Many guys are doing a lot of things right in the gym and you can see the results. Sculpted physiques with bulges in  all of the right places speak for themselves. These guys are not only doing things the right way but are probably spending less time on their muscle building workouts than you think.

Then there are those guys that seem to be working themselves to death hours every day and getting nowhere. What’s the difference? Some would just say they are hardgainers and leave it at that.  Many of them keep looking for that elusive muscle gaining secret that is finally going to produce the results they are looking for.

If you are in the latter group, the following guest article by Jason Ferruggia may be the end of your search.  Jason is the guy that wrote the book – Muscle Gaining Secrets – and what he tells you you can take to the bank.

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Less Time Equals Better Results?

By Jason Ferruggia

Why is it that almost everyone you see working out in the gym does high volume bodypart splits? Today is Monday and in just about every gym in America that means it’s chest day. Tomorrow is back, Thursday is legs and Friday is arms…or something like that, I guess.

Why the lack of variety or rational thought? What is the need for all that training volume?

You need to understand that most forms of training have just been passed down for decades from one generation to the next, without the inclusion of rational thought. Sometime in the 60’s, sensible training programs started becoming less and less prevalent with the rapidly growing usage of anabolic steroids.

In the days of old, men like Steve Reeves and Paul Anderson trained with far more sensible, lower volume programs but these started to disappear during the 60’s. By the time Arnold got to Gold’s Gym in Venice for the first time, high volume, bodypart splits were the widely accepted way for everyone to train for size and strength.

This type of training is not based on deductive reasoning but just on the fact that “it’s what everyone else is doing.” The proponents of these training methods will always blindly tell you that “higher volume training is needed for hypertrophy gains.” Says who? I can tell you for a fact that the University of Chicago isn’t wasting time examining the effects of Jay Cutler’s marathon workouts. There are no studies saying that you need 8-12 sets per bodypart to grow. In fact there are studies that show the opposite; that one set is just as effective as three.

The proponents of this type of training will also tell you that higher volume training is associated with higher levels of growth hormone secretion. What they don’t tell you is that the level of GH increase is not enough to make any difference at all. In fact, almost anything you do elevates GH. Extreme temperatures elevate GH but my biceps don’t get bigger every time I take a shower. The increased GH secretion from training is so minimal that it is not enough to make the slightest difference whatsoever.

For the drug free lifter who does not possess muscle building genetics quite up to par with the Austrian Oak, training this way is a huge mistake. Not only does it drain your amino acid pool and glycogen stores but it dramatically enhances your recovery time between workouts. If you do 8-12 sets for chest on Monday you can not recover from that workout and be able to train again for seven days. So you are only getting one growth stimulus per week or fifty two per year.

Now if you reduce your volume to the point where you can recover faster and more efficiently without draining your amino acid pool and glycogen stores so greatly, you can train bodyparts twice per week instead of once. Now instead of 52 growth stimulating workouts per year for each bodypart, you can now do 104. In fact, if your volume is kept low you can even get away with training bodyparts three times a week in certain situations. Now, which do you think will be more effective; 156 growth stimulating workouts per year or 52?

To train more often you absolutely have to lower your training volume. The total sets per workout should be kept low and the total sets per exercise should be even lower. There is no need to hit four sets of incline presses, flat bench presses and decline presses for your chest workout. Doing that is a form of neuroses; you think that you need to hit every angle and do and endless amount of sets to stimulate every last muscle fiber, but this is simply not the case.

The reason these training programs remain popular is because nobody wants to be told that they are wrong. Admitting your mistakes is something many people can’t do. It is why when something radically different is proposed, the high volume proponents get upset and offended. Nobody likes to have their ego bruised so they keep on doing and promoting the same old high volume workouts that they always have.

That’s fine, let them continue to do what they choose; personally I have way more important things to do than spend all of my waking hours in the gym. If I can get better results in a fraction of the time I will choose that option every time.

Cut your volume down, up your weights and intensity and get ready for the “what are you on” questions to start rolling in.

For more tips on building muscle mass the the right way, visit Jason’s Muscle Gaining Secrets site.

Technorati Tags: Jason Ferruggia, Muscle Building, Muscle Gaining Secrets, programs, routines, workouts

That is a question that has a lot of people stopped in their tracks. Since they believe,  incorrectly by the way,  that you can’t lose fat and gain muscle at the same time, they choose to do nothing!

For the benefit of everyone who has heard what amounts to a fairy tale, Jason Ferruggia has been giving out the straight scoop for ages. Here’s what he has to say about this.

It has often been said that you can’t lose fat and gain muscle simultaneously. That statement is actually incorrect. Beginners can do it. Even guys who have been training for a long time who make drastic changes to their diet and their workout programs can do it. You can’t do it for extended periods of time, but it can be done.

For example, if you are currently doing traditional steady state cardio, switch to sprints. Sprints have an anabolic effect and do not produce cortisol at the same rate that traditional cardio does. Not only that but they burn twice the fat. So you will build muscle and get leaner at the same time.

If you are currently using light weights and high volume workouts, increase the weight and drop the sets and reps. This will help you get stronger, build muscle and avoid unnecessary cortisol production.

If you are currently eating 2500 calories per day, jack it up to 3500 calories per day. This will ignite your metabolism and you will start building muscle and burning fat faster than you have in months. You will notice that your temperature increases and you are hot even in the dead of winter. This is a sure sign that your metabolism is jacked. But be careful because this magical effect will only last for a few days or weeks at most. Then you will have to start employing some nutritional trickery to keep the effect going.

What can’t be achieved on a long term basis is MAXIMAL muscle gain and MAXIMAL fat loss AT THE SAME TIME. You can do both simultaneously on a long term basis, but neither will be maximized. That is the key difference that many people often overlook. So if you want to be ripped like George St. Pierre or Terrel Owens you can’t also hope to add 30 pounds of muscle in the next 12 weeks. It’s one or the other. At the same time, if you want to get jacked like a strongman competitor, you can’t be trying to maintain a single digit body fat percentage for the next 12 weeks.

I hope this clear it up for everyone. You can gain muscle and lose fat at the same time, you just cannot max either one of them out. To gain as much size as possible in the shortest time, go with a program like Jason’s Muscle Gaining Secrets.

To lose weight as quickly as possible you need a program like Warp Speed Fat Loss.

Technorati Tags: Fat Loss, Jason Ferruggia, Muscle Gaining Secrets

Jason Ferruggia has just released an updated Muscle Gaining Secrets which I am now in the process of taking a look at. At first glance, it looks like one of the few really complete bodybuilding program available but I’ll hold off my final comments until I have had a chance to get inside of it.

In the meantime, I thought you might be interested in a question and answer session with Jason himself to discover who he is and how he got where he is. It was a long interview and this is only Part 1. I’ll post Part 2 in a day or so. It’s a long read, but Jason has a really great story, so don’t skip any of it.

Question: Jason, your transformation was pretty incredible going from 147lbs to 231lbs. How much trial and error did you think you went through training wise until you found what really worked?

Answer: Oh man, I can’t even begin to tell you. I tried so many different methods and systems it was unbelievable. I actually started out as a beginner on a six day a week high volume body part split. This was back in the 80’s so I think I was just looking in the magazines at whatever Shawn Ray or Aaron Baker or Gary Strydom were doing and just copy it exactly. Obviously that didn’t work out too well.

I entered high school weighing less than 100 pounds and after four years of training my ass off and growing almost a foot taller, I only weighed 147 pounds at graduation. So obviously, all my experimentation during high school didn’t work out to well either.

During those four years I was still doing whatever I could find in the magazines and even ordered some courses like Cybergenics and some other stuff that was popular at the time. I think the first training books I had were the Arnold Encyclopedia and one of Dr. Hatfields. I tried everything I read in both of those.

My experimentation during college was quite extensive and quite varied. I finally stumbled upon the HIT movement and Mike Mentzer and Arthur Jones. It was like a beacon of light and I adopted that training philosophy immediately. And for the first time I started to really grow, which isn’t shocking since I was so grossly overtrained. But as anyone who has had a similar experience can tell you, those gains don’t last too long either.

I could be here all day telling you about all the crazy stuff I did but I think it’s pretty safe to say that I was in the game and wasted an inordinate amount of time and money for a good ten years before I really figured out what really worked. Read the rest of this entry

Technorati Tags: Jason Ferruggia, Muscle Gaining Secrets, Natural Bodybuilding