Guys beat their brains out for years and never got their arms past fifteen or their chests past forty. But today any trainee can make good progress. Everyone can’t be Mr. Olympia, of course, but everyone can build a strong, shapely, rugged body.

And most of all, everyone can gain weight. There’s no excuse for staying thin. If you’re trying to build muscle fast and you’re having trouble doing so, then you’re doing something wrong and it’s as simple as that.

Probably the most common mistake in bodybuilding, and the one you’re most likely to be making, is frittering away your energy on a multitude of projects. Versatility is a great thing in most endeavors. It’s a positive asset if you’re a professional handyman. But it’s no help in bodybuilding, and particularly if you’re a hard gainer.

A lot depends, of course, on exactly how much you want to accomplish. Almost any form of training will develop you a little bit, but if you want to gain a lot of muscle, if you really want to look impressive, then you’ve got to dedicate yourself to that goal. You’ve got to channel all your energy into adding pound after pound of good, solid muscle to your body.

Gaining a lot of muscle in a hurry is clearly a form of specialization. You must realize this. If you want to add twenty, thirty, or forty pounds of muscle, then you’ve got to put your mind to it. You’ve got to dedicate yourself. You’ve got to make a few sacrifices. You’ve got to conserve your energy and direct it towards a great and rapid increase in muscular size.

If you’re dashing around and doing the million and one things that burn up energy then you’re making a big mistake. Don’t forget that gaining muscle is specialization, and during the period of specialization you’ve got to restrict your outside activities.

You can do anything you want to after you gain the weight, but while you’re gaining it you’ve got to devote yourself to that one basic purpose. That’s one of the “nitty, gritty” secrets.

Here’s another secret: hard work.

Hard work is the most important single factor for bodybuilding success. You’ll improve without a lot of other things; but you won’t get far without hard work.

Hard work is more important than the program you choose. The lousiest exercise will produce results if you work hard enough on it. Hard, hard work on any program is infinitely more superior to loafing through the finest program ever devised.

And when I say hard work, I don’t mean dragging along for hours at a time doing hundreds of exercises. I mean doing an ordinary program, but working hard on each exercise.

Remember… hard work is much more important than your choice of exercises! Too many guys make the same mistake. They surf around for course after course. They’re looking for some magic routine that’ll turn them into Mr. Olympia. But there is no such thing. It’s the effort you put into each exercise that counts.

Without maximum effort no routine will build you up very much. You’ve got to work hard, give it everything you’ve got and then some, or else forgetit. You won’t gain with a half-hearted effort.

Let me give you an example: When I started gaining, heavy breathing squats were the thing. I squatted for months and never gained an ounce. Then I learned to do it properly. The only change was increasing my effort about fifty fold. I learned how to really work.

Somebody once said that success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. It’s a good thing to keep in mind. If you’re not progressing like you should, it’s a cinch you’re not working like you should.

Make up your mind to change all that. Make up your mind to pour every ounce of effort you’ve got into every exercise you do. Make up you mind that starting right now you’re going to progress. Remember… no program will work unless you do.

Okay, so I’ve discussed the importance of hard work, and it’s relationship to bodybuilding success. Now I want to hit you hard with another training essential. We’re going to talk once again about your choice of exercises.

There’s no denying that some exercises are better than others. Most exercises will build some muscle if you work hard enough at them, but some do the job much faster.

There’s only really a handful of good exercises that build muscle rapidly. There’s others that do it a little slower. Then there’s some that are so damn useless, that they’d leave you ready for the retirement home before you got the build you really wanted.

Picking the right exercises has always been a problem for the novice. In many cases, it seems even harder for the experienced lifter. I don’t know why they seem to want to complicate the whole issue.

Let’s try and sum it up as simply as possible: Generally speaking, the best exercises for fast muscle gains, are the ones that bring the most muscle groups into action, and allow you to use heavy weights.

The barbell squat, in other words, is a hell of a lot better for you than fiddling around with your XBOX controller. Always, always use the big exercises. If you want a “lite” workout, go grab yourself a Budweiser.

The lighter exercises, the ones that use isolated muscle groups, have some value. But in most cases they are highly overrated. They’re definitely next to worthless if you’re trying to build bigger, stronger muscles.

Big muscles are built with heavy weights. If you want to build bigger muscles, than use the big exercises. These big exercises are the best exercises, and they have a name. They’re called basic exercises, or compound exercises. They’re your key to MUCH bigger and faster muscle gains.

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The questions deal with medical matters. Some trainees want to know about natural remedies and home treatment for ulcers, infections, back pain, knee injuries, migraine headaches, and so on.

The plain, an unvarnished truth of the matter is that medical advice isn’t really my area of expertise. Furthermore, I don’t feel that it’s an area anyone other than a medical doctor should presume to give advice in. There’s enough quacks in the field of health already.

If you’ve got a medical problem, the best and only advice I can give you is to see a good doctor. If your problem isn’t too acute you might try a visit to the National Institute of Health (NIH), or WebMD to do a little research yourself on the matter. I personally think, though, that the best advice is to see your family doctor immediately if your problem is anything more than a minor annoyance.

There’s also been emails from a few trainees with very definite emotional problems. Here again the advice is the same – see a competent doctor, and in this case a psychiatrist is probably called for. Your mental health is just as vital as your physical health. If you have a problem, then get treatment right away.

Don’t waste your time and money on goofy theory and self-help nonsense. Go to a competent specialist in the field of mental health. It’s your life you’re dealing with, and the best is none too good. There’s no stigma attached to emotional problems anymore. If you have a problem, do the sensible thing – visit a specialist, and do it right away. Untreated emotional problems, strange as it may seem, can completely ruin your chances of physical improvement.

I’ve got a friend who’s a psychiatrist. A lady psychiatrist. She’s about five-foot-six, dark hair, built like Kim Kardashian, wears little minis, and loves playing poker. We get together periodically for a little “Texas hold-em”. The last time we got together I asked her if emotional problems could hinder bodybuilding progress.

She promptly informed me that emotional problems, probably more than anything else, if they aren’t treated and controlled, can play havoc with your health. You see, worry and tension burn up energy at a fantastic rate. You can reduce yourself to utter exhaustion just by mental stress.

You’ll lose sleep too. Emotional problems can completely ruin your normal sleeping habits. Bodybuilders need a lot of undisturbed sleep to grow. Untreated emotional problems would probably ruin all that. People with that type of disturbance don’t sleep well as a rule, and most of them have no appetite at all. And if you don’t have the appetite to eat properly, your body won’t get the nutrients it needs to build muscle fast.

So with that said, what I want to discuss with you – rather briefly, since we’re running out of time – concerns those trainees with abnormally low energy reserves who just can’t gain on any of the programs outlined by most of the so-called bodybuilding experts.

Some bodybuilding experts ignore this type of trainee, probably because he doesn’t make very good advertising copy. But the real fact of the matter is that these low energy types need more help than anyone. None of them will ever be Mr Olympia and their picture on a cover wouldn’t sell insurance to a professional skydiver, but putting on ten pounds of muscle on one of these guys is a bigger accomplishment than turning out a whole gym full of heavyweight champs.

The key for the low energy type is simplicity of training. A very effective approach to this problem was discovered many years ago and outlined by the case of a trainee who was recovering from a complete nervous breakdown. The man did one exercise only – the squat. As long as he stayed on the one exercise routine he made good steady progress in strength, health, and mental stability. Any attempt to add more exercises to his program, however, completely disrupted his training.

Gaining muscle can be extremely difficult for men with low energy reserves. It’s not impossible however. There are three areas in which to combat this problem, and, if the three areas are taken care of, the low energy type can usually make big gains like anyone else. The three areas are proper sleep, proper nutrition, and proper training. I’ve covered all these three on my blog and in my Huge Gains Fast ‘mini-course,” but for now I just want to make a few extra comments about proper training.

If you’re a low energy type, you’ll find it’s easy to overdo it. A program that wouldn’t even warm some people up could leave you completely wiped out. If you feel excessively tired and shaky after your workout, or if you don’t approach your workouts with a feeling of energy and enthusiasm, then you’re most certainly exceeding your present energy reserves.

So while the programed outlined in my mini-course may not look like much, and in these days of super routines I guess it’s not very much, but if you’re not gaining muscle because of low energy reserves it’s probably just the thing you need. It could be the first step on your way to a degree of health, mental strength, and rugged development that you wouldn’t have thought possible.

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Your back is a vital area. It’s the keystone of power and vitality. But it’s something else as well, something often overlooked by bodybuilders seeking bulk. It’s an area that’ll provide you with fast muscle gains. Back training, at the proper time in your training program, can trigger twenty or thirty pounds of solid muscle for you.

Back exercises, like squats, have a growing effect on the rest of the body. Your lower back, in fact, may well determine the degree of strength and development you eventually reach. That is important. Remember it, because we’ll be coming back to it. Back exercises, properly performed, have an overall growing effect on your body. Back exercises will stimulate weight gains and enormous power.

Let’s look at Olympic lifters for just a moment. As a group, they’re the most powerful men on the face of the earth. No other athlete can hope to compete with a lifter in any contest of sheer strength. Olympic lifters work at a form of back training practically all the time. Their programs are riddled with such back exercises as cleans, snatches, power cleans, deadlifts, and so on. Back work is essential in building power, and the good lifters know it.

We might discuss Olympic lifting in greater detail some other time. This is primarily a natural bodybuilding blog, however, so we’ll confine our back specialization to its effects on bodybuilding for the time being.

Bodybuilders who do a lot of back work, particularly of the power variety, generally possess massive, shapely, herculean physiques. They usually possess the power to go with it as well.

There’s no denying that some exercises are better than others. Any exercise will build muscle if you work hard enough at it, but some do it better. There’s good exercises that build bulk and power rapidly. There’s others that do it a little slower. Some are so crumby you’d be starving on your old age pension before you got the build you wanted. Picking the right exercises is always a problem for the inexperienced bodybuilder.

Herculean physiques, and muscular backs with tremendous power are built by heavy weights. If you want a big, powerful back, then use the big back exercises. The big exercises, the best exercises have a name. They’re called basic exercises. There’s one, and occasionally more than one, basic exercise for each muscle group.

Let’s take a look at the best ones that focus on the back:

#1 Dead Lifts. This old standby is the granddaddy of them all for building pure, overall power. For extra effect – do them standing on block. You should be able to lower the bar till it just clears the top of your toes. This is one of the most important exercises in any routine. Work extremely hard at it. You’ll have to build up to at least 150% of your body weight for really sensational gains.

#2 Bent-Over Rowing. This is another old favorite and terrific for back development if done properly. Take a close grip and pull the bar up to the lower abdomen – about to where the legs join the trunk. Arch your back when the bar touches your body and slightly round it when the weight goes back down. Let the bar hang dead on the bottom and get a good stretch in your lats.

#3 Regular Chins. Chins are another favorite lat exercise of mine. Take a palms-facing grip on the bar and pull up until your chin extends over the bar. Dead hang on the bottom to give your lats a good stretch. Anyone can chin themselves in a sloppy fashion and have no muscle to show for it. But not many chin the way you’re supposed to, and those that do have plenty of muscle to show for it. Build up your reps as quickly as you can, and then start strapping weights around your waist. When you’re doing proper chins with thirty or forty pounds tied on, your back muscles will start looking like it.

Remember, the best exercises for bulk and power are the ones that bring the most muscle groups in to action and allow you to use the heaviest weights. The deadlift, in other words, is a lot better for you than fiddling around with your Facebook profile. Always use the big exercises.

No one can guarantee that you’ll get development like those bodybuilders you see in the muscle magazines no matter what exercises you do. Anybody who says he can is either kidding you or after your money. You can, however, be guaranteed of improvement. If you work hard enough on a program that includes some of exercises listed above. And while you may not end up looking like the current Mr Olympia, you’ll end up a lot bigger and better than you do now.

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You should already be exercising correctly, so we’ll confine ourselves to diet in this blog post. The diet we’ll be talking about is the high protein diet for building muscle.

There’s been a lot of talk from medical authorities on the value of the protein diet, but, for the average lifter, there’s two major difficulties with their advice. First of all is the fact that the advice is aimed generally at people who never lift anything heavier than a ham sandwich and couldn’t care less about building muscle.

The amount of protein usually recommended by nutritionists is too low to force big muscle gains. Most of the diets are based on about one-half a gram of protein per pound of body weight per day. There’s nothing wrong with this amount. It’ll build brimming health, and you might even end up looking like Brad Pitt. But you’ve got to consume one heck of a lot more protein than that if you want to end up looking more like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

If you want 19” arms and all that goes with them, then remember this – a high protein, muscle building diet for weight trainees should contain about one and one-half to two grams of first class protein per pound of body weight per day, based on what you want to weigh. For example: If you want to weigh 200lbs., then eat from 300 to 400 grams of protein per day.

The second major difficulty with most diet advice is that it’s too complicated. if you tried to calculate the exact amount of protein in everything you ate, you’d be ready for the laughing academy in about two weeks.

The practical way is to average out the protein content in the main sources of first class protein only. Bring these to round numbers, and you can remember it with no trouble at all. Get your daily requirements from these sources. Then if you pick up a few more grams in the rest of the stuff you eat, figure it as a bonus and don’t worry about it.

You’ll have trouble eating enough regular food to get in that much protein. That means a protein supplement is a must. The best way I know is adding your favorite brand to the “Get Big Drink”. It’s based on a good protein supplement added with milk and made to your own personal taste, and can contain from fifteen to twenty grams of the best protein per eight ounce glass. Take it, or something very much like it, every day if you’re serious about building up.

Without sufficient protein, the body cannot repair and regenerate itself, much less enlarge its muscular content. It stands, therefore, as a cardinal rule of weight training, that if you want to enlarge your muscular bulk, you must provide the body with ample amounts of the vital nutrient.

First of all, you can as a rough guide eat all you can of anything that’s a direct or indirect animal product. I mean meat, fish, fowl, eggs, cheese, and milk or anything made with it. Now write this down. It’s the approximate protein count in round numbers in the foods I mentioned. It’s not down to the last decimal point, but that doesn’t matter. it’s close enough for practical purposes.

While there’s protein in other foods, nobody’s going to memorize the protein content in all food, and you can’t be taking a note book and slide rule to every meal. Just calculate your daily protein intake from the list, and if you can get some extra protein in the other stuff you eat, so much the better.

Let’s keep it simple. As simple as possible anyway. Strive to get about one and one-half to two grams of protein per pound of body weight per day, based on what you want to weigh. If you want to weigh 200, then figure on about 300 to 400 grams a day.

Now, this is based on six meals a day. You eat your regular three meals and have a snack in between and at bedtime. That way you keep first class protein in your system all the time, you’ll assimilate it better and you won’t stretch your guts too much. Now, here’s a sample menu to show you what I mean. You don’t need to stick to it exactly, but it’ll give you a rough idea.

Remember, the two basic essentials for building muscles are exercise and diet. Each of them represents approximately half the tools you need to transform yourself into a Hercules. You can get some results with either one of them. You can develop a little muscle with exercise alone, and you can get ripped with diet alone, but this half-way application only restricts your eventual progress.

Diet and exercise used together, as they’re supposed to be, will positively double your gains. They’re the combination that will blast you ahead to the kind of strength and muscular development you really want.

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If you’re trying to gain muscle fast you’re way better off doing too little than too much. Three hour workouts are fine for a drug-enhanced Pro bodybuilder with nothing else to do – but they’re suicide for any guy trying to build up fast.

Let’s be reasonable about it. Anybody who works for a living and spends three hours a day working out is making a social outcast of himself. Keep that up and the next sound you hear will be your girlfriend laughing as she runs off with the pool man.

You can gain all the muscle you want and still lead a normal life. Gaining muscle is a building process. Don’t tear it all back down again. You only have so much energy. If you exceed it you won’t build up. You might even lose muscle. So if you can’t build muscle fast, you’re doing something wrong.

You’re probably over-working and don’t even know it.

Most guys spend too long at it. They do waaay too much. They’d look better if they did less. The extra time is largely wasted. If you’re trying to gain muscle it can even be detrimental. Bodybuilding is concentrated. You reach a point of diminishing returns very quickly.

If you want to build muscle quickly and easily – good solid muscular weight – then cut down on your long workouts. Never, never, never spend more than half an hour on any single workout.

And workout two to three times a week. No more! Don’t touch the weights at all on your in-between days. When you finish your workout have a shower and forget about it until your next training day. Get plenty of sleep and rest and eat lots of good, wholesome food. You’ll gain muscle. I guarantee it.

Okay. We’ve covered the time factor. Keep your workouts short if you’re a beginner or trying to gain weight and build muscle. Long tedious workouts won’t help unless you’re a real easy gainer.

The guys who use long workouts are either drug takers or just plain crazy. Even then they’re not intended for pure weight gains. Most of the long programs you read about are intended to define bodies that are already bulky. Don’t confuse building up with sharpening up.

Training is a progressive thing. Any nut can sit down and list a pile of exercises. That doesn’t make it a program. Some of the programs you see advertised on the Internet and supposedly followed slavishly by hordes of grateful bodybuilders are right out of the author’s dreams.

Building muscle isn’t a complex affair. Let’s set out a few preliminary points in order. You should be working out two to three days a week – Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Or, if you workout only two times a week, let’s make it Mondays and Thursdays. Don’t work out any more often. It isn’t necessarily true that six hours of exercise a week is six times as good for you as one hour a week. There’s a happy limit. So don’t exceed it!

You’ll work your whole body every session. Full body workouts. No split routines. Make sure you get enough rest and sleep. You won’t gain without it. Eight hours sleep a night is the rock bottom minimum and ten would be better. A short nap during the day is a big help. Lie down and take five whenever you can. Don’t skimp on your rest, you’re only cheating yourself out of the eye popping build you’re looking for.

Now, there’s a few things I want to summarize for you. First of all, remember to work out two to three times per week. No more – no less, especially no more. The idea that if three workouts a week are good then four or five must be better is one of the biggest fallacies in the sport of bodybuilding. Two to three times a week is ideal for ANY muscle gaining program. Any more will slow your gains.

Finally, no one can guarantee that you’ll get development like those bodybuilders you see in the muscle magazines no matter what exercises you do. Anybody who says he can is either kidding you or after your hard-earned money.

You can, however, be guaranteed of improvement. If you work hard enough on any program you’ll get results. You may not look like the current Mr Olympia, but you’ll look a lot bigger and better than you do now.

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It’s also for the individual over forty regardless of their condition. If you’re in either of these groups, reading this blog post could be the most important thing you’ll ever do.

To repeat then: if you’re a beginner, leave this blog post alone for now. Carry on with the basic bulk and power principles outlined elsewhere on this blog. If you haven’t already, sign up here to get my “Huge Gains Fast mini-course.”

If you’re an experienced trainee with some size, or if you’re over forty years old, consider working the following into your training. It’ll revolutionize the way you look and feel.

There’s an old saying that nothing is perfect. It’s true of most things and it’s also true of bodybuilding and weight training.

Weights provide the quickest and best means to improve yourself physically. There’s no denying it. You can convert yourself from a scrawny bag of bones into an absolute superman by training sensibly with heavy weights. Weight training is so superior to every other form of exercise that comparisons become ridiculous. But weight training, good as it is, is not perfect and we might as well be honest about it.

Weight training, as most of us practice it, has three flaws. Generally speaking, and unless you work specifically for it, weight training:

1. doesn’t provide enough stimulation for your heart
2. doesn’t necessarily ensure crisp definition, and
3. doesn’t, as a rule, build outstanding endurance.

While the plaster is still falling, I’ll explain what I mean by that.

1) Weight lifting is not harmful to your heart. Quite the opposite, in fact. Heavy training strengthens your heart just as it strengthens all the muscles in your body. Weightlifters have hearts far healthier that that of the general populace.

But standard weight training, while good for your heart, doesn’t provide quite enough stimulation. Your heart is best stimulated and strengthened by light exercise of a rhythmical nature carried on uninterrupted for up to an hour. Exercise of that type provides the cardiovascular stimulation necessary for really outstanding heart health.

2) Weight training doesn’t usually build really sharp definition unless you train deliberately for it. You can, if you wish, alter your training routines and go all out for definition. If you work hard enough you’ll probably end up fairly well defined. The trouble is, you’ll also end up so weak and dragged out that it’s debatable if it’s worth it. Physique contestants who have to train deliberately for definition are a pretty weary bunch by the time the contest rolls around.

3) Weightlifters, as a group, have far more endurance than the average man. But, here again, weight training doesn’t generally build the kind of endurance you could and should have. Like definition, you can go on a program of very high reps and build endurance, but it usually wipes out your muscle building progress. Endurance is developed by very high reps, bulk and power by much lower reps. You can’t do both effectively in your weight workouts.

The solution to the three problems is to supplement your weight training with exercise of an extended, rhythmical nature. This will strengthen your heart, sharpen your definition, and increase your endurance without having to make any alterations in your weight training or do anything to hinder your bodybuilding progress.

The best supplementary exercises, far and away the best, are light progressive running, swimming, and road biking. All three will work wonders for you. They’ll improve your physique tremendously. They’ll put the finishing touches to your appearance, giving you that polished, rock-hard look.

Run, swim, or bike at least two, and preferably three, days per week. If you’re lifting three days a week, run, swim, or bike on the alternate days. You can exercise any time during the day, early morning or midnight if you prefer, it doesn’t really matter.The whole thing should take less than an hour and you’ll never spend time more wisely.

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You can walk into any gym in the country and see scrawny kids slaving away on their arms and shoulders long before they’re ready for it.

Most of them don’t make too much progress. They eventually become discouraged and quit. The hard and bitter truth of the matter is that if they’d spent the necessary time and effort building up a proper foundation first, then they’d get the results they want from their curls and presses.

Remember – it’s a fact in training and you can’t get around it – that you can’t build really impressive bulk in your upper body until you’ve built the proper foundation in your legs and lower back.

The degree of foundation you’ve built will determine the results you’ll get from the rest of your program. If you’ve built properly, you’ll gain inches and pounds of upper body bulk. You’ll add slabs of muscle all over your arms, chest, and shoulders. You’ll transform your appearance dramatically.

If you’re just starting out, read all the posts on my blog and get a copy of my “mini-course” so that you can build a foundation first. Then you’ll make the gains you want in your upper body. Here’s a few pointers to get you started in the right direction.

The first thing we’ve got to consider is increasing the bulk and power of the entire body by hard work on what I like to call the growing exercises. And incidentally, NOT considering the growing exercises is the primary reason for 99% of all bodybuilding failures. If you specialize exclusively on the upper body, or any small muscle group, without adequate work on the big muscle group growing exercises, you’re practically doomed to failure.

I still get emails from trainees who haven’t grasped the importance of heavy squats. Remember this – your ultimate success depends almost entirely on your squatting ability. Nobody ever failed who did heavy squats. Conversely, very few succeed who don’t do heavy squats.

By heavy, I mean five hundred pounds and over for men who want to get really big, and about three hundred pounds for smaller men. That should be your goal. The only thing that keeps you from three to five hundred pound squats is yourself. Don’t make excuses. If you’re afraid of the weight, admit it and overcome it. Don’t waste your time fiddling around with baby sized barbells your crippled grandmother could lift. If you want to look like a Mr Olympia, then plan to lift weights like one.

Listen – building muscle is not a complex affair. Let’s set a few more preliminary points in order. You’ll be working out two to three times a week – Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Don’t work out any more often. It isn’t true that six hours of exercise is six times as good for you as one hour. There’s a happy limit. Don’t exceed it.

Make sure you get enough rest and sleep. You won’t gain without it. Eight hours sleep a night is the rock bottom minimum and ten would be better. A short nap during the day is a big help. Lie down and take five whenever you can. Don’t skimp on your rest, you’re only cheating yourself out of the eye popping build you’re working for.

You’re still trying to gain weight, so be sure you eat enough. We’re going to delve in the whys and wherefores of diet in another blog post, but for now eat lots of good food. Eat three big meals a day and snack between each meal and at bedtime. Take the “Get Big Drink” as outlined. All the exercise in the world won’t put weight on you if you don’t eat enough.

Use fractional relaxation and auto-suggestion to improve your mental outlook. Maintain a calm and tranquil mind. Worrying is the one sure way to stop your progress. It’s hard not to worry once in a while, but keep it to a minimum.

You’re going to need some equipment for this program. Buy it, rent it, or build it if you haven’t already got it. Equipment is one thing you can’t afford to skimp on. If you’re going to put out the necessary time and effort for a good build, then you may as well do it properly and get results.

Give some though to building up a nice home gym. It’s not really that expensive when you spread the cost over the number of years you’ll be using it. It’ll pay for itself many times over the course of your training life.

Don’t go poundage crazy on this program. Work for a nice smooth performance on each exercise. Use all the weight you can, but perform the exercise in a steady, even manner. All the above points are essential. Don’t overlook any of them. Put your mind to work and build your body wisely and well.

Remember to get lots of rest and sleep, eat plenty of good food, take supplements for weight gaining, and maintain a relaxed and cheerful outlook. You ought’a be hunting for bigger clothes when you make your next advance.

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The only problem is what to do about it. As I have explained before, you can get rid of fat in two ways. One, the old fashioned way, is to start a program of very high reps and follow a low calorie diet. You simply starve off the fat. The trouble with this method is that you also starve off a lot of muscle. It’s not a satisfactory way to trim down.

The best way to trim down, the modern way, is to vary your calorie intake slightly and prevent the accumulation of the fat in the first place. I call it staying lean. It’s a fairly new concept in bodybuilding and we’re going to talk more about it. Before we do, though, let’s take a quick look at the route towards a muscular physique.

It used to be thought that the best method of bodybuilding was simply to bulk up thirty pounds or so above what you hoped to eventually weigh in muscular condition, and then trim down once and for good. This concept proved faulty in two respects.

The first flaw was that some men simply couldn’t bulk up that much without becoming purely fat men. The second flaw was that some of the men who did bulk up enough never succeeded in trimming down properly afterwards. They’d accumulated too much extra flab and they’d carried it too long. For a complex combination of physiological and psychological reasons they never did reach the appearance they wanted.

It’s now known that the best way to build up is in a series of jumps. You don’t just zoom up to your top body weight. Your increases should be gradually ascending plateaus rather that in a straight climb. Let’s make that simpler.

If you want a herculean physique, you do it like this: Keep increasing your body weight with bulk and power exercises until you start looking too soft and weight begins to accumulate on your waist and hips. At this point you should stop gaining weight for a while. Train back down ten pounds or so, or until you look hard again. You don’t have to look like an anatomy chart, but get in fairly solid condition by cutting back on your calories.

Now hold this reduced body weight for a month or two and work hard on your showy muscles, such as arms, pecs, deltoids, and so on. After a couple of months you start bulking up again from your new base by slowly increasing your intake of calories.

Never let your body accumulate too much fat. It’s too hard and time consuming working it off again. Keep careful watch on your condition. As soon as your waist gets to the point where it’s spoiling your appearance, work off the flab, sharpen your overall appearance, and then start bulking up again.

If you train this way, bulking up and then trimming down periodically by controlling your calorie intake, you’ll make better progress in the long run and you’ll end up with a much better physique. Your aim should be for a herculean body, not a fat one. Don’t confuse muscle with blubber. You’ll notice that even the big bodybuilders maintain some definition all year round. Not as much, perhaps, as smaller men, but still enough to emphasize their muscular development.

Let’s assume now that you’ve bulked up to the point where your general appearance is smooth rather than defined, and your waist and hips are getting just a little too big for good proportions. If you’ve been training properly, most of you should be at this point by now.

What you’re going to do now is trim the extra weight off your waist and hips and cut your body weight until you look hard and solid all over. You won’t reach a highly defined state, just looking solid is good enough at this point. You’ll hold this look for about two months and then start bulking up again.

The key point to remember is that you don’t want to lose weight all over. You certainly don’t want to lose any muscle. All you want to do is trim your waist and hips. Any loss of fat off your arms and legs should be compensated for by increased muscle in those areas. The end result should be that your muscular measurements remain the same or increase slightly while your waist and hips reduce drastically.

If you do this properly, you can look for a revolutionary change in your appearance. You’ll take on a polished, highly trained look. If you train hard and diet conscientiously your appearance will change practically from day to day. You’ll improve more in two or three months than you would in two or three years of normal training. Do this several times and you’ll own an outstanding physique.

Remember – this isn’t the end of your bulking up. You’ll continue highly effective bulk and power training again after you harden up. Each time you trim down to a solid condition you’ll start up again from a greatly improved base. Each time you bulk up you’ll be able to carry a lot more body weight without looking sloppy.

* Note: If you have written me for training advice and I have not answered your email, it is because (a) my email program tagged your email as spam or (b) your question was impossible for me to understand and therefore unanswerable. If you would carefully include a subject line, and write clearly there should be no problem.

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John Doe develops the ultimate training system and Sam Smith improves on it. Super-duper programs – long, low, improved models – hit the scene in blinding succession till the trainee stands astounded, blinded by the brilliance of it all.

And going, as a rule, absolutely nowhere.

He becomes unable, as they say, to see the forest for the trees. He loses sight of several basic truths. Like the careless climber he gets snowed under, buried by an avalanche of confusing information.

A friend asked me about it the other day. And it’s one question, worded in various ways but frequently asked of me. It goes a little something like this:

You continually stress the necessity of working hard with heavy weights. You say repeatedly that hard work is a must for effective gaining. Yet I know of a title holding local bodybuilder who doesn’t work hard at all. He trains easy and makes fabulous gains. How come?

Here’s my reply to that question: The information in my mini-course – and this whole website, for that matter – is geared towards helping the average trainee. That’s the gentleman who needs help, the guy who has trouble gaining, who sweats buckets for every fraction of an inch and lies awake at night wondering if it’s all worthwhile. For him, hard work and heavy weights are essential. He won’t gain without them. He’s got to shovel coal every foot of the way, and anyone who tells him otherwise is lying to him.

A few people, however, are more fortunate. They’re different from us lesser mortals. They’re what we call easy gainers and they’re luckier than the devil. You can admire these people all you want. You can envy them if you’d rather. But don’t make the mistake of trying to train like them. You’ll wipe out for sure.

Easy gainers can break all the training rules and still make big gains. They can wave light dumbbells around and grow arms like Ronnie Coleman. They can live on tutti-frutti ice cream and still win the best abdominal award at the muscle show. People like this have to be endured if only because it’s against the law to poison them.

One of the best physiques I know trains for half an hour at a time and never took a supplement in his life. He’s too lazy to squat and gains fine without them. But the point you’ve got to remember is that this type of guy is unusual. You can’t use him for statistics. He’s got the particular chemical balance or genes or metabolism or whatever that enables him to grow bulging muscles with practically no effort and even less thought.

Very, very few men can train that way and still make gains. If you can – if you’re an easy gainer – then you’re wasting your time reading this blog. You don’t need help. If you’re not an easy gainer – if you’re a hard luck apple like the rest of us – then don’t get confused and don’t get misled. You can’t train like the easy gainer and still succeed. He’s got natural advantages you don’t have.

If you’re an easy gainer – a natural, in other words – you’ll soon know it. You’ll grow like a baby whale no matter what you do. But if you’re not an easy gainer, and chances are you’re not, then figure on working very, very hard. It’s the only way.

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While weight training is so superior to every other form of exercise that comparisons become ridiculous – like almost everything else – it can be done properly or improperly. The purpose of my Huge Gains Fast mini-course is to show the budding bodybuilder how to train properly in order to derive the maximum results from his (or her) efforts – with the minimum of time invested.

So let me clear up one point of contention right now. When I speak of proper training, I refer to the standard, basic lifting and bodybuilding exercises, performed for a reasonable number of sets and repetitions, and over a realistic time period.

I am not suggesting excessive flushing, bombing, pumping, cramping, nor distorting of the muscles. I do not recommend any super-duper six hour workouts, starvation diets, nor sensuous poses in front of a full length mirror. I feel that a man should be able to train with weights, develop the maximum of strength and appearance he is capable of, and still lead a normal life.

Excessive, fanatical, odd-ball routines may or may not have a place in modern bodybuilding culture, and personally I have no desire to become involved in any dispute of this nature, but for the present purpose, at least, we will stick to the tried and true, sensible methods.

This blog, along with my newsletters are aimed at giving you the knowledge to develop great strength as a solid foundation for further muscular development. Make up your mind right now that you’re going to be using heavy weights at the end of it all. Two months from now you’ll be heavier and a whole lot stronger because of it.

There’s a tendency among uninformed bodybuilders to minimize the strength factor. I remember a guy I used to train with years ago. He was a tall good-looking dude with a slim, willowy build. He trained on light weights. He had a top press of 140 pounds and couldn’t have cared less.

I remember that when I tried to explain to him that he should do some power training and bulk up. He thought I was crazy because he figured the girls loved him the way he was already. The problem was that he was weak as a kitten. He didn’t think it mattered because the girls didn’t know how weak he was. What a joke.

Now get this! Suppose you’re walking home with a girl one night. And suppose some big lug steps out of an alley and drags her away. What do you do then? There may be a few bodybuilders who developed a nice looking build on light weights and never acquired much strength, but all the really great Champions emphasize power in their training. If you want a Herculean body, don’t overlook strength.

If you want a development like a Champion bodybuilder, then emphasize strength in your program. Spend some time at power training. As a group, weightlifters are the strongest athletes in the world. No one can match the sheer power of a top lifter.

This biggest fallacy in weight training today is the foisted notion that you can build big powerful muscles without hard work on heavy weights. You can’t do it, brothers, and you’re wasting your time trying. If you’re not gaining like you should, give your training poundage a long hard look. The fault may be entirely yours.

Remember though, you’re not becoming an Olympic lifter. This is a bodybuilding blog. You’re simply developing great strength as an aid to further muscular development. You need to keep your training session relatively short, but aim to work very, very heavy. Don’t forget – you’ve got to really put out to succeed.

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