Hey Athletes! Want to get some hardgainer tips? Tune into this week’s episode of Ask Me Anything!
Episode 25 of Ask Me Anything is up!
Ask Me Anything: Hardgainer Tips
In this week’s episode of Ask Me Anything, the guys answer a question from Evan. He wanted to know about being a hardgainer and how to get over plateaus. The guys dive in a give their tips on how to overcome this!
If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to the Garage Gym Athlete podcast either on Stitcher, iTunes, or Google Play by using the link below:
Related Resources at End of Three Fitness:
—
Thanks for listening to the podcast, and if you have any questions be sure to add it to the comments below!
To becoming better!
Jerred
Transcript:
Ask Me Anything: Hardgainer Tips
[00:00:00] Jerred Moon: Welcome to garage the math. He asked me anything. It’s pretty simple. I’ll be answering questions from the thousands of athletes that follow our daily programming. If you have a question or topic you want submitted, go to dot com slash AMA. Let’s get started.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast. Jared moon here with Joe Courtney. So Joe, Hey, what’s up? Not much. How are you doing? Keep
Joe Courtney: on, keeping on everything is everything is the same as you can see.
Jerred Moon: Yep. I told you I wouldn’t talk about your beard and I’m not going to, so we can just get straight to doing an ask me anything.
So we got a question from Evan recently. And he wanted to know about being a hard gainer. So he’s going to state that in his, question. so hard gainer is just someone who has trouble [00:01:00] putting on muscle mass or weight in general. I considered myself a hard gainer for very long time. And, I’ll talk about that a lot, a little bit more, but here’s the actual question is that I’m wondering about your advice on breaking through plateaus.
I am what you convention. Would conventionally be called a hard gainer, trying to gain muscle weight, and we’re seeing good progress, but now have been stagnant for a few months. I trained for EO three, schedule E decently, but not perfectly and try to sleep and otherwise take care of myself. Think EO three elements is the answer.
Just to eat more deal with extra body fat, or is there something. Else I can do any general advice for plateau, plateau, busting, or advice for her hard, hard gainers in general. So I think, Joe, you might answer in general terms of plateaus and I can answer maybe specific to hard gainers. you want to go first?
[00:02:00] Joe Courtney: Yeah, that’s fine. I never, I was just a talk on a hard gainer. I never really cared about like the scale stuff when I was doing the bodybuilding thing, because I was always really skinny and I was didn’t have, very low body fat anyway, so I just kinda kept lifting and it was, it was fine. I was, I was working on doing both things at once, but as far as plot telling in general fitness and stuff, and like strength gains and things.
Is you always have, you kind of have to change things up. A lot of times people will stick to strengthen and programs that they know works. You know, you’ll do 12, 16 weeks of work and you’ll keep going up and up. And then you just think you want to keep on doing more of that same thing. And it’s like, okay, well, if it’s not, if I’m not, if I’m starting to plateau some, then I’ll just do a little bit more of what I’m already doing, but he’s actually like, Flip it and do something completely different, not like totally, totally different.
But if you were training more hypertrophy, then you might need to go and do a little bit more dynamic stuff a little bit more, maybe tempo things, just some sort of, changing up your lifting so that your body [00:03:00] you’re not working your muscles the same way that you were before. for a firm standpoint, not necessarily a weight standpoint.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. Now, I mean, this used to be my hobby. I would, let’s just go back to college. So I was in ROTC in college cause I had every intent on being an air force officer being a pilot. And so that’s why I did those things. And CA like my normal college schedule was almost like, In season for me because, I was a physical training leader, like even in college, like every semester as a cadet.
And so I always needed to be really fit. I always wanted to do really well on the physical fitness tests. so anyway, I would ride those months at a much leaner weight. Because I needed to be able to run calisthenics all those things, but then the summer became a game for me of like how much muscle can I gain in this timeframe.
So I got really good at it. I could, I could pack on a lot of weight in a very difficult time period. But when [00:04:00] I first started lifting, going back to high school, I mean, I could not put on weight. It was very difficult and it takes a lot of work, to gain that muscle. Now I have to start with an asterisk of just, I don’t think trying to gain muscle is a healthy mentality to get in or be in forever.
And I’ve talked about this a lot on the podcast, just body dysmorphia in general and getting like, you know, I don’t know your exact situation, Evan, but maybe are you like. Six foot two, 145 pounds really need to gain some weight. And it’s hard for you, or is it more like I’m one 95, but two 30, you know, there’s very difference in like legitimately whether or not you’re a hard gainer, what you need.
And I’m just gonna assume that you are, but make sure the mental piece is there because. As someone who did that, there was never a good enough, another big enough strong enough. And so I had to just like cut all that out [00:05:00] at a certain point. That’s why I moved to more performance based training. so make sure that you’re taking care of yourself mentally, I guess is my biggest takeaway there.
And now getting into the actual tactics and strategies, I would say, do not try and combine multiple things that you’re either hearing from us or other places on the internet. Like if you’re trying to do keto and also gain muscle, or if you’re trying to do intermittent fasting and also gain muscle, you could find a lot of information saying that it’s possible and you can do these things.
But my recommendation is don’t combine strategies, just pick one and you really just need to eat. so kind of, yeah, like w well, your era, your aunt you’re like was, he is the answer just to eat more. Kind of, you need to eat a lot more carbs. Hydrates are going to be your friend. Some body fat will come.
you want to try and keep it as lean as possible as somebody that will come with, Just excessive eating. That’s why you’re training so hard. You need to be trained so hard. but another thing to pay attention to is how much protein you’re getting. Every time you sit down to eat, I’ve talked about this on the podcast.
Good amount too, but to properly [00:06:00] stimulate muscle protein synthesis, too. For those gains, you need a bout 35 grams of high quality protein routine, or at least two grams of leucine, to make sure that you’re getting the full amount of muscle protein synthesis that you would, you would want. So what does that mean?
That means that you need to hit that amount every time you eat. and I don’t think you have to eat every two hours, but every time you do eat, make sure that you are getting that right. Lean quality, protein, not. Peanut butter sandwiches or some other crap, like you need to be getting really good sources of protein.
and don’t be afraid of carbohydrates. rolled and sprouted oats, I think are a great place to add carbohydrates into shakes and things like that, but it really is a numbers game. You know, you make sure you get the most accurate. To date, like, like either whoop, I mean, I don’t know of one better, Joe, you can, if you think so, but whoop is probably the best calorie counter I know of because it’s on every second of the day, it doesn’t turn off everything else is an estimate.
[00:07:00] And so if you can measure your calories that precisely, and then eat more than that, you know, you will be at a surplus and that’s what you’re trying to do with gaining. You know, it’s just the opposite of weight loss.
Joe Courtney: Yeah. And, just to go back to kind of tie in yours and my point of, of, changing up like exercise that you’re doing is also changing what you’re eating or a supplementation to.
There was a guy that I used to work out with an active duty, who was, who was kind of a hard gainer who was trying to get stronger, but also bigger. But he knew every couple of every cycle or so 12, 16 weeks, he would completely go supplement free for about six weeks or so. Just a, of completely flushes body out of any supplement it’s time where you’ve probably taken all kinds of stuff.
There was the pre-workout post-workout all that stuff. Yeah. They might only take protein or just worry about protein and that was it, but it would completely wash it, wash his body, cleaned up any. A supplementation that he was taking and then go back on it. And even during his getting rid of the supplements, he had some gains, but then [00:08:00] we got back on the supplements or whatever, if you’re taking some, then, you can see a boost, but your body might just be using them as a crutch too much as well.
But either way, it’s good to kind of flush them out.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. And it depends like. We’ve talked about this. I mean, creatine is a great way for me to gain like 20 pounds if I stay on it long enough. So you could add, it could be as simple, like add creatine, but I mean, that is adding some water weight, but again, it helps you lift more, which can help you gain more muscles.
So some supplements can be looked at, but. beyond, supplementing protein and creatine. I don’t think there’s much else I would recommend for weight gain other than food. Yeah. Is that everything? Yeah, I think we’re good. All right, guys. Thank you so much. for tuning in to this, week’s ask me anything.
If you guys have a question, go to garage, gym athlete.com/. AMA, and we can get your question answered. If you watch it on YouTube, give us a thumbs up, leave us a comment, let us know what you think. And then, Hey, whatever device, however, you’re listening to us. Podcasts. Five star review [00:09:00] positive comment really helps us out and we would really appreciate it.
And we would be forever grateful. That’s it. Thanks for listening or watching.
I hope you enjoy. Today’s ask me anything episode. So one more time. If you want to submit a question, topic or idea you can do so at garage dot com slash AMA and Hey, while you’re there, if you haven’t already sign up for garage, gym athlete membership, we are the best community and programming on the internet.
I dare you to try and prove me wrong.