Being overweight is a problem for many but for some people it’s the opposite — they would simply like to gain weight.
Feeling underweight, waif-like, pencil-thin or generally scrawny touches the sensitive nerves of these people and it can lower their self-esteem and confidence.
My days in the gym are often brightened up when a prospective male client comes in and wants to learn more about weights but does not want to get “too big”.
“Too big?” It always raises a laugh because these words normally come from the mouths of males who bear close physical resemblance to the jockeys at nearby Leopardstown Racecourse.
The reality is that guys who label themselves as “hard gainers” of muscle are engaged in a self-fulfilling prophecy. More often than not, they do not work hard enough or frequently enough to gain muscle mass.
People struggle to gain weight because the design of their exercise programme may be poor or they may be staying on the same programme too long. The same workout should not be completed more than six times before changing.
The more you completely change the programme, the more growth hormone the body makes to build muscle.
A programme designed for gaining muscle will be dependent on the client’s training age and their years of weight training. The repetition range is crucially important and by individualising the specific reps to a client’s genetic muscle-fibre make-up, they can realise their biggest potential for growth.
Heavy
This means that some clients can grow with lower repetition ranges and heavy weights, as their muscles may be more fast-twitch explosive fibres. Other clients may need more repetitions and sets to get the same response for growth of muscle, as their muscle make-up may be slow-twitch muscle fibres.
The goal is to cause as much damage as possible. You increase damage, you increase growth, and so gaining weight through muscle will be accompanied with soreness as the body adapts to the stimulus.
By choosing the right exercises, such as dumbbell chest presses over machine-based presses to recruit more muscle through a bigger range of motion, you can stimulate more growth.
You should always measure your progress as this will help record improvements and inspire you to continuously progress. You can see if your plan is working by measuring progress in weights lifted but also in appearance.
The target for every workout in Dublin is to increase your weights lifted by two per cent or get an extra rep of the previous weight lifted. If you can’t improve it means you haven’t recovered from your previous exertions. You should change the exercise or change the grip.
World-renowned strength coach Charles Poliquin says that “people don’t grow because they don’t do enough sets” so sometimes you have to repeat a large number of sets.
German volume training was a method popularised by Poliquin in which a person would perform 10 sets of 10 repetitions of a back squat, for example, to induce a hormonal response, cause damage and gain muscle. The skinnier you are the more compound exercises — using two joints like knees and hips in dead-lifts — you should do, as you are neurologically inefficient. In other words, the body and the brain are not efficient in sending messages to each other.
As you gain more experience and you gain muscle mass you can use isolation exercises to grow, such as biceps curls.
Habits
Training to gain mass can be easily accomplished if the participant is prepared to work hard and to be disciplined in their eating habits. It is very common for someone wanting to gain weight to train twice a day and by alternating repetition ranges and exercises used, it can coax the body to grow.
By coaxing and teasing your body, it will get the necessary message to change — and by using these messages, you soon won’t be able to hide behind the bus stops on the street!
