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

The big truth out there is that a good portion of lifters in the gym don’t concentrate on training their lower body to create solid muscle growth. I get it; a solid pair of quadriceps isn’t precisely what many people would deem a showy muscle.  Moreover it’s doubtful that any person has ever heard a woman ask a male to flex his hamstring for her.

Because everyone is so bent on getting a thick upper body, the other half of their muscles down below repeatedly become disregarded. To get out of difficult and heavy leg training, people frequently say I jog to build up my legs, squats are tough on my knees, or come up with some other lame excuse along those lines.

I can’t even begin to tell you how costly this gaffe is…

It not only appears ridiculous having a ripped, muscular upper body sitting over a pair of toothpick-like legs… but imagin if I assured you that a refusal to put equivalent muscle mass building focus on your lower body is a huge limitation on your upper body, back, arms, and shoulders in terms of significant muscle growth?

Even though many might view this as a ploy to get you into the squat rack, it is a truth that working your legs can do miracles in getting huge muscle tissue development. A great number of lifters see power training as “train muscle X using exercise Y, and muscle X will become bigger and stronger”. It is not that simple.

This restricted view of huge muscle growth is one of the main reasons why many beginners can’t get the maximum results from their workouts. Instead of reaching for the kind of explosive, huge muscle growth that you are truly capable of, too many folks settle for average gains.

The honest truth is this.

In due course, the muscle tissue developing mechanism moves beyond a basic localized function that takes place at the level of your muscle structure alone! There is a enormous level of solid lean muscle development that occurs once the complete system is placed under tension and adapts to it on a holistic level. This is because more significant levels of growth hormone along with testosterone will be produced.

Regarded as the holy grail of massive muscle tissue development, these hormones happen to be the primary things which can control how much muscle the given man or woman will be able to gain. When bodybuilders inject anabolic steroids into their bodies, they’re increasing the circulation of those fundamental chemical substances in an attempt to get more huge muscle development.

Seeing that you’re a natural trainee and injecting a roid-filled needle into your butt just isn’t your way, it is important to find a different method to speed up the creation of these muscle-increasing compounds so that they can attain huge muscle growth.

So, how can you do this most effectively?

You already know it!

Intense leg workouts! Do leg presses, lunges, squats, as well as stiff-legged deadlifts.

Have you by chance found just how difficult and bowel wrenching these workouts can be whenever you perform them with complete intensity? Ideal for huge muscle development! An all out sets of these lifts may make you wish you would have stayed home. That’s simply because, not only do these lifts involve the most significant muscle groups on your entire body, they allow you to move solid quantities of weight.

These leg routines will make you enormous because their intense difficulty is one of the key ways to seriously drive your entire body to rev up its production of anabolic hormone. When you raise your anabolic hormone levels, it means you get increased muscle tissue size and strength, not only for your lower body, but for your whole upper body too.

The thing I’m trying to say is never let your leg training become an infrequent element or even an after-thought in your training program or you will miss out on considerable massive muscle mass development that you might be getting.

Take up this challenge.

Tack on an strong time of leg training to your weekly routine program at the gym. You may want to incorporate the most elementary compound lifts such as squats, leg presses, and stiff-legged deadlifts; force yourself to the limit and add greater weight each 7 days. In just 4-8 weeks, you will observe huge lean muscle growth.

You will report that your power on each and every single upper body routine shot through the roof, if you are just like 99% of the people… and you will notice your arms, back, chest, and shoulders got larger, also. Look, if you truly do not care about the size of your legs or huge muscle development, don’t worry about your leg workouts. At the very least, include hard and intensive leg training for the sake of those upper body muscle groups that you covet.

It may not seem logical initially, but intensive and steady leg training really is one of the true “secrets” to solid muscular growth and a powerful and ripped upper body!

Technorati Tags: body building, bodybuilding, building muscle mass, Muscle Gaining Secrets, Natural Bodybuilding

Anyone looking to build muscle fast needs to keep the three basic principles of successful bodybuilders in mind: intensity, diet, and recovery.

Intensity

Intensity is a double edged sword in that too much of a good thing is actually a bad thing. Too little intensity brought into a properly designed workout schedule will yield mediocre results at best.

A proper intensity workout should include enough sets of limited rep, high weight exercises to stimulate fast twitch muscle fibers as well as several high volume sets to facilitate the growth of slow twitch muscle fibers.

No matter how hard one tries they are unable to significantly alter the ratios of slow to fast twitch muscles they were born with, so ignoring one group in favor of another in hopes to alter ones muscle composition is futile.

Intensity means limiting rest between sets, and never missing a day in the gym unintentionally. There are times when missing a day should be planned as part of a recovery cycle, but catching the flu is not a sufficient excuse.

Diet

A proper diet is protein rich but also replete with proper fats and a moderate amount of carbohydrates. At least 1.5 grams of protein per day should be eaten in order to ensure that those seeking to build muscles fast do not enter catabolic states. To further avoid catabolism, one should eat healthy meals 5 or 6 times daily.

Recovery

Recovery is often overlooked on both a micro and macro scale. Recovery time between sets should be kept to around a minute regardless of intensity while nightly sleep periods should be in excess of 6 hours. Every six to eight weeks a bodybuilder will need to take a few days off their routine in order to allow the body proper time to recover before beginning a new cycle.

Are you a hardgainer and just can’t seem to build muscle? The free report at Hardgainer Project X reveals how to beat your genetics.

Average build? Muscle Gaining Secrets is a top choice to quickly build muscle.

Technorati Tags: bodybuilding, build muscle fast, Muscle Building, Muscle Gaining Secrets, Vince DelMonte

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