark chocolate is one of the highest antioxidant foods in the world – and adds in almost 400 total calories to this shake.

How To Consume This Weight Gain Protein Shake

Calling all SERIOUS hard gainers. If you are skin and bones and are desperate to gain weight as fast as humanly possible, drink this 2,400 calorie shake daily. Yes – every single day whether you are working out or not.

When you combine a very high calorie surplus with a program that contains elements of progressive overload like the Weight Gain Blueprint – you have the perfect formula for gaining a ton of weight very quickly.

Packing on mass isn’t rocket science – and once you train to improve strength and feed your body a calorie surplus you will find gaining weight a walk in the park.

If you are not a serious hard gainer and rather following a “lean bulk” – try out this weight gain protein shake as a meal replacement shake when you are short on time between meals – or as a really anabolic post workout shake.

If you are following a lean bulk – consuming this shake just 3 times per week will add in 7,200 extra calories. Remember on a lean bulk, all it takes is about 300-500 calories over maintenance so this should give you more than enough anabolic ammunition.

Hope you guys enjoyed this recipe and I will be in touch really soon with some hardcore bulking hacks!

The post Weight Gain Protein Shake: 2,400 Calorie Peanut Butter Gorilla Mass Builder first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

Time for another mass building review. I know you guys are hitting your local supplement stores and see all of these fancy “mass builders” – so I take it as my responsibility to lead you guys in the right direction and make an informed choice.

I know from first hand experience that I have wasted a ton of money on mass gaining supplements over the years and I don’t want to see you young guys make the same mistake I did!

If I had to guess I spent over $3,000 on worthless bodybuilding products between the ages of 18 and 21. I spent money on “all science and no hype” test boosters, and tons of mass builders with giant bodybuilders on the cover.

I was reading a book the other night and it really reminded me of the supplement industry. The most successful products do not succeed because they are selling anything special, they succeed because they do the best at selling a certain emotion.

If you walk into a supplement store and are struggling with your gains you are extremely susceptible to buying something off pure emotion and no logic.

If you pick up a mass gainer by the name of “Extreme Super Pump Mutant Mass” and you see a picture of a screaming Komodo Dragon with 27 inch biceps – chances are that you are going to think that this supplement is far more effective for your gains than the plain looing tub of “whey isolate.”

Now I’m not saying that all “mass builders” are hogwash – so I was actually quite excited to review this one as it has a lot of great benefits.

Pro Complex Mass Gainer is a pretty good supplement overall – so let’s take a look at my unbiased review. (I make no money by reviewing this supplement.)

Pro Complex Mass Gainer: The Pros

Let’s start this off with the good things.

Pro Complex Gainer has a pretty decent macronutrient profile if you take a look at the “per serving” macros.

There are 650 calories, 60 grams of protein, 85 grams of carbohydrates, and 8 grams of fat per serving. Overall Pro Complex Gainer also contains 25 vitamins and minerals.

I’m going to rate the ingredient profile a B+ as it has a good anabolic blend of protein and carbohydrates – and although it contains some filler and artificial ingredients, it doesn’t have as much as some of the mass builders I’ve reviewed.

Here are the pro’s that I came up with:

1. Ingredient profile is good and it will increase protein synthesis.
2. Good post workout anabolic blend of protein and carbs.
3. Great overall taste.
4. Works Best in my opinion as a post workout shake.
5. Good source of healthy fats as it contains MCT’s.

The biggest benefit I see for Pro Complex gainer Is as a high calorie post workout shake vs. a “meal replacement shake.”

This is not a good replacement for a regular bodybuilding meal, but as a post workout or even intra workout shake it is pretty solid as it contains a good anabolic blend of protein, glutamine, carbs, and vitamins and minerals.

Pro Complex Gainer: Cons

Let’s dive into the cons of pro complex gainer.

I’m not a huge fan of the large scoop size for one. These serving sizes are really big and you are going to get a ton of powder in each scoop. It makes it pretty difficult to get 1 serving size down using a standard shaker cup.

The price is also really expensive. I’ve seen the pro complex mass gainer as expensive as $68.00 on some sites and even on Amazon prime it was well over $50.00.

I like that it has a good amount of L-glutamine – but you can purchase this ingredient by itself for very cheap on Amazon.

When it comes down to it I’m comparing the $60 it will cost for this tub of pro complex gainer vs. all of the other potential options.

Overall list of cons:

1. Large scoop size per serving.
2. Very expensive for what you get.
3. Still contains some artificial ingredients.
4. Not the best use of your hard earned money as I only see benefit as a post workout shake.

Pro Complex Gainer: Final Thoughts

In my opinion you are going to skyrocket your gains if you spend $60 on lean grass fed beef and organic whole eggs vs. this supplement.

One lb. of 95 percent grass fed beef at whole foods contains creatine, CLA, healthy fats that will boost your testosterone, and about 90 grams of muscle building protein from one of the best all natural sources.

12 dozen organic eggs contain omega 3’s, healthy testosterone boosting fats, and 72 grams of protein per carton.

For the same $60 you can buy 5 lbs. of lean grass fed beef and two dozen organic eggs!

That’s about 600 grams of protein, tons of natural creatine, and enough healthy fats to skyrocket your testosterone levels.

I’m going with this all day over even the best mass building supplement!

The post Pro Complex Gainer By Optimum Nutrition: My Complete No-BS Review first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

What’s up my dudes! I’m ready to go on a lean bulk and make some major progress on my physique this fall and I thought it would be really interesting to speak about intermittent fasting (IF).

A lot of naturally skinny guys are scared off by intermittent fasting because they think they have to eat every 2-3 hours to build muscle mass.

Not only is this false – but it could be holding back your progress. Intermittent fasting is something that I have a lot of experience with, as I have tried it out for several stretches of my life.

Today I’m going to cover the benefits of intermittent fasting, and how it can actually help you build lean muscle mass if you are a naturally skinny guy.

First thing is first, we need to discuss the rules of intermittent fasting.

The Rules of Intermittent Fasting

There are a few things you need to follow in order to get all of the benefits we are going to discuss in the next section.

Warning: What you are about to read will challenge your way of thinking and will go against the grain of many things you have been taught.

I urge you to please keep an open mind, and most importantly try this out yourself. My body has reacted wonderfully to intermittent fasting, but other guys have tried it and struggled miserably.

1. You need to make sure you don’t eat for at least 16 hours

This may seem like a really long time, but you have to consider the fact that you will be sleeping for at least half this time, or at the minimum 5-6 hours. This means that all you have to do is push back your first meal 5-7 hours to achieve this 16 hour fasting window.

2. No liquid calories

You are not allowed to have any liquid calories during your intermittent fasting period either. This means that you are not allowed to have anything like soda, sugary energy drinks, sports drinks, milk shakes, Frappuccino’s, and even tea with honey.

You need to make sure you limit what you are drinking to coffee and tea with no added sweetener, water, carbonated water, and in moderation energy drinks and soda with no calories.

No need to overcomplicate things – so these will be the only 2 rules we need to follow. Pretty simple – just don’t consume any calories for 16 hours and stay hydrated by drinking your favorite calorie free beverages.

The Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

Let’s dive into the benefits of intermittent fasting. I have done IF a few times in my life, and I was first motivated to give it a whirl when I read about the incredible muscle building and fat loss benefits.

How in the world would this benefit your muscle gains? You have to keep in mind that the strongest factor to building muscle mass are your natural anabolic hormones. HGH and testosterone are the holy grail of the muscle building hormones – and intermittent fasting has been shown to boost both of these alpha male hormones.

Another huge benefit that I noticed with IF was that my energy levels were through the roof. When your body is not constantly digesting food you give it time to secrete more natural hormones and increase its natural energy levels.

The main benefit that I personally got from intermittent fasting was longer periods of focus on my work. By pushing back my first meal to 6-8 hours into the day – I could get up and focus on my work and get my hardest task done first thing in the morning without thinking about food.

We are about to get into the muscle building benefits of IF – but another benefit I noticed with intermittent fasting is that I was able to maintain my strength very easily while I was cutting – and it also made my cutting diet a lot easier since I was only allowed to eat within a 6-8-hour window.

How To Build Muscle With Intermittent Fasting

Now that we know how to perform IF and some of the benefits – let’s chat about the specific things you need to do in order to make gains during intermittent fasting.

Although you will likely have higher levels of HGH and testosterone – its vital to understand these rules if you are a naturally skinny guy.

1. A calorie surplus is still vital.

You will still need to consume a quality calorie surplus to make fast gains. In order for any muscle building strategy to work you will need to be at least 250 calories over maintenance.

For many of you guys – this will mean well over 3,000 calories. If you are having trouble trying to figure out how many calories your maintenance is – make sure to check out your Basal metabolic rate and then multiply by your activity level using the harris benedict equation.

Here is a link for you to check out:

http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/harris-benedict-equation/

Whatever number that you get for this – you still need to be over 250 calories to make really fast lean muscle gains.

How do we get a calorie surplus during IF? Very easy!

2. Work out at the end of your fast.

If you do it right and your body adjusts well to intermittent fasting, you should be able to get in an intense workout during the last stage of your fast. This means that your first meal “breaking the fast” would be your post workout meal.

This is ideal for building muscle as a skinny guy as your body will be prime for muscle building fuel and glycogen replenishment.

Let’s say my last meal was at 8 PM the night before. I will play my workout around 10:30 AM – so by the very end of my resistance training workout I will be at around the 16-hour mark.

Another benefit from doing this is that I notice when I take pre workout or drink coffee before my workout it hits me way harder – since I am on an empty stomach. This allows me to train at my peak intensity which is always key when training for muscle mass.

3. Post workout meals are HUGE.

If you do everything that I have stated above, you should have absolutely no issue consuming 1,000 calories in your post workout meal. By working out at the end of your intermittent fasting period you are putting your body in a prime anabolic position where it is starving for protein and carbohydrates to replenish your muscle glycogen levels.

Your post workout meal needs to be at least 1,000 calories if you are trying to build muscle mass, and the next trick is you should incorporate a high calorie mass building shake about 1.5 hours after your post workout meal.

We got a ton of mass building shake recipes on the YouTube Channel that are well over 1,000 calories – so make sure you check them out.

By incorporating a high calorie post workout meal and mass building shake within the 3 hours following your workout you are giving your body a huge surplus of calories to build lean muscle mass. This combined with the giant surge of anabolic hormones from intermittent fasting should form a potent muscle building punch.

What are your thoughts on Intermittent fasting? Let me know what you guys think and if you plan on giving it a try during bulking season!

The post Intermittent Fasting: Will It Help You Build Muscle If You’re Skinny? first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

What’s going on my dudes! I am really excited to bring you a biceps and triceps workout today with absolutely zero equipment.

I have got a lot of questions recently from guys looking for workouts they can do at home. Most guys are familiar with the traditional body weight exercises like the push ups, wall sits, and bodyweight squats – but few guys know of any exercises they can do for their arms with no equipment.

I had to really get outside my comfort zone and think of some unique tricks to work out my biceps and triceps at home with no equipment.

I know you are going to thoroughly enjoy this bicep and triceps workout – and it will help you sculpt larger and more defined arms from the comfort of your own home.

This workout is for guys who don’t have access to traditional gym equipment and still want to train for mass building, as well as guys looking for a few extra training hacks to take their bodybuilding goals to the next level.

I am going to be honest – I was never a fan of bodyweight training and didn’t see the point of it if you are training for size and strength.

My opinion towards bodyweight training has changed forever after trying some of these out myself. Not only were my biceps and triceps challenged differently when filming this workout, but I was able to add new forms of stress and overload to them that I wasn’t accomplishing in the gym.

I’m still going to train like an anabolic machine in the gym, but will certainly be adding in forms of bodyweight training like this arm workout into my routine.

Are you ready to see a highly unusual arm workout at home with no equipment?

Let’s dive into the workout and start busting some sleeves off…

Exercise 1: Doorway Curls

Alright, time to get this party started. The doorway curls exercise is the hardest one to explain, so make sure you watch the video so you can see how to do the perfect doorway curl for sleeve busting biceps!

You are going to be working out each arm one at a time, and all you need is a doorway with ridges to perform this exercise!

Start off with your feet staggering the doorway for stability, and your hands facing each-other on the doorway hinges while you lean back slightly.

Bring your thumb closest to your body and have your palms resting against the doorway hinge. Lean back and pull your entire body back and forth on a plane placing all of the tension and overload on your biceps. With this one – its important to keep stable and not go back all the way.

You want to place all of the tension on your biceps, and turn your wrist slightly outward to feel the contraction in your biceps peak.

Make sense? Make sure to watch the video so you can nail this biceps exercise!

Exercise 2: Kitchen Counter Curls With Isometric Hold

This is certainly a strange exercise – but the best way to mimic the traditional barbell curl exercise at home with no equipment.

All you need is a kitchen counter top that you can place your hands under (and make sure its sturdy! Lol)

With your feet staggered apart and your palms facing up and pushing against the counter top you will push up as hard as you can be putting all of the tension on your biceps muscle.

It is ideal if you have a kitchen counter that is a little taller than your waist line, but you can bend your knees to adjust the height and make it a perfect set up for this exercise. Play around with your hand placement and with how much you bend your knees and find your “sweet spot” where you can feel the maximum tension on your biceps muscles.

I prefer a grip that is about shoulder width apart, and my knees slightly bent to adjust to my kitchen counter top height.

After doing a set to complete failure – we are going to dive into a biceps isometric pose to create healthy micro-tears on our already fatigued biceps.

Go until failure on both parts of this biceps superset and you will have the arm pump of a lifetime!

Exercise 3: Diamond Triceps Push-Up with Isometric Hold

Next up we have a classic variation to a bodyweight staple exercise. Diamond triceps push-ups are a great way to not only work out your upper chest but also develop powerful horseshoe triceps.

The mind-muscle connection on this one is huge – as you really have to force the tension to your triceps and squeeze them as you lock out each diamond triceps push-up. When I do this exercise I can focus and switch between putting tension on my chest and triceps. This is the power of a mind-muscle connection!

Focus on squeezing and contracting those triceps muscles during each repetition and you will get the biggest bang for your buck.

Perform the diamond triceps push-up set until complete failure – and when your triceps are toasted make sure you go right into an isometric flex hold to further create those healthy micro-tears.

How long do you hold the isometric triceps pose for? As long as you can! If you want to reap the most benefits to this type of training the intensity has to be there – just like you are doing a set of heavy squats or deadlifts.

Try four total supersets for a complete arm blaster!

Exercise 4: Doorway Triceps Push-Backs

This triceps exercise will be completed in the middle of your doorway – so every time you walk through a door you can make some gains!

This one is going to mimic the same range of motion of traditional dumbbell triceps kickbacks with the wrist rotation.

Start off by standing in the doorway with your feet about 6 inches ahead of the doorway opening. You will be bent over in an athletic position and you will place the side of your clenched fist on the wall to the right when you are working your right hand, and you will flip around and do the opposite when you are working your left hand.

Push back as hard as you can directly on your hand so you can feel maximum tension on your triceps. The goal with this exercise is to hold the positon for 30 seconds with maximum tension on the triceps. The key is to make sure you are pushing back as hard as humanly possible – and feeling the tension in your triceps.

If you want to take this exercise a step further try another isometric hold when your triceps are fatigued. This one may seem strange but is the best way I have found to work out my triceps with no equipment from the convenience of my home.

This wraps up my arm workout at home for bigger biceps and triceps! Did I miss anything?

Please let me know if you have any other arm exercises with no equipment so I can keep taking my training to the next level!

The post Arm Workout At Home For Bigger Biceps & Triceps (NO EQUIPMENT!) first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

Today we’ll take a look at Optimum Nutrition Serious Mass, and I’ll give you my full unbiased review of this weight gain powder.

Is this mass gainer really the best thing for you to spend your hard earned money on to gain weight and bulk up?

This is a really valid question because the way that mass building supplements are marketed they tend to really appeal to the serious hard gainer.

Optimum Nutrition (ON) is one of the most reputable names in the supplement industry – so I was excited to look under the hood and break down each individual ingredient.

I headed down to my local Vitamin Shoppe and purchased a big 6 lb tub of Optimum Nutrition and analyzed the entire ingredient label and even did a complete taste test.

Just as I suspected there are a lot of pros and a lot of cons. Let’s dive in and take a look at the ingredient label and first get into the pros of this popular mass builder.

Breaking Down The Pros Of Optimum Nutrition Serious Mass

Lets first get into the pros of Optimum Nutrition Serious Mass. The first thing that I really liked is that it contains a complete vitamin and mineral complex A through Z.

When you purchase Optimum Nutrition Serious Mass you really don’t have to purchase a multi-vitamin.

Another benefit is that you will have no problem getting in your carbohydrate content with Optimum Nutrition Serious Mass.

You get about 252 grams of carbohydrates per serving – so this makes it really easy to get all of your carbohydrates in for the day.

The fact that it has so many carbohydrates makes it really useful for a post workout mass building that also replenishes depleted glycogen stores.

Another thing that I liked was that Optimum Nutrition added in BCAA’s, Glutamine, and Creatine. These are proven mass builders and will help with growth and recovery.

Last but not least – since this is a mass builder, it has to be stated that Optimum Nutrition packs in over 1,200 calories per serving. This will make it very easy to enter a calorie surplus if you are consuming 1 serving every single day.

There are some good things here so far, but now let’s take a look at the cons of this supplement…

The Cons Of Optimum Nutrition Serious Mass

To be fair to you, let me preface this section by saying that this supplement has a lot more cons than pros. Take a close look at this section before you spend your hard earned money on this mass building supplement.

The first negative mark on this supplement is although it contains 1,250 calories per serving it only contains 8 servings per container. In the entire 6 lb tub you will only get 8 full servings! I think most guys are under the impression when they buy a giant tub that is 6 lbs. it will have close to 50 servings – but this is certainly not the case.

Another major negative aspect that I noticed was that this entire container only has 400 grams of protein, or about 50 grams per serving.

This may seem like a lot, but I took a look at the entire 4.2 lb. tub of combat protein powder and it contained a whopping 1,300 grams of high quality protein!

Protein should be the main ingredient in any serious mass builder – but sadly the carbohydrates drastically outweigh the protein content.

Most of the ingredients in this mass builder are carbohydrates. Maltodextrin is a really cheap ingredient. You can purchase a large 10 lb. tub of pure maltodextrin for less than 20 dollars!

Another major check mark is that this has some major allergy warnings. Serious mass contains wheat, soy, dairy, and egg! These are the 4 most common allergens – so make sure you are careful if you are sensitive to any of these things.

Last but not least – this product contains creatine, but only 8 grams in the entire 6 lb. tub.

This is only 1.5 tsp and is barely enough to be noticeable. You are much better off buying your creatine separately and adding to your protein shakes, which is exactly what I do.

Overall I’m going to give this popular mass builder a C. There are certainly better options out there, and I recommend making your own mass builder instead of buying this processed formula.

Let’s take a look at one of my homemade mass building formulas:

My Homemade Mass Building Shake

Just like with the Dymatize Super Mass Gainer review, I want to offer you a better alternative than Optimum Nutrition Serious Mass with way more bodybuilding nutrition.

This one is called the Chocolate Peanut Butter Mass Builder and I know you will love it (especially if you love peanut butter cups!)

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Mass Builder

• 2 cups chocolate almond milk or regular almond milk
• 2 tbsp. liquid coconut oil
• 2 tbsp. hemp seeds
• 2 tbsp. peanut butter
• 1 frozen banana
• 1 scoop chocolate protein powder
• 5 grams creatine powder
• 1/4 cup maltodextrin powder

This mass builder is pure muscle-building nutrition full of protein, carbs, creatine, vitamins, minerals, omega 3’s and electrolytes.

This is 10 x better than Optimum Nutrition Serious Mass. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

The post Optimum Nutrition Serious Mass: My Complete NO BS Review first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

This post was inspired by one of my coaching clients who was actually able to go from “skinny fat” to ripped and muscular in about 6 months’ time following this regimen.

With that said, a skinny fat body type is one of most challenging to work with and transform quickly because you are probably overwhelmed with what to do first. Do you do a cut first and focus on losing body fat, or do you bulk up and first and try to gain more muscle mass – which boosts your metabolism?

How about we do a little bit of both? Today I’m going to break down the simple steps you should follow for the next 6 months to go from being skinny fat to ripped and muscular.

If you follow the nutrition and workout advice below, you’ll be able to accomplish the goal of losing body fat and gaining lean muscle mass in the same day.

Let’s dive in and take a look at the blueprint!

Step 1: Don’t Panic

I just want to start this off by saying please don’t panic! You may feel like you have the world against you and hate your body as a skinny fat guy, but I promise you that time is going to fly by regardless – and you will be absolutely enthralled you took part in this journey in a few months.

This blueprint is going to give you epic results, and I have a feeling you are going to love the new you sooner rather than later. So with that said, let’s begin your epic skinny fat transformation.

Step 2: Hit Your Macros Daily

The most important aspect to building muscle and burning fat at the same time, or at least in the same day is hitting your macros.

You want to set up your daily nutrient totals differently depending on if it is a workout day vs. a non-workout day.

This will allow you to maximize your muscle building on workout days, and also dial in your fat loss on non workout days. This is precisely what makes this plan so effective.

Your daily macros should be set up the following way on your training days to maximize workout intensity and muscle growth:

• Protein: 1 gram per 1 lb. of bodyweight
• Carbs: 1.25 grams per 1 lb. of bodyweight
• Fat: 0.25 grams per 1 lb. of bodyweight

For example, if you are a 200 lb. guy on a training day you would consume 200 grams of protein, 225 grams of carbs, and 50 grams of fat.

For non-training days we want to dial in our fat loss, so we are going to hit our macro totals differently.

• Protein: 1.25 grams per lb. of bodyweight
• Carbs: 0.5 grams per lb. of bodyweight
• Fat: 0.4 grams per lb. of bodyweight

Now that we know what our daily totals are, let’s discuss timing and how it relates to quick results!

Step 3: Master Carbohydrate Timing

Carbohydrate timing is going to be crucial for your results. You want to consume the majority of your carbohydrates on training days before and after your workout. This will maximize pre workout training intensity, and post workout muscle growth.

You want to taper off your carbohydrate totals later in the day so your body can enter a fat burning mode. Stick to lean protein and healthy fats for the last few hours of the day so you can keep insulin low and maximize your body’s human growth hormone levels!

On non training days you will see that your carbohydrates are much lower. You will see the best results if you consume the majority of your carbohydrates first thing in the morning in the form of slow digesting carbs such as oatmeal, steel cut oats, or brown rice. For the rest of the day get your remaining carbs from veggies.

If you follow this carbohydrate timing you will be a fat burning machine every night, while giving your body adequate amounts of protein to build muscle.

Step 4: Train Insane

We got our nutrition dialed in, so let’s shift our focus to the workouts. I want you to perform the following workouts every single week.

Four times per week you should be in the weight room with 50 percent of your exercises focused on increasing the strength on your compound movements, and the other 50 percent of exercises shapers and machines that will help to obliterate body fat. (More on this in the next section).

For your cardio I only want you to do HIIT training – which will boost your metabolism and turn you into a fat burning machine post workout. This can be done by simply sprinting as fast as you can for 10-15 seconds, and then resting for about 45 seconds. Then repeat.

 Step 5: Work Out Like This

For your 4x per week weight room workouts, I want you to set them up a very specific way to maximize strength, muscle growth, and fat loss.

You will be doing 4 exercises total per workout.

The first two exercises will always be a compound exercise movement. I want you to focus on increasing the strength on these exercises, and keep great form. Sets following a 5 by 5 regimen are perfect – which means 5 sets of 5 reps per compound movement.

The next 2 exercises of your workout I want you to do a machine or shaper and keep the repetition ranges really high in the 15-20 range, but also shorten rest time to 45 seconds between sets. This will ignite a surge of HGH and maximize fat loss.

Step Six: Lights Out Science

Step 6 is perfect PM nutrition to maximize our healthy testosterone and HGH levels. Manipulating your hormones is so important late at night, so I wanted to include this in the last step.

Make sure the only thing you are consuming late at night is a great source of slow digesting protein and healthy fat.

Some of my favorite options are omelets with left over meats, and casein protein powder with a handful of almonds. These are perfect protein sources and will maximize muscle growth and recovery overnight.

If you want to supplement with anything else I recommend ZMA – as many guys who are skinny fat are low in zinc and magnesium, which has a lot of negative consequences.

So this was my 6-part skinny fat transformation guide! Follow this to a tee and you will see some great results! Stay patient, stay motivated, and embrace the journey – it’s going to be well worth it!

The post Skinny Fat Transformation: Step-By-Step Guide To Get Ripped And Muscular first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

What’s up dude! Summer time is approaching rapidly and I know you want to head to the beach and take off your shirt and showcase those muscles! It’s hard to believe that about 5-6 years ago I barely had any muscle mass, and was a walking stick!

Thank god times have changed, because I’ve packed on 60 lbs. of pure muscle mass, and it has completely changed my life.

Was it easy? Absolutely not, but I’m sure thankful that I took the plunge and started training and eating right. This article is going to disclose 5 things I did to gain 60 lbs of muscle mass.

I wanted to put together an outside the box list and hopefully spark some creativity and shock your body into radical muscle growth this summer.

I remember back when I was in school the most exciting time of the year was the summer time because it was when the rapid improvements happened.

If you are looking to transform your physique this summer make sure you try out these 5 things and you will have a first class ticket on the gain train!

Keep A Strength Journal/Workout Log

This one is first for a reason. In the video I actually show you some of my old workout logs and have I have improved over the years. These workout logs are so cool if you keep track of them and nothing is more satisfying than looking back and seeing radical strength gains on your bench, squat, and deadlift.

Looking back at some of my old workout logs it’s crazy to think that I have improved well over 50 lbs on my bench press, squat, and dead-lift in just the last 24 months. This is how you grow bigger and stronger; keeping track of your weight and reps and walking in the gym each day with an exact target to beat!

This was one of the biggest reasons that I gained 60 total lbs. over the course of my transformation.

Post Workout Carb Loading

Going in the gym and lifting like a monster is nothing but a waste of time and energy if you aren’t going to feed your muscles with post workout carbohydrates.

Maximizing your insulin spike following a crazy intense workout is the fastest track to muscle growth and recovery.

When I am trying to make really fast gains I will consume about 0.5 grams of carbs per lb. of bodyweight immediately after my workout.

This means that I am eating like a monster and pigging out on simple carbs like white rice, gummy bears, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, and even cheesecake!

Make sure you are hitting at least 40-50 grams of protein and close to 100 grams of carbs following your workouts if you want to maximize your recovery and growth.

X Factor Exercises

In the pursuit of rapidly gaining weight all exercises are not created equal. I have labeled four exercises that are not the mainstream compound movements that are crucial for fast muscle gains.

These exercises are the true x factors to muscle growth and will help you develop some weak points you may not be hitting with your typical training routine.

I have put a huge emphasis on increasing the strength on the following four exercises and I attribute at least 15 lbs. of muscle growth because of it!

• Weighted Pull-Ups
• Incline Bench Press
• Straight Leg Deadlift
• Weighted Dips

These exercises are incredible for activating new muscle growth and hitting weak points. Want to grow fast? Gain 20-30 lbs. on each of these exercises.

Advanced Training Every Few Months

On top of hitting your compound exercises movements and training for strength you should be cycling an advanced training regimen every few months to shock and confuse the body.

Some of the best advanced training strategies you should be implementing every few months are:

• German Volume Training
• FST 7
• Rest/Pause
• Time Under Tension
• Slow Motion
• Drop Sets
• Opposing Muscle Group Supersets

These are all radical training techniques that will challenge your body like its never been challenged before; which always results in getting over a plateau and building slabs of lean muscle mass.

Embrace The Journey & Stay Motivated

One of the most powerful things you can do to make radical progress over a period of 6-12 months is to stay 100 percent focused on each day, and not be overwhelmed by the journey.

Many naturally skinny guys have a habit of giving up before they even get started. Don’t be one of those guys!

I remember motivating myself by looking at pictures of fitness models I wanted to look like. I would look at pictures of my idol Greg Plitt before I worked out in college to inspire intense workouts – and a few years later I got to meet him and actually looked just about as big as him in the picture I took! That was honestly one of the coolest moments of my life!

Whatever you have to do to stay motivated, make sure you do it! Look at pictures of physiques you want to look like, think of the kind of dating life you want, and how you want girls to react when you take off your shirt. These may all sound stupid and shallow – but they are really positive momentum boosters on a life long journey of making incredible gains!

The post Ectomorph Body Type Workout Tips: I Did These 5 Things And Gained 60 Lbs. Of Muscle first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

Every single day on “international chest day” (Monday) I see the same boring chest routine. Guys hit the bench press, maybe do a few dumbbell incline presses, and then follow up this routine with a few pectoral flies.

If you want your chest to make size and strength gains you have to think outside the box and incorporate unique exercises that work different sections of your chest.

There is a huge problem with most guy’s chest development – and that is most guys have absolutely zero upper chest development and also lack a chiseled inner section.

Carving out that line in the middle of your chest and building a thick upper chest will set your physique apart from the other bros this summer, and is essential for maximum aesthetics.

If you only hit the bench press and a few “shaper” exercises you’re really missing out. So I wanted to come up with 4 chest exercises that not only you are likely not performing, but will also develop parts of your chest you aren’t working with your current routine like the inner muscle fibers and the upper chest.

After this article you will be calling me the Christopher Columbus of your pec gains – because we are about to help you discover that upper chest! Let’s get started.

Dumbbell Pullover Superset With Close-Grip Incline Pushup

I actually learned about the power of this exercise watching a video of Jeff Seid workout with Kai Greene. Kai Greene explained how just doing the incline bench press is not enough to get a chiseled upper chest.

You need to hit the upper chest from a different angle and get a squeeze – and this is precisely what the dumbbell pull over accomplishes.

Check out the video so you can see the exact form you need to perform with this exercise. It is truly all about the squeeze and contraction. Don’t even worry about how much weight you are lifting during this exercise.

If you are able to channel that insane mind-muscle connection on this exercise you will start to see upper chest development.

To take this superset to another level – I suggest that you perform some incline close grip pushups on a bench directly after the set.

Check out my sick chest pump as I go until failure after the dumbbell pullover set!

Hex Press

The hex press is a really unique dumbbell chest exercise. Most guys flair their elbows out during traditional dumbbell chest press exercises and only work the outer portion of their pectorals.

During the hex press you are going to keep the dumbbells close together and keep your elbows in.

What this accomplishes is focusing on that inner portion of your chest – developing a chiseled line down the center of your chest that makes you resemble a Greek god!

Make sure not to go very heavy on this exercise starting out – and channel that mind-muscle connection right to the center of your chest.

Keep your elbows in as you squeeze the weight up and you will feel a chest pull right in the center of your chest.

Eccentric Overload Chest Press

Contrary to popular belief – you actually build more muscle on the “eccentric portion” of the exercise. This is the part of the repetition when you are lowering the weight.

The key with this exercise is to go really slow on the way down so you are able to maximize the healthy micro tears that you create.

One of my favorite ways to utilize the eccentric overload style of training is with a machine. Machines allow you to control the weight much better than free weight exercises, and one of my favorite upper chest builders of all time is the iso incline chest press machine.

I try to go really heavy as you see in the video – and go for a full 3 seconds on the way down. When using a machine, you don’t have to worry about a spotter so you can go really heavy on this exercise and challenge yourself. Try this exercise at your gym and load up the plates as heavy as you can go and focus on squeezing that muscle for a full 3 seconds on the way down!

Wolverine Low Cable Fly

The wolverine low cable fly exercise is my personal favorite for sculpting the inner portion of your chest because you are forced to incorporate an “exaggerated motion” far past the normal low cable fly.

Wit the wolverine low cable fly exercise you are actually crossing your hands in the movement – getting an extra stretch on your chest muscles.

This is absolutely incredible at carving out your chest and the pump I get from this exercise far outweighs any other cable fly chest exercise.

Another really cool benefit is that you will likely feel like The Wolverine as you do this exercise and get an insane pump in your chest and arms!

These are my 4 favorite “forgotten” chest exercises that grew my pectorals. Make sure you try these out on chest day as they will help to develop weak points in your chest you likely are not hitting with your current workout.

The post Chest Exercises For Men: 4 Forgotten Chest Exercises That Grew My Pecs first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

Someone recently reached out to me asking what mass gainer he should spend his hard earned money on to gain weight and bulk up.

This is a really valid question because the way that mass building supplements are marketed they tend to really appeal to the serious hard gainer.

The problem with most mass building supplements is they just don’t have the nutrient density that whole food has. Many mass gainers contain a lot of artificial and processed ingredients, cheap carbohydrate fillers, and other cheap “mass builders” such as powdered fats.

In this article I’m going to give you my No-BS review on Dymatize Super Mass Gainer. We are going to cover the good, the bad, and the outright ugly with this mass builder so you can make an educated decision if it’s right for you.

I want to give you guys the best information possible on supplements because 9 times out of 10 you could be making a really poor investment and there are far better resources out their to bulk up and gain weight then a cheap mass builder.

I’ve been huge on supplement science and learning what everything does in your body, so you are getting a science based “no bro science” opinion on this mass builder.

Dymatize Super Mass Gainer (Breaking Down The Ingredients)

As you can see this mass gainer packs in a ton of total calories and has 1,300 total calories per 2 heaping scoops.

The thing you have to keep in mind is that these scoops are REALLY BIG!

Be prepared to mix about 24-30 ounces of water to get down all of this powder.

The total macronutrient breakdown for one serving size with water is the following:

• Total Calories: 1,300
• Total Fat: 11 g.
• Total Carbs: 253 g.
• Protein: 52 g.

Holy carbohydrates! If you look at the ingredient profile you will see that Maltodextrin is the first ingredient listed.

This is a really cheap carbohydrate ingredient and you can in fact buy a giant tub of Maltodextrin powder for $10-15 dollars. If you wanted to buy this stuff in bulk I just located an 8 LB tub for only $23.00 – so the first ingredient is a really cheap one.

Next up we have a 6-protein blend, with the 1^st protein being a whey concentrate, which is the cheapest of all the whey proteins.

This isn’t bad, and Dymatize Super Mass Gainer STILL contains 1,300 total calories.

Based on the Carbohydrates and Protein – this isn’t a bad solution to gaining weight, but unfortunately we have a ton of crap and filler ingredients coming up!

The next ingredient is something called “Sunflower Creamer” – which I had never heard of, but I’ve never seen it listed as a “healthy bodybuilding fat source.”

Upon further research I found out that “Sunflower Oil” – which is the first ingredient in Sunflower Creamer is one of the cheapest vegetable oils in the world, and has literally zero nutritional value.

Then we go further down the list of ingredients and we see a bunch of names we can’t pronounce. These are pure filler ingredients and artificial and processed ingredients that also serve absolutely zero nutritional value.

More than half of the ingredients that comprise this “super mass builder” are nothing more than ingredients which contain absolutely no purpose and WILL NOT help you with your gains whatsoever.

Overall, I’m going to give Dymatize Mass Builder a C+. Dymatize makes high quality protein, but they really dropped the ball on their mass builder by putting a lot of cheap filler ingredients to keep the manufacturing costs low. The only reason it is getting a C+ is because the taste is half way decent and it does pack in a ton of total calories per serving size, so if your ONLY goal is to gain weight (notice I didn’t say muscle) – it will help you.

This supplement is not worth your hard earned money in my opinion however. Although it stacks up decent compared to some of the other mass builders out their – you can find a way better solution to gaining weight that is both CHEAPER and MORE EFFECTIVE with whole foods and my secret mass gainer recipe.

A Better Alternative: A Delicious Mass Building Shake That You Can Make At Home!

Ok manchildren! Time to fire up the blender for a REAL mass building shake.

This one is called the “Orange Creamsicle Mass Builder” and tastes 10 x better than any store bought mass builder and will help you pack on thick slabs of muscle.

Orange Creamsicle Mass Builder:

• 12 oz. orangeGatorade
• 4 oz. cashew milk
• 3 tbsp. hemp seeds
• 5 scoop vanilla protein powder
• 1 frozen banana
• 1/4 cup oatmeal or oat flour (you can make oat flour by blending oatmeal)
• 2 tbsp. almond butter or peanut butter
• 2 tbsp. liquid coconut oil

Total Calories: 1,400

The beauty of this mass building shake is it has whole food nutrition, and aside from the orange Gatorade it is mostly hardcore bodybuilding foods like hemp seeds, protein powder, peanut butter, almond butter, oatmeal, and fruit.

Next time you are looking for a hardcore mass builder always look in your kitchen over a supplement store. Pounding the cabinets and fridge with delicious whole food options is the best way to get jacked and save a lot of money at the same time.

The post Dymatize Super Mass Gainer: My Complete NO-BS Review first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

As a naturally skinny guy I have had to become a bit of a “muscle building mad scientist” to achieve my current physique. I’m making a big push to get to 210 lbs. with 8 percent body fat – and that means I’ve had to reassess everything I have done over the last few years.

I’ve made a lot of progress gaining close to 60 lbs. – but I’ve felt a bit stuck recently. What am I doing wrong? What do I need to change to get stronger and build muscle?

It’s one thing to make gains when you are a beginner, but another animal when you have been working out for several years (in my case close to 10).

I researched and experimented like crazy and I’m excited to share with you guys my 3 biggest muscle building revelations that I know will help you push past any current plateau you might be facing.

Are you ready to take your gains to the next level? Let’s begin!

Less Is More

I have been obsessed with getting bigger arms for the last year and after analyzing the strengths and weaknesses in my physique I reassessed my training philosophy.

My shoulders, traps, and chest seem to be growing at a much faster rate than my biceps. How is this possible – as I’m training my biceps 4-5 times per week?

I really had to go back to the bodybuilding principles with this one. How does a muscle grow and get stronger? You have to train with peak intensity and create healthy micro-tears, and then allow it ample time to rebuild and repair. If you are training a muscle almost every day your body is going to get used to this routine.

Your body is also not getting enough rest to make rapid lean muscle gains.
I was also not able to make my biceps sore after a workout – and this bothered me. I thought that if I work out my biceps once per week, but I absolutely MURDERED THEM – I could make them sore again and spark some new growth. Mission accomplished!

I’m now doing once per week biceps workouts and doing about 35-40 sets per workout. I’m also cycling in a new radical training technique into each workout such as drop sets, rest: pause, pre exhaust (check out the next section) and slow motion training.

If you want a muscle group to grow fast work it out once per week – but when you are training that muscle group give it 110 percent and throw some radical training techniques at it each week.

Pre Exhaust Training

Are you ready for a training principle that the legendary Arnold Schwarzenegger implemented to get gigantic arms and tree trunk arms? Look no further than pre exhaust training!

I tried out this training principle about 2 months ago and instantly fell in love. In fact – the workout after doing this pre-exhaust training workout with my legs I increased my squat max by about 10 lbs.

Now that we have our training dialed in to once per week, we need to focus on what type of advanced training techniques we are going to utilize.

This one works amazing, especially with trying to increase your bench press or squat max.

How to perform pre-exhaust training is really simple. You are going to start off your chest day or leg day with a “shaper exercise” instead of your compound lift. The goal Is that when you hit the squat rack or the bench press you have already fatigued your muscles and will create a new type of overload that will spark strength and size gains.

On leg day try doing 4 sets of leg extension and a few sets of dumbbell walking lunges before hitting the squat rack. This will no doubt increase your squat max after just a few sets.

For chest day, hit the low cable flys and the pectoral fly machines before you hit the bench press. I was stuck for the longest time around the 275. lb. mark on bench press, and I was able to work my way up to over 300 lbs. using this technique.

Intra Workout Shake

For the last year I have been relying on stimulant based pre workouts to get through intense workouts. The problem with pre workouts for naturally skinny guys is that they contain a lot of stimulants and caffeine that actually raise your body’s cortisol levels (your ugly “anti-muscle” hormone.)

Cortisol is a nasty hormone that will make it nearly impossible for any naturally skinny guy to build muscle – and taking a pre workout and spiking your adrenaline every day with caffeine and stimulants is a sure fire way to spike your cortisol levels.

Instead of relying on stimulants and drinking them throughout my workout I switched to 100 percent anabolic fuel.

My new intra workout shake gives me energy during my workout and most importantly doesn’t increase my cortisol production.

I simply mix a whey protein blend (a mix of slow, medium, and fast digesting proteins), maltodextrin (a carbohydrate powder) and some creatine.

This is the perfect recipe for lean gains and maximum energy during your workout.

I mix about 40 grams of protein, 30 grams of maltodextrin, and 5 grams of creatine and I will drink this throughout my workout.

This is 100 percent strength and mass building fuel – and making the switch from a stimulant based pre workout to drinking quality carbs and protein during my workout has helped me increase my strength and make lean gains all summer long.

That’s it for now guys! Try out these 3 simple skinny guy training hacks and I promise you this will be a “Suns Out, Guns Out” type of summer for you.

The post Ectomorph Workout: Skinny Guy Training Hacks To Build Muscle And Increase Strength first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

If you are struggling to gain weight you might want to incorporate a few of these “skinny guy life-hacks” to pack on more lean muscle mass and healthy weight.

There are so many X-factors that can sky rocket your gains, and also so many little “lifestyle choices” that can completely derail you from the gain train.

This article is going to shine a big spotlight on a few things that could be holding you back from making gains (like partying and drinking alcohol) – and how to incorporate “skinny guy life hacks” so you can live a normal life and not have to sacrifice your hard work in the gym.

Party Gains

This is of course only for guys who are 21 years of age and older! One of the biggest things that will completely derail your strength and muscle building goals is alcohol and partying.

The combination of late nights and drinking alcohol are not kind to your body as a hard gainer.

When I was in college I was known to hit a few parties, and I was also working my butt off in the gym.

Sadly, I gained only a few lbs. of muscle over the course of 4 years in college. Why such minimal progress? I was drinking alcohol and I wasn’t properly hydrating after.

I don’t want to sound like your mom and tell you to never have fun and enjoy being young and having a thriving social life – so I’m going to tell you to go out and have an occasional drink (or two) with your buddies and follow this blueprint so you can still make gains!

How To Party Responsibly And Still Make Gains:

Step 1: Fill Your Stomach

One or two hours before drinking alcohol fill up on high quality carbohydrates and protein.

This is crucial so you are not drinking on an empty stomach! Drinking alcohol on an empty stomach is like throwing away all of your muscle mass in the dumpster. Don’t do it!

I like to fill up on some high quality grass fed beef, salmon, or chicken breast. I will pair it with some delicious sweet potatoes and brown rice

Step 2: Try to Drink “Clean”

I highly recommend you try to drink high quality liquor that is clear. A good quality Rum and vodka is going to contain less empty calories and be easier for your body to digest.

Mix it with some club soda and a lime and you have the “cleanest” drink on the planet other than water!

Step 3: Post Partying Hydration And Recovery

This one is HUGE! Don’t go to bed without consuming something that can absorb that liquor and feed your body with bodybuilding nutrition.

You want to have the following:

1. Potassium and Hydrating minerals to prevent dehydration
2. High quality protein so you don’t lose muscle mass
3. ANY type of carbs so you replenish the muscle glycogen that was eroded from the alcohol
4. Some Healthy fats to further soak up the liquor in your belly

My favorite combination is the following:

1. I will eat some cheese pizza with chicken or ham on it(if I’m already out and want to be social still)
2. I will drink a big thing of Gatorade and mix a little magnesium powder in it when I get home
3. I will then eat a small serving of left over protein in my fridge such as grass fed beef, chicken, fish, or fry up some eggs
4. I will drink a big glass of water with fresh squeezed lemon

Follow this blueprint and you won’t lose that hard earned muscle mass!

Intra Workout Mass Builder

Who says you can’t drink some high quality mass building shakes when you’re working out?

One of the best intra workout mass builders can be made very easily with some common ingredients you can get at amazon.com

I recommend you buy the protein powder of your choice and also some maltodextrin powder.

Fill a shaker cup with about 30-40 grams of protein, 60 grams of maltodextrin and 5 grams of creatine.

In the middle of your workout start sipping on this and finish by the end of your workout. This intra workout mass builder allows you to get in another 400 high quality bodybuilding calories every workout.

If you train 5 times per week this is an extra 2,000 calories per week of pure bodybuilding nutrition!

Perfect PM Nutrition

The 60-minute window before you go to bed is probably the 2^nd most important “nutrition window” for your gains other than post workout.

If post workout is the “anabolic window” this is “Ronnie Coleman’s Front Door.”

What you put in your body 60 minutes before you go to bed can really supercharge your nighttime recovery.

My favorite thing to do is make a protein omelet, which consists of:

• 4 whole eggs
• Diced veggies
• Chicken, fish, or turkey

Eggs have slow protein and cholesterol, which is the building block of testosterone and is secreted by your leydig cells when you go to sleep.

Having an omelet before bed is the perfect catalyst for growth and recovery.

About 10-15 minutes before bed I will then take 4 ZMA pills for added testosterone support and recovery.

Magnesium is a really critical mineral in your body and many people are deficient in it from excessive mental and physical stress and dehydration. This assures your body is operating like a machine when you wake up!

These are my 3 favorite skinny guy life hacks that I have used the last couple years to make faster gains. Make sure you check out the full video and tell me your favorite skinny guy hacks in the comments.

The post How To Put On Weight: 3 Skinny Guy “Life Hacks” I Used To Gain Weight first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

What is going on dude! I get this question a lot to be honest:

“What is the perfect clean bulk diet?”

The thing about bulking up and gaining weight is that it’s not that difficult. If you want to gain weight you can enter a “dirty bulk” and pound pop tarts, cheesecake, and fried chicken and I guarantee you that you will pack on weight… in your stomach!

I want to help you create a perfect clean bulk diet for maximum muscle and minimal body fat.

The first thing that we have to consider is a few rules you’ll need to apply… Or else you’re bound to get carried away with too much fat gains during your bulk.

I’m going to share with you my exact formula for the perfect clean bulk diet for maximum muscle and minimal body fat. I’m actually going to share with you an full day of eating if I was following a “clean bulk” – but first let’s get into some rules regarding the perfect clean bulk diet:

The Perfect Clean Bulk Diet Rules

Rule #1: 80/20 Principle

The first rule of the perfect clean bulk diet is that 80% of your food choices should be “clean foods” – and 20% can be considered “dirty foods.”

Some examples of dirty bulk foods include anything with high amounts of sugar, pizza, fried foods, and my personal favorite – Cheesecake Factory Cheesecake!

Rule #2: Timing Still Matters

Since the goal of this clean bulk is maximum muscle and minimal body fat – I can’t stress enough how important timing is.

You’re going to want to consume more carbohydrates pre workout and post workout when it’s beneficial for your lean muscle gains and workout intensity.

Late at night you are going to want to stick to healthy protein and healthy fat choices to keep your insulin levels low and keep those body fat levels low!

A Day In The Life: My Perfect Clean Bulk Diet Meal-By-Meal

Let’s go meal by meal and I will share with you what my last “clean bulk diet” consisted of on a training day.

Breakfast:

½ cup steel cut oats

1 chopped banana

½ cup blueberries

2 tbsp. peanut butter

1 tbsp. honey

2 tbsp. hemp seeds

2 scoops Combat protein powder

Post Workout Mass Building Shake:

2 cups chocolate almond milk

2 tbsp. coconut oil

2 tbsp. chia seeds

1 Banana

1 Scoop vanilla protein powder

5 grams creatine

¼ cup maltodextrin

Lunch:

2 cups whole grain pasta

½ Lb lean grass fed beef

organic tomato sauce

2 tbsp. olive oil

Italian seasoning and garlic

Late afternoon Snack:

¼ cup raw almonds

¼ cup goji berries

Dinner:

10 ounces wild caught salmon

2 cups steamed veggies with olive oil

Late Night Snack:

4 egg omelet

½ cup chopped chicken breast

My Final Thoughts On The Perfect Clean Bulk Diet

This would be my example perfect clean bulk diet on a training day. A few important things to consider. This meal plan was meant to be “quick” – in the sense that I’m a busy guy and I don’t want to have to spend time cooking each of my meals when I’m on my grind!

Another thing that I love is that it is very clean and at the same time very satisfying.

My post workout mass building shake is absolutely delicious and decadent, and does not contain one ingredient that I would consider “dirty.”

I love starchy carbohydrates and consuming a huge amount of pasta for lunch allows me to really satisfy my carbohydrate cravings and allows me to make cleaner choices for the rest of the day.

This would be an example of a very clean bulking day, in which I actually make healthy choices about 95 percent of the time.

Sometimes just to change it up and enjoy my food a little more I will include two of my favorite high protein snacks:

1. Lenny and Larry’s protein complete cookies. I absolutely love the Birthday Cake and the Snicker Doodle Cookie and love to munch on them during my bulking diet, as they are high in calories.

2. Chocolate rice cakes with applesauce and almond butter – This is purely decadent and satisfies my cheesecake craving believe it or not!

Make sure you have fun with your clean bulk diet and you will no doubt enjoy some rapid lean muscle gains! Talk to you soon my dude!

The post Bulking Diet: The Perfect “Clean Bulk” Diet For Maximum Muscle & Minimal Fat first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

When you are trying to make serious gains in the gym you are going to go face to face with your biggest mental, physical, and personal challenges throughout your journey – especially if you‘re young.

One of the worst things you can do for your confidence and progress is make excuses on why you aren’t seeing fast results.

Life is all about overcoming obstacles and in this article I’m going to share with you some personal experience on how myself and some guys I’ve coached have overcome not enough time, money, and bad genetics. Let’s get started!

Overcoming “Not Enough Time”

So you don’t have enough time to make gains? That is complete BS! You’re just poor at time management. Even if you’re going to school full time, raising 2 children, and have a full time job all you really need is 3 gym workouts per week at about 20-30 minutes per workout to see great gains.

If all of your workouts are focused on compound exercises you will see rapid lean muscle and strength gains.

The following is my favorite 3-day split that will take 60-90 minutes’ maximum.

For each of these exercises I want you to do 4 total sets pyramiding up to your heavy set.

There will be 2 exercises per workout, and you will be doing 8 total sets per workout. The goal of this split is to focus on increasing your strength and giving you a lot of rest between workouts since you are only going 3 times per week.

Workout 1: Classic Push-Pull Pyramid

Exercise 1: Barbell Bench Press

Exercise 2: Weighted Pull-Ups

Workout 2: Leg Day Pyramid

Exercise 1: Barbell Squat

Exercise 2: Dumbbell Lunges

Workout 3: Anabolic Pyramid

Exercise 1: Barbell Deadlift

Exercise 2: Dumbbell 1 Arm Row

Overcoming “Not Enough Money”

This is a big one for most guys in their teens and early twenties. Not having enough money for the food and supplements you think you need is pretty detrimental to your success – but there are certainly ways around it.

Let me start off by giving you a bit of life advice. Back when I was in college I started freelancing on the internet and picking up random writing jobs and misc. task jobs. It was extremely easy to work a few extra hours per week and make an extra $50-100 per week.

This adds up to $400 per month if you can earn at least $100 per week, and with so many freelance work sites like Upwork and Fiverr you should have no problem getting close to this, plus you will learn how to hustle which is a skill that will benefit you the rest of your life.

Now – you guys should be investing 95 percent of your extra money on bodybuilding superfoods, and NOT supplements except a protein powder as this is actually one of the cheapest sources of protein.

Let’s take a look at the cheapest bodybuilding protein sources:

1. Protein powder
2. Chicken breasts
3. Lean ground turkey
4. Canned tuna
5. Canned salmon
6. Eggs
7. Egg Whites
8. Wild caught cod chunks (I get them for $4.00 per lb. at Trader Joes)
9. Lean ground sirloin

Here is a list of the cheapest “bodybuilding carbs.” Keep in mind carbs are REALLY cheap if you know what you are shopping for.

1. Brown Rice
2. Sweet potatoes
3. Beans
4. Lentils
5. Quinoa
6. Red skin potatoes
7. Jasmine rice
8. Maltodextrin powder
9. Bananas
10. All other Fruits and veggies

Here is my list of “bodybuilding fats” that are relatively cheap:

1. Peanuts or peanut butter
2. Mixed nuts
3. Olive oil
4. Chia seeds
5. Avocado (Wal Mart has them for $1)
6. By product of whole egg consumption

By product of sirloin steak consumption

Overcoming “Bad Genetics”

This one really infuriates me. What exactly are “bad genetics” anyways? I’m sure most of you who are naturally skinny think you have piss-poor genetics but you actually have a lot of good things going for you.

Once you learn how to build muscle mass for your body type(which I’m sure you are if your watching our videos and reading our articles) – you will see that building a chiseled fitness model physique is a lot easier for your body type than a lot of other body types because you don’t store body fat very easily.

The muscle mass that you build will make you look like a monster because you are lean and chiseled. You have to think of every circumstance as a “glass half full” opportunity, and your “skinny guy genetics” is going to be a blessing in disguise.

I remember when I was 142 lbs. and could barely bench press 100 lbs. Since then I’ve packed on 50 lbs. of lean muscle mass while keeping my body fat levels really low and most people assume I’m well over 220 lbs. because I’m so lean.

Stay consistent and stay positive and NEVER blame your genetics on anything. You have huge advantages of a hard gainer – but you won’t ever realize these advantages sitting back and making excuses about your genetics.

As far as I’m aware – there is no genetic body type that makes it impossible for you to build a lot of lean muscle mass.

Your idea of “bad genetics” just means that you have to change up your workout routines a little more often, do a few more compound exercises, and eat a few more calories to compensate for your fast metabolism.

This is far from torture and in my opinion pretty awesome because you can scarf down an entire box of Fruity pebbles post workout and not get fat unlike 95 percent of the population!

The post How To Bulk Up: Overcoming Poor Genetics, Time, And Money first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

I have been eating at Chipotle since college and always thought of it as the “perfect post workout” meal because you could pack a bowl full of chicken, steak, rice, beans, and other delicious ingredients.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could make en easy recipe that tasted like Chipotle and packed in even more gains and nutrition?

Welcome to the “Epic Muscle Meals” video series – where we take some of your favorite foods and put a special bodybuilding twist on them.

In the first episode we bring you high protein Chipotle inspired burrito bowls and “man salads” designed to give you a plethora of high quality protein, complex carbohydrates, and healthy fats.

The burrito bowl is perfect for anyone looking to make some rapid lean muscle gains and is “bulking” and the “man salad” is perfect for anyone looking to make “lean gains” and increase strength and their anabolic hormones.

This first “epic muscle meal prep” episode was created by popular demand in the YouTube comments section – so please make sure to keep the comments coming and we’ll keep sharing our favorite meal prep recipes.

Chipotle Inspired Burrito Bowl

One of the bad things about Chipotle and pretty much every fast food Mexican restaurant is the inclusion of a ton of added sodium and vegetable oils. Did you know that Chipotle adds unhealthy oil to your rice? This oil serves zero purpose on a bodybuilding diet – and will cause you to store belly fat.

The meat at Chipotle also contains a lot of added sodium and oil. Time to improve on this recipe and give you enough protein to feed a baby dinosaur!

Step 1: Cook Your Meats On The Frying Pan

The most cooking you will have to do is with your protein. I bought a 1 lb. package of 99% lean turkey and 94% lean beef and combined it with 3 tbsp. coconut oil for some healthy cooking oil.

This monster protein skillet contains over 200 grams of protein. For even more added protein you can cook a few organic eggs over the protein scrambler.

Step 2: Fire Up The Rice Cooker!

This one is pretty self explanatory. Fill up your rice cooker and throw in 2-3 cups of uncooked brown rice. This will fill you up with some healthy carbs that makes for the perfect partner in crime to your protein scrambler.

Step 3: Mix-Ins

The world is your oyster with this incredible recipe. Once you have the rice and protein scrambler base you can start by separating this into your meal prep containers and adding In your bodybuilding powerhouse mix-ins.

Here are some of my favorite things to mix into my Chipotle inspired Meal prep bowl.

-Kidney beans
-Corn
-Black Beans
-Garbonzo Beans
-Spinach Leaves
-Shredded Cabbage
-Diced tomatoes
-Diced Peppers
-Diced Onions
-Hemp Seeds
-Hot Sauce
-Salsa
-Sliced Avocado

This is where you can get really creative with your meal prep and try out new ideas! Let me know in the YouTube comments if I missed out on anything and if you have any variations of this recipe you enjoy.

Chipotle Inspired “Man-Salads”

When I was trying to make “lean gains” back in college I would often go to Chipotle for a high protein Salad.

I’m really excited to share with you my Chipotle inspired high protein salad as its absolutely delicious and will help you maintain and build your muscle mass while cutting body fat.

Step 1: Cook Your Meats On The Frying Pan (Or use the meat left-over from the Burrito Bowls)

We’re using the exact same meat as with the Burrito Bowl recipe above. I bought a 1 lb. package of lean turkey (99 percent) and lean beef (94 percent) and combined it with 3 tbsp. coconut oil for some healthy cooking oil.

This protein skillet contains over 200 grams of protein. For even more added protein you can cook a few organic eggs over the protein scrambler.

Step 2: Time To Make Healthy Protein Packed Croutons!

Did you know you can make amazing protein packed croutons with Ezekiel bread? Cut out squares of Ezekiel bread with a scissors and pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees.

Lay out the croutons on a baking sheet and spray with coconut oil and season with garlic salt.

Let them cook for 10-12 minutes until they are completely crunchy.

Step 3: Let’s Complete These “Man-Salads”

By now we have done the hard part. Separate the meat and the croutons and get out your meal prep containers.

The base of your salads will be a combo of romaine and spinach leaves. Lay out the lettuce in your meal prep bowls.

Next throw on top your protein and croutons. I like to put about 1 cup protein mix, and ½ cup croutons.

Now the fun part. We are going to add on top some delicious ingredients that will give these salads a big flavor kick.

Here are my favorite mix-ins:

1. Hemp Seeds (really high in omega 3 and protein)
2. Shredded Carrots (perfect nutrient dense carbs)
3. Black Beans (more protein, fiber, and healthy carbs)
4. Corn (gives it that Mexican Flare)
5. Colored Bell Peppers (more vitamin C and crunch)
6. Franks Red Hot and Salsa!
7. ½ Cup of Mashed Avocado
8. Garlic Salt to Taste

Mix all of these ingredients together and you have an epic “Man-Salad” recipe that will give you a ton of protein!

Make sure to stay tuned for the next “Epic Muscle Meals” episode as I give you another delicious meal prep. Don’t forget to leave your comment to tell me what you want to see next!

The post Epic Muscle Meals Ep. 1: Chipotle Inspired Burrito Bowls and “Man Salads” first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

Are you ready to blow up those arms? I hope you are pumped about this insane 27 set arm workout and the introduction of the “Insane Workout Series!”

This new workout series is designed to challenge you; taking you outside of your comfort zone and help you bring up any lagging muscle group.

I know you’re probably killing your arms trying to get them to grow, and you might not be seeing the results you hoped for.

The problem is you’re doing the same boring arm workout over and over again and not changing up your routine.

The key to explosive arm growth is to set the stage for an anabolic atmosphere with a compound pulling movement, and then destroy your arms with advanced training techniques and exercises you have never attempted before.

I guarantee that if you start incorporating new exercises and training philosophies with your workouts you will see tremendous growth.

This arm workout is designed to help you gain at least ½ to 1 full inch on your pythons over the next month.

Simply do this workout one time per week and keep track of your results. Each time you step foot in the gym focus on improving your strength and rep totals from the previous workout. Arm gains can be as simple as that!

Time to leave your comfort zone and enter the “Insane Workout Series!”

Epic 27-Set Arm Workout

Are you ready to go beast mode and enter the arena of gains? Let’s crack into the 27-set arm workout.

Exercise #1: Hendley Row

• Sets: 3
• Reps: 4-6

This exercise is actually a hybrid of a deadlift and a barbell row. If you want to get big ass arms you need to increase your “pulling strength” and also increase your anabolic hormones.

This exercise knocks out both of these at the same time! Make sure to watch the full workout video so you can see how to do this exercise properly. We are starting off with this exercise because it is really difficult and it will work your body’s largest and strongest muscle groups setting the state for an “anabolic atmosphere” in your body.

Exercise #2: Cheat Curls

• Sets: 3
• Reps: 6-8

The cheat curls are the exercise you want to challenge yourself, neglect form “a little” and try to throw up as much weight as you can.

To be honest, I really throw my entire body into this movement and I challenge myself to see how much weight I can do.

If you want to bring up your biceps you need to increase your strength on curls, so keep track of your sets and reps and aim for constant improvement!

Exercise #3: Seated Barbell Curl

• Sets: 3
• Reps: 6-8

The seated barbell curl is an awesome variation of the seated curl that will thicken the long head of your biceps and also hit your forearms.

I just started doing this exercise a few months ago and its now a staple in my arm workout routine.

Exercise #4: Reverse Preacher Curl Superset With Seated Preacher Curls

• Sets: 3
• Reps: 10 Each “Super-set”

Time to pump those veins out of your arms for a high volume superset! Starting off you are going to do a reverse preacher curl with your arms at a dead hang to get the lower portion of your arms a workout.

Then you are going to transition straight into the seated preacher curl for an even bigger arm pump. This is a super set where you want to focus on your form and the pump rather than throwing up a ton of weight.

Exercise #5: Triceps Push-Ups Superset With Dumbbell Triceps Kickback With Twist

• Sets: 3
• Reps: Failure/10 Reps

Did you think I forgot about those triceps? Of course not! The triceps push-ups are one of the hardest push up variations and one that you definitely need to try! Check out the video so you can see exactly how to perform these.

After your triceps got a nice “pump” you are going to transition into dumbbell triceps kickbacks. These will obliterate your triceps and sculpt that “horse-shoe” that makes you look like a real man-child!

Exercise #6: Triceps Rope Tri-Set

• Sets: 2
• Reps: 10 Each/30 Total

Triceps Rope tri-set is pure muscle failure. You are going to be doing 3 different variations of the classic triceps rope extension exercise and focusing on the mind muscle connection with your triceps.

Form is everything on this amazing tri-set, so watch the video and make sure you pick a weight light enough to hit the 8-10 repetition range for each section of the tri-set.

Exercise #7: 6 x 3 (Grip Changes)

• Sets: 2
• Reps: 6 Reps x 3

This is a variation of the classic 21’s – and will pump up your arms fresh off of triceps demolition. Make sure you switch your grip on the 2^nd set of this exercise. I like to start with my hands going from the outside to the inside, and then vice versa.

Exercise #8: Dumbbell Single Arm Twist Superset With Single Arm EZ-Bar Curl

• Sets: 2
• Reps: 8-10 Each

This is for sure one of the more “unique” supersets you will ever see and focuses on the rotation of the wrist and isolating each arm.

Rotating your wrist at the end of the bicep curl movement is one of the best ways to sculpt monster biceps and improve your biceps peak.

Start off this movement isolating the biceps with a Single Arm Curl, and then you will superset with the same arm into a Single Arm EZ-Bar Curl.

Switch sides and then hit your 2^nd set after about a 90 second rest!

Exercise #9: Drag Curls

• Sets: 3
• Reps: 10-15

Drag curls are a very similar movement as the underhand grip barbell row – except you will be focusing on squeezing your biceps throughout the movement. This is a great exercise to go heavy and challenge yourself as you will be doing it on the “smith machine” which will take away any of the instability you normally feel with the barbell row.

Exercise #10: Dumbbell Overhead Triceps Extension

• Sets: 3
• Reps: 6-8

Time to end things with some heavy triceps overload. This exercise works the largest head of your triceps and will help you lock out those heavy bench press sessions.

Make sure to keep your elbows in as much as possible and squeeze those triceps throughout the movement.

Continuous Overload Progression

That wraps up the epic arm workout! Make sure you try it out and let me know what you think.

This arm workout is designed to give you explosive biceps and triceps gains over the next month leading into beach season.

I want to wrap this up by telling you one more time to keep track of your workouts. Track your weight and repetitions and always focus on improving each time you step foot in the gym.

What muscle group should we feature for the next insane workout series? Let us know in the YouTube video comments!

The post Insane Workout Series Ep. 1: Arm Workout For Mass (27 Sets) first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

What’s up guys, I have been waiting a really long time to do these type of videos and I’m really excited to bring to you Brain Gains Episode 1!

You’re probably thinking by the title of this video I fell off my rocker and I’ve gone completely insane!

The truth is, I want to start sharing what I’ve been learning the last few years about mental confidence, and the mindset it takes to start achieving great things in your personal life – both in AND out of the gym.

Today’s concept is a “platinum diamond pony on roids” – which is how I describe the importance of this mental paradigm.

What do you think your most valuable asset is? Do you think its time? Do you think its money?

In this article I’m going to share with you what your most valuable asset is (Hint: its NOT time or money) – and I’m going to tell you exactly why its so tough to achieve.

I know you are jacked about getting a biggest chest and bigger arms – but you better be even more excited for some BRAIN GAINS because this is the stuff that really changes your life.

This concept is going to help you make faster gains, improve your bank account, make you more charismatic, and EVEN improve the relationships you have with your family and friends.

Are you read to wake up each day excited and full of energy and enthusiasm? Let’s get into my 3-part blueprint on how you can maximize your energy levels and enthusiasm each day.

Get Outside Your Comfort Zone

This is an ugly habit of all of my friends who are not happy with their lives. If you want to wake up each day excited and ready to take action you better start getting outside of your comfort zone.

The amazing thing about getting outside your comfort zone is that you will feel energized and excited AFTER you go through the temporary “pain” of doing something that’s a little bit scary.

I remember when I was 20 years old I decided to take an acting class for the 1^st time, and it was probably the scariest thing I ever did in my life up until that point.

In my spare time I thought that it would be really cool to be an actor and star in a movie – but speaking in front of complete strangers and doing a monologue without any experience in a cold and bright room was a whole new ball game!

I remember driving to that acting class completely terrified of what was going to happen.

I got up nervously and rattled off my 1^st monologue and acting scenes, and left my 1^st class feeling like I could do anything. Even though I wasn’t that good yet – I knew I was moving in the right direction of my dreams and I instantly felt the energizing power of doing something outside your comfort zone.

Stop Caring What Other People Think

One of my favorite books of all time is the “50^th Law” because it helps you really channel a mindset of having no fear and not caring what other people think. Make sure you watch the video so you can hear one of my favorite quotes of all time by 50 Cent!

Caring what other people think is a huge reason why most guys don’t go after their dreams. The earlier you stop caring what other people think the better your life will be.

You only have a small window to do big things in your life. If you are constantly self conscious of what other people think of you, not only will this suck the life and energy from you but you will be miserable.

Say you want to try out a career path that is a little bit off the beaten road, and you never even take the 1^st step towards that life because you are so scared what your family, girlfriend, and friends will think of you.

Do you think you will be more energized because you live a life of fear and caring what other people think? Of course not! As time goes on you are going to have a lot of regrets associated with never taking that step, and you will continue to care what other people think of you.

This is the recipe to a “low energy” life and a life that I hope none of you guys live!

Avoid Negative People

The last thing that will suck the energy levels from you is people. Negative people are one of the most poisonous things you need to eliminate from your life right away.

It could be a roommate, could be a girlfriend, could even be a best friend! If your social circle is bringing you down your energy levels are likely a direct reflection of that.

In 5 years you will be the sum of the books you’ve read and the 5 people you’ve spent the most time with.

If you have been stuck spending time with negative people you will likely be unhappy and start to mirror those negative thoughts and emotions.

Make a list of the 5 people who give you the most positive emotions and make a point to spend as much time as humanly possible with them!

Stay Tuned

Make sure you stay tuned for Episode 2 of “Brain Gains” where you’ll learn why the imaginary realities you tell yourself is more powerful than a Harvard MBA!

If you haven’t already subscribed to the YouTube channel, you can go here.

The post Brain Gains Episode 1: Platinum Diamond Pony On Roids first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

Fresh off of the squat and biceps challenge – I’ve been really trying to challenge myself and figure out new ways to build lean muscle mass and get stronger.

What I’ve been attempting to do recently is cut my workouts to only a few times per week – but really focus on exercises that build mass and make them even more challenging.

How in the world do we accomplish that? We superset some mass building exercises with short rest times and go beast mode!

This workout is absolutely insane – and the beauty of it is you can knock it out in about 45 minutes.

This mass building workout is going to be perfect for guys who are trying to get larger biceps, a wider and thicker back, and more muscular legs.

This workout is pure bodybuilding at its finest – as we are really maximizing our time under tension with each exercise and creating those healthy micro-tears that will yield incredible lean muscle gains.

This workout is going to be set up with 1 incredible back superset, 1 insane biceps exercise that will maximize your time under tension, and 2 leg exercise supersets I’m 99.9 percent sure you have never attempted before.

Let’s dive in and take a look at this mass building workout.

We’ll split this workout into two upper body supersets – and 2 lower body supersets.

Mass Building Workout Part 1: Lower Body

Time to get into some insane lower body training. This first lower body superset is going to build you some muscular quadriceps and large leg muscles.

It’s going to really capitalize on your time under tension, which will create a lot of healthy micro-tears in your legs. If you are trying to bring up your legs and the normal squat routine just isn’t cutting it you need to be doing this superset every single week.

Mass Building Superset #1:

Double leg extension superset with iso-leg extension

This one is really easy to explain. You are going to start off on the leg extension machine and you are going to be doing the double leg extension BUT you will never rest the weight at the bottom or top of the movement.

You will be keeping constant tension on your quadriceps – and going as heavy as you possibly can in the 8-10 repetition range.

Immediately after doing your double leg extension set you are going to switch to single leg, or “iso leg extensions.”

You are going to have to drop the weight to about 40 percent of what you just did because we are going to be sticking in the 8-10 repetition range with no rest between sets.

If you are doing 200 lbs. on your double leg extension, you will be dropping it down all the way to 70 lbs. on the superset.

Same thing applies with the superset – as you want to keep constant tension on the quadriceps muscle, except you are only doing 1 leg at a time. Expect the quad burn of a lifetime with this superset!

You will be completing 3 sets of this superset:

• Leg extension: 8-12 reps.
• Iso-leg extension: 8-12 each leg.
• Time between sets – as little as possible.
• Time between supersets – 90 seconds.

Mass Building Superset #2:

Stiff leg dead lift superset with smith machine stiff leg tension deadlift.

Time to end this mass building workout with pure hamstrings and lower back.

The first part of the superset is you will be doing stiff leg deadlifts and going heavy. Do something that you can perform about 8 repetitions at your maximum.

Immediately after doing the stiff leg deadlift you are going to jump on the smith machine to do some hamstring tension work.

The exercise you are super-setting with is something that I call the smith machine stiff leg tension deadlift. You will be really focusing on blasting away at those glutes and hamstrings on this superset – and it’s a crazy leg builder in conjunction with the stiff leg deadlift.

You will be completing 3 sets of this superset:

• Stiff leg deadlift: 8-12 reps.
• Smith machine stiff leg tension dead lift: 8-12 reps.
• Time between sets: as little as possible.
• Time between supersets: 90 seconds.

Mass Building Workout Part 2: Upper Body

Mass Building Superset #3:

Underhand grip lateral pull down superset with time under tension seated close grip row.

This superset is going to absolutely blast your lats, middle back, and biceps. For the underhand grip lateral pull down you want to go really heavy on this and start with your hands slightly inside shoulder width apart.

By placing your hands “underhand” you will emphasize your upper lats and biceps a lot more, which is exactly what we are trying to do!

You are going to want to stay in the 8-12 repetition range, but should be at 100 percent failure by the last repetition.

After the underhand grip lateral pull-down – head on over to the seated row machine immediately. These machines are typically right next too each other.

For the seated row super-set we want to pick a light weight we can control for a full 30 seconds time under tension.

This is going to emphasize the “time under tension” principle and combined with the heavy lifting is the perfect combination to build some serious muscle mass.

You will be completing 3 sets of this superset:

• Underhand grip lateral pulldown: 8-12 reps.
• Seated close grip row machine: 30 seconds time under tension.
• Time between sets – as little as possible.
• Time between supersets – 90 seconds.

Mass Building Biceps Superset #4:

Anabolic alternating Curls Superset with incline Tension Curls

This is a hardcore biceps exercise that will challenge you to the max! Start off with a pair of dumb-bells about 50 percent of the weight you would normally pick for palms up dumbbell curls.

You are going to curl one arm up, while the other arm is also working and “sitting” at 90 degrees. You will be alternating each bicep curl, while keeping one arm flexed in a static position while the other arm goes down slow and controlled.

For the superset – you guys are in for a real bicep blasting treat!

You are going to set up an incline bench and lean all the way back. Squeeze the scapula in your back and keep your elbows in. You will only be going up about half-way and keeping constant time under tension on your biceps. Both biceps will be working at the same time, and you will also want to flare your elbows slightly out. Make sure to watch the video to see my exact form!

You will be completing 3 sets of this superset:

• Anabolic alternate curls: 8-12 reps.
• Incline tension curls: 8-10 reps.
• Time between sets – as little as possible.
• Time between supersets – 90 seconds.

And that’s all she wrote! Follow this incredible mass building workout to get larger biceps, a wider and thicker back, and more muscular legs.

The post Mass Building Workout: Follow This To Get Larger Biceps, A Wider Thicker Back, And Muscular Legs first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

You might be wondering, “Why in the world would I want to focus on my lats?”

Believe it or not, your lats are one of the largest muscle groups in your body and certainly one of the most important when it comes to building the perfect aesthetic physique.

Your lats in combination with your deltoids and a small waist are what gives you the perfect V-shaped body that we all want, and women go nuts over.

Think about your body for a second – and take a look at the top physique competitors in the world all over Instagram.

They aren’t really that big. In fact – some of them are about 170-180 lbs., yet they look like monsters. Take a look at Jeremy Buendia if you want to see someone who weighs 170 lbs. and looks huge.

What makes these dudes look so big? Its their aesthetics. The wider you can get your lats and deltoids and the smaller you can get your waist is going to give you the illusion that your way bigger than you really are. This is why fitness models have such an appealing physique.

Are you excited to develop this under worked and under appreciated muscle group? Let’s dive into how you can integrate this 3-exercise lat workout routine into your bodybuilding schedule.

How To Use This Lat Workout

First of all – we are going to use this in addition to the workouts we are already doing. We don’t need to dedicate an entire workout to our lats – but rather integrate a few crucial exercises into the routine we’re already doing.

This routine works best if you perform it about 2 times per week. This simple lat routine will only take you 15 minutes to go through, so I recommend you do it at the end of your back day, and at the start of your leg day.

If you can knock out these three exercises twice a week for the next month you’ll certainly see a big improvement in your aesthetics.

Ready to start working those lats? Let’s dive in and take a look at the actual lat workout routine you can do twice per week for a wider more muscular V shaped back.

Lat Workouts For Mass: Use These 3 Exercises

Exercise #1: Standing Lat Press-Downs (superset heavy then light)

This is a great exercise, which will emphasize time under tension directly on your upper lats.

You will be performing this exercise by standing up and placing your hands about shoulder width apart on a lateral pull-down machine.

The key to this exercise is you never come up past the height of your middle chest. This is going to break down the maximum amount of lean muscle in your upper lats – and stopping the movement right around the middle portion of your chest will directly work your upper lats.

Focus on keeping a tight core throughout this movement and you’ll reap some incredible results.

For the first portion of the superset you should pick a weight you can only do for about 8-10 repetitions. Then you will drop the weight in half and do another set in the 12-15 rep range.

To really work a muscle like your lats which are hard to focus on – you need to squeeze the muscle throughout and get a strong mind-muscle connection. This is the perfect exercise to achieve that combination.

Exercise #2: Static Hold Wide Grip Pull-Ups (superset with side-to-side pull-ups)

Time for some fun… You’re going to be performing a static hold pull-up with your hands in the wide grip position. By holding the pull-up position with your hands out wide you are focusing directly on your upper and middle lats, which will give you an incredible V-shape.

If you’re serious about your aesthetics this is the exercise you want to focus on. Your goal starting out should be about a 20-30 second hold. If this is too easy you can add a weight between your feet.

After you complete this static hold until failure you should grab a quick rest – and get ready to knock out this superset with some side to side pull – ups. This is going to really drill those lats after doing the static hold pull-ups. If you can do more than 8-10 side to side pull-ups after being fatigued, you are a full blown beast!

Exercise #3: Underhand Grip Smith Machine Barbell Row

The smith machine underhand grip barbell row is pretty straight forward and will help you develop the thickness of your V-shaped back.

I prefer doing this exercise on the smith machine because you can get constant tension and resistance on the negative portion of the repetition.

On this exercise you should really aim to go light and get somewhere in the 15-20 repetition range. Focusing on that mind-muscle connection and squeezing the lats throughout the movement.

And that’s the entire lat exercise routine! I know the idea of working your lat muscles isn’t the most exciting thing in the world – but you will be thanking me in a few months when you have the aesthetics of a Greek god!

The post Lat Workouts For Mass: Use These 3 Exercises For A Wide Muscular V-Shaped Back first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

What’s up my dudes! I’m really excited to share my meal prep formula for faster gains. If you’re a busy dude and you have aspirations of building a ton of lean muscle mass in a short period of time, then you absolutely 100% need to be meal prepping.

Meal prep for bodybuilding is one of the greatest fitness hacks of all time because it is going to help you make easier lean muscle gains and will also save you a ton of time and money.

I don’t know about you – but if I had to pick my 2 biggest assets in life they are certainly money and time. To be honest I value my time even slightly ahead of my money – but if you’re short on either then you’re going to struggle immensely with your personal life and with your bodybuilding goals.

This article is going to break down how I meal prep for bodybuilding success – and also give you my favorite new recipe that will make meal prep a lot more exciting.

I’ve been meal prepping for about 2.5 years and I can honestly say it has been the most important fitness hack that I’ve tried in the last few years due to all of the benefits.

We already know that it will help you save money and save time, which I’ll dive into deeper in the next section – but it’s also going to help you easily consume a calorie surplus and eat clean even when you’re craving junk food.

Just having all of your meals cooked and prepared is going to take away that urge to hit the fast food counter, and you have zero excuses not to get all of your calories in when all your gains are as close as a 2-minute trip to the microwave.

The devil is certainly in the details when it comes to meal prepping – so let’s cover the important aspects to meal prepping success.

Meal Prep Blueprint – The Fast Track To The Gain Train

We need to cover a few important questions before I dive into how I meal prep for muscle gains.

The first question is when should you meal prep? I personally like to meal prep on Sundays to prepare all of my meals for the upcoming weekdays. During the weekdays you are probably really busy with school, work, girlfriends, etc.

The thought of taking a 45-minute break from your busy schedule to cook a bunch of food during the week can be soul crushing – so for this very reason I like to meal prep on Sunday nights.

I like to eat out and have a more flexible diet on the weekends, so I will cook just enough food to last me Monday through Friday.

How long does it take? The beauty of meal prep is you can be the world’s greatest multi-tasker and knock out a week’s worth of gains in an hour.

You’re going to be taking advantage of every accessory your kitchen has. The oven, stovetop, and microwave can all be used at the same time.

You might be baking some chicken and sweet potatoes in the oven, while rice is cooking in the rice cooker, while you are frying up veggies and fish on the frying pan. Yes – you can cook 3 things at once with a little bit of planning as you’re about to see!

What do I need to meal prep? You need about 10-12 Tupperware containers (I recommend getting BPA free Tupperware) – and of course a whole bunch of food.

Since you’re looking to meal prep for muscle gains you’re going to want to have a nice array of protein, carbohydrates, and healthy fats in each meal prep container.

My Perfect Meal Prep

Without a lengthy talk about nutrition science you are going to need a nice array of the following major macronutrients for your meal prep:

1. Lean protein
2. Complex carbohydrates
3. Healthy gat (It’s best if they contain some Omega 3’s as well)

So let’s figure out our grocery store list for this super easy meal prep:

• 2 lbs. boneless skinless chicken tenders or breasts
• 2 lbs. salmon or 6 cans wild caught salmon
• 4 large sweet potatoes
• 4 cups brown rice
• Hemp seeds
• 3 avocados
• Coconut oil
• Veggies of choice

So here’s how it breaks down:

1. Protein: Chicken tenders and salmon
2. Complex carbs: Sweet potatoes, brown rice, veggies
3. Healthy fats: Hemp seeds, avocados, coconut oil

Now this is going to be so easy to cook all at once. Are you ready? Let’s make some gains in less than an hour which will last you the entire week!

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.

Step 2: Turn on your rice cooker and place 2 cups brown rice and 4.5 cups water in your rice cooker. Press “cook” and your brown rice will be ready in less than an hour!

Step 3: Chop the sweet potatoes into shape of your choice (I prefer fries) – and spread on a baking sheet with coconut oil. Sprinkle with seasoning of choice.

Step 4: Place the chicken tenders on a separate baking dish and season with cayenne pepper sauce, coconut oil, black pepper, and garlic (this is my favorite healthy combination, feel free to use whatever baked chicken recipe you want)

Step 5: Once the oven is preheated to 450 degrees place the sweet potatoes on the very bottom rack and the chicken tenders on the middle rack. They’re going to cook for about 45 minutes at 450 degrees together. They should finish at literally the exact same time if you have 4 sweet potatoes and 2 lbs. of chicken in the oven.

Step 6: Now you’ve got your chicken, sweet potatoes, and rice cooking all at once and we are only about 15 minutes into the meal prep.

Now we are going to heat up that skillet and pan-fry some salmon and veggies while everything else is cooking.

Coat your frying pan and let’s get frying! Place the salmon on the frying pan and cook those bad boys about 8 minutes on each side. Now you have 2 lbs. of salmon cooked in less than 20 minutes. Next take out your veggies and fry them up in some coconut oil and seasoning!

Set the salmon and veggies aside.

Step 7: We’re about 45 minutes in, and we’re ready to start separating this into meals. Take out your chicken and sweet potatoes from the oven and place all your food on your kitchen counter.

Separate your Tupperware containers and let’s make some meals.

Remember the avocado and hemp seeds? We are going to add this into our meals for additional protein, healthy fats, and nutrients. The beauty of theses two foods is they don’t need to be cooked and we can add them on top.

I like to combine all sorts of things into my Tupperware, so with everything we just cooked we can have a few different types of meals:

1. Baked chicken, brown rice, topped with sliced avocado.
2. Baked chicken, sweet potatoes, topped with hemp seeds.
3. Pan-fried salmon, brown rice, topped with sliced avocado.
4. Pan-fried salmon, sweet potatoes, topped with hemp seeds.

And we’ve also got a few lower carbohydrate meal combinations:

1. Baked chicken, hemp seeds, and pan-fried veggies.
2. Pan fried salmon, sliced avocado, and pan-fried veggies.

Simply separate all of your cooked food into meal prep containers and you’ll be on your way to saving time, saving money, and making gains!

Hope you enjoyed this meal prep extravaganza! Once you get the hang of it you will be meal prepping like a boss every week.

The post Meal Prep for Bodybuilding: Get Easier Muscle Gains By Prepping Your Meals first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

Post workout nutrition can make or break your lean muscle gains, and sadly most guys really screw this meal up. There are so many rules you need to follow for the perfect post workout meal.

The goal of the post workout meal is to maximize recovery and shut down your most catabolic hormone (cortisol), which is elevated after a really intense workout.

A few things are going on after you finish a workout that are vital to understand so you can implement the proper post workout nutrition.

1. Your cortisol hormones are elevated and need to be shut down so you can enter the “anabolic zone” and make some gains!

2. Your body is starving for carbohydrates because you just broke down a ton of “glycogen” – which are stored carbohydrates in your muscles. You need to replenish this muscle glycogen by consuming carbohydrates.

3. Your body is starving for amino acids that will fuel protein synthesis and set the stage for muscle growth and recovery.

So with all of this being said we are going to tackle these issues with a very precise combination of ingredients.

We have about 90 minutes following a resistance training workout to really capitalize on blunting cortisol levels, replenishing muscle glycogen, and maximizing muscle recovery.

We are going to ingest a nice combination of:

1. High quality protein
2. Simple carbohydrates
3. Vitamin C

And most importantly we are going to stay away from foods that are going to block the absorption of our high quality protein and carbohydrates.

Many foods that you would normally deem as healthy are going to be big no-no’s during your post workout window.

These “health foods” that you should stay away from immediately following your workout are fiber and fat.

Fiber and fat are going to reduce the insulin spike and prevent those speedy carbohydrates from shuttling amino acids into your cells rapidly.

Foods like avocado, almonds, olive oil, flax seeds, and chia seeds are all very healthy – but are loaded with fat and this is not what we want post workout.

High fiber foods such as broccoli and green beans are also going to be big no-no’s as they are going to lower the insulin impact.

You are about to find out why this is a really bad thing to do if you are serious about building muscle mass.

Anabolic Insulin

Do you know what the most anabolic hormone in your body is? The magic answer is insulin following an intense resistance training workout! That is why we are going to hit the simple carbohydrates hard following a resistance training workout.

I actually consume about 60 percent of my daily carbohydrates in the post workout window following a resistance training workout.

Simple carbohydrates are going to shuttle amino acids into your cells, spike your insulin, and result in a powerful positive nitrogen retention.

Believe it or not the perfect post workout carbohydrates are going to be “speedy carbs” that have a really high glycemic index.

Although these foods are normally not meant to be eaten on a “bodybuilding diet” they are going to give you the maximum insulin spike and help to shuttle amino acids into your cells and replenish your muscle glycogen.

My personal favorite choice for post workout carbohydrates are Gatorade, gummy bears, low fat frozen yoghurt, sweet potatoes, and white rice.

You got to live a little bit with your post workout carbs! It’s literally the one time of the day where you can sit back and eat gummy bears and build muscle!

My favorite hack to get about 120 carbohydrates of post workout carbs in very quickly is drinking a bottle of Gatorade and having about 1 cup of Haribo gummy bears.

I recently starting mixing orange Gatorade with my vanilla protein powder to make an “Orange Creamsicle” post workout shake. Absolutely delicious!

Your protein choice following a workout should be a fast digesting whey protein powder immediately following the workout, and then switching to a lean and high quality form of protein shortly after such as fish, chicken, or lean beef.

How many carbohydrates are ideal for growth? The answer varies – so let’s dive in and take a look.

How Many Post Workout Carbs Should You Have?

The amount of carbohydrates you have in the 90-minute post workout window is really crucial. There are a few crucial things you need to consider. If you are really trying to stay lean and drop body fat you need to hit the perfect ratio of enough carbs to spike your insulin, but not so many calories that you are going to store body fat.

If your main goal is to cut body fat and maintain lean muscle mass, you are going to want to consume about 0.5 grams of carbohydrates for every 1 lb. of bodyweight in the 90-minute time frame following a resistance training workout.

If you are a super hard-gainer and you want to hit those lean muscle gains effortlessly you want to bump up that carbohydrate total to about 1 gram of speedy carbs per 1 lb. of bodyweight.

If you are a 200 lb. guy like myself this means that you should be eating about 200 grams of carbohydrates in the 90-minute post workout window.

This may seem like a lot but with a nice combination of Gatorade and gummy bears you will fill up this total quickly.

My perfect post workout nutrition combo is the following:

Immediately following my workout:

• 50 grams of carbs from orange Gatorade, 40 grams of whey protein

• 50 grams of carbohydrates on my drive home from the gym (Haribo Gummy Bears)

• 45 minutes after my workout: 60-80 grams of carbohydrates from white rice or sweet potatoes paired with 40 grams of protein from high quality.

And that’s it my dude! Follow this protocol and I can promise you will see some radical lean muscle gains. Make sure that you pack in as many post workout carbohydrates as possible if you want to make some fast lean muscle gains.

Remember, insulin is your best friend following a beast mode workout!

The post Post Workout Nutrition For Muscle Growth: Meal Tips For Bigger Gains first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

Your forearms may not be the most glamorous muscle group in the world to work out but they are very important to your overall arm development.

Building strong and muscular forearms has many benefits. The first benefit from regularly performing incredible forearm workouts is for pure aesthetics.

When you build the muscle in your forearms and have more vascularity in your lower arm you will have the appearance of bigger arms and a more powerful looking physique – and that is never a bad thing!

The second benefit from forearm workouts is you will be increasing your grip strength. Your grip strength will help you on many of the more important compound exercises such as the dead lift, barbell row, pull-ups and even bench press. Many old school bodybuilders and power lifters would perform grip strength exercises to maximize their compound exercises.

The third benefit to great forearm workouts is injury prevention. Your wrists are susceptible to injury on many common exercises such as the barbell bicep curl. Many experienced lifters injure ligaments and tendons in the wrist and forearm whey their upper arm strength is much stronger than their wrist and forearm strength.

This creates a dangerous muscular imbalance and can only be corrected through intense forearm exercise training.

Interested to see what the best forearm exercises to reach “Popeye status” are? Let’s dive in and check out the 3 best forearm exercises.

Forearm Exercise #1: Reverse Grip EZ-Bar Curl

You should be performing 3 sets of the reverse grip EZ-bar curl in the 8-12 rep range. Remember that perfect form and not swinging your back into the contraction of the movement is the key to amazing results. Let’s check out how to perform the reverse grip EZ-bar curl.

How to perform the reverse grip EZ-bar curl:

The reverse grip EZ-bar curl is similar to the traditional EZ-bar curl except for one major variation: You will be placing your hands palms down instead of palms up. This simple hand placement switch creates one of the best forearm exercises of all time!

The key to getting an effective forearm workout is to tuck in your elbows as close to your body as possible throughout the movement.

Stagger your feet and have a slight knee bend so you can get a great angle on the contraction of the exercise. Squeeze your biceps and forearms as you come up and make sure to control the weight slowly on the way down so you can get maximum contraction in your forearms.

Forearm Exercise #2: Standing Dumbbell Wrist Extensions

You should be performing 3 sets of standing dumbbell wrist extensions and keeping your repetitions between 10 and 15 reps per set. This is an exercise where you want to go light and control the weight and keep your repetitions high to build the stabilizers in your wrist and prevent injury.

How to perform the standing dumbbell wrist extensions:

Start off by holding two light dumb bells in both your hands and stand straight up. Put your arms straight out while holding the dumb bells like you are grasping a pickle jar or some object.

The starting position should be your arms straight out in the air and holding the dumb bells with your palms down.

Rotate the dumbbells up by moving your palms from the “facing down” position to “facing out” while controlling the weight with your wrist and forearms. Keep the weight in motion the entire time so you can build the forearms and increase wrist strength.

Forearm Exercise #3: Dumbbell Farmers Walk

The more weight you can do with the dumbbell farmers walk the more success you will have with compound lifts that incorporate grip strength such as the barbell deadlift and barbell row.

You should be performing 3 sets of dumbbell farmers walks at 30 seconds under tension per set.

How to perform the dumbbell farmer’s walk:

The dumbbell farmer’s walk is performed by simply carrying around the heaviest dumb bells you can handle without straps. You can wear lifting gloves but make sure you do not wear lifting straps as that will take the overload off your grip strength and forearms.

Walk in a straight line and aim to hold the dumb bells for a full 30 seconds per set. Relax your arms and put all of the emphasis on gripping the heavy dumb bells as hard as you can and getting a pump in your forearms.

Conclusion

Now that you know how to perform 3 of the best forearm exercises for aesthetics, grip strength, and injury prevention you are probably curious how you can incorporate this into your bodybuilding routine.

I definitely don’t recommend an entire workout dedicated to solely the forearms. Since they are a minor and small muscle group you should perform this forearm routine at the end of your main workout 2-3 times per week.

A little goes a long way with your forearms. Between these three exercises you will be working your forearms from 3 different angles and will improve quickly. Expect to see powerful results in less than a month if you incorporate this routine at the end of your training sessions 2-3 times per week.

Time to reach Popeye Status! Good luck bro.

The post Forearm Workout: Best Forearm Exercises to Reach “Popeye Status” first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

Let me guess – you’ve probably been following the same weight training split for a good period of time, right?

The more guys I talk to at fitness conventions and working with my online clients the more I realize that over 90 percent of guys plateau from their weight training routine.

If you want to build lean muscle mass fast you need to have a strategic weight training routine that will help you build the body’s largest and strongest muscle groups and also cater to your schedule and time that you have to lift.

Whether you have just 3 days, or a full 7 days to work out, there’s absolutely no reason you can’t see amazing progress with your fitness and muscle building goals.

I used to follow the same boring routine as everyone else and was stuck for around 18 straight months with absolutely ZERO strength and lean muscle gains. My routine was doing the exact same chest routine on Monday, the same back routine on Tuesday, a mediocre leg workout during the middle of the week, and a generic shoulder routine at the end of the week.

Sound familiar?

I’m excited to share with you these 3 hardcore training splits that will yield you the fastest results in the shortest time. Below, I’m going to break down my absolute favorite training routines for a 3-day, 4-day and 6-day training split.

Weight Training Routine #1: (3-Day Training Split)

The 3-day training split is perfect for the beginner or someone who doesn’t have a lot of time on their hands but wants to make some amazing gains.

What makes the 3-day split so effective is ZERO WASTED TIME in the gym. You are only doing the exercises that give you the maximum muscle building gains.

Compound exercises are the ones that work your body’s largest and strongest muscle groups. On the 3-day split you will only be doing the exercises that give you the fastest lean muscle gains and put the maximum overload on your largest muscle groups.

With this 3-day split, you’ll be using 6 of the best muscle building exercises in the world, which include:

• Barbell bench press
• Barbell deadlift
• Barbell squat
• Barbell row
• Weighted pull-up
• Weighted dip

The 3-day split means you will pick the 3 days of the week you have available to work out and you will ONLY perform 3 of these compound exercises per workout. You can pick and choose what you want to lift and the key is to always switch up the workouts.

Weight Training Routine #2: (4-Day Training Split)

The best way to set up a 4-day split is by incorporating opposing muscle group super-sets. This classic training split was actually made famous by Arnold, and the push-pull superset workout was his favorite workout for building lean muscle mass quickly and bursting through any plateau.

Here is how you would set up the classic 4-day opposing muscle group supersets.

• Monday: Chest and back
• Tuesday: (Rest)
• Wednesday: Quadriceps and hamstrings
• Thursday: (Rest)
• Friday: Biceps and triceps
• Saturday: (Rest)
• Sunday: Traps and shoulders

The best way to do this split is performing back-to-back opposing muscle group super sets throughout the workout. For example – you will start off doing a set of wide grip pull ups until failure and transition into the barbell bench press on your chest and back day. Opposing muscle group super sets = rapid lean muscle gains.

Each workout will be a combination of opposing muscle group super sets. The science behind this split is that when one muscle groups is fatigued the opposing muscle group will actually feel stronger.

When I started doing this training split I could not believe how much stronger I felt when I was training the opposing muscle group.

If you have been in the gym for at least a year and have started to plateau this is the perfect training split to try for a few months.

Weight Training Routine #3: (6-Day Training Split)

The 6-day training split is by far the most hardcore and is only for experienced lifters who are ready to make some rapid lean muscle gains.

The 6-day training split is very common in the fitness model and bodybuilding world because it allows you to put all of your emphasis on just 1-2 muscle groups per day.

The 6-day split puts a ton of emphasis on each muscle group EACH workout. The key is you want to start the workout with the exercises that you can lift the MOST weight on, aka the compound exercises.

Here’s how the workout looks:

• 6-7 total exercises
• 20-25 total sets per workout

This means that on your chest day you’ll start off by doing heavy bench press and dumbbell bench press and then transition into low cable flys and your shaper exercises. Follow this regimen for each muscle group on the 6-day split.

• Monday: Chest
• Tuesday: Quadriceps and biceps
• Wednesday: Hamstrings and triceps
• Thursday: Heavy pull day
• Friday: Deltoids
• Saturday: Traps
• Sunday: (Rest)

The magic of this workout split is that you can really put a ton of emphasis on your weak points. My personal weak points were my legs and triceps. This 6-day split for example allows me to blast my triceps with 20-30 sets per workout and then split my leg workout into 2 separate days where I can solely focus on my quadriceps and/or hamstrings.

This is my current workout split and I have seen the most progress with the 6-day split. If you have been in the gym for more than 2 years and have reached a plateau, then I recommend following this training split for at least 3 months straight.

Like I said – the key to this split working is that you have to change up your routine consistently and put the most emphasis on the compound exercises at the start of the workout.

These are my favorite weight training routines for rapid lean muscle gains. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box and try new things! Experimenting and staying hungry with bodybuilding is the X-factor for amazing results.

Whether you have 3, 4, or 6 days a week to work out, there’s no doubt you’ll see rapid gains following these workout splits.

The post Weight Training Routines: 3 Hardcore Training Splits for Rapid Gains first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.

Today I’m going to answer a question that’s been on my mind for a while:

What would happen if I trained legs and biceps every day for 30 days?

Well, in this 3-part series, I tried it for myself, and the results were very interesting to say the least.

Scroll down this page, and you can find all 3 episodes of my “Squat Everyday and Biceps Everyday Challenge.“

For those who are interested in how I got such a crazy idea in the first place, I’ve got quite the story to share with you. It all started with an epic night out at the club less than a year ago.

Holy s#it! It was 4 am and I woke up cold, sweaty, and confused. A few hours earlier I had gone out to the club with my wingman, Alex and his corporate cohorts.

That night I brought home an Asian girl I met at a place called YOLO, and she was super impressed with my gains. Let’s just say I had an epic night at the club, AND after the club. (or so I thought!)

Little did I know I was about to experience the wake up call of my life that would change my anabolic pathway forever.

So 4 am rolls around and I wake up and this girl is missing. My first thought was she most likely was in the kitchen whipping me up an omelet so I could go for round 2. I walk in the kitchen to see my wingman Alex drowning his sorrows in a box of pop tarts (his favorite strawberry, no wonder he has dad bod.)

Then I go outside thinking she was probably on the cell phone explaining to her boyfriend why she didn’t make it home that night. I search the perimeter and she is still nowhere to be seen.

What in the world was going on? Was she married? Was this all a dream? Then I see a note on my bed. “Had a fun night, wish you didn’t skip leg day though. -J”

Now – I know that this story seems absolutely false and ridiculous – but you have to realize this was no ordinary girl. She was actually a super fit chick and was represented by a major supplement company.

She truly cared a ton if her boyfriend or hook up buddy skipped leg day, and so do millions of other fit chicks.

I was absolutely mortified. She thought I had the “complete package of gains” – but when we got to the business she saw that my legs just weren’t cutting it. Then I started to realize this phenomenon and what girls actually are super attracted too.

All of these years I thought that it was abs, biceps, and chest muscles that girls drooled over. Sure these muscles go a long way – but there are millions of girls that love a guy with a muscular butt and muscular legs.

This inspired me and a fire burned deep in my anabolic heart. I started crushing legs about a year ago and I haven’t stopped since. I’ve made some amazing gains in my legs and I’m ready to challenge my mind and body to the next level – so I’ve decided to squat AND do biceps every single damn day for the next 30 days.

Please follow along as I’m going to need a lot of inspiration to get through this next month.

Remember to NEVER skip leg day.

Now onto the meat and potatoes of this blog post… Let’s get into the first episode.

Squat & Biceps Challenge (Episode 1)

I’m starting off the squat and biceps challenge with a vengeance! In this episode I really hit the box squats and traditional barbell squats hard. The first 10 days were definitely the most challenging.

An interesting thing that I found out about squat variations:

Each version of squats is going to be an emphasis on different minor muscle groups – and you are going to find out very quickly where your weak points lie.

If you have weak hip flexors you are going to be super sore from doing box squats. If your hamstrings and gluteus need work the traditional squat is going to exploit this weakness. This was one of my favorite aspects of the squat challenge early on. I got actual field research on what my body needed to improve on. My box squats were stronger than my traditional squats so I knew I needed to work on my hamstrings and gluteus to bring up my squat.

So how did I feel during this first part of the squat challenge? Working out your arms and legs every single day is a huge challenge and it certainly takes some time for your body to adapt to this strenuous overload.

Days 7-10 I was by far the sorest out of any point in the squat challenge. After that I really started to adapt quickly and started to feel stronger every single day.

The arm workouts were going great. I made sure that I did at least 5 sets of a unique bicep exercise for each of the workouts.

Make sure you watch episode 1 (above) to get some great ideas for new bicep exercises.

Nothing will stunt your bicep growth more than doing the same arm workout over and over again.

Squat & Biceps Challenge (Episode 2)

Episode two was all about changing it up. I wanted to focus on other parts of my leg when my quadriceps were sore – so besides doing my 5 sets of squats – I worked in a lot of hamstrings after this.

The big mistake I made for the 1^st 10 days of the squat challenge was I hit my quadriceps too hard after my squats. I went really heavy on dumbbell lunges and leg presses and this made me incredibly sore.

I learned my lesson and days 10-20 I went super hard on my squats for 5 sets – and then after that I did a lot more shapers and high repetition training. This was the perfect storm for me as I felt a huge improvement in my squat and felt stronger by day 15.

There were a lot of stiff leg dead lifts and hamstring machines accompanied my squat sets during days 10-20.

It was no coincidence that when my hamstrings started to feel stronger and more explosive that my regular back squat felt way stronger.

As far as my bicep workouts – it was really hard to get my arms sore after around day 10. I am used to training my arms a lot and no matter what I threw at them I felt like I couldn’t get a great workout. More on this in episode 3 when I touch on my results!

Squat & Biceps Challenge Final Results (Episode 3)

Wrapping up the squat and biceps challenge. So the big question – what kind of results did I get and would I recommend it to my buddies?

As far as the results – my legs improved a great deal in only 30 days. My barbell raw squat improved by about 30 lbs. and I can now do 3 plates on each side (something I have never been able to do.)

I also measured my quadriceps at the start of this challenge and they came in at 23 inches, now they are a shade under 24 inches! This was a huge improvement in only a month and I was really happy about that.

The improvements on my biceps were not as much however. I felt stronger with my biceps but the tape measure does not lie. I only gained about 1/8^th of an inch overall on my arms.

It was really hard to make my arms sore and I felt that my biceps adapted very quickly since they are a small muscle group.

Going forward I am only going to work my biceps 1-2 times per week at the most – but focus on increasing the volume during these workouts.

Would I suggest the squat and biceps challenge? This is a hardcore workout challenge and it really depends on what your experience level is. If you have been in the gym for at least 3 years and can squat at least 225 lbs. and barbell curl at least 100 lbs. you should have the baseline strength to test your body to its limits and see what happens!

At the end of the day you guys have to be smart about training and listen to your body. If you are super sore and feel as if you are actually tearing your muscle during a workout, don’t try to be a hero! Rest it up for a few days and hit the gym hard when you are recovered.

The post Squat Everyday + Biceps Everyday (Insane Workout Challenge) first appeared on Weight Gain Network.com.