- ...What if you are an extreme hard gainer?
. First ensure that your recovery machinery is in good order:a. Go to sleep early enough each night so that you wake naturally each
morning. If you have sleeping problems, get them fixed—seek profes-
sional help, perhaps a sleep clinic.
b. Adhere to a nutrient-dense dietary program that provides more calories
than you need to maintain your bodyweight, at least one gram of pro-
tein per pound of lean body mass, and six similar-sized easily digested
feeds/meals each day. Poor digestion and assimilation will kill your
progress.
c. Make weight training your only physically demanding activity. Perform
no aerobic work. Conserve your energy.. Adopt a bare bones approach to program design. Follow a twice-a-week
super-abbreviated program (Monday–Friday) built around the squat or Trap
Bar deadlift, alternating two different routines with little or no overlap. See
Framework in Chapter . Do not add a single extra exercise. Do warmups
plus – work sets per exercise except the squat, where warmups plus ×
may work best. Apply all that this book teaches on effort and progression.. If after four weeks you are unable to add weight to the work sets of each
exercise every workout you train it, try being more radical. Reduce your
training frequency so that you alternate the two routines on a Monday, Fri-
day, Wednesday, Monday, Friday basis, i.e., increase the rest days between
workouts, and provide more recovery time.. If you do not start growing now, and assuming you really are fully satisfying
the recovery components, and are training very hard, add an additional rest
day between workouts. Continue to increase recovery time until you start
gaining.. Once you find the training frequency that works for you, stick with it for as
long as possible, and milk it dry.. Commence a new cycle. Use the same format that worked well last time, but
use two or three different core exercises. Add two different accessory exer-
cises to each routine, one warmup and one work set for each. If they do not
diminish your gains, keep them in. If your gains suffer, drop the accessory
exercises.