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Tips for hardgainers to build muscle
Posted by: Sean
If you're thin and lanky and burn any food or fuel you eat real fast because any food you eat or drink always gets torched by that monster metabolism of yours, then you're an ectomorph, the typical hard-gainer. But just because gaining muscle is difficult does NOT mean it's impossible.
Below are just a few tips that you can implement that will help to turn the tide on your slow gains. It should be noted that implementing these tips randomly once a week will not get you the results you're looking for; it needs to be a lifestyle change to get any noticeable results.
1. Less Volume, Not More
All hard-gainers make the mistake of training with too much volume. When a hard-gainer see's he/she is not growing they immediately add more volume instead of decreasing volume. Hard-gainers all have a very limited capacity to recover, adding more sets and reps that you're not able to recover from is taking a step backwards and not forwards.
2. Stop doing Isolation Exercises
Because an ectomorph or hard-gainer has such a limited capacity to recuperate you need to select movements that give you more "bang for your buck" than an isolation movement will give you. Hard-gainers should focus on doing movements that stimulate the most muscle fibers using the heaviest weight they can.
3. Limit Cardio Training
Hard-gainers need to always be aware of their limited ability to recover. Doing cardio three or four times a week is counter-productive. A brisk walk, light jogging or a cardio session in the gym twice a week will help maintain your cardiovascular health and will enhance hunger, plus it will increase blood flow to your muscles to deliver all the nutrients they waiting for.
4. Control Your Life Stressors
All hard-gainers need to make an effort to remove as many outside life stressors as they can. Stress makes the body release a higher volume of a catabolic hormones, it's vitally important that you try to control this. High catabolic hormone levels (tissue breakdown) will cause you to lose precious muscle; your objective is to be anabolic (tissue building).
5. Use Liquid Shakes
Any ectomorph hard-gainer needs a serious amount of calories and this demand by supplementing with liquid shakes makes it a lot easier. It's tough to reach high calorie intakes when only eating solid food. Eating calorie dense foods like nuts, dried fruit and red meat is tough and needs planning, it could be easier, cheaper and more effective using liquid shakes.
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