5 Muscle-Building Tips for Hardgainers

1. Try the 5x5 Training Method

The “5×5” method is credited to Reg Park, the legendary bodybuilder who built a 500-pound bench press in the 1950s. This method remains one of the most reliable ways to pack on muscle size and strength in existence. In short, you do 5 heavy sets of 5 reps for each exercise rather than the standard "3 sets of 10." You can learn full details here.

2. Avoid "Failure" and Grow Like a Weed

According to Pavel Tsatsouline, a former Soviet Special Forces physical training instructor and recent guest on The Joe Rogan Experience, there are 3 major reasons not to train to failure.

• First, extreme stress dramatically spikes the muscle-wasting hormone cortisol.

• Second, the gains achieved with intense training to failure are short-lived and easily reversed mainly because no mere mortal can maintain that type of long-term intensity.

• Third, training to failure disrupts your strength gains thanks to something neuroscientists refer to as the "Hebbian mechanisms." The last concept is in line with the "success begets success" theory that Dr. Squat, Fred Hatfield, has written about many times. The bottom line is this: Failure is a learned pattern that can be hardwired into your neuromuscular pathways and, for the most part, should be avoided like the plague.

3. Stick with Dumbbells and Barbells

Newfangled exercise machinery with complicated cables and pulleys designed to give your muscles the "ultimate workout" are typically less effective than good old-fashioned barbells and dumbbells. Using simple free weights on basic multi-joint exercises, like the squat, bench press, shoulder press, and deadlift, are still the most effective means of rapidly increasing muscle size and strength. Scientific research has shown that many exercise machines lack the proper eccentric component of an exercise that’s necessary to stimulate muscle tissue to remodel (grow).

4. Consume 1 Gram of Protein per Pound of Bodyweight

Bodybuilders with impressive physiques regard protein intake as their number one priority. And it's no secret why. Protein is essential to providing the necessary building blocks for increasing muscle size and strength. Even anabolic steroids have a low success rate when protein intake is too low. A mix of lean proteins from whole foods like chicken, beef and fish along with healthy doses of whey and casein from regular protein shakes is best.

5. Optimize Your Post-Workout Nutrition

Any Ph.D. in sports nutrition will tell you the real key is optimizing muscle growth is both HEAVY weight training (the spark) and optimal POST-workout nutrition (the gasoline). Maximize the two, and you can create a raging inferno of muscle growth. Keep reading. I'll lay out everything you need to know to dial in your post-workout nutrition for maximum gains.

How To Pour "Muscle Growth" Gasoline on Your Workouts by Optimizing Your Post-Workout Nutrition

STEP ONE: Heavy Weight Training (The SPARK): This is your job. If you're having trouble busting your ass in the gym, lifting heavy, and going all-out — well, that's a YOU problem. I don't know what it is — whether you need to stop listening to Yanni during your workouts or start choosing big-boy barbells and dumbbells over machines, the bottom line is, you need to step your gym game up if you don't want to be "that guy" who wears his T-shirt in the swimming pool.

STEP TWO: Optimize Post-Workout Nutrition (The GASOLINE): This is where I come in — helping you dial in your post-workout nutrition for MAXIMUM muscle growth. If you're a serious lifter, you may have heard of the term "The Metabolic Window." This is a phrase used in strength training to describe the 30-minute (give or take, dependent on the individual) period after heavy weight-training exercise during which the right nutrition can shift the body from a catabolic state to an anabolic one.

Specifically, it is during this period that the intake of protein and carbohydrates — along with key anabolic intermediates — can aid in the increase of muscle mass.

Some exercise scientists believe the metabolic window begins to close within minutes of the end of a workout. The same nutrients taken over an hour later result in significantly reduced protein synthesis and muscle glycogen storage.

Unfortunately, most of the so-called post-workout protein powders on the market today offer hundreds and sometimes even thousands of unnecessary calories that eventually lead to unwanted increases in bodyfat.

Conventional post-workout powders offer little more than gut-busting amounts of sugar, moderate protein intakes, and insignificant quantities of metabolic intermediaries. Shovel-size scoops of powder, with hundreds if not thousands of calories, do NOT mean more lean body mass — but it can mean more bodyfat.

Serious weight-training athletes don't want to gain fat weight. They want to gain lean body mass — muscular and strong weight. Mega calories and protein overflows only slightly influence the factors that regulate lean body mass and muscle-protein synthesis.

FACT: The most potent stimulators of lean, rock-hard muscle mass are zero-calorie molecules with direct or indirect actions: clenbuterol and other beta-agonists, anabolic steroids, insulin and IGF's, and growth hormone, to name a few.

Many of these anabolic agents are effective even on low-calorie diets. However, side effects and legal concerns prevent many individuals from taking these drugs, leaving a gap in the search for a true post-workout lean-body-mass promoter.

A new, hardcore post-workout complete bodybuilding system called The Pro Series Muscle Building Stack (from TeamANR, a Silicon Valley Sports Nutrition start-up) was designed to fill this gap without filling fat stores and offers an advanced, university-tested formula that supports lean body mass in weight-training athletes.

The Ultimate Post-Workout Anabolic Solution...

The unique biochemical matrix of clinically proven metabolic intermediates Rhodiola Rosea Extract, Tongkat Ali Root, and Tribulus Terrestris (45% extract), along with HPLC Creatine Monohydrate (the most pure, pharmaceutical-grade creatine on the market), L-glutamine, L-arginine, Octacosanol, ZMA, and Alpha Lipolic Acid found in The Pro Series Muscle Building Stack was engineered to be the ultimate post-workout anabolic solution — markedly increasing muscle size and strength by up-regulating your testestorone levels, increasing growth hormone, reinforcing cell volumization, and increasing muscle protein synthesis and recovery.

What's more, the low-calorie nutrient matrix in The Pro Series Muscle Building Stack utilizes a proprietary Branched-Chain Amino Acid Complex — a select formulation of high-quality whey and casein proteins with a reduced-lactose content, combined with moderate quantities of slow-release carbohydrates, providing a true post-workout lean mass stimulator, rather than an enormous calorie load that can favor fat synthesis and storage.

Each post-workout dose of this four-supplement stack also provides high levels of MSM (methylsulfonylmethane), Glucosamine, and EFAs (essentinal fatty acids) to support optimal muscle and joint recovery.

The Pro Series Muscle Building Stack controlled blend of macronutrients, cell volumizers, and metabolic intermediates is combined with one additional "secret weapon" ...  the inclusion of a patented protein enzyme called ProHydrolase® which is clinically proven to increase protein absorption by 300 percent. That means up to 3 TIMES MORE post-workout muscle size and strength gains.

But Don't Just Take My Word for It — Check Out This University Research...

Build Muscle While Shedding Fat: Recent university research published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise shows that combining the key ingredients found in The Pro Series Muscle-Building Stack with a proper nutrition and heavy weight-training program will help you build muscle while SIMULTANEOUSLY shedding fat. Using a sophisticated technique for measuring body composition known as DEXA, results showed that the supplementation group added muscle more than three times faster than the control group. Subjects using the placebo put on almost 2 pounds of fat, while the supplementation group lost almost 3 pounds of fat.

Spike Testosterone up to 440% Post Workout: Recent research out of Kent State University shows this post-workout system's biochemical matrix had a profound effect on activating lutenizing hormones in the body, which in turn signaled testosterone production by as much as 440%.

Supercharge Post-Workout Growth Hormone: A separate study recently published in the scientific journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise showed The Pro Series Muscle-Building Stack biochemical matrix helped increase the muscle size and strength of NCAA athletes, while speeding their recovery time from exercise, by naturally increasing levels of IGF-1 (growth hormone) and testosterone.

Try It For Yourself 100% Risk Free While Quantities Are Still Available...

The manufacturer of The Pro Series Muscle-Building Stack has agreed to offer my readers a full 30-day supply with an additional 20% discount when you subscribe to have it delivered to your doorstep every month ... while supplies last (and you can cancel anytime).

These stacks are flying off the shelves. ... AND with the recent supply-chain backlogs you've no doubt been reading about in the news, raw materials are becoming increasingly hard to come by. And believe me, this isn't just more "marketing hype" bullshit either.

Just look at how empty some of the shelves are at your local retail and grocery stores.

Similarly, high-quality microfiltered whey protein, HPLC creatine monohydrate, ProHydrolase, Tongkat Ali and the other adaptogenic compounds included in this stack are becoming increasingly hard to get.

I don't mean to go on a "political rant," but we didn't have massive supply-chain backlogs, $5-a-gallon gasoline, insane spikes in food prices, and hyper-inflation up the yin-yang during the last administration. Just sayin'.

Anyway, if you'd like to put The Pro Series Muscle-Building Stack to the test and get an extra 20% off when you subscribe to have the stack delivered to your doorstep every month.

Here's to the best gains of your LIFE!

Clay Sullivan, NPC Bodybuilding Champion