It’s the 2nd of june, so exactly 1 year since I bought Scrawny to Brawny. I thought I’d post some of my results and experiences, and some of the things I’ve learned over the past 12 months. I invite all other former skinny bastards to share in this…
For those who might want to argue with some of the points I’m going to make, please bear in mind that I’m writing only about my own highly subjective personal experience. When I write ‘you’, I mean ‘me’. Conversely, if everyone reading this just says ‘Well. d’uh!’ then I apologise for wasting their time. The past year’s been a bit of an epiphany for me, and, quite frankly, I want to talk about it.
Ok then…
I’ve gone from 160 to 200lbs, and from 6% to 10% body fat. So that’s about 30lbs LBM, nearly 3 times as much as I put on in my 3 previous years of training.
Never having gone heavier than 8 reps before S2b (and having therefore the maxes of a toddler) I can now manage more-than-bodyweight for the deadlift, bench and squat.
I need to buy trousers 4" too big at the waist or I can’t get them over my thighs, and I take a 17" collar on my shirts (15" last year)
I have to train really f*****g hard to get any results. If I don’t leave the gym soaked with sweat, barely able to speak, I’ve been wasting my time.
Commensurately, volume has to be low. A workout of 4x5 for front squats, power clean, incline press and chins (for example) is plenty. I’ve settled on 45 min total body workouts, 3 or 4 times a week.
Isolation exercises do nothing but waste time that could have been spent on compound lifts. Why do calf raises, shrugs and upright rows when you could do high pulls? Even without any bicep curls or skull crushers, I still fill out the sleeves on my L shirts.
Get lots and lots of rest. Take the bus, take the lift, take a nap when you can. If it’s the weekend, or you haven’t got lectures til the afternoon, make a breakfast shake the night before, get up, down it, go back to bed for a bit.
Eat and eat and eat and eat. Still full from your last meal? Great! That means you haven’t slipped into catabolism.
Health benefits be damned, cardio is a no-no when you’re a hardgainer hoping to bulk.
People have stopped asking me ‘Do you lift?’ Or saying ‘You look really fit. Do you play tennis or something?’
I think that once or twice a hot girl has checked me out in the gym.
Right. I think my horn has been given a thorough tooting. Now it’s the turn of all you other FSB’s!