Abel - The Hardgainer Solution: The Training and Diet Plans for Building a Better Body, Gaining Muscle, and Overcoming Your Genetics

About the Author

Scott. (Back in the day.)

Scott Abel has been involved in the diet, fitness, and bodybuilding industries for over four decades. He has written for, or been featured in magazines like Muscle &Fitness, Flex, Muscle Mag, T-Nation, and many more.

The Hardgainer Solution is based not just on Scotts knowledge of exercise physiology and workout program design; it has also been tested and tweaked based on Scotts experiences working with hundreds of clients for over thirty years.

Visit Scott at his website.

Copyright 2015 Scott Abel

THE HARDGAINER SOLUTION:

The Training and Diet Plans

for Building a Better Body,

Gaining Muscle, and

Overcoming Your Genetics

Scott Abel

scottabelfitness.com

Table of Contents

Part 1:

The Truth About Hardgainers and the Logic Behind This Program

Part 2:

The Hardgainers Workout Solution

Part 3:

The Hardgainers Diet Solution

Part 4:

The Complete List of Workouts and Diet Plans

Part 5:

PART 1: THE TRUTH ABOUT HARDGAINERS AND THE LOGIC BEHIND THIS PROGRAM

Are You a Hardgainer? and the Hardgainer Dilemma

Ive spent the last couple of years reviewing my notes and coming up with new strategies to help one of the toughest demographics out there the hardgainers and Im really on to something with what Ive come up with, and Im excited to get it out there.

Most hardgainers already know theyre hardgainers.

If this is you, no one needs to tell you that you are hardgainer: youve tried every workout program out there and you still feel frustrated by a lack of results. Your results simply dont reflect your efforts. I get it.

But some of you may be hardgainers and not even realize it. This means you could be making more progress than you have so far if you start following the right protocol in the right way.

Being a hardgainer is not just limited to being a skinny ectomorph. Thats easy to categorize, but its not the whole story.

Here are the other common signs that someone is a hardgainer:

Training for years and not changing your body shape.

Training for years and not gaining heavier body weight because of yearly muscle mass increases.

Training for years and people still ask you if you workout.

Training for years and no muscle maturity and development shows on you with your shirt off.

However, there are other aspects to being a hardgainer as well.

For example, as you age you lose muscle even if you workout, even if youve got pretty good genetics.

I watch pro sports like NFL football and at certain positions they say that a player is getting old when barely into his 30s.

Well, developing a physique becomes more challenging as you age as well. Research shows that a new category of consumers in cosmetic surgery and body transformation interest are men in their 50s.

There is a natural slow loss of muscle that begins around age 35, whether you work out or not. Even myself, I was able to maintain a fairly high level of muscle mass till I turned 50.

After age 50, I would now also consider myself a hardgainer, because I know and understand the ongoing muscle loss and performance that accompanies aging. The benefit I have is know-how and people still comment on my physique, even at this age.

But make no mistake, Ive had a personal interest in addressing the hardgainer issue and Im really on to something with what Ive come up with.

And to reiterate: someone older say someone in his 40s who is just starting to workout to transform their physique this person is a hardgainer from the get go.

However, properly addressing the hardgainer issue required me looking at this differently. First of all, every hardgainer is unique metabolically.

That is something no one ever talks about.

But its true.

Moreover someone tall and lanky is likely to be a hard gainer because the lever systems of long arms and legs put their physiques at a disadvantage when trying to overload muscles. Long limbs mean having to move resistance through a greater range of motion, often with less support from stabilizing and guiding muscles.

So someone who is taller and older for instance, is really likely to be a hardgainer.

This also means that a tall and lanky person is less likely to be able to lift heavier weights: and heavier weights has always been the myth of the solution to the hardgainer issue! Not any more!

I developed Metabolic Enhancement Training (or MET training) beginning back around 2004, and since then Ive had a decade or more to observe the feedback of my coaching clients, and the people whove purchased my MET programs. I was also able to cross-reference this with feedback from my clients who used my Innervation Training methodology protocols (the more traditional bodypart programs for building muscle).

I realized that for hardgainers, industry experts (yes including myself!) tended to address the issue too myopically. When you look at the comments and programs aimed at hardgainers, the discussion is always about training for the hardgainer, but only in a very specific sense.

There are other elements of training that dont get enough consideration.

First is recovery. I started to address the elements of recovery, both within workouts, and between workouts. If hardgainers are unique metabolically, then intra-workout recovery and inter-workout recovery are serious matters of consideration. And training affects their recovery, and their recovery affects their training.

No one was properly addressing thisat least not without sacrificing the volume and intensity needed for growth.

And along with these, the intensity factor is another consideration for the hardgainer a consideration that to my mind has until now been misconstrued.

Many experts insinuate that hardgainers just dont train intensely enough. That maybe true for some, but you just cant paint the whole demographic of the hardgainer with that same brush.

Ive also experienced the opposite. In my heyday everyone wanted to work out with me, and some of my best training partners I would call hardgainers. They could hang with me rep for rep, where other plate-heads who had much more muscle just couldnt yet they didnt have the physique development to show for it. Why? This wasnt being addressed by the industry!

Ive come to learn and embrace that its because these werent the right workouts for their unique metabolic needs.

Many of the workout programs that hardgainers follow are simply unsuited to their genetic situation. One question I would ask of any hardgainer: if you are a true hardgainer, why would you go to hardcore bodybuilders for workout guidance?

These guys are genetically suited for developing muscle, or they wouldnt be competing to begin with. Then you add in the use of a myriad of performance enhancing drugs and the question begs, how is following what they d addressing what YOU actually need, as a hardgainer?

In terms of intensity, for the hardgainers unique metabolic profile, the hardgainer may actually be training too hard. Thats right: that is what I just said!