Beast-eBook.pdf

Disclaimer

Be inquisitive

The information in this program is for informational purposes only, only, and only to use at your own discretion. Keep in mind there are inherent risks associated with participating in any form of physical activity, activity, including everyday activities like jogging.

We highly encourage you to ask lots of questions! Take advantage of the community and coaching to coaching to fast-track your results.

The activities set-out herein may be dangerous if performed incorrectly, and may not be appropriate for everyone. Not all nutritional information will be relevant depending on personal health, genetics, body-fat levels, diseases, etc. As such, you should seek the counsel of a competent and professional physician prior to acting on any information. The choice of what you do with your body is yours, and yours alone. While the information inside is obtained from sources believed to be reliable, we do not guarantee accuracy or completeness.

Please don’t share this With the three of us combined, we’ve spent decades studying in university un iversity,, attending seminars, interning at sports performance centres, sifting through dense meta-analysis’s on nutrition and muscle-building techniques, and coaching in-person and online. We We’ve ’ve put our best years and energy into this program, and we really appreciate your using it for your own personal use only. If you feel like sharing, sharin g, please share our: Website Facebook page Instagram account YouTube channel That’d be awesome.

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Have a sister sis ter,, female friend, or a girlfriend/wife interested in building feminine muscle? We’ve got our sister program Bony to We’ve Bombshell! It is a weight-ga weight-gain in program specifically designed for women looking to build feminine curves through muscle. For a special deal for having already bought this program, email us for a coupon code at: [email protected] Click here to launch Bony to Bombshell

Published by Foxhound Ltd. User agrees to indemnify indemnif y, defend and hold Foxhound Ltd, Bony to Beastly and its partners, attorneys, staff and affiliates harmless from any liability, liability, loss, claim & expense, including reasonable attorney’s fees. First published in 2012 Second Edition—Release Candidate 1.0 Copyright © 2016 All Rights Reserved Polowick, Jared. Duquette, Shane. Walker-Ng, Marco. Bony to Beastly—The Muscle-Building Program for Skinny Guys Typeset in Futura & Tisa This system, including this eBook, is fully copyrighted and does not come with giveaway or resale rights. In other words, you may not sell or redistribute this. No part of this program may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in, or encourage piracy of these copyrighted materials which vi olates the author’s rights, which is not n ot only illegal, but hurts the author’s. Your support is appreciated! 3

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CONTENTS 10

GOALS & EXPECTA EXPECTATIONS TIONS WELCOME TO B2B The “Ideal” Physiqu Ph ysique? e? Twenty Twen ty Po Pounds unds of Hearty Heart y Muscle The Importance of Gaining Leanly The Benefits of Building Muscle How Permanent Are Muscles? Can You Improve Your Muscle-Building Genetics? …But How Much Do You Need to Eat?

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THE QUICK-START GUIDE HOW TO TRACK YOUR PROGRESS

The “Before” Assessment HOW TO LIFT WEIGHTS

How to Warm Up What Weight to Start With The Three Rules of Weight Selection Which Routine Routine to Begin Beg in With How Much Can You Gain Each Week? Summary HOW TO EAT FOR GAINS

Calories: How to Gain Weight Protein: How to Build Muscle Summary

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HOW TO STICK WITH IT

Sticking With It, Even When It’s Tough Action Steps To Get Started Summary Muscle-building Muscl e-building Flo F lowChar wChartt 64

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DOING ENOUGH

PRIORITIES & PYRAMIDS The Tiered Pyramid

LIFTING ENOUGH How Heavy To Lift Warm-Up Sets Periodized Volume Recovery

EATING ENOUGH Don’t Shoot Yourself in the Stomach The Basics of Appetite Manipulation Manipulation How to Hack Your Appetite Summary

ADHERING ENOUGH Motivation Accountability Choosing Choo sing Good Go od Habits The Wrap-Up 109

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DOING IT WELL

LIFTING WELL Posture Po sture Matters Cues For Rock Solid Posture Putting Put ting The Cue C uess Into Action The Five Main Movement Patterns Summary

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EATING WELL Optimizing Macronutrients & “IIFYM” How to Count Macros Optimizing Micron Micronutrients utrients & Fib Fibre re Summary

RESTING WELL Stress Isn’t Bad—Bu Bad—Butt Chronic Stress Is Pressing The Reset Button on Stress Sleep Is The Big Bouncer That Kicks Stress Out How to Get to Sleep, Stay Asleep & Wake Up Energized Summary 155

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SUPPLEMENTS

IF, WHAT, WHEN & HOW Buying Supplements Safely Understandi Und erstanding ng Supplem Supplements ents The Five Beastliest Supplements Supplements For Guys Who Like Supplements

SUPPLEMENT PROTOCOLS The Beastly Workout Shake Pre-Workout Pre-Wor kout Shakes Sha kes Daily Supplements 188

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MODERN SCIENCE

OPTIMIZING YOUR LIFTING We Three Th ree M’s: Ho How w Muscle is Built Power: Can It Be Used to Gain Size? Resting Between Sets: Laziness or Cleverness? Bodybuilding vs. Powerlif Powerlifting ting Cardio: Can it Help Build Muscle? Postural Po stural Rest Restorati oration: on: Curing Cur ing Chronic Pain? Periodization: Periodizati on: Destroying Dest roying Plateau Plateauss Summary 7

OPTIMIZING YOUR NUTRITION Optimal Workout Nutrition Optimal Meal Frequency Carb & Calorie Cycling Is a Calo Calorie rie a Calo Calorie? rie? Unde Un derstanding rstanding Insulin How to Maintain Gains on Fewer Calories Summary 220

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS YOU ASKED, WE ANSWERED Beginner Questions Aesthetics Questions Lifting Questions Nutrition Questions Bulking Lifestyle Questions

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GOALS & EXPECTATIONS WELCOME TO B2B Introduction Written by Shane Duquette

First off, welcome to the program. You’ve just taken a pretty huge step towards dramatically changing nearly everything. In a few weeks you’ll be handsomer, healthier, hunkier and happier. The first thing you need to do is ask yourself why you’re doing this. Why do you want a powerful physique? Why do you want to be healthier? What’s it worth to you? Those questions opened up a whole can of worms for me. When I was a teenager teenager,, my parents were always telling me that they were worried about my health. Not knowing how to fix it, they would tell me to eat more and play more sports. My friends thought of me like their skinny kid brother. They’d playfully tease me and push me around. They were nice to me, but they didn’t respect me like they respected each other. On dates it became a common thing for a girl to jokingly tell me that she would protect me if i f we got into any trouble. And wow, wow, when I was single I wanted a strong and masculine body more than ever. That’s when I was the most motivated 10

PREFACE: GOALS & EXPECTATIONS

to change, thinking that it would help me attract the girl of my dreams. Now that I’m in a longterm relationship, I want to be a strong, masculine guy so that I can be sexy for her. her. That’s important. More than that though, though, she truly sees me as a strong and capable man. That’s something I was never sure I could accomplish, and it’s worth the world to me. So I’ve had a lot of reasons. I desperately wanted wanted to change. But no matter how much ectomorph anguish I was feeling, I would usually take the defensive route, telling whoever asked that I liked bei being ng skinny s kinny.. To make matters worse, I’d even tell myself that that I liked being bei ng skinny skin ny.. We’re We’re supposed to accept the things we cannot change, right? So I convinced myself that it was out of my control. I was desperate to feel confident in my body, so I was easy to deceive. But I still secretly wanted to be muscular, and that probably wasn’t as much of a secret as I hoped… I spent nearly a decade wavering between periods of motivat m otivation ion to change and acceptance of how I was, but eventually it got to a point where I decided I was going to change no matter what. I’m hoping you’re at that point too, because if you are, I can guarantee that it is possible. I’m not saying this just based on personal experience, or even based on the fact that I’ve seen thousands of guys gain 20+ pounds. The most thorough muscle-building genetics study found that skinny guys are able to build muscle more quickly than anyone else (study ( study). ). Some of the study participants added more than two inches to their arms while doubling their strength in just three months. Whaaat?! That goes against everything I thought I knew. All of my failed

muscle-building attempts had been proving the exact opposite. I’d eaten until I felt like throwing up and still failed to gain weight. I’d done fitness challenges 11


with my friends and seen them explode into muscularity while I worked my ass off, literally. Just kidding. kidding. I didn’t have have an ass to begin begin with.

Anyway, every time I decided to change I would tell my parents that I was trying to be healthier, like I knew they wanted. I would tell my friends that it was something I was trying out for fun, since I was too embarrassed to admit how important it was to me. I would tell the girls I was dating that it was an interesting three-month “experiment,” since I thought that calling it an experiment would make my muscle-building goals seem academic, not pathetic. All of those reasons were true (and the “experiment” “exp eriment” line actually worked really well at getting people peop le intrigued instead of skeptical, so you’re you’re welcome to use it). The real truth though is that while all of those reason were true… they weren’t the whole story. Not even close. I wanted to feel like a man around other men, not like their scrawny kid brother. I wanted to fit properly in t-shirts, and I wanted to look strong when I took those t-shirts off. I wanted to inspire raw physical attraction in women. I wanted the girls I was dating to feel safe around me. I wanted to be able to carry my girlfriend down the hallway without my muscles shaking, clumsily banging her into doorframes, and then trying to hide the fact that I was out of breath. I wanted her to feel light and feminine in my arms, not like a bulky behemoth. I wanted my body to be a symbol of virility virility,, manliness, strength and health—not of an unhealthy lifestyle and an inability to accomplish my goals.

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The “Ideal” Physique? So I had a goal—a goal goal—a goal that I wanted more than anything—but it still wasn’t a very clear one. How many inches did my arms need to grow before men thought I looked strong? How much weight did I need to gain before people would stop thinking of me as skinny? How powerful a physique did I need to build before the woman I loved would feel safe and feminine around me? How broad did d id my shoulders need to be to command respect when I walked into a room? I wanted all of these things, but I was spending hours hunched over in front of the computer researching and speculating instead of actually accomplishing anything. How could I get started though? Not knowing the answers to all of those questions made it really hard for me to strive towards a specific outcome, and not having a program to follow made it really hard to know where to start. So the first thing you you’ll ’ll need is a goal. We’re here to help you accomplish it. That true underlying reason that we want to build muscle is often a hard thing to come to terms with. Turning that reason into a specific goal is no piece of cake either. Maybe we can help. As you’ve you’ve likely heard before, women love Brad Pitt’s P itt’s Fight Club physique. Hell, maybe they even like beefy dad-bods. Regardless of the specifics, that’s very different from the “more muscle the merrier” merr ier” attitude that many bodybuilder bros have. Women are invariably drawn to bodies that exude strength, health and masculinity—bodies that are big and strong without being obsessivel obsessively y lean or comically muscular. mu scular. This type of body is considered ideal by most men out there too. They’ll respect you for having it while wishing that they were blessed with your 13


genetics—because who wants to admit that this kind of thing may be achievable for them as well? Perhaps the best thing about being a guy with one of these bodies is that you can actually be strong and healthy. The reason these physiques look so good is because they are so good. They live longer, run faster, lift heavier, have the healthiest kids, suffer from fewer diseases, and communicate ambition and self control. If you ask a professional bodybuilder, he’ll likely tell you that the ideal male body is four times that size and twice as lean. That’s okay too. The truth is that women won’t really dock you many points for getting bigger, stronger and even more masculine than the big, strong and masculine guys they dream about. Just keep in mind that the reason bodybuilders come to prefer these physiques is usually because they’re frequently exposed to the physiques of other bodybuilders (and superheroes, action figures, pro wrestlers, etc). This preference tends to be conditioned, not natural. Since most men and women aren’t conditioned that way, way, most prefer more realistic bodies.

So figure out what you want from your body. Whether you want to look like an actor, athlete or the burliest dad on the block, any of those options will be more than enough to get the woman of your dreams, more than enough to be considered manly by other men, and more than enough to have you living a long, strong and healthy life. This is still kind of vague though. What’s the specific goal to strive for?

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Twenty Pounds of Hearty Hear ty Muscle Casey Butts, a leading muscle-building genetics and aesthetics researcher, found that a BMI between 23 and 26 was optimally attractive. The caveat here is that you also need to be lean. As a rule of thumb we could say under 14% body fat, i.e., with at least the faint outline of your abs visible when you’re flexing in the bathroom mirror with those flattering overhead lights. Putting aesthetics aside for a second, a BMI in that range is also perfectly ideal for your health (again provided that you’re lean). To help you better visualize that, here’s Jason going from a BMI of 20.5 up to a BMI of 24, which is considered ideal.

So if you’re you’re a typical 5’10 dude, that would mean getting up to a lean 170 pounds. This is all well and good if you’re 5’10 and 150 pounds, where 20 pounds will bring you right into the ideal range. However, this presents a problem for the 15


very skinny. I was 6’2 and just 130 pounds. That’s a BMI of just 17. Trying to gain the whopping 55 pounds that I needed to get up to a BMI of 24 (185 pounds) would be ridiculous. Not ridiculous in the longer term—I’ve been happily fluctuating between 180 and 200 pounds for a couple years now—but ridiculous as a goal when I first got started. So I’m going to propose moving up in twenty pound chunks. That’s something that you can accomplish in a matter of months, it will produce a very dramatic visual change, and it may even get you up above a BMI of 23, at which point you start looking pretty manly-manl manly-manly—especiall y—especially y if you stop shaving. Imagine a pound of lean red meat from the grocery store. It’s likely a fair bit bigger than your fist. Now imagine twenty of those strategically added to your body. Add enough of those hunks of meat to your shoulders, biceps, triceps, chest, glutes, thighs and back and you you’ll ’ll have a drastically transformed physique, both in terms of athletics and aesthetics. Best of all, most of the members in the Beastly community are able to gain over twenty pounds within the first three months—when they’re just over halfway through the program. While that may sound crazy, especially if you’ve tried and failed in the past, that’s less than two pounds gained per week—a very reasonable pace for a skinny guy. This may sound controversial, but this is also reflected in the research when factoring in how far away from our genetic potential we are (study (study). ). You obviously won’t be able to consistently gain 1–2 pounds of muscle each week for years, but by the time your gains slow you’ll likely already already be in that ideal BMI range. Having this specific, concrete goal means that every week you’ll step on the scale and see that you’ve gained another pound or two, bringing you that much closer to your goal. If you don’t gain that 1–2 pounds, we we’ll ’ll help you tweak and adjust so that you do better the following week. 16


The Importance of Gaining Leanly During one of my college muscle-building attempts I finally managed to gain weight, gaining twenty pounds over the course of just a couple months. I was thrilled beyond belief! Unfortunately, I seemingly did it without gaining a single pound of muscle. I looked just as skinny as ever, except now with pudgy cheeks and a little pot belly. Jared, my roommate at the time, called this my “fat Shane” phase. To make make matters worse, my other roommate, a naturally athletic guy named Willem, was half-heartedly following the exact same plan as me. He was skipping half the workouts, always always seemed to have a powdered donut in his mouth, and every day he was looking more and more like an Olympic wrestler. When I admitted to myself that I had gotten fat, I was bummed. When I realized that Willem Willem was working half as hard and actually building tons of lean muscle, I was devastated. devastated. To me, this was proof that my genetics were to blame. Surprisingly, this was relieving, because it freed me from needing to try. I gave up and went back to my regular skinny-boy lifestyle. However, after a year of complacency I was back to my familiar skinny self and feeling that familiar urge to get bigger. That’s when Jared and I decided to bulk up together together.. Jared had witnessed first hand how poorly my previous bulking attempt had gone, but I assured him that this time we would do it properly. We took the time to learn the science of building-muscle nutrition, and we got a lifting plan that we thought was incredible. (The lifting plan wasn’t actually all that great, but we met Marco halfway through and he made us a far better one.) We even set up a system that punished us for skipping meals/ workouts, allowing us to be nearly 100% consistent for four straight months. We succeeded, gaining 20–30 pounds each and appearing leaner than when we 17


started. This successful lean bulk from two such obvious ectomorphs is what

gave us the internet fame that encouraged us to create the Bony to Beastly Program with Marco.

Anyway,, in the muscle-building Anyway muscle-bu ilding world, my accidental fat-gain routine is called a “dreamer bulk,” where you bulk ambitiously ambitiously,, with dreams of quickly becoming muscular… but wind up looking fatter rather than more muscular. I know how much that sucks, and a nd we’re here to make sure that doesn’t happen to you. Luckily, as people who aren’t naturally prone to obesity, I’ve since learned that it’s pretty easy to get and stay lean, even when building muscle. This is one of the advantages to being a “hardgainer.” If we bulk properly, we’re able to build muscle more leanly than any other body type (study ( study). ). Later on in the eBook we’ree going to discuss some strategies for keeping your gains very lean, and we’r a nd for 18


skinny guys like us, these strategies are very effective. These are not the strategies you see fitness models talking about on YouTube and whatnot, where they gain 1–2 pounds of muscle per year while maintaining a very low body fat percentage. We’re talking about how, as a skinny guy, you can gain 1–2 pounds of muscle per week to help you quickly get up to a more ideal BMI without getting soft. We believe that on laundry day you and your family should always be able to use your stomach as a washboard—even mid-bulk.

FOR THE NA NATURALL TURALLY Y SKINNY-FA SKINNY-FAT / FORMER DREAM BULKERS B ULKERS We have a specific guide to help you lean out while still building muscle. Click here. here.

The Benefits of Building Muscle First, the bad news. Over the course of four months I went from wearing slim-fit medium t-shirts to a slim-fit extra-larges. Jared went from being too small to wear a small to comfortably fitting into slim-fit larges. There's a good chance that'll you'll be no longer able to fit into your favourite clothes by the end of this program, but the local clothing charities will love you. Most of the news is good though:

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A LEGITIMATEL LEGITIMATELY Y STRONG, ATHLETIC ATHLETIC PHYSIQUE If you’re concerned about your strength and athleticism, you’ve got to build a balanced muscle structure—one that works as a system. “Coordination” is how good you are at moving your body naturally through various movement patterns, and how quickly and reactively your muscles are able to fire. Because of this, a good weightlifting program is the absolute best way to improve your coordination and athleticism. Many of the best weightlifting programs are built around lifts like squats, deadlifts, bench presses, chin-ups and curls. This is good, as these are all incredibly effective lifts. However, However, all of o f them involve moving up and down, frontwards and backwards. These are two-dimensional lifts. Mario could do them on your retro GameBoy. The problem is that training in just one movement plane can lead to imbalances and injuries. So in addition ad dition to those big big compound lifts, we also need to lift in the frontal plane (out to the side, like with a lateral raise), and in the transverse plane (anti-rotation, like one-arm bench presses). This will not only build a physique that looks more badass, it will allow you to perform feats of real world athleticism safely and effectively. Athleticism is just one benefit of building muscle. The more obvious benefit is the immense increases in strength and power. I’d expect anywhere from a 30–300% increase in strength, and this strength will transfer directly into power and speed. The skinnier you are now, the more rapid your strength gains will be. Being able to put a few 45 pound plates on either side of the barbell when you set up for a deadlift will seem surreal, and your newfound strength will be enough that you’ll notice it in your day-to-day life as well, whether you’re moving couches or moving people. Having a muscular body is one thing, but you’ll you’ll notice 20


that having the strength and athleticism to match it is surprisingly satisfying. So feel free to monitor your progress (aka flex your pecs and ‘ceps in the mirror), but keep in mind that’s just the tip of the iceberg. This program will have you leaping higher, running faster, faster, carrying further and punching harder.

MORE CHARISMA Olivia Fox Cabane, executive “charisma coach” to Fortune 500 companies and author of The Charisma Myth, defines charisma as power combined with warmth. According to her, one of the biggest indicators of power is physical power. Size, strength and posture is surprisingly important. Can we be charismatic without being strong? Of course, but being physically strong will make it a helluva lot easier. Just by building up strength and size you’ll be mastering that magic component of charisma that’s so ellusive to so many of us naturally skinny guys.

CASUAL LEANNESS It may or may not be easy for you to maintain your abs right now. If it’s already easy, great, it will continue to be. If it’s not already easy, don’t worry, it will become easier and easier with every pound of muscle you gain. There are two reasons for this. First, the habit of weightlifting increases both testosterone production and insulin sensitivity ( study study). ). Second, having more muscle mass also increases insulin sensitivity ( study study). ). Combined with our natural hardgainer genetics, most of us naturally skinny guys are able to casually maintain a pleasantly lean physique year-round.

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POSTURE Despite my shoulders caving in and my stomach sticking out, when I first started out I was so eager to build muscle that I didn’t care about posture at all. Little did I know it plays a huge role in how good we look and feel. Once you correct your posture you’ll stand taller, feel healthier and look more confident. Good posture can also improve testosterone output, your mood and, even your actual confidence levels. The more you learn, the cooler it seems.

We designed our exercise plan to strengthen your core muscles and get them firing properly, getting rid of the protruding “ecto-belly” that so many of us have. This will also fix the “forward head syndrome” we tend to develop. In the community we can help you deal with the other postural issues we skinny guys often struggle with: a Quasimodo hunch, a raised shoulder, internally rotated shoulders, hamstrings that feel too tight, pecs that won’t activate/grow, and whatever else you may be struggling with. 22


LIFELONG MUSCLE Many young guys have have a good metabolism and a bit of muscle mass because we walk around, bike, play sports, or skateboard with friends. As the decades roll by, most of us slowly abandon physical activity. As a result, our muscle mass and strength gradually wither away… to be replaced by a little skinny-guy gut. The largest study looking into muscle-building potential found zero difference in the ability to build muscle between the youngest (18 years old) and oldest (40) participants in the study. study. The researchers suspected that this would hold true up to the age of sixty! Droopy skinny-fat physiques and low energy levels don’t necessarily necessarily have as much to do with our ages as our lifestyles. The point I’m trying to make here is that if you can develop a healthy lifestyle now, you’ll be in total control of your body all through your life. You can build larger muscles, denser bones, stronger ligaments and tendons, better cardiovascular health, improved insulin sensitivity, etc. You’ll be a beast while you’re you ’re dating and getting married, you’ll be a beast as you raise your kids—hell k ids—hell you’ll you ’ll even be a beast of a grandfather!

THE MANLY MANLY MAN’S MAN’ S V-TAPER V-TAPER A 2003 study in Archives of Sexual Behavior concluded that men with shoulders that were 40% wider than their waists were rated as the most attractive by women. Now, you could curse or bless your genetics… or you could work with what you’ve got. Jared went from being shaped like like a skinny egg to to having having a V-shaped body body by building up his shoulders and back, resulting in a huge change in the overall appearance of his body’s silhouette. With the right workout and diet anyone can pack slabs of muscle onto their upper and lower body while keeping their waist the same. V-shape here we come. 23


ATTRACTIVENESS ATTRACTIVENESS The science of attractiveness is incredibly fascinating. Some bodies create gut level attraction, and the research into that topic has advanced to the point where there are some very clear answers to exactly how to trigger that. We’re going to cover eaxctly how to build an optimally attractive physique a little later in the eBook—including specific workouts, and taking into account where you’re starting at. For now, a picture speaks 1,000 words:

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How Permanent Are Muscles? One of the biggest fears our members have is that they’ll work hard to build muscle, work hard to maintain it, and then life will happen. They’ll get sick, they’ll go on vacation, they’ll become too busy to train, and they’ll deflate back into their skinny former selves selves.. It’s easy to see where this fear comes from. Let’s say you start going to the gym, you gain twenty pounds over the next few months, and then you go on vacation for a couple weeks. Let’s be real here. You’re a naturally skinny guy. After the first week you’ll have dropped a good couple pounds. Maybe as many as five pounds. Enough to scare you. So we start thinking that our gains are ephemeral—that as soon as we stop holding onto them for dear life they’ll fade away. That’s not how muscles work. Muscles do atrophy atrophy,, but not very ve ry quickly quick ly,, and they won’t completely atrophy atrop hy unless you’re actually literally starving to death. If you lose a few pounds while you’re on vacation or while you’re sick, you’re not experiencing muscle atrophy. So why will you lose 2–5 pounds when you take a week off from the gym? This is just your weight fluctuating down because you’re taking a break from your routine. Your stomach isn’t packed full of food, your muscles aren’t inflamed with blood as your body turns muscle damage into muscle growth, and your muscles aren’t bloated full of glycogen (sugar and water). You’ve also probably lost a little bit of fat. You may find that when you come back from your vacation you’re lifting a little lighter, but that’s just because you’ve fallen out of practice, not because you’ve become weaker. Your muscles will re-inflate with glycogen as soon as you start lifting and eating (especially carbohydrates) again, bringing them 25


back to full pre-vacation size. Building muscle is not like sculpting a fragile ice sculpture that will quickly melt away. After building twenty pounds of muscle your body will be more robust than ever! And the reason for this is kind k ind of fascinating:

Can You Improve Your Muscle-Building Genetics?

Once you’re lifting and eating for muscle growth, how quickly and easily you build muscle depends largely on how many myonuclei are in your muscle cells. You can think of these myonuclei as little builders, maintaining or building your muscle mass. Genetically gifted guys have a lot of these myonuc myonuclei, lei, so they build muscle very quickly and very easily. 26


These myonuclei will happily idle around doing as little as possible (maintenance), (maintenance ), but as soon as you tell them to build muscle (with training) and give them the materials they need (calories and protein), they’ll get to work building muscle. If you stimulate enough muscle growth, eventually your myonuclei won't won't be able to keep up with the workload of building more and more new muscle. That's not a problem though. When your muscle fibres start needing more myonuclei, myonucl ei, they fuse with the surrounding satellit satellitee cells, stealing theirs.

You could say that as we we build more and more muscle our “genetics” improve because, as you can see, this muscle-building process creates muscle fibres that are identical to the muscle fibres of the guys who are naturally muscular. All that remains is the question of permanence—of whether this creates a change that will last the rest of our lives. 27


Researchers used to think that the benefits of lifting were temporary. That if we stopped lifting these myonuclei would die off. That we'd be right back where we started. There are a lot of old biology textbooks describing this "de-training" effect in this way. All current research is proving that this is false (study). When we take a break from lifting, we might not be using our "builder" myonucl myonuclei ei for anything more than maintenance, but they'll gladly idle around. They won't won't die, and they have nowhere to go—the satellite satellite cells that they came from are already gone.

This is why guys who were were previously muscular can gain weight weight very leanly leanly at a ridiculous pace. This is why guys who were once on steroids build muscle more easily for the rest of their lives. This is why you see muscular guys doing non-muscle-buildy things (callisthetnics, HIT, HIT, slow lifting, martial arts, jogging, low protein diets, paleo diets, etc) etc) and remaining super jacked. The non-muscle-buildy stuff is not what got them jacked, but it’s enough to keep them jacked. That’s why guys who have built 20, 30, 40+ pounds of muscle remain casually—“naturally”—more casually—“naturally”—more muscular for the rest of their lives. 28


Did Tony Horton get muscular by doing P90X? No, he was a bodybuilder first. But P90X sure kept him impressivel imp ressively y muscular. This also solves the mystery from earlier. This why my damn roommate Willem was able to casually bulk up even though we were following a really stupid bulking protocol that shouldn’t have worked for either of us.

…But How Much Do You Need to Eat? Another big fear our members often have is that they’ll need to eat like a beast for the rest of their lives. In order to build muscle, yes, we do need to eat a lot of food. Furthermore, as we eat more and more, our skinny-boy metabolisms increase even more in an attempt to prevent fat gains. This adaptive metabolism is both a blessing and a curse, and it’s something unique to us hardgainers. Anyway, by the time we finish a bulk we’re eating more than we want to be eating. There are strategies to make this easier, and we cover all kinds of appetite manipulation tricks a little later in the eBook, but no matter how easy we make your bulking diet, it’s not exactly something you’ll want to keep up forever. Fortunately, you don’t have to! To maintain your weight you need to eat a maintenance diet, not a bulking diet. Right now you’re probably staying about the same weight every week. You’re already eating a maintenance diet. I bet it feels pretty natural too. too. Most appetites naturally cue us to to eat at maintenance. With every pound of muscle you build your metabolism will go up by a little bit, but not by much. You’ll You’ll burn about six more calories per day for every pound of muscle you build. I’ve gained about fifty pounds of muscle, so I burn around 300 more calories per day. day. That’s a couple glasses of milk, or a slightly larger dinner, or some ice cream for dessert. Not that big of a deal, and that’s 29


after gaining fifty pounds of muscle. For another example, consider Patrick. He gained forty pounds, raising his metabolism by 240 calories per day. His appetite will increase to match his new needs, so he may find himself craving an extra cookie or two after dinner.

This is all to say that once you actually build a hearty amount of muscle and learn how to live a casually beastly lifestyle, you’ll be able to maintain your muscle much much more easily than you expect. I promise. To make this easier though, we have a section at the end of the eBook about how to “reverse diet” out of a bulk, maintaining your muscular gains while deliberately reducing your metabolism. Once you collect your gains, just follow the reverse dieting guide to switch gears into maintenance.

Okay, enough of the “why.” Let’s switch gears and move onto the “how.”

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THE QUICK-START GUIDE

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QUICK-ST QUICK-START: INTRO INTRO HOW TO TRACK YOUR PROGRESS

Building muscle is kind of like breaking up with a girlfriend that just isn’t right for you. Skinny is kind of cute, sure, and things are okay when you’re with her, but by now you’ve realized that you’d be happier with another body. Staying with her is safe and comfortable, comfor table, but you know you’re you’re ready for more, and now that you you’ve ’ve made the (right) decision, you’ve got to break the news. It’s time to gently let her know that your love affair is over, put all her things in a box—you know, the chips, juice, Ramen and Kraft dinner—and send her on her way, box in hand. Re-stock with some chicken, eggs, olive oil, milk, yogurt, cheese, potatoes, rice, beans, oats, fruits and vegetables and start re-building your life in a burlier way. We're not going to sugarcoat things. This initial adjustment period can be exciting, but also overwhelming. Some things will be harder than you think, some things won’t go as smoothly as you expect, and sometimes you’ll have moments of low motivation. Being without skinny can be really tough, especially if all of your friends 32

QUICK-START: HOW TO TRACK YOUR PROGRESS

are in unhealthy relationships with physiques like her (or her best friend chubs). Frankly, the more of those people you know, the more challenging this change will be. But going out gyming on Wednesday night to try and meet a new body is damn hard, especially if all your friends are back home on the couch eating chips with chubs, never living up to their full potential. Even if you man up and start down this wholesome path, at some point you might crave skinny again. You might be tempted to take her back. She’s been calling, promising you that things will be different this time around. Right now things are a mess, so in your lowest moments that familiarity might appeal to you. We’ve all been there. With her, things were comfortable, safe, easy. Building muscle isn’t. It isn’t comfortable. It isn’t easy. However, it isn’t impossible either. Hell, it doesn’t even need to be unpleasant. Still, in your moments of doubt, you might find that you long for that comfortably complacent life that you once had with skinny, even if you know you weren’t happy with her. Remember that time you skipped breakfast together? That was kind of romantic, wasn’t it? If you can resist temptation and stick with your decision, you’ll you’ll soon find the physique of your dreams. If you keep having one too many protein shakes at the gym and you keep working on your pick-up technique, sooner or later you’re you’re going to meet a new body. body. If you can resist temptation and take the right path— the harder but more rewarding path—then soon you’ll be with the physique of your dreams. And things will be pretty fantastic. Not only is this new physique smokin’ hot, she’s also energetic, lively, lively, wholesome, full of confidence and just great for you in every way. You’ve got to be a better man to have her, but boy is she ever worth it. This is a physique you could raise a family with. 33


Now, on that wholesome note, before you break up with skinny once and for all, it’s time to take some half-naked photos of her and post them on the internet.

The “Before” Assessment While posting revenge nudes is something you should absolutely never do, taking before photos of yourself when you begin this program is something you absolutely should do.You also need to weigh yourself, take a few key measurements, and track your strength gains. This isn’t one of those programs where you just train as hard as you can and eat as clean as you can for twenty weeks, hoping for the best. Even with the best lifting and nutrition program, that relies on a certain amount of luck, and as skinny guys, we don’t don’t tend to get lucky with these things. If you don’t know if you’re progressing each week, how will you know that the sum of those twenty weeks will get you where you're trying to go? That would be like looking at a map, closing your eyes, and trying to walk to your destination. Your map may be good, but since you aren’t keeping track of your progress very well, you may very well go down the wrong path and have no way way of knowing it. Those programs are about input—about how hard you’re trying. We care about output—about how good your results are. In fact, if you can make great progress with a minimal amount of effort, great. The easier this is, the more likely you are to succeed when life gets stressful or busy. So we take a strategic and adaptive approach to this. We’re going to track your progress in the gym by measuring your strength gains each week, and we’re going to track your weight gain progress with a weekly weigh-in. Using 34


this information we can then strategically adjust your protocol to guarantee that you’re getting results every single week. Your nutrition will cause the weight gain, and the workouts will help ensure that those gains are lean. That lean weight gain will then guarantee that you show up to your next workout bigger and stronger. And so on and so forth. Fully optimizing this cycle is what building muscle is all about, and this process relies on knowing exactly how and when to adjust the input to get the output that you want. In addition to these small weekly check-ins, every five weeks we’ll be taking measurements and photos so that we can assess how lean your gains are, where your problem muscle groups are, and where you’re growing the most. For example, after five weeks we’ll know if you’re you’re limb dominant or torso dominant, and thus what accessory lifts you’ll you’ll benefit the most from. Here’s how to get started:

1. YOUR 1. YOUR BEFORE PHOTOS

Peter Drucker, the famous business writer, is often paraphrased as writing, 35


“What gets measured, gets managed.” This must be the first step, and it must be taken now. Once you begin the program, your body will be changing quickly. We recommend taking photos of yourself from all angles, weighing yourself, and taking measurements. These three things will give you an objective way to gauge your size gains. Here's how to best do that: 1. Get into some freshly laundered tighty whities, jorts, or your kid

sister’s short shorts. The goal here is to show some thigh. Try Try not to make the same mistake Jared did, where you opt for the cool "manly" gym shorts and wind up with mystery thighs. Just this once pretend you’re you’re like Shane and go for the Daisy Dukes, where the more visible your thighs are, the better. But choose wisely! w isely! This is your Beastly uniform from here on out.

2. Next, find an area with a white-ish wall and some half-decent

lighting. Overhead light works well to highlight musculature, which is why bathrom muscle selfies are so popular. p opular. Also, Also, try to pick a spot that you’ll be able to re-use for future progress photos.

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3. Take a relaxed front view, a flexed front view, a flexed side view

and the infamous “back-double-bicep”. “back-double-bicep”. If you only have manly shorts, add in a photo of your thigh by provocatively provocatively lifting up your short leg a bit. Feel free to add in a couple extra flexing photos for good measure, and perhaps per haps a photo of yourself in some clothes that you plan on exploding out of—hulk style.

2. YOUR 2. YOUR BEFORE MEASUREMENTS

Grab a tape measure and take some circumference measurements. There are a few specific measurements that are particularly useful for measuring your progress. These are girth measurements, so just wrap the measuring tape all the way around. 1. Waist at the narrowest point. I know the pop po p culture saying

is, “abs are built in the kitchen.” That’s true for most, as most 37


people are overweight. We skinny skinny guys need to build our abs in the gym by training our abs, obliques and spinal erectors. This measurement should go up. (Also keep in mind that your stomach will soon be full of food.) 2. Shoulders at the widest point. It’s no coincidence that broad

shoulders are a sign of masculinity. masculinity. Men have a lot of androgen receptors in their shoulders and upper back. You ou’ll ’ll likely gain more here than in your waist, upping your shoulder:waist ratio. 3. Biceps, flexed. (Muscles are alwa a lways ys measured flexed.) fl exed.) Gaining

even an inch here is a big deal. d eal. Celebrate Celebrate every hint of progress. 4. Chest. This will keep track of your chest and upper back growth.

Measure this one right at nipple height. 5. Hips at the widest point. This isn’t just to improve your

assthetics. Glutes are also important for athletics and injury prevention (especially in your lower back). 6. Thighs. Being totally massive in the lower body is more of a

bodybuilder thing. Most guys want a masculine V-taper, not the bodybuilder X-taper, X-taper, but keep in mind that wimping out on leg day will literally make you look like a chicken. 7. Calves. If you’ve seen Marco, you know that the smaller your

calves are, the better you’ll look. Juuust kidding. Calves should be about the same size as your upper arms though, so I suspect that your arms need to gain a few inches before you start stressing about your calves. Still, measuring them is wise. 38


If you want to track your symmetry improvements, you can also measure both arms, thighs, and calves. This is optional, as symmetry can also be monitored fairly well via strength.

3. YOUR 3. YOUR STARTING WEIGHT We recommend weighing in once a week, keeping the timing consistent. The best option would be to wake up, pee, and then immediately weigh yourself for consistency. Which day you decide to measure on is entirely up to you. You can also weigh yourself yoursel f daily, daily, adding up the numbers num bers and dividing by seven at the end e nd of the week. This becomes more useful as your weight gains begin to slow. An advanced lifter will often only want want to gain around 0.5 pounds per week, for example, and this requires far more precision. precis ion. With this method, you would measure daily but still analyze / adjust just once per week.

4. SAY 4. SAY HELLO IN THE COMMUNITY Don’t feel like you need to do this alone. Take advantage of the community, where you’ll be surrounded by the Beastly brothers who will be with you through thin and thick. Post your starting photos, measurements, weight, and height in the progress section. section. You can include a little intro about yourself and your goals too. When you post your before photos on the forum we can answer any questions you have, deal with any unique circumstances you’re in, and give you some pointers about getting started. This is also a great time to say hello to other guys who are posting their own introductions and updates. If you’re feeling a little shy about posting your skinny before photos in your th em anyway. anyway. Everyone else in the sister’s short shorts, that’s understandable . Post them

community has, so you’ll hardly be the odd man out. While you’re at it, take a look at some of of their their transformations transformations.. We really hope to see you in there! 39

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QUICK-ST QUICK-START: LIFTING LIFTING HOW TO LIFT WEIGHTS

Now that you’ve documented your skinniness, there’s no longer any need to stay that way. It’s time to muscle away your skinniness as quickly as possible. Weight gain is caused by eating in a calorie surplus. However, if you just started eating Beastly Beastly,, you you'd 'd be leaving it to your genetics to dictate the percentage of fat and muscle you’d be gaining… with the average person gaining around 67% fat. Us naturally skinny guys tend to do a little bit better than that—our leanness means more testosterone and less estrogen, we don’t have a ludicrous amount of fat cells, we’re insulin sensitive, and we’re nowhere near our genetic muscular potential. But still, you’d be dreamer bulking. I’ve been there. You don’t want to be there. So we need to tell your body to store store muscle mass, not fat mass. This is done by lifting weights. The better the quality of your weightlifting program, and the more consistently you follow it, the more doggedly your body will fight to add muscle to your frame. 40

Q U I C K - S TA TA R T: T: L I F T I N G E S S E N T I A L S

There are a lot of factors to optimize. Exercise selection, exercise variety, using a variety of rep ranges, performing the right number of total sets per muscle group per week, improving your lifting technique, etc. If you’re totally new to this, you don’t need to consciously worry about any of that. Simply getting under some heavy weights every couple days will stimulate muscle protein synthesis, directing nutrients towards your muscles. However as you become more advanced (which should take as little as a couple months) these factors begin to become incredibly important. They become the difference between getting fat and getting strong. We’ll explain all of that in greater detail later on in the eBook. Right now you don’t need to consciously understand all the fine details though. If you just follow the workout sheets you'll you'll be doing a fully optimized plan. Let’s go over how to follow them.

How to Warm Up The typical warm-up involves getting your heart rate up a little bit, some stretching, and… that’s it. Remember though: if you want typical results, do a typical program. Getting your heart rate up before a workout isn’t a bad idea, especially if you train first thing in the morning or show up at the gym freezing cold. For most people though, it’s not needed. A couple light practice sets with some weights will allow you to get plenty of blood flowing into the right areas. Stretching is a bad idea, yet no matter how much research comes out disproving its benefits, it remains surprisingly popular. When your muscles stretch too far your body signals pain, worried that you’ll cause damage if you stretch further. further. Doing this over and over again teaches your muscles that it’s safe 41


to relax a little bit because stretching won't actually cause damage. However, stretching does not physically lengthen your muscles (no growth takes place), it just increases your pain tolerance while stretching. Unfortunately, this flexibility doesn’t translate very well to movement, just stretching. Lifting weights isn't about being loose and relaxed though, it's about being strong and forceful. Every study looking into pre-workout stretching has found that it reduces your muscles’ ability to forcefully contract, reducing your gains ( study study). ). However, there are some very effective ways to warm up. We’ll be doing something called a dynamic warm-up. There are two reasons for this:

#1: MORE MUSCLE Countless studies have shown that, unlike stretching, a dynamic warm-up increases vertical leap, sprint speed, and maximum strength output (tested via squat). It will also loosen up tight areas and activate certain muscles, allowing you to achieve the positions needed to lift with proper technique. If you have trouble squatting, for example, the dynamic warm-up will help you loosen your hips up so that you can squat deeper, and turn on your glutes and quads so that you can lift heavier weights. This stimulates more muscle growth.

#2: FEWER INJURIES Cold muscles are less flexible and pliable, and thus tend to be injured more easily. Warming up will get them ready to lift while the loading is still low enough to be safe. This reduces your chances of getting injured. That covers why we recommend this type of warm-up routine. With stuff like this it’s much easier to teach you with videos, so follow this link here here for for the how-to. how-t o. You You can practice this warm-up routine at home right now if you like.

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What Weight Weight to Start With With barbell lifts I’ll always have someone start with just the bar—45 pounds. This allows you to see how heavy the bar feels. After you know how heavy the bar is, throw some ten’s on, do 2–5 reps to see how it feels, and then go up accordingly.. Same thing with dumbbells. Start with a light, 20-pound dumbbell. accordingly du mbbell. During your first week of the program, there are only 2 “work” sets for each exercise. However, However, I recommend doing several “feeler” sets beforehand to determine the proper weight. When you become good at this you’ll only need to do a couple reps to see if it’s a good weight. For now, now, you might need to do all the reps on the sheet before realizing that you aren’t even close to failure—that the weight is too light. That’s okay. Just count it as a bonus warm-up set. During your first week, keep the weights light so you can really practice your technique. Then, as your technique solidifies itself more and more, you can start pushing your boundaries little by little. Going to failure every set and using improper technique will sap your body of energy and ingrain bad habits. That can limit your success in the long run. That being said, the set should still be challenging and you should actually need the allotted rest period. Many trainees select big, sexy weights that make them feel like a beast instead of picking reasonable weights that will make them a beast. For many, this will be their first time lifting seriously or following a program. This is when you need to take the time to develop good lifting habits—to learn what it feels like to lift well until it becomes instinct. The boundary between training hard and training smart is a thin line, and difficult to define at times. I do not expect you to find the balance right away. Don’t be scared of trying new weights; instead be honest with yourself about where you are and how your technique is. 43


The Three Rules of Weight Selection DON’T COMPROMISE FORM. If you’re new to this, your form won’t be great right away. But the weight shouldn’t shouldn’t be the reason for that. If the weight is making your form worse, the weight is too heavy.

YOU NEED TO BE ABLE TO FEEL THE CORRECT MUSCLES WORKING. This won’t always be true with heavy compound lifts, but during Phase Zero you should always be able to feel the target muscles working. If you can’t, you must adjust your technique. If you still can’t can ’t feel it, it could be because the weight is either too heavy or too light. If you don’t really feel anything and the weight feels easy,, up the weight! easy weight !

YOU NEED TWO REPS “IN THE TANK”. This means if you’re doing rack pulls with 135 pounds for 12 reps, you should actually be able to do 14 reps. This allows your technique to stay clean, and it will also help you recover faster, allowing us to give you more training volume—which will speed up muscle growth.

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Which Routine to Begin With Now it’s time to pick a routine and get started lifting.

BEGINNER ROUTINE If you’re new to lifting, we recommend starting with Phase Zero. Zero. (Clicking that link will take you to the workout sheets, exercise videos, and a more detailed description of how to get started in the gym.) You’ll be building muscle very quickly while we teach you the basics of squatting, deadlifting, bench pressing, chin-ups, bodybuilding, and posture.

INTERMEDIATE ROUTINE If you’re already familiar with the gym, we recommend starting with Phase One.. You’ll still be building muscle fairly quickly, but we’re assuming that One you’re already competent at squatting, deadlifting, benching, chin-ups and maintaining a rock solid neutral spine while lifting.

How Much Can You Gain Each Week? Combining the best of strength training and bodybuilding in this way is very, very effective. If you’re still skinny, you can realistically expect to gain 8–12 pounds in the first five weeks. Some members have even gained as much as 20 pounds in that timeframe—leanly. However, forcing your weight up at a too-rapid pace by consuming too many calories will cause those extra calories to be stored as fat. It is very rare for someone to be able to gain more than a pound or two per week leanly, even as a beginner. As we become more muscular we build muscle more slowly, so if you’re already looking pretty fit, you may want to aim for “just” a pound or so per 45


week. You You’ll ’ll be gaining 4–6 4– 6 pounds in the first phase, and something like 16–24 pounds over the course of the the program. More than enough to have you looking like a beast by the end of this.

BEGINNER OR NOT, WATCH THE EXERCISE VIDEOS. Lifting with improper or reckless technique is bad for two reasons. First, when things get heavy, you tend to revert back to instinct. This is good.… provided you’ve already developed good instincts. If you use sloppy form now, you’ll be ingraining potentially dangerous compensation patterns (where you lift with the wrong muscles). Second, Second , your muscles, tendons, ligaments and bones have not yet adapted to the point where they’re bigger, stronger and denser. Injuries can range from something as trivial as a muscle strain to something as serious as a mouthfull of barbell. And muscles don’t pair well with a trailer-park smile.

Good luck, man! Now, after the chapter recap, Shane’s going to teach you how to consistently consistently gain weight each week by adjusting your diet.

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Summary •

While eating in a caloric surplus is what allows one to gain weight, lifting weights helps prevent your body from storing around 67% of that weight as fat. So before you eat big, lift big.

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Dynamic warm-ups help you lift heavier weights with more grace and less chance of injury injury.. This will lead to more consistent gains.

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Weight Selection Rule #1: Y You ou must use u se proper technique for every single rep. Lock your ego in your gym locker locker..

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Weight Selection Rule #2: You must feel the correct muscles mu scles working on every lift while doing Phase Zero. During later phases, you must feel the correct muscles working on all the lifts that go above 8 reps (all the “bodybuilding” lifts).

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Weight Selection Rule #3: At the end of a set you should be able to do two—but only two—more reps before your your muscles fail. We call this “leaving two reps in the tank.” We don’t expect you to be amazing at this right away. Just do your best.

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Use “feeler sets” if you are not sure which w hich weight you should use. Do as many of these as needed. Your first real set is the one that brings you close to muscular failure (within a couple reps).

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If you are a new to lifting, start with Phase Zero. If you’re confident with squatting, deadlifting, deadlifting, bench pressing, chin-ups and maintaining neutral spine, begin with Phase One.

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QUICK-ST QUICK-START: NUTRITION NUTRITION HOW TO EAT FOR GAINS

Muscle-building nutrition can be a little overwhelming at first. How much should you eat? What foods are considered clean? Should you be carb cycling? Why are paleo and vegetarian guys both healthier than average despite having seemingly contradictory dietary restrictions? What supplements should you be taking? When should you be taking them? Do you even need them? Luckily, nutrition can also be pretty simple if you begin by focusing on just the highest prior priority ity factors. There are just a couple c ouple factors that make the difference between gaining 0 or 1 pound over the course of the next week, but there are hundreds of things that make the difference between gaining 1 or 1.1 pounds. If you focus on the hundreds of small details you risk trying very hard yet making progress that is too insignificant to even be noticed. So this chapter is about going from gaining 0 pounds per week to gaining 1 pound per week. Building muscle becomes harder and harder as you get more and more advanc advanced, ed, so I recommend learning everything eventually, eventually, but there’s plenty of time to explain all of that later—once you’re you’re already building muscle. 48

Q U I C K - S T A RT RT: N U T R I T I O N E S S E N T I A L S

Right now you just need to worry about those two important factors:

calories and protein.

Calories: How to Gain Weight Food contains energy—calories. When you consume fewer calories than your body needs, you lose weight because your body is forced to burn fat/muscle to get the missing energy. When you consume more calories than your body needs, you gain weight because you store the extra energy as fat/muscle.

Calorie surplus = weight gain Calorie balance = no change in weight Calorie deficit = weight loss

So “being in a caloric surplus” simply means “eating enough to gain weight.” This makes weight gain simple. Not easy, but simple. If you’re not gaining weight as quickly as you’d like, you need to increase your calorie intake. This gives your body extra calories that can either be stored as fat or used to build muscle. If you gain 20 pounds while eating a regular diet and doing regular exercise (e.g. jogging) research shows that you’ll gain something like 7 pounds of muscle and 13 pounds of fat. We can do better. You’re following a muscle-building routine in the gym, and thus your muscles are now desperately trying to grow. If your weightlifting program is good enough, and it is, that might be all you need to make great muscular gains. We’re going to talk about keeping those gains lean, but first and 49


foremost, how many calories should you eat in order to build muscle at an optimal pace? You probably need to eat something like 18–22 times your bodyweight in pounds (40–50 times your bodyweight in kilos) in order to gain around a pound per week. Gaining a pound per week is enough that you’ll build noticeable amounts of muscle quickly, but not so quickly that you’ll also gain a lot of fat. So if you’re 130 pounds/59 kilos, you’ll want to consume 2400–2900 calories per day. That’s a rough guess though, as even within our subgroup (naturally skinny men) metabolisms can vary. How much you need to eat will depend on how active your lifestyle is, how much you fidget, how much body heat you produce, how lean you are, and even what you eat! What we used to do at this point was give you a calorie calculation algorithm so that you could get an ever so slightly more precise number. Still a guess, but the best guess that researchers have discovered discovered so far. Over the years we have discovered a better approach:

The Lean & Eager. If you’re naturally very lean and/or unafraid of gaining a tiny bit of fat, aim high—start with bodyweight x 22 (or x50 if you’re using kilos). Adjust as necessary each week to get into the gaining golden zone of 1-2 pounds per week. The Soft & Cautious. If you’ve you’ve got a body fat percentage of 15% or more (no visible abs), a bs), aim low—start low—start with bodyweight x 18 (or x 40 if you’re you’re using kilos). Adjust as necessary to get into the lean gaining golden zone of 0.5–1.5 pounds per week.

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CUSTOMIZABLE MEAL PLAN If you want a clearer idea of what a muscle-building diet might look like, check out this customizable meal plan. plan. It’s an ideal diet for muscle growth that’s optimized for appetite, convenience conv enience and budget while still being flexible enough for your individual lifestyle and preferen preferences. ces.

There’s a third approach too. If your diet is already somewhat healthy, fairly consistent, and if your weight weight is staying about the same every every week, you have have the option of simply adding calories in. This is very effective, since your lifestyle will hardly need to change. Fewer changes, more willpower left for other things.

The Add-Man. Since your weight is holding steady each week, you’re you’re currently in neither a calorie deficit nor a surplus. To To get into a hearty calorie surplus simply add 500 extra calories to what you normally eat.

We’ve got a section on how to deal with your skinny-boy skinny-boy appetites, metabolisms and stomach capacities later on in the eBook. For now let’s keep things simple. If you eat three meals per day, you could add 500 calories by: •

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Increasing each meal by 170 calories. Perhaps you do that by adding a glass of whole milk to your meals. Liquid calories are fairly easy on the appetite, so this should be fairly achievable.


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Adding in a couple 250 calorie snacks. Snacks have been shown to instinctively instinctively cause people to eat more, and they will allow you to keep your main meals reasonably sized. These snacks could be as simple as a homemade protein bar split in half, a handful of trail mix, or a Quest bar.

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fruit/protein smoothie, Adding in a fourth meal. Maybe a small fruit/protein a whole grain peanut putter and banana sandwich, or some muesli cereal with milk and frozen berries. All of these options are quick to prepare and consume, rich in fibre, contain a fruit or vegetable, and contain enough protein to spike muscle protein synthesis.

Hell, if you already eat a pretty healthy diet made up mostly of whole foods, perhaps you could just have a 500 calorie dessert d essert after dinner. Bonus points if you make the dessert yourself. Here’s a great recipe for nutritious homemade chocolate fudge brownies. brownies.

Any of these approaches should make it a little easier to gain weight. Your appetite is no fool though! If you hit your calorie goal one day, you may forget to eat breakfast the next. This is your body’s attempt to restore balance—to eradicate the surplus you worked so hard to create. Don’t let this happen. Be mindful of how much you’re eating all week long, and make sure to carry around some emergency calories (like trail mix or protein bars).

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ADVANCED FLEXIBLE DIETING GUIDE If gaining weight is already easy for you but you’re gaining more fat than you’d like, we’ve got a very advanced nutrition protocol here.. This would be more similar to what a pro-bodybuilder or here fitness model would use to make sure that their gains are as steady and lean as humanly possible. Be warned: this is almost certainly overkill, especially if you’re new to bulking.

Whether you’re a beginner or advanced, we always recommend building a diet out of foods that you already eat and you already love. Our beastly recipes are here to make things easier, healthier and better for building muscle, but that doesn’t mean you can’t eat anything else. Feel free to eat tons of foods that aren’t explicitly mentioned in this eBook! To make things easier though, we’ve got recipes as simple as strongman cereal, as seasonal as sweet muscles eggnog, as portable as homemade protein bars, as delicious as chocolate fudge brownies, brownies , and as efficient as fiery skinny-boy skinny -boy chili—prepared twelve servings at a time. There are many effective, research proven ways to make your gains leaner, but we can worry about that a dozen pounds from now. As a beginner, I would emphasize ease over perfectionism when it comes to your food choices. However, there’s still one component of your diet that you do really need to focus on, especially as a beginner.

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Protein: How to Build Muscle Weightlifting will get your body trying to build muscle, and getting into a calorie surplus will allow your body to gain weight. Muscle can only be constructed out of protein though, so you also need to make sure that you’re giving your body not just the energy it needs to gain weight, but also the building materials that it needs to build muscle.

Eating enough protein will make your gains much leaner.

Thankfully, eating enough protein to build muscle is very realistic. There are some studies showing a potential muscle-building benefit to consuming as much as 1.5 grams per pound bodyweight (3.3 grams per kilo), but most research shows that muscle is built optimally with around 1 gram per pound bodyweight (2.2 grams per p er kilo). Muscle doesn’t take much protein to maintain, and over time we become better at digesting and using protein. This means that in the future you can reduce your protein intake by quite a bit. However, right now you’re going to be building muscle at a rapid pace while also being rather inefficient at turning that protein into muscle mass. So I would try to stay above that gram per pound. We’ve got a section on timing your protein intake to accelerate muscle growth, and another section on workout nutrition. For now just focus on spreading your protein somewhat evenly between meals. Having 30+ grams with breakfast, lunch and dinner is pretty great. Perhaps 40 grams with breakfast + 50 grams with lunch + 60 grams with dinner to hit 150 grams total. That’s a pretty normal way to take in enough 54


protein to grow, with breakfast being vegetarian and dinner having some meat in it or whatnot. If you have more meals than that, try to have 30+ grams of protein in those as well. For instance, 30 grams + 30 grams + 30 3 0 grams + 30 grams + 30 grams. If you have fewer than three meals… consider eating more meals! Intermittent fasting, whether it’s forgetful or deliberate, is not appropriate for rapidly trying to build muscle mass. (More on that later in the eBook.) When rapidly bulking, 3–7 meals per day with most of them containing 30+ grams of protein is ideal. Some of those meals can be snacks. There are lots of great protein sources: chicken, fish, milk, yoghurt, cottage cheese, eggs, beans, peas, red meat, grains, soy, etc. This makes eating enough protein pretty easy if your diet has no restrictions. If your diet does have restrictions though, or eating enough protein is still a struggle, I’d recommend getting some protein powder. Whey protein is cheaper than chicken, fantastic for building muscle, and quite nutritious. However, there are many great types of protein powders. For example, pea + rice protein powder (like SunWarrior) is great for people who have problems with dairy or animal products. That covers everything you need to know: calories to gain weight, protein to build muscle. Not that difficult to understand, but quite difficult to execute— especially as the days and weeks roll by. We’re going to discuss strategies that will make bulkier easier in the next section of the eBook (T (Tier ier One). First though, Jared Jar ed’s ’s going to cov cover er some strat strategies egies that will help you get off to a stro strong, ng, consistent start.

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Summary •

Make sure you’re you’re lifting before going gung-ho with calories.

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18–22x your bodyweight in pounds (or 40–50x your bodyweight in kilos) is a good starting point for most m ost skinny guys.

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18x is a more cautious approach, and may need to be adjusted ad justed up if you don’t gain weight in your first week.

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22x is a more eager approach, and may need to be adjusted down by a couple hundred calories if you gain more than 1–2 pounds in your first week.

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If your diet is already made up mostly of whole whole foods, it’s fairly consistent, and your weight stays about the same each week, then you don’t need to start from scratch. Adding 500 calories to what you’re already already eating is a simpler way to get into a calorie surplus.

•

Your overall caloric surplus for the week is what will determine how much weight you gain that week, but the leanest gains are from small, consistent daily surpluses, not under-eating by 500 calories one day and overeating by 1,000 the next.

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•

Eat 1 gram of protein per pound bodyweight (2.2 grams per kilo).

•

Eat the foods you already love, just add more calories & protein. p rotein.

•

Don’t fret about advanced nutrition techniques until this is easy.

0 5

QUICK-ST QUICK-START: LIFESTYLE LIFESTYLE HOW TO STICK WITH IT

We’ll be honest. It’s not an easy job to sell you the importance of “adherence.” Even the word itself—adherence—sounds boring, clinical, and not the least bit related to building muscle. Getting the point across that adherence matters to a newer lifter is like trying to explain the importance of saving enough money for gas when buying a new car. To a young guy who’s buying his first car, he wants to know how the car handles corners, how fast it can go from 0–60 MPH, about the beautiful new paint job. But if there’s no gas in the tank, he won won’t ’t get anywhere. The same is true with this program. We know right now your motivation is probably high, but like any new challenge, building muscle will be tiring. There will be times when your motivation is low, low, and when consistency becomes very difficult. The fancier you make your routine, the less time and energy will be left to focus on the fundamentals. You You need to develop a routine that is not only effective, but also efficient on gas—efficient on willpower. This will allow you to keep succeeding even when you become tired, stressed and demotivat d emotivated. ed. 57

Q U I C K - S TA TA R T: T: L I F E S T Y L E E S S E N T I A L S

You won’t need to worry about this forever. Soon your body will adapt, and once your fitness improves to meet the challenge, you’ll even begin to crave it. Soon this lifestyle will become habitual, and it won’t be draining anymore. But during your first month you’ll be laying down the foundation of a new habit. There’s evidence that it takes an average person 66 days to form a habit (as little as 18 days and as much as 254 days, study). This will make that first month quite difficult at times. Dr. Baumeister is a famous researcher for looking into topics like willpower,, habits, etc. He writes in Willpower (2012) that best way to gain from willpower your current motivation right now is to invest that energy into developing habits rather than using it as a huge burst of energy to go gung-ho for two weeks before you collapse. This is normally what people do during New Years Resolutions or boot camps, which is not only punishing, but also doesn’t work. work.

Many new lifters make the mistake of deciding to change everything in their lives—throwing out everything in the cupboard, switching to a completely new diet, working out every day, day, etc. Their motivation is high, so they want to do everything. Eventually when their motivation fades—and it will fade— something will need to be dropped from their too-intense new lifestyle. The energy-draining new activities, like working out, will inevitably be dropped. dropp ed. So your goal for right now is to introduce small changes into your life. Since the changes are small, they won won’t ’t be overly draining, and you’ll you’ll be able to handle them. After some time they’ll become ingrained as habits, and at that point you’ll you’ll have some new energy to add in your next new change. This is when we recommend progressing to the next part of the eBook. When talking about lifestyle there are so many ways to improve your 58


ability to build muscle leanly leanly:: improving your sleep, limiting chronic stressors, improving your recovery abilities, and much more. We’ll cover these things a little later. Right now though let’s focus on adherence—the most important factor of all.

Sticking With It, Even When It’s Tough When Shane and I first started working out together in May 2010, I weighed 130 pounds, and had never lifted properly before. We were in the midst of starting our graphic design business, and we were reading lots of business books about how to manage yourself and your energy at work. One of our favourite authors was Dan Ariely, a professor at Duke and MIT, who studies human behaviour. He wrote about the Ulysses contract. The idea is that when you you’re ’re full of energy and vision, you can act in your future best interest and make a self-binding contract for the future—for when you know you’ll be tired and weak. Inspired, we came up with a plan. What we did was very simple, and it worked very well. We made a bet with each other that would last until the end of the month. m onth. We We put a big mason jar in the living room, and had to put $10 into the jar for missed a workout, and $5 into the jar for every missed meal (or even if a single bite of food was left on the plate). It’s easy to rationalize that you’re too tired to hit the gym after work. To tell yourself that you’ll do it tomorrow. But for us, laying on the couch resting would cost $10! I was broke at the time. Actually, I had a lot less than nothing—I was in thousands of dollars of debt. $10 was a lot of money to me. It was more than enough to motivate me to hit the gym when feeling tired. We’ll talk a bit more about accountability later later.. 59


The workouts and nutritional guides in this program are top tier, but they won’t give you results without consistent adherence. The exciting part is that while your genetics will play a part in what you can achieve, it will primarily be your work ethic that determines the quality of your results! Take Take ownership, be consistent, be patient, take advantage of all the resources you have at your disposal, and you’ll do great.

Action Steps To To Get Started 1. SET 1. SET A REALISTIC, SPECIFIC, AND CONCRETE GOAL. Gain 20 pounds in 5 months (20 weeks at 1 pound per week). Add 5” to my shoulders. Get as specific and objective as possible when setting goals. Be realistic too. too. If you’re working long hours, maybe committing to 3 hours hour s a week of training is too much. 2 hours a week isn’t 100% optimal—but it’s something, and if that helps you build consistency and progress, then plan for that.

2. MAKE 2. MAKE A BET / ULYSSES CONTRACT. There’s amazing psychology behind using your current, full-energy self to make plans for your future, tired self. The idea is that if you make the pain of losing a bet higher than the pain of going to the gym exhausted, even when you're exhausted you’ll go to the gym because it’s the less painful of the two options. Make sure to have an end date, and once you reach the end of the bet you can celebrate and then create a new bet. If you’re well-off financially, you’ll need to increase the intensity by betting more than $10, making sure that the pain of losing is still high enough. It also helps to prepay so that you don’t rationalize or cheap out on paying up if needed. Give $50 to a friend or neutral party that you trust, and say if you 60


don’t reach your goal they can spend it however they want (except on you). When you succeed a month later, they give the money back. Here are a couple ideas. •

Hit the gym fourteen times in the next five weeks. That would be 3x a week for five weeks with one slip-up allowed.

•

Gain at least four pounds during these five weeks, aiming for one pound gained per week + one week to track and adjust.

•

Reach your weekly caloric goals for these five weeks. (This is much harder than it sounds!)

3. KEEP EATING FOODS YOU ALREADY LIKE TO EAT, WHILE SLOWLY 3. ADDING / SWAPPING SWAPPING IN MUSCLE-BUILDING MUSCLE-BUILDING FOODS. FOODS. If you cut out all the junk food now, you could be losing calories which you’ll need to build muscle. Make small additions for now to what you’re currently eating, such as having protein powder. It’ll be much better to transform your diet into a muscle-building and healthy one more slowly, to help you stick with it. Shane will cover more about this in the nutrition tiers.

5. REMEMBER THAT WHEN YOU SLIP UP, YOU DIDN’T FAIL. If you missed working out for a few weeks or didn’t gain any weight this week, you did not fail. It was just a setback, a small piece of your eventual success story. That is normal, and that is human. Start working out again today. Start eating big again the moment you leave the gym. And keep moving forward from wherever you currently are in your journey.

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Remember: take ownership, be patient and consistent, be happy that you’ve you’ve got a healthy body and the resources to build bu ild up your body, and you’ll do great.

Summary •

Building new muscle requires consistency.

•

Bet on your success with accountability—you know that you you’re ’re capable. Give your friend $50 bucks to hold onto for a month while you commit to this first 5-week challenge.

•

Continue to eat the foods you love while adding in new foods to help you eat enough calories to gain weight, and enough protein to build muscle.

•

If you fall off track, don’t beat yourself up & pick right back up where you left off as soon as possible.

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Introduce yourself and join and join the community for community for encouragement, accountability, and to pass on your own tips & tricks that are working for you.

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Muscle-building FlowChart

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TIER ONE: DOING ENOUGH

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0 6

TIER 1 INTRODUCTION PRIORITIES & PYRAMIDS

Eating enough calories is simple, effective and difficult. There’s no doubt that it works, however, however, there’s nothing marketable here. Nothing glamorous. Nothing revolutionary. What skinny guy wants to hear that he has to eat more? Not us, that’s for damn sure. Beta-alanine, on the other hand, has some potential. It's experimental and exciting. It's something a lot of us haven't heard of before. It’s expensive, but just maybe it could provide the shortcut we’ve been desperately searching for—a chance to quickly and easily rewire our genetics. Unfortunately, even if we take every muscle-building supplement under the sun and spend every waking hour lifting, if we fail to hit our calorie targets we’ll gain gain a whopping zero pounds. That’s not an exaggeration to make a point, that’s straight up science. No calorie surplus, no gains. This means that we need to get our priorities in order, ranking the things we’re doing from most important to least important. This lets us invest our time, money and energy into the things that will actually get us the best results. 65

TIER 1 INTRODUCTION: PRIORITIES & PYRAMIDS

The Tiered Pyramid To help with this, we're going to be organizing the program into a pyramid structure. (We (We got the idea to organize the program in this way from the muscle researcher Eric Helms.) The stuff at the bottom—the foundational stuff—is the important stuff that will give you the majority of your results. As we move further up the pyramid, into the finer details of lifting and nutrition, things get more controversial, more cutting edge, more exciting exciting.. However, However, no matter how advanced advan ced you get, remember that everything rests on top of that foundation.

We've already laid out the bare, bare bones of muscle-building in the Quick-Start Guide, so the first tier of the pyramid has already been covered. Kind of. We told told you what you had to do, but we didn't explain all that much about why, and we didn't give you that many strategies to help make it easier. 66

TIER 1 INTRODUCTION: PRIORITIES & PYRAMIDS

So in the first tier of this ebook we’re going to cover how to lift enough. We'll teach you what lifting volume is, and teach you why it's the single most important thing to focus on in the gym. In fact, stimulating muscle growth basically boils down to getting lifting volume high enough. Mastering this will allow you to get more consistent results than you ever thought possible. Then we'll cover how to eat enough. We begin by going over how your appetite works, why your stomach gives you so much grief when you try to bulk, and how to manipulate your appetite so that you don't feel like napping all day. We hope this will finally make bulking feel realistic. That will give you all the information that you need to do this—to gain a good twenty pounds. But most guys don't fail because they lack information, they fail because their adherence a dherence isn't high enough. They fail because they get distracted by something else going on in their life and fall off the wagon. They fail because their motivation eventually wanes and they move on to other things, only to wish later on that they hadn't. They fail because our irrational minds inevitably invent weirdo, bizarro rationalizations and then convince us that they're true. So we're also going to do our very best to equip you with the best mental tools available. Hopefully that will be enough to defeat your brain for long enough to get into the swing of things.

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TIER 1 LIFTING LIFTING ENOUGH

To stimulate muscle growth in the gym we must disrupt skinneostasis—our bodies' natural mechanisms that keep us perpetually skinny. At the heart of weightlifting lie two key variables that you may use to disrupt this skinneostasis. These two variables are volume and intensity. Volume is how many sets and reps you do each workout, and how many workouts you do each week. Simply said, volume is the amount of lifting you do each week. There’s a lot of talk about minimalist workouts in the mainstream. The fact is that these workouts neglect volume. This is foolish, because volume has been proven time and time again to be one of the largest contributors to muscular development. As the research currently stands, there is not a single factor that is more important than volume. The more volume you do each week, the more you will grow—to a point. If your lifting volume is too high, your body will be hard pressed to even simply repair the damage. 68

TIER 1 TRAINING: LIFTING ENOUGH

This is why helping a friend move once every year will not make you bigger or stronger. Your body has been hit with an onslaught of work, and you'll you 'll be sore for days as your body repairs the damage. However, in situations like this your body will often rebuild the muscle at exactly the same size. You may be lifting quite a lot of weight that day, but it’s so infrequent that your body sees no need to adapt. adap t. It will just recover and go back to normal. This is why a workout routine is a must if you want to build large amounts of muscle quickly. Your body needs to realize that it needs to adapt because this is a stressor that will w ill relentlessly keep on coming. Volume = reps x sets per week. Bodybuilding programs tend to be fairly high volume because

each set will have many reps, whereas strength training tends to be lower volume because there are fewer reps in each set..

However, for that volume to count you also need to be doing those sets and reps with enough intensity. Otherwise they are just warm-up sets. They are just practice. Intensity sounds like it may be referring to how loudly you’re grunting and how much misery you can sustain. This is not the kind of intensity we are talking about. That has nothing to do with building muscle. When we talk about weightlifting intensity it is not about your attitude, it is about how heavy you are lifting in relation to how strong you are. If the most you can lift for one rep is 200 pounds, then we would say that 200 pounds is extremely intense for you. The most you can lift for a single rep is called your one rep max (1RM). The closer you are to your one rep max, the more "intense" the lift is. Powerlifting is thus very intense, since the rep ranges are low. Bodybuilding is less intense, since the rep ranges are high. Both are intense enough to stimulate muscle growth.

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You have to cross a certain line of intensity (percentage of 1RM) to stimulate growth. When you lift heavy enough, you are sending signals to your body’s adaptation machine. You You’re ’re telling it that it’s not strong enough—that it needs to grow stronger. This kickstarts the process of strengthening your muscles, and your body strengthens your muscles by increasing their size. Unless you are barely strong enough to perform a bodyweight squat, a bodyweight squat is simply not enough weight to force your body to adapt. You are already strong enough for that activity. activity. Your body will see need for growth. The intensity is too low. This is why activities like jogging, swimming and yoga will not make you more muscular. You may be doing a lot of volume, but the intensity is so low that your body sees no need to add muscle. You already have enough strength for those activities, so your body will invest in other adaptions instead. Strength coach Joel Jamesion calls intensity the signal for muscles to grow, and volume the signal amplifier. While the signal tells your muscles to grow, without the right amplitude, you will be less likely to make significant progress. If you did your program and were using the right intensity but only did 1 rep of each exercise, yes, your body would be sending the signal to grow, but there wouldn’t wouldn’t be enough of a signal amplifier to elicit a good response. You need a certain amount of intensity to send signals, and then you need plenty of reps and sets to get your body to pay attention to the signals you are sending it. A bodybuilding set will have many reps, meaning lots of volume. A strength training set will be very heavy, meaning lots of intensity. Both of these sets will elicit a similar overall growth response. When doing a program like ours, which mixes powerlifting and bodybuilding, bodybuilding, you could say that it is the "total number of challenging sets" that determines growth. (Easy sets, or sets that do not get within 2 reps of failure, are not counted, as those will not cause growth.)

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When you are a beginner, your intensity and volume thresholds are very low, so you do not need a lot of weight or volume to stimulate growth. As you continue with a training program, your threshold increases and you will need ever higher intensities. Your work capacity will increase as well, allowing you to train with greater volume and greater intensity. This is how you will become a beast. For this reason, some advanced bodybuilders bodybuilders spend a tremendous amount of time in the gym doing very long and intense workouts. However, However, it is usually best to use as little volume and intensity as needed to achieve results. This means that you should save the more advanced loading schemes and methods for when you really need them.

How Heavy To Lift We like to use the “leave two reps in the tank” method. If your hypothetical tank was how many reps you could do before your muscles became so fatigued that you were no longer able to lift with proper technique, you would stop two reps before that happened. This ensures good, safe technique while still lifting intensely enough to send a signal to your body to adapt. It is also light enough so that you can recover in time for your next set, and for your next workout. Each workout you can use your warm-up sets as a way to gauge whether or not you should increase your weights for the day. Not every day will feel amazing, and you don’t need to break a personal record every workout. However, However, it is important to consistently consistently work to increase your intensity threshold.

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Warm-Up Warm-Up Sets For your first two exercises, do at least two warm-up sets of each of the two Circuit A exercises. Earlier in the program, take some light weights and do your warmup sets with a lower intensity. For example, for your first day doing dumbbell sumo deadlifts, start with a 50 pound dumbbell and test the water. Perform around eight reps for around two sets. Use this to gauge how much weight you may want to use in your first fir st real set. As you get stronger you can use heavier weights in the warm-up sets, doing fewer reps. For example, you may perform a light set with eight reps, then a heavier set with just three reps. These should still be well shy of failure, but you will still be getting your muscles warmed up by lifting fairly heavy weights. When gauging how heavy your first real set should be, err on the side of going too light. Then, if you misjudge the weight for your first set and finish with more than two reps in the tank, simply count that first set as an extra warmup set. Increase the weight on the bar, try again.

Periodized Volume As far as volume goes, we have you starting small, with a relatively high frequency of lifting. You will have three days of full body workouts. This ensures that your muscles have adequate recovery time between workouts while also giving you a hefty dose of growth stimulus. The volume progressively increases as the phase goes on, with the last week being a very high volume workout. This is an overreaching week, and we'ree intentionally serving you more we'r m ore than you can realistically recover from. The next phase then begins again with a lower volume week. This 72


is a deload week. This deload week gives you a chance to catch up on your recovery. Because the stimulus from the previous week was so intense, this deload week will often yield the most muscle growth. Besides, you will also be learning new exercises during this deload week, and it’s best to learn new exercises with less weight and volume. Too much volume and intensity combined with learning new exercise progression will mean you’ll you’ll be spending the week hobbling around. We then begin the process of increasing the volume again, except this time you will be lifting more weight and doing more advanced progressions of the lifts. Your body will also be bigger, stronger.

Recovery Research shows that muscles need about 24-48 hours to fully recover. If you’re new to lifting they will need closer to 48 hours, whereas if you’re a seasoned lifter you’ll be able to recover more quickly. This can vary depending on volume and intensity, but it’s a good rule of thumb. However, the central nervous system (CNS) will always need about 48 hours to fully recover recover.. This means that once you’re you’re fit, non-intensiv non-intensivee CNS work can pretty much be done daily da ily,, whereas heavy lifting should still be done every other day. This is one reason that we have chosen to divide up the ideal weekly lifting volume into three full body workouts per week. This lets your individual muscle groups finish growing between workouts, work outs, and it also lets your central nervous system fully recover.

I wouldn’t worry about this stuff too much for a while. This program will work your CNS and muscular systems extensively, however, if you follow the 73


guidelines for weight choice, you should be fine. Our volume and intensity protocol is well within what you should be able to recover from. That is, unless you decide to neglect recovery! In order to recover properly from your workouts you need to be eating plenty of protein and calories, since that is what provides your body with the energy and materials that it needs to invest in growth. That growth happens while you sleep. There is a reason puppies sleep about 20 hours a day. 20 hours might be a stretch for you, but 7-9 hours seems to be the gold standard for humans who are eager to build muscle. Note from Shane: Marco just got a puppy, so you'll find a few enthusiastic puppy references

scattered throughout the eBook.

At this point I am going to pass the torch to Shane and Jared. They are going to go into more depth about how to feed and rest your body so that you can take full advantage of the growth stimulus that my workouts provide.

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TIER 1 NUTRITION EATING EA TING ENOUGH

Your body is going to make it very hard for you to eat enough to gain weight. That’s not just because you’re skinny, it’s also because you’re healthy. Even a naturally chubby person would be hard pressed to gain 20 pounds over the next couple months, especially when you take away the junk food that makes gaining weight so easy for them. Some research shows that most overweight people aren’t even gaining weight in their everyday life. Instead, they gain most of their weight during the holidays, when they feel free to eat triple-size meals, indulge on desserts, skip the gym, gy m, and snack on all day long. Your body is a finely tuned machine with overlapping mechanisms that pressure you into eating exactly enough to stay the same weight. This means that if your weight is holding steady that isn’t a sign that your appetite and metabolism are broken, it’s a sign that they aren't broken. So the problem isn't that you’re able to instinct instinctively ively maintain your weight, the problem is that you’re maintaining a skinny physique, not a buff one. 75

TIER 1 NUTRITION: EATING ENOUGH

This is a real problem for us. If most people are only able to get fat by binging on junk food during the holidays, how are us naturally skinny guys supposed to get buff on low calorie health food? After all, if we use McDonalds and ice cream as bulking crutches, we’ll we’ll just get fat. We haven't even talked about the fact that we naturally skinny guys have smaller stomachs, smaller appetites, and bigger, more adaptive metabolisms. What I mean by an bigger, more adaptive metabolism is that when we’re in a calorie surplus our metabolisms grow, turning us into a perma-full human furnace, expending tons of energy in the form of body heat and fidgetting. When you consider all of these facts, it’s no wonder that most skinny guys who have tried to gain weight have been surprised at how difficult it is. That's why telling you to tough it out for the next few months won’t work. “Man up, eat more.” Yeah, yeah. You probably already know that. Hell, 76


you've probably already tried that. I did. That advice is stupid not because it's wrong, but because it's assuming that you have a bottomless pit of willpower willpower.. That in your laziest, fullest moments you'll you 'll somehow be able to force down another three grilled chicken salads. During the very best of times you can power through it—you can will yourself to eat more—but as soon as you become tired, busy or stressed you won’t won ’t be able to find any motivation to make yourself eat. This is also why the “eat less, move more” movement is failing so hard for the mainstream, overweight population. That’s what they need to do, yeah, but that advice doesn’t doesn’t actually help them do it. It I t does such a poor job of accounting for hormones and psych p sychology ology that the advice becomes useless. This is why simply telling a skinny guy to “eat more” is such bad advice that it borders on insulting. We need a better strategy, not tough love. So in this chapter we’re going to discuss appetite hacks—ways to trick your body into thinking that the food you’re eating doesn’t contain as many calories as it does. We want your bodyweight regulation system thinking that everything is totally normal… meanwhile you’re secretly gaining a pound of muscle each week. These tricks aren’t perfect. Your body will eventually begin to suspect that you’re in a calorie surplus. So eating enough to build muscle will always take a little extra willpower and planning. But the easier we can make this, the higher your chances of success are. When you’re tired, stressed and busy you won’t have a dietary mountain that you need to will yourself to climb. Just a little hill.

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Don’t Shoot Yourself in the Stomach Most of the population is trying to lose weight, and as a result most researchers who are studying appetite manipulation are studying how to eat less, most nutritionists are designing meal plans that help people lose weight, and most health-oriented articles are written with the assumption that you're trying to stop overeating. This would be okay if they were clear about it, but they aren't. Someone will say that a food is "healthy" when what they really mean is that a food is low in calories. The only reason that it's "healthy" is because it will help a morbidly obese person bring their bodyweight back into the healthy range. Things like lettuce and celery and whatnot. For a skinny guy, it would be more accurate to call these "unhealthy" foods, since they don't provide calories efficiently enough to allow us to thrive in our bodies. Things get more confusing still, because a lot of people writing about building muscle don't realize this. They just regurgitate what they're hearing in the mainstream literature. The result? Most bodybuilding diets are full of appetite reduction hacks, like eating unseasoned lean chicken breast and broccoli for dinner, or grilled chicken salads with no dressing for lunch. So before we talk about bulking hacks, let’s first make sure you aren’t using any weight loss appetite hacks. Here are some common pitfalls to avoid:

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DON’T SKIP BREAKFAST One effective way to lose weight is to limit serving sizes. Instead of having a 1,200 calorie dinner, they switch to having a 700 calorie dinner. This creates a deficit of 500 calories for the day, day, and a deficit of 3500 calories for the week. For most, this will result in losing about a pound of fat. That's all well and good in theory, but for a beefy dude who's used to eating 1,200 calories for dinner, this means stopping while his stomach is still growling. He's going to spend the night trying fighting the urge to eat the chocolate ice cream his wife bought last week—the ice cream that's just a few feet away from the couch where he's watching TV. Some nights he might have the willpower to behave, other nights he'll eat the whole 2,000 calorie tub of ice cream, cancelling out the deficit he fought so hard to create the four previous nights. This is a well known problem, and recently guys like Martin Berkhan popularized a way to solve it—intermittent fasting. Berkhan's particular form of intermittent fasting is called LeanGains (aka 16/8 fasting), where you fast for sixteen hours of the day and feed for the remaining eight. More simply put, p ut, you skip breakfast. Zero calories at breakfast means more calories left for later, meaning that the beefy dude can replace his 500 calorie Starbucks Frappuccino with a 0 calorie Starbucks Americano, have his regular lunch, and then have that 1,200 calorie dinner that leaves him feeling nice and satisfied. No growling stomach, no late-night ice cream binges, and finally some consistent weight loss. This method works well because ghrelin, the hormone that causes us to feel hungry, hungry, is lower in the morning than at night. As a result, many people find it easier to restrict calories at breakfast than at dinner.

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Because we're aggressively bulking, we’re going to be eating to fullness at every meal always, so skipping a meal is not helpful at all. Moreover, because meals spike protein synthesis, not only will it make it harder to eat enough, it will also reduce the amount of meals that will stimulate muscle growth. We recommend adding meals to your day, not subtracting them. I know the name of his intermittent fasting protocol (LeanGains) has made it popular to attempt to build muscle while fasting, but this is because he's a guy who enjoys binge eating who is also at an advanced level level where he's gaining weight at such an incredibly slow pace (a fraction of a pound per week) that he hardly even needs a calorie surplus to grow. When guys are close to their genetic potential they don't "bulk," they simply eat enough food and enough protein to support strength gains in the gym. They gain 0.25 pounds per month or whatnot and that's enough to creep three pounds closer c loser to their genetic potential each year.

DON’T AVOID CARBS Avoiding carbs is great for weight loss for a couple reasons. First, it makes it very hard to eat junk food, since most junk food is a combination of carbs and fat. Second, starchy carbs tend to be pretty delicious, making them pleasant to eat in large quantities. When trying to lose weight many people have a lot of success when they switch from sugary/starchy carbs to fibrous carbs. Instead of rice, peas and croissants, they have cauliflower, cauliflower, broccoli and onions. These foods take up a lot of space in the stomach because of their high water content, and they're slow to digest because of their high fibre content. For us skinny guys, whole food carbohydrates are a delicious and nutritious source of muscle-building calories. Feel free to eat plenty of bread, rice, potatoes, oatmeal and fruits. We want to fill our stomach up with lots of nutrients and fibre and whatnot, but also calories. 80


DON’T AVOID FAT Lower fat diets are less common these days, but you still hear about them sometimes in plant-based communities. Low fat diets encourage weight loss in a similar way to low carb diets: because most junk food is a combination of fat and carbs, avoiding either of these macronutrients makes it very hard to eat junk food. And like carbs, fat can be pretty damn delicious, making it easy to eat in large quantities. There's something else about fat though. Per gram, fat has more than twice as many calories as carbs or o r protein. Carbs contain four calories per gram, fat contains nine. As a result, you can fit a lot of fat calories in your stomach. While a high fat diet combined with a calorie surplus can cause excess fat gain, we also don’t want to be on a lower fat diet, since that can mess with our hormones and make it hard to eat enough. A moderate fat diet will serve us well. 20-30% of calories coming from fat is about right. That should let you eat the staple muscle-building foods that make buildng muscle easier (e.g. eggs, fatty fish, whole milk), while also allowing you to add high calorie seasonings to your food: potatoes baked in olive oil, dark chocolate in your cereal, nuts sprinkled on top of your salads, peanut butter on your toast, and butter on your corn on the cob. This should make your food taste better, allowing you to more enjoyably eat more of it.

YOU DON'T NEED TO EAT EAT LIKE A CAVEMAN CAVEMAN Humans have a natural inclination to favour what’s natural. Sometimes things like protein powder, genetically modified foods, microwaves—they can seem scary because they’re modern and “unnatural.” It doesn’t matter how many decades of research there is showing that they’re safe, they just feel wrong. Some diet fads, like the paleo diet, take this to an extreme by rejecting 81


everything that came along with modern agriculture. This is an incredibly hot topic, so if you want to eat organic, avoid potatoes, and throw your microwave out your window, I’m okay with that (so long as I’m not standing under your window). However, if you don't have the budget or the inclination, you don’t need to stress out about eating non-organic foods, using a microwave, or eating grains. After several decades of research these things are now considered safe by medical and health organizations worldwide. The only modern foods you need to avoid are the heavily processed “junk” foods. A better rule of thumb is to get the majority of your calories (80% or more) coming from minimally processed whole foods. The cheapest bananas at your grocery store that don't have an organic label on them? Probably good. The expensive organic industrially processed crackers? Probably not so good.

YOU DON’T NEED TO EAT EAT A SUPER HIGH HIGH PROTEIN DIET DIET There are tons and tons of studies looking into protein’s effect on appetite, including a study that served the participants tuna milkshakes. Yum. They’re all pretty unanimous: protein is pretty much the magic food for feeling full and satisfied because it causes a hearty spike in insulin followed by a long-lasting feeling of fullness. Darnit. If you put someone on a high protein diet they tend to feel pretty full, eat less, and lose fat (while maintaining a good amount of muscle). That makes sense, as eating 1,000 calories of skinless chicken breast in a single sitting, however deliciously spiced, is very difficult, and the resulting fullness would last for an exceptionally long time. 82


Recently, research has been showing that most of the benefits of lower carb dieting for fat loss comes from the higher protein intake, not the lower carb intake. This higher protein intake is what's responsible for preserving muscle mass while causing feelings of fullness with fewer calories. Unfortunately, when trying to build muscle we do need to eat a fair bit of protein. I would recommend sticking closer to the 1 gram per pound (2.2 grams per kilo) that will have us optimally building muscle, not the massive amount of protein that bodybuilders are known to eat. (They will regularly eat twice that much.) This will have the added benefit of keeping your bulking costs as low as possible, since protein tends to be the most expensive macronutrient.

YOU DON’T EVEN NEED TO EAT EAT "CLEAN" There’s a lot of fascinating psychology surrounding food—about how we worship certain foods while demonizing others. During just the past couple years there have been massive movements demonizing various food groups— gluten, grains, carbs, fat, coffee, fruits, meat, dairy—with very little scientific evidence to support their claims. As a result, everyone has a different idea of what clean and dirty foods are. To a vegan, fruits are considered clean whereas fish is considered dirty. To a paleo guy though, fruits are dirty d irty and fish fi sh is clean. Scientifically, Scientifically, both fish and fruit have been shown to improve many health markers. So as you can see, the word clean is very arbitrary. Why is this “clean” approach to eating bad for gaining weight? Because these restrictions make eating a wide variety of food more difficult, and that makes it harder to eat enough to gain weight. It also makes it hard to be healthy! The more restricted your diet, the more likely you are to suffer from nutrient deficiencies. This is why many people who begin a "healthy" diet will run into 83


more problems with nutrient deficiencies than they did while eating whatever they wanted. An unrestricted diet made up mostly of minimally processed whole foods will likely be the best for your health. This will also make grocery shopping cheaper and easier, and it will leave lots of room for personal preference and personal convictions, such as avoiding olives because you think they're gross, or avoiding animal products for ethical reasons. Now that you know how to avoid suppressing your appetite, let’s talk about things you can do to boost it. To set the groundwork for understanding appetite manipulation, let’s take a look at a study ranking foods by how filling they are on a per-calorie basis (study (study): ):

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The Basics of Appetite Manipulation Some of the stuff in that satiety index (previous page) is pretty obvious. Most of us know that eating 1,000 calories of junk food is pretty easy easy,, whereas you’d be hard pressed to shovel down 1,000 calories of broccoli, no matter how hungry you were. In fact, if you were forced to survive solely on junk food you may live to 60 while struggling with poor health and then die young of a heart attack or whatnot. If you were forced to survive solely on broccoli you'd die within a few weeks, unable to get the basic calories or macronutrients you need to survive. I wouldn't recommend either.

Some of the stuff might surprise you though! Would you have have guessed that 250 calories coming from potatoes was nearly four times as filling as 250 calories coming from peanuts? Even more impressively, potatoes are seven times more filling than a croissant. Potatoes are also pretty damn nutritious, making them pretty much the best weight loss food ever. Weird, Weird, eh? This brings up a very important question: does how full we feel actually affect how many calories we eat? In this case, yes. They found that with these 250 calorie meals, for every 100 point difference on the satiety scale there was a corresponding 50 calorie difference in how much was eaten in the next meal. That means that if you ate a croissant (47 satiety) for lunch you might eat an 800 calorie dinner, whereas if you ate a potato (323 satiety) you’d eat a 650 calorie dinner. Does that matter? Hell yes. If you started eating a potato for breakfast instead of a croissant you’d slowly get skinnier. Horrifying, I know. And now you’re probably going to have nightmares about being served a boiled potato for breakfast. I'm sorry for that. 86


Anyway, this stuff is pretty cool when you start thinking about how it could help you bulk. I know this chart only shows a few foods. We don’t want to look at these specific foods, we want to see the patterns and learn how these principles apply to all foods.

SO WHAT MAKES A FOOD MORE FILLING THAN ANOTHER FOOD? Three things: high protein content, high fibre content and high water content.

If you wanted to feel full and satisfied you’d eat a diet that’s rich in whole foods, which will tend to combine a bunch of foods that have a balance of all three. So looking at the satiety index, maybe you decide to eat rice instead of potatoes along with your dinner. Or, considering the underlying principles, maybe you slice up the potatoes, slather those slices in olive oil, salt, pepper, cayenne, and onion powder, and bake them in the oven. The baking would remove a lot of the water water,, the spices would boost the flavour profile, and the fat would add a ton of calories. A couple little strategic changes like that and you might find yourself instinctively eating 500 more calories each day. For some of us switching from a natural maintenance diet to a natural bulking diet may really be that simple. Pretty cool, right? And we can expand that example to cover a whole meal, and then a whole diet. To To illustrate this, let's take a basic meal and hack it for our ecto-muscle-building purposes:

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CLEAN FOOD Here we've got a fairly basic clean meal: grilled chicken breast served with a baked potato and some steamed broccoli. This is all wonderfully nutritious stuff, and the calorie content is quite high because of the sheer volume of it, but damn is it ever filling.

Unfortunately,, the very things that make it great for building muscle also make Unfortunately it awful for appetite manipulation. This meal is very high in protein, very high in fibre, very high in water. The broccoli alone is twice the size of my stomach yet barely contains a calorie. You can see that this presents a dilemma. A classically healthy meal is great for building muscle but far too filling to make weight gain easy. When people try to get fit they often swap out the unhealthy meals for healthy ones, but this cuts their calorie intake in half. For most people that’s great, but for us it’s a disaster. 88


JUNK FOOD Here's the exact opposite. The chicken and potatoes are deep fried in industrially processed fat, dipped in sauces made of refined sugar, and served alongside a sweet and acidic soda to make it all go down easier.

The foods that are the least filling are the ones that combine fat with refined carbs (carbs with the fibre processed out). This essentially pre-digests the food, making it pass through the digestive system quickly and with few calories being lost in the process. These meals are also designed to taste amazing, combining tons of different flavours and textures so that we want to keep eating even after we start feeling full Because of all this, you’d need to consume an absurd amount of calories (3–7 times as many ma ny)) to get the same amount am ount of satisfying fullness that you’d get from a clean-style meal. Unfortunately, Unfortunately, the very things that make this meal easy on the appetite also make it awful for building muscle leanly. 89


BEASTLY FOOD Here's a meal using a few appetite hacks. I've taken a fresh potato, chopped it up, coated it in olive oil, cayenne, salt, pepper and onion powder. The olive boosts the calories in a very nutritious way, the spices make it delicious. Ketchup is too processed to be rich in micronutrients, but the sweet, fresh and acidic taste, like a Coca Cola, will balance out the flavour profile.

The chicken is coated in breading, spices and a couple eggs then baked alongside the potatoes. I made a few servings at once, putting the rest in the freezer for an easy meal later. Lean meat is pretty filling no matter what you do, so there's a little bit less of it here. I've used some milk to boost the protein content instead. And the protein content is intentionally high, meaning I don't need as much protein with breakfast, lunch, and snacks. Then, for the fibre and micronutrients, I threw some kale in the oven too. Baking removes the water, making them take up almost zero stomach space. 90


How to Hack Your Appetite Alright, so we've just discussed how the very things that make whole foods so damn filling are also the things that make them so damn nutritious. Fibre, protein, vitamins and minerals are both incredibly important when it comes to your health and body composition. So, sadly, we can’t just rev up our calories by eating a bunch of junk food. We gave one example meal, but that's the tip of the iceberg when it comes to appetite manipulation. Here we're we're going to cover cover all the best ways ways to hack hack your appetite. You You don't need to use all, or even most, of them. Just experiment with the ones that you think jive best with your lifestyle.

DAIRY Dairy is great for any goal because it’s so versatile. It tends to have have some protein in it, making it fairly filling, but when it’s liquid or higher in fat, it can also be very calorie dense. For example, low fat greek yogurt is very filling (high protein), cheese is moderately filling (high fat), and cream isn’t all too filling at all (liquid and high fat). Depending on what kind of dairy you choose it can help you either lose or gain weight. Dairy is quite nutritious too. The calcium and protein in dairy make it very effective for improving bone density, and the rich amino acid profile makes it fantastic for building lean muscle. It’s no coincidence that whey, whey, milk, Greek yoghurt and cottage cheese are four of the most popular bodybuilding foods. A whey protein shake makes a great snack, a glass of milk goes well with most dinners, you can dip your Dorritos in Greek yoghurt, and you can sprinkle cheese on top of your chilis.

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STARCHY CARBS These are another very versatile group of foods as far as appetite is concerned. Potatoes, grains, legumes, fruits and most other whole food carbohydrates are packed full of nutrients and fibre. Starchy carbs also cause insulin to go up (although not as much as protein), and thus result in that nice pleasantly satisfied feeling. Most (minimally processed) carbs sit somewhere in the middle as far as appetite goes, but you might want to lean more towards potatoes and porridge if you’re trying to eat less, and more towards rice and beans if you’re trying to eat more. Now, you might be thinking, isn't rice processed? Yes, but like freshly baked bread, rice isn't industrially processed. These somewhat processed carbs are a little different from things like high fructose corn syrup and soybean oil. When you process these carbs, yes, you you strip the fibre out of them and they lose a lot of their micronutrients, but they also stop being very filling. They aren’t unhealthy or fattening, fattening, per se, at least for people who are not obese, as our insulin sensitivity is high, and our bodies handle them well. For us, not being very rich in vitamins or fibre is pretty much the extent of their evil. Moreover, weightlifting, calorie surpluses and carbs like one another very much. Carbs are excellent muscle fuel, and they aren’t easily stored as fat when you go into a calorie surplus. This makes it okay to load up on the white rice, bread, maltodextrin and fruit juices, so long as you have them alongside nutritious meals. This means that rice is a great bed to rest your dinner on, orange juice can be a good companion for your omelette, starchy treats make for good desserts. This will not only make bulking easier and more enjoyable, but also much, much more affordable.

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FRUITS Fruits are full of vitamins and fibre, and they’re pretty versatile on the appetite front. Some of them, like apples, oranges, watermelons and berries are incredibly filling and great for cutting. Others, like bananas and grapes, are more calorie dense and great for bulking.

GRAINS A meta-analysis of all studies looking into grains and weight loss/gain loss/gain found that adding more whole grains into a diet resulted in a tiny amount of fat loss and an itty bitty bit of muscle gain. Nothing to write home about, but if you tolerate them well then grains are definitely something you should eat plenty of. Muesli cereal makes for a great bulking breakfast. So does oatmeal. You can even add oatmeal to your chilis to cheaply bulk up the carb, fibre and protein content. And never shy away from a peanut butter and banana sandwich on whole grain bread.

KEEP IT SIMPLE, SKINNY (KISS) The more convoluted co nvoluted your diet, the th e harder it will w ill be to stick to. You You may be really into cooking fancy meals or shopping for exciting weight gainer supplements, but don't abandon the bulking basics. This can be simple. For example, Dan John, the high school football coach who became a famous strength writer, would bulk up his high school football team by giving them peanut butter and jam sandwiches. Cheap, easy, simple, and between whole grain bread and real peanut butter (not the crap with soybean oil and sugar in it) you actually get quite a lot of protein and fibre in there. Want even more protein? Have it alongside a glass of milk. If you want to add in more vitamins and phytonutrients, swap out the jam for a sliced up banana. I use a banana and jam (because I like to live on the edge). 93


LIQUID CALORIES Our brains don’t seem to understand that liquid can contain calories. This is one of many reasons why soda and juice are so demonized by weight loss gurus. We aren’t trying to lose weight though, and this is exactly the kind of thing we’ve been looking for. There’s absolutely nothing even remotely unhealthy about whole food, liquid calories, so this presents a real lean bulking opportunity. opportunity.

ENTER SMOOTHIES: Fruits, veggies and berries + nuts or coconut milk + dairy or water + protein powders + something frozen. That’s a super duper healthy and easy way to down a ton of calories without your stomach exploding, and you’ll probably find that you can eat another big meal shortly shortly afterwards. afterwards.

AVOID AVOID FASHION FASHION MODEL FOODS FOODS Some foods—like broccoli, carrots, celery, lettuce, spinach—are full of fibre and phytonutrients phytonut rients but pretty much impossible to get calories out of. You’ll You’ll run out of stomach space way before you find any gains. When bulking I recommend opting for equally nutritious foods that are more calorically dense. Fruits and veggies like bananas, peas, sweet potatoes, quinoa, grapes, avocados, etc. When in doubt, ask yourself, "Would "Would Julia Bergshoeff eat this?" (WJBET?) If the answer is yes, remind yourself that you don't even know who that is, so you certainly don't need to eat like her. (Y (You ou don't need to google her either.) This is b2B, not Vogue. 94


DRIED FRUIT One of the best ways to eat more food is to eat very calorically dense foods, and right at the top of o f the list of calorically dense foods are dried fruits. Water Water is one of the three main things that make a food filling. Removing the water will turn an everyday fruit into a weight-gain weight-gain superfood. All the calories and nutrients of an entire fruit packed into one tenth of the size. When trying to build muscle there’s no shame in raiding your grandfather’s prune cabinet. He'll understand. He was young once too.

CHEESE, CHOCOLATE AND NUTS It’s easy to overeat fats because they’re so calorically dense, so now is pretty much the perfect time to have some delicious cheese, dark chocolate and peanuts. If there’s enough cacao in your chocolate—70% or more, let's say— then hell, you can even count it as a whole food.

SNACKS Snacking causes us to eat fewer calories in our next meal, but not by as many calories as the snack contains. So if we have a 200 calorie snack we may eat 100 fewer calories at dinner, resulting in an overall 100 calorie gain. So in general snacks are a good tool when trying to eat more.

Good snacks include: cheese, fruits, yoghurt, nuts, trail mix, whey shakes, smoothies, dark chocolate.

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STEAL TRICKS FROM WEIRD BODYBUILDERS Bodybuilders do all kinds of weird things in order to eat more. You know, swallowing raw eggs like Rocky—that kind of thing. They also make “protein pudding” by mixing whey protein into pudding. Anyway, you can get creative. A cup of cottage cheese with a spoonful of strawberry jam is a surprisingly surpr isingly delicious high protein snack. So is Egg-J, where you beat four raw eggs into a cup of orange juice with a fork. Okay, so maybe I invented that last one. Try it though. Not bad, right?!

MAKE TIME IN YOUR LIFESTYLE FOR EATING. One of the biggest contributors to obesity is apparently the fact that people get bored and want something to do with their hands while watching TV, sitting at their desk or socializing. So I put Quest Bars beside my desk, banana chips and chocolate in front of the TV, and I try to eat all the cheese and crackers at parties. You know that person per son who always needs to get snacks before going to the park or the beach? Who always needs interrupts long walks by stopping for a burrito? Who eats two of every sample at the grocery store? Who seems to be eating an apple every time you speak with him on the phone? You can become that person.

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Summary •

It’s hard to gain weight, and your appetite will fight you. That's normal. Healthy, even. We need to approach this strategically.

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Eat the foods you already love. There’s no need for a dietary revolution. You You just need more calories, more protein.

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Don’t skip breakfast, don’t avoid carbs (e (even ven simpler carbs like rice and bread), and don’t d on’t worry too much about eating clean yet—this yet —this isn’t the time to eliminate the foods that are the easiest to eat. Dessert is encouraged while bulking.

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There are several types of food that bodybuilders will use with great success to build muscle leanly leanly:: smoothies, protein shakes, milk, greek yoghurt, yoghurt, cottage cheese, cheese, cheese, rice, beans, whole grain bread, bananas, dried fruit, dark chocolate, nuts, peanut butter,, trail mix, fruit juice. butter

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There are several very healthy foods that will sabotage your attempts to eat more: broccoli, lettuce, celery, celery, carrots, apples, watermelons, cucumbers—the watery fibrous stuff.

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Do weird bodybuilders things. You You know how Rocky would drink raw eggs? That’s actually a thing. Or put a spoonful of strawberry jam in your cottage cheese

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Eat more often. Put some trail mix on your desk, some peanuts in front of your TV, and some protein bars in your glovebox or murse.

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0 9

TIER 1 LIFESTYLE ADHERING ENOUGH

Right now you’re at Point A, trying to get to Point B. Point A is okay, it's your home—but it's also Point A. Point B, though, is great. It’s a super lush, beautiful spot, and there are many brand new empty condos there with great views. Regardless of how good Point A may or may not be, Point B is much nicer, and you've you 've decided that you want to get there. The problem is that the road between Point A and Point B hasn’t been built yet. You You know the direction that you need to go, but the path hasn’t been paved. In fact, at one point there's a forest so thick that you entirely lose sight of which direction Point B is. You aren't alone in your desire to get there. Every year motivated people will leave on an expedition from Point Point A to Point Point B. In fact, at the beginning of every January a large group of people all decide to leave at once. They’re so excited, they mark the start off their journey with a kiss and an Instagram update, and then they start sprinting there as quickly as they can. Point B feels so close, and they just can’t wait to get there. But they were so motivated, so optimistic, that they didn’t think to pack 98

TIER 1 LIFESTYLE: ADHERING ENOUGH

a tent, or food, or water. Their legs are not used to sprinting—they have not trained for this—and a couple miles in, they are starting to get tired. So they slow their pace to walk. Unable to catch their breath, they start panting. They’re not feeling so good, and they’re not prepared to keep moving forward. By the time they get to the deepest part of the woods—the part where they can no longer see Point B—they’re exhausted. With no food, no water, no hope, they realize that Point B isn’t a place they can get to. Their motivation turns to frustration, then hopelessness. They crawl back home to Point A—feeling defeated. On their way back home they see a group of people marching forward with tents, maps, water, water, machetes to clear the way, and one man is even carrying a tub of strawberry flavoured protein powder. The lesson here is that people can’t sprint as far as they can walk. That’s okay. The trek from Point A to Point B was never intended to be a race, it was a journey, and no amount of motivation could possibly carry anyone that far without an equal amount of preparation. As the original group crawls back home, feeling defeated but slightly wiser, wiser, the group of people with maps and machetes draw nearer. They realize, hey, that man with the strawberry flavoured protein powder—that's you. You were smart. You found people p eople who had already made the journey—a trio of sherpas. They've given you a map, as well as a compass, and even a satellite phone so that you can reach out to them if you get lost. That way they can get you back on the right path. This is how you came to be the man sipping the strawberry flavoured protein shake, map in hand. We are the trio of sherpas, and the satellite phone is the community forum, just so you know. know. And that forum is full of the other people marching to Point B right alongside you.

This won't make it easy, but as you see all these people crawling back the other 99


way, you'll realize that being prepared has made it possible. I’ll be honest, hanging out at Point A is easy. Trying to get to point B is not. But when you arrive there, the hard part will w ill be done. You can rest. You You can go back to just hanging out, but it’ll be in a much m uch better place. After you hang out at Point B awhile, you might feel the itch for another challenge. Looking back you may realize that the hike from Point A wasn’t all too bad. Maybe you even enjoyed the challenge of the journey. At that point we can help by giving you another map to another amazing place a little further up ahead—Point C.

SETTING GOALS Moving beyond the metaphor, Point B is the goal you’re striving for. Maybe it’s gaining twenty pounds, gaining six inches on your shoulders, or being able to carry your wife in one arm and your kid in the other. Whatever you define Point B as, it needs to be clear. If it’s not clear, you won't won't be able to find it on the map, and you’ll have no idea how to get there. This is what’s called setting a concrete, tangible goal. In our program we recommend starting with a goal that can be achieved fairly quickly. Your first journey shouldn't take decades, or even years. At most it should take a few months, and with several checkpoints along the way to make sure that you're still headed down the right path. Perhaps you decide to gain twenty pounds over the course of twenty weeks, with small adjustments every week, and full progress updates every ive weeks. Twenty pounds in twenty weeks is one pound gained per week. Simple, measureable. If you don’t gain a pound in your first week, you know exactly what you need to address. This is only possible p ossible because your goal is concrete.

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A FEW IDEAS FOR FOR CONCRETE GOALS: •

Gain twenty pounds in twenty weeks

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Burn ten pounds of fat in ten weeks

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Upgrade your shirt size from small to medium

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Build 14” biceps

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Squat and deadlift your bodyweight

It’s better to have smaller goals that are more achievable, so if you have 10" biceps, as I did, start by aiming for 11" biceps. When you reach your goals be sure to celebrate in your own way. That could be as simple as renting a movie with some friends, or going out to dinner to celebrate. You should post an update in the community too, showing others that yes, it is indeed possible for someone like them to make m ake it to Point B. Then set a new goal.

Motivation Right now you’re full of motivation. Motivation could be defined as your willingness or desire to do something. So far you’ve been motivated enough to research building muscle, and you were motivated enough to put some money on the line to buy this program. Now it’s our job to help you put what’s left of your motivation motivation to good use before it runs out. Today your motivation is likely a burning furnace. You’re looking for a way to burn right through thro ugh whatever is in i n your way. way. You’re You’re looking to put gasoline ga soline on this fire. Light it up big. 101


Well, here I am—but not with gasoline. I am humbly standing in front of you with an offering of slow-burning hardwood. White birch, if you were wondering. As a seasoned muscle-building hobbyist lumberjack raised in a small Canadian town, part of my job is to tell you that gasoline would be the wrong choice. We’re not looking for a big explosion of heat, burning bright but burning quick, leaving us with nothing a few moments from now. We’re looking for consistent and stead steady y heat to keep us warm throughout the night. A huge part of knowing yourself is knowing you’re not always going to act in your own best interest. There is a future version of yourself that will retire one day, and between now and then you'll surely run into some unexpected expenses, but your present self is probably finding it extremely hard to save. I have to give you you credit. I can promise you that there is indeed a stronger, bigger, and healthier version of yourself. By researching how to bring that side of yourself out, you’re doing exactly what you should be doing d oing for your future. Right now you're doing exactly what you should be, but we still have to be realistic. The motivation that you feel right now won’t last forever. forever. Eventually a tired version of yourself will take the reigns. I am not writing wr iting this to be a downer. I am writing wr iting this so we can be smart. smar t. So that we can plan p lan for this inevitable day. day. So that you have clear instructions to give to that tired version of yourself. A plan so good that even he can help you reach your goals. How? In the Quick-Start Guide I mentioned Baumeister, the famous willpower researcher. In his book, Willpower, he writes that the best way to use your current motivation is to use it to set up habits. Habits don’t require motivation, they just happen. Can you imagine if you just automatically ate well and lifted weights three times per week without even thinking? Without even thinking, you’d be continually getting 102


bigger, stronger, healthier, beastlier. How exactly do you do that? Research shows that habits take an average of 66 days to become established. Some people can do it more quickly, some more slowly. To ensure the foundation for those good habits is laid down, we need to use our motivati motivation on (our willingness or desire) d esire) to kickstart the process. Will your motivation last 66 days? If you pour gasoline on your motivational fire, it might last a few weeks. The Wall Street Journal wrote an article article that that claimed the flurry of January gym visits start to dwindle just a few weeks in. That’s not long enough. We need that slow burning white birch that I was offering you earlier. We a steady, gradual change. We need some habits. Don’t approach change like an explosion, training until you’ve spent every last bit of energy, stuffing yourself to the brim, buying every supplement that you can afford, and eating as clean as you possible can. Instead, we recommend using a steady supply of energy, making small and slow changes that will establish good habits in the longer term. Will small and slow changes get you to 66 days? If you do it small and slow enough, yes. If you’re not confident that you can make it that long, you need to make the changes even smaller. You need absolute certainty that you can stick with this. If you’re not working out at all, maybe hitting the gym three times each week for an hour is too much to commit to. Right now you might be in gasoline mode, itching to train five times per week. But be realistic. Consider that future, more tired version of yourself yourself.. The version that's stressed, busier than expected, and low on sleep. Even though hitting the gym twice a week is not quite as ideal for building 103


muscle, it’s still infinitely better than nothing at all and will still be enough to build muscle. Once hitting the gym a couple times a week is a habit, then you can add some more exercise in. Maybe one day even the most tired, lazy, stressed version of yourself will be able to train five times per week. There's no benefit to training five terms per week instead of three times per week, but you get the idea here.

If you’re someone who is disappointed to learn that you should dial your intensity down, you’re normal. This is not exciting to hear. Even though I'm offering you slow-burning birch wood, it might actually feel like I'm handing you a wet blanket. Researching and trying expensive and experimental supplements is exciting. Trying brutally challenging workouts that beat you to a pulp is exciting too. So is searching for that one nutritional trick that will make your gains twice as lean. We are wired to think that the more challenging or risky the task is, the greater the reward. Leave it all in the gym. Pain is just weakness weakne ss leaving your body body..

Unfortunately, none of that is true. It makes for great marketing, for great humble bragging, and it may get you lots of shares and likes. It certainly makes people a lot of money m oney.. But it won won’t ’t help you achieve your goals. So don’t rely on a huge explosion of motivation. Not only will it not last, it won't even necessarily improve your short term results. As Marco explained in his lifting section, lifting too intensely will just stimulate recovery, not growth. The stress will be too intense to even produce a benefit. You will be better served by relying on small, progressive changes that gradually accumulate into something truly impressive—even in the short term. 104


This is all to say that you don’t need to change your lifestyle as dramatically as you may think to get the dramatic changes that you you’re ’re looking for.

Accountability So what do we do to help establish habits? We use a trick called accountability. We use our clear-headed, and highly motivated versions of ourselves to make binding agreements for the future when we know we won’t feel this way. It’s called the Ulysses Contract. In the Quick-Start Guide I wrote about how Shane and I used accountability in our muscle building experiment. Every skipped meal or workout meant putting money in the jar. Without that jar, I’m sure I never would have understood how enjoyable lifting and eating can become… once you’re you’re through the hard habit-building habit-building part. In the moment, lifting was hard. Eating enough to get into a calorie surplus was painfully uncomfortable too. And it was a hassle to change my lifestyle and schedule. All those things added together made for a pretty challenging month. You know what was worse than all of those things? Losing $10 when you’re already way past broke. So I kept up with the lifting, the eating, and switching my life around even when I didn’t feel like it. At the end of the month, when I emerged 22 pounds heavier, stronger, and fitter than I’d ever been before—I loved it. I chose to extend the challenge for another 30 days, and in that second month neither of us contributed to the jar. The habits were already starting to solidify solidif y. After that second month we didn’t even need the accountability anymore because our habits were effortlessly carrying us through. The last two months of our four month challenge were a breeze, and we successfully made it to Point B. Those 60 days of accountability was all 105


that we needed to develop a habit that’s lasted over half a decade. If you’d rather not use a negative motivator because you’re a positive person, I hear you. But research seems to be hinting that we as humans are twice as motivated by the fear of losing something as we are by the benefit of gaining something. It’s called loss aversion. You might notice this in kids. Sometimes they won’t care about a toy until another kid picks it up, creating the fear of losing that toy. You might argue this is why some people hoard stuff. Or why older parents really dislike downsizing after they don’t need the space anymore. As we grow up we try to bury this instinct further, but it’s still there, and it’s still one of the strongest motivators motivators that we can access. Use a friend or a neutral party p arty to be a referee. It needs to be someone with enough of a backbone to keep your money if you fail your goal, even if you try to ask for the money back. If you don’t have total confidence that your friend will carry through, then there’s no legitimate fear of losing something. The pain also needs to be high enough to work as a motivat motivator. or. Not so high that it could ruin your life or put you into financial jeopardy, but high enough to be effective. When it’s too high-risk, don’t be surprised if you start cheating. Ultimately, the accountability is only there to help you reach automaticity, otherwise known as a habit. It’s like scaffolding on a new structure. Once the building is complete, it can be removed.

Choosing Good Habits You ou’ll ’ll almost always hear people talking about bad habits rather than good ones. We just sort of “fall” into our habits. Most of our habits haven’t been conscious decisions to help us do the things that we want to do. do. Research says we spend about 45% of our day mindlessly executing Research 106


habits—time spent without thinking about what we’re doing. Don’t waste your motivation. Pour it into developing a habit of lifting, and a habit of eating a big healthy diet with enough protein and enough calories. The results will come. Another trick for consciously developing habits, from Chip & Dan Heath in their excellent book Switch, is called shaping the path. Essentially, you just make it easier to make the right decision. It’s easier to stay on the path if it’s the most direct route, and it’s paved. This is why we recommend recommen d cooking meals m eals in bulk when you’re high energy, energy, and have the day off. Every day after work, and you’re super tired, it’s going to be hard to make a delicious meal that’s suitable for building muscle. But if you’ve got a delicious and muscle-building meal waiting in the freezer that will be ready in 5 minutes in the microwave—you're setting yourself up to win. You can shape the path everywhere. If you build a home-gym, you’re making it easier to workout since it’s literally a few steps to your garage or basement. If you go to a gym, pick a gym close to work, or close to home so it’s easy to get to. If you feel too tired to work out late at night, work out in the morning before you need to work, or study, so that it’s easier to fit into your day. Marco invested in his kitchen prep to help make it easier for him to cook meals. This is what works for him: •

Buy a non-stick and wooden cutlery to eat out of them to cut down on doing dishes.

•

Organize your kitchen for easy preparation and cleanup like having your tools hanging on hooks for quick access.

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•

Buy extra shaker cups so you can always be ready for a protein shake. Mason jars work well, just watc watch h out for the post workout jitters, they they are a bit sensitive sensitive to drops.

The Wrap-Up This section has been about how to get the results you want, by being consistent with your nutrition and workouts. If you aren’t doing the program p rogram consistently enough then you won’t get the results you’re looking for. In the next lifestyle section we’ll discuss how to accelerate and improve your results by developing your “lifestyle”—the things you do outside of the gym and the kitchen. We’ll talk about how you’re screwing up your sleep, why it matters, and then how to sleep like a beast. It’s rarely discussed, but this will allow you to make leaner gains. We’ll also talk about some additional lifestyle tips and tricks, like how light exposure can give you a bigger energy boost than caffeine, how sleep regulates your mental energy, how to further bulletproof your habits with rewards, and more. But for now, don’t go overboard with your routine. Focus on the first tier of the pyramid until you’re doing it automatically. We want to use your motivation right now to bind your future self to a goal with a time period that’s long enough to lay down a habit—and start seeing the benefits that you’ve you’ve been working hard for. I’d start with a 30 day block, reach your goal, then set a new one that’s a little more adv advanced. anced. Good luck!

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TIER TWO: DOING IT WELL

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TIER 2 TRAINING LIFTING WELL

Lifting well is an incredibly important aspect when gaining muscle, since it ensures using the correct muscles, as well as safety. Being a healthy lifter ensures consistency, consistency, which is needed to gain a significant amount of muscle. We want you to be able to enjoy lifting. We want you head to the gym with all the fervor in the world, and I want you to be able to maintain that passion your whole life. While that may sound like a tough order, if you lift well I believe you can accomplish it. If your reality is one of chronic pain or the inability to touch your toes, that may seem like a fairy tale. While I would always always recommend someone to seek a qualified professional in person p erson if they have any serious injuries, lifting well can remedy many little aches and pains.

Lifting Well = Moving Well = Balanced Muscle Length = Good Posture

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TIER 2 TRAINING: LIFTING WELL

In the equation above you can see how all of those work hand-in-hand. A muscle’s ability to fire properly is based on its length, so someone who has a posture that is too far from optimal will develop imbalanced muscle lengths and have trouble using them properly. That means poor coordination, weaker lifts, less ability to build balanced musculature, and a less aesthetic posture. Our modern lifestyle has many communalistic, so what we typically see is something like this:

This body lacks the muscular strength to keep the posture strong and stable. With these weakened muscles, the stress falls on the skeletal structure instead. There is going to be significantly more pressure going through each joint. Our gut instinct is to stretch the muscles that are tight and to strengthen the muscles that are weak. That instinct isn’t bad, but there are some issues. First, the research looking into the effects of stretching has shown 111


the results to be underwhelming. There are numerous studies showing that stretching does not in fact lead to any significant long term gain in flexibility. Second, when a muscle feels tight, is that because it’s too short and in need of stretching, or because it’s already being stretched too far? Both would give you a feeling of tightness, after all. Third, oftentimes when people think they are stretching a tight muscle they are actually stretching a ligament and creating further instability. instability. Finally, our bodies have adapted to moving in this new posture. Haphazardly stretching certain muscles might move you out of a posture where you’ve grown strong. One of the most important parts of lifting well is ensuring your muscles are at more balanced lengths before you lift. This allows the exercises you’re doing to actually stimulate the right muscles. Not only will getting into a better position improve how much weight you can lift, this will give you the predictable, aesthetic and balanced muscle growth that you’re looking for. Keep in mind you may need to use lighter weights again while you build up a stronger lifting foundation in this new position. New muscles will be bearing the load, and those muscles may not have developed the strength they need yet. However, focusing on these muscles will improve the look and function of your body, so these lighter loads will still be accomplishing encouraging things. Great posture has benefits outside of being able to properly lift big weights. Strong, confident posture has significant effects on your mental well-being as well as your internal state. Standing in power poses has been shown to increase testosterone, testos terone, and a proud p roud posture is a potent non-verbal communicator.

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Posture Matters To make your posture rock solid we will be doing some asymmetrical exercises, designed by the Postural Restoration Institute, aimed at tackling your body’s natural tendency to favour right sided dominance. Asymmetry for symmetry, you could say. These exercises are aimed a repositioning your posture so you can engage the weakened and restore balance. If you take a look at the pictures below they show how common this pattern is. A more forward left pelvis, more flared left ribs and weaker right glutes. We expand on this topic a bit more in the next lifting section.

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Cues For Rock Solid Posture NEUTRAL SPINE Neutral spine is usually referred to as a position where your spine has curves in all the right places. Many trainers will have their clients perform their weight lifting in this position because it has been shown to be the safest. However, it is not always easy to achieve this position. When you begin lifting you are going to feel pretty awkward, and it is going to feel quite forced. The warm-up routine we have you you going through should help, but the thing that will help the most is getting into the gym three times each and every week and putting in your practice.. If you learn to recognize the feel, you’ll you’ll be able to do it intuitively while lifting, and also elsewhere in life. The benefits of this are great.

While lifting with a neutral spine is perhaps the most important cue, there are some other cues we will use to help you make your lifts safer and more solid.

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GET TALL AND EXHALE Imagine a string pulling up on the top of your head. Then exhale in this position, forcing all your air out. You should begin to feel the sides of your abs engage. Learning how to get tall and exhale is a great way to fix a lot of technical issues without having to focus on too many things at once. If you hear me say it often, it’s because learning to lift intuitively with good technique is very important. We’re We’re going to make things harder at first so that they can be easier in the future. Then you can train harder, heavier, more safely.

KNEE OVER SECOND TOE It's common for guys to let their knees cave in when the weight gets heavy. We actually want your knees going ever so slightly outwards when you lift. 15 degrees or so. You can think of it this way: when your knees go out they should always alwa ys be gliding out over your second toes.

NEUTRAL WRIST When you throw a punch your knuckles should be more or less in line with your forearm bones. This allows proper transfer of force without your fist buckling inwards or outwards. The same is true with lifting, where you want to to be able to push a weight without any power being lost. Try to push through the whole hand, but be especially aware of the heel of the palm. This position ensures that your have a strong connection with the bar, and that you are avoiding hyperextension of the wrist. This is especially important during the bench press, where a floppy hand will result in a huge loss of lifting power.

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FEEL YOUR WHOLE FOOT Don't balance on your toes, but don't balance on your heels either. When doing all standing lifts, this concept is important to keep your balance and give you a solid base to push from. To accomplish this when squatting, you want to feel the weight being pushed through your whole foot, however always being aware of your heels in the ground. There can be a tendency to push into the front of your feet, but it's often better to think of pushing through your heels to balance this out. When deadlifting, there can be a tendency to shift all the weight back onto the heels which can cause the toes to come up you to lose balance. To remedy this, feel the whole foot, but concentrate on the heel and big toe staying down.

Putting The Cues Into Action To learn something new, you must go through four steps: unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and finally unconscious competence. If we use picking something up as an example, the first stage is when you instinctively pick up a box on the floor incorrectly. You don’t know that you’re doing it poorly… but you’re doing it poorly. You’re incompetent, but unconsciously so. The second stage is when I tell you that you should stop lifting with your lower back—that back—that you should use your back muscles to keep your spine strong and stable, but that the lifting should be done with your legs and glutes. You give it a try and you can’t do it yet. You’re still incompetent, but now you’re conscious of it. The third stage is when, after some practice, you’re you’re able to do lift up the box 116


with good technique. You need to concentrate while doing it, but you can do it. You’re competent, but you need to be consciously focusing on your technique. The fourth and final stage is when, after much more practice, you’re able to lift up the box instinctively. You can chat with a buddy while casually lifting boxes with great technique. You’re competent, and you can do it unconsciously. Take your time and enjoy the blissful ignorance of the first phase, the harsh reality of the second, the building of confidence in the third, and then the cool, calm, relaxed demeanour that can only be built from overcoming adversity and accomplishing something worthwhile. You’ve bought this program, that blissful bubble of ignorance has likely already been popped, so let’s get to work on getting you out of that harsh reality period where everything feels all awkward and overwhelming.

The Five Main Movement Patterns Here are the main patterns pa tterns you will focus on in your training. They are essential for a balanced and high functioning body. To do these exercises well your whole body needs to work well. By mastering these exercises you’ll learn how to instinctively coordinate the firing of your muscles in unison to accomplish a given task. This will make you more coordinated and powerful in everything you do. That means you can lift heavier weights and build bigger muscles. Furthermore, maintaining a neutral spine throughout these exercises leads to not only a strong core, but a core that has endurance as well. Neutral spine endurance is incredibly important, as it is usually a lack of core endurance that leads to back injuries.

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THE SQUAT The squat is any sort of lower body lift that has a lot of emphasis on hip and knee movement. The most famous of the squat movements is the aptly named barbell back squat, often simply called “the squat.” Magic happens when you hold a weight and squat. Your butt becomes more effective than the best of belts for holding your pants up. Women will enjoy it when you wear shorts in the summer. They’ll enjoy it even more when you bend down to tie your shoes. While the squat is a lower body-centric exercise, exercise, it will still heavily recruit the muscles around the spine. Keeping a neutral spine during this exercise is very healthy for the spine. This makes it superior to the leg press for all around muscular development.

THE HINGE The hinge involves any sort of deadlift variation, swing, swing, or movement with lots of hip movement and less emphasis on knee movement. Deadlifting done well is very healthy for the body and will throw muscle onto your body from your head to your toes. Keeping proper technique while a lot of weight tries to break you is an excellent way to strengthen your your spine and your posture, po sture, and it will do this in a way that is surprisingly different from the squat. By using both you’ll get the most balanced development of your lower back musculature. This pattern is notoriously difficult, at first because it’s hard to coordinate your muscles, and later because of the sheer poundage of your lifts. However it is perhaps the most practical of all of the patterns. It will allow you to learn to use hundreds of muscles in unison, developing coordination and stimulating growth throughout your entire body. It will also help you develop explosive athletic power and a big back, butt and pair of hamstrings. 118


THE PUSH The push pattern will involve any sort of pushing movements, like the push up, bench press or shoulder press. This pattern is one of the main upper body patterns used to grow the chest, arms, shoulders and neck. For balanced growth you’ll want to perform a mix of horizontal presses (e.g. bench presses) and vertical presses (e.g. overhead presses).

THE PULL The pull pattern is the other upper body pattern, and a very important one at that. This one helps keep your shoulders healthy healthy.. Modern day posture has made it easier for our head to move forward, as we are hunched over desks taking down notes, looking down at our phones, or looking at a laptop on a desk. When the head moves forward, the rest of the body tends to follow. One thing that can happen is the upper back rounding too much and the shoulders moving forward. This can weaken the muscles of the upper back and strong upper back is necessary to lift big weights in all your lifts, as well as to keep your head well supported so that you can keep your head held high. This is a large focus early on, and will stay with your throughout the program. As with the press, for balanced muscular development you’ll want to to do a mix of horizontal pulls (e.g. rows) and vertical pulls p ulls (e.g. chin-ups). chin-ups).

LOADED CARRIES This is another pattern designed to add muscle everywhere. Carrying heavy things for distance is an incredible core endurance workout and will work every muscle in your body. It also develops real world strength so that when you shake someone’s hand they will remember remem ber you because your calluses scratch them. Carries are a foundational lift in strongman and athletic training, but a lot of bodybuilders will omit this movement. You may not see it often if you 119


train in a commercial gym. This is not because it’s ineffective, this is because it’s a difficult workhorse of a lift. This exercise really challenges your postural muscles as the heavy weights in your hands will try and pull you down into a slouching position. You will have to try your best to remain upright, thus bolstering your grip, traps, shoulders and hip muscles. If you care about looking and feeling your best, never skip the carries.

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Summary •

If you are in pain, check in with a local doctor or physical therapist. Weightlifting Weightlifting will probably be able to help, but don't take our word for it.

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Lifting well means can you lift with the right muscles through a healthy range of motion (ROM). If you have certain ROM limits, it is important to stay within those limits to avoid injury while you simultaneously work to improve your mobility.

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If you are pain free and have good posture, think of that as a green light. Still, make sure to keep your technique clean.

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Get tall and exhale to keep your spine neutral and activat activatee more stabilizer muscles.

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Keep your wrists neutral, push the ground away with your whole foot, and keep your knees in line with your second toe.

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Focus on mastering the squat, hip hinge, push, pull and carry. carry. If you can get good at these, you'll be great at lifting anything.

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Learning proper movement takes time. Don't be too hard on yourself,, and be patient. yourself

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TIER 2 NUTRITION EATING WELL

If you’re gaining weight and things are going well, it may be time to make things a little more interesting with the hopes of improving your health, body composition, and bicep circumference. But wait. Before eagerly ea gerly going into all this thi s advanced stuff, be sure to have the fundamentals mastered. Upgrading to 1000 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets when you don’t even have a bed yet is a very poor way to get a better night sleep. Similarly, moving on to advanced nutrition principles before having mastered the process of gaining weight would be a foolish way to go about building muscle. If things are going well though and you’ve got a little room on your plate for more, let’s look at some of the nutrition tricks that elite athletes, fitness models, bodybuilders, and powerlifters use to max out their gains. If you want people privately asking you where you got your steroids, this is for you. By the way, the correct answer to the steroid question is: “My dear friend or enemy, Bony to Beastly is the true path to muscledom, not steroids.”

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TIER 2 NUTRITION: EATING WELL

Anyway, here we’re going to be talking about things that can improve the rate that you build muscle, reduce the amount of fat that comes along with it, improve your energy levels and mood, moo d, and improve imp rove your overall health. You're already eating enough calories. Now let’s talk a little more about where those calories should come from. A good rule of thumb when bulking is to get 80% of your calories from nutritious whole foods. The other 20% should be optimized for enjoyment and lifestyle. When we’re talking about a food being a “nutritious” whole food we mean a few things. First and foremost, that it contains the macronutrients (macros) that you need, i.e., that it fits into the amount of protein, fat and carbohydrates that you need. That assures that you have the energy you need to gain weight, the fat you need to regulate your hormones, the amino acids that you need to build muscle, and the exact proportions of each that will allow for the leanest gains. Second, we want to make sure that you have the micronutrients (micros) that you need. Micronutrients are the vitamins and minerals and phytonutrients and such. This will keep your testosterone pumping at full force, help prevent illnesses, boost performance, and improve almost everything. Third, you need enough fibre. This will keep your digestive system working well, help regulate blood sugar, improve your your heart health and all sorts of other great things. Once we’ve covered that triad of nutritiousness, we’ll have the quantity and quality of your nutrition down pat, and that will take care of 95% of what you need to look like a young strongman for the next 100 years. Then we can dig into the even more advanced stuff, like supplements and fiddling with when you eat things. Those little details pale in comparison to your macro, micro and fibre intake though. 123


Optimizing Macronutrients & “IIFYM” In the muscle-building world, optimizing macronutrients often devolves into the If It Fits Your Macros (IIFYM) way of thinking. This is the idea that if you just optimize your calories and macros that you’ll be able to get absolutely incredible results without really even needing to worry about much else. This is a sort of rebellion against a lot of mainstream dogma that advocates eating clean, avoiding sugar, avoiding junk food, etc. IIFYM originated when the pro-bodybuilding and pro-athlete dietitians were constantly being asked by their clients if certain foods (potatoes, rice, bananas, flour, etc) were allowed to be consumed as part of an optimal diet. Frustrated by the fact that these people weren’t understanding that total perfection isn’t needed and that most whole foods are nutritious, they started answering:: “yes, you can eat that food—so long as it fits your calories/macros.” answering calories/macros.” For example, ice cream’s got some carbs, some fats, and an itty bitty bit of protein, so if you want to eat some ice cream, you’d just fit it into your calorie/ macro allotments for the day day.. No stress, optimal results. Because of its solid scientific roots and its incredible effectiveness, the mantra caught on in the various fitness communities. Whenever someone would say “can I eat ____”, people would respond: “if it fits your macros, bro”. Soon, however, however, people started forgetting about the underlying u nderlying foundation that it was built upon—an overall nutritious diet made up primarily of whole foods. That’s when it became problematic. IIFYM was never supposed to be a diet fad, it was supposed to mean that if you enjoy bananas you can eat some bananas… so long as you realize that bananas contain carb calories, and that you need to eat a certain amount of carb calories in a day if you want to progress towards your body composition and performance goals. It was supposed to 124


mean that if you wanted to put some cream in your coffee that you absolutely can, so long as you realize the cream contains fat calories, and that you need a certain amount of fat calories in a day day.. It wasn’t supposed to mean that calories and macros are all that matter, and it wasn’t supposed to mean that you should eat a diet entirely composed of junk food. ... But so long as you don’t take it to stupid extremes and you keep the overall quality of your diet high, simply upgrading your calorie/protein tracking to include carbs and fat is the most effective strategy out there for further improving the pace that you can transform your physique. Just keep in mind that all the old rules still apply. 80% of calories should be coming from nutritious whole foods. So how do you do it? Usually you’ll you’ll see macronutrients broken down into percentages. 40% carbs, 30% protein, 30% fats, and then abbreviated like so: 40/30/30. 40/30 /30. Dividing up your intake into percentages like that can be helpful, but that isn’t really how our bodies work. It’s a very simplified approach based on a stereotypical bodybuilder’s body type, lifestyle and goals. To illustrate this, let’s imagine that you’re the typical 200 pound bodybuilder trying to maintain his muscle mass while dieting down to get lean. You’d need 200 grams of protein to build and maintain muscle mass. You’d also need to be in a calorie deficit, consuming, say, 2500 calories per day. In this case 200 grams of protein would make up that classic 30% of your overall calories. 200 grams of protein at 4 calories per gram = 800 calories. That’s 32% of 2500 calories.

Now let’s say you’re a 150 pound professional swimmer and you burn 6,000 calories per day day.. As an athlete who’s concerned with strength and power you’d still be well served by that grams per pound of protein per day, but with 125


the huge amount of food you’d be consuming 150g of protein is now just 10% of your calories. Since caloric demands can vary so greatly—even between professional athletes—percentages can be tricky. Given that you’re a naturally thin dude who’s going to be lifting weights with the goal of building muscle as rapidly as possible, I’d guess that your your percentage breakdown breakdown would be more like 50% carbs, 30% fat, 20% protein. We’re going to go into a little more detail than that though so that you get a more solid understanding of how things will change when you’re trying to build muscle, trying to lose fat, taking a break from building muscle, etc. If this seems complicated, com plicated, well, don’t d on’t worry about it too much. Admittedly Admi ttedly,, this is rather advanced stuff. Most people who go into this level of depth with their nutrition are earning a living from their bodies. Just keeping track of grams of protein and total calories is quite effective. However, there have been a lot of technological advancements recently that have made tracking your macros much easier. Crowdsourcing and online calorie/macro trackers have made it so that you don’t need to carry around tupperware, a food scale and a calculator calculator.. Curious? Let’s break down the macros one by one.

PROTEIN If you want to max out your gains you need around 0.8 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight (1.8 grams per kilo). Some guys need a little more, some a little less. Just to be on the safe side, let's call it one gram of protein per pound bodyweight (or 2.2 grams per kilo k ilo). ). You already know why protein is so incredibly important for building muscle, so let’s jump right to some nutritious examples of where to get it from. 126


There are many nutritious sources of protein, these are just some examples to get some ideas flowing. •

Fish

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Poultry

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Red meat

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Game meat

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Whey protein

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Pea/rice protein powder

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Greek yogurt

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Cottage cheese

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Milk

Plenty of other fatty/ fatty/carby carby foods have some protein in them as well: eggs, cheese, nuts, seeds, legumes, grains, edamame, ed amame, etc. Don’t forget to count those little bits of protein towards your macros, as they will quickly add up.

DIETARY FAT To maintain great health and hormone function, you need a minimum of 0.4–1 grams of dietary fat per p er pound bodyweight per day (or 0.9–2.2 grams per kilo). Your body uses fat for a number of purposes. Many vitamins are fat soluble (A, D, E, K, etc), meaning that in order to digest them you need to be eating quality fats. Dietary fats also have a lot to do with your hormone regulation. Hormones are your body’s communication system. They tell your body 127


whether it should be storing fat, building muscle, spiking blood sugar levels, stressing out, or maxing, relaxing all cool. Fats will also help control free radical damage and inflammation, which are pretty key when lifting weights. That's one reason why fish oil is a popular supplement—for reducing delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS)!

As far as your health is concerned, it appears app ears that your body can function optimally with a pretty wide range of fat intakes. Some people get 20% of their total calories from fat, some get 60% of their total calories from fat. Anywhere in this range can be optimal, depending on the person and their goals. When we’re talking about skinny-dude muscle-maxing, and we are, we can be a little more precise. To gain weight you need to be in a calorie surplus, and when you’re in a calorie surplus your body is vulnerable to storing fat. Any surplus calories not used to build muscle will either be burned off as body heat or stored as body fat. Fortunately, the more of a hardgainer you are, the more likely your your body will be to burn off those extra calories. However, there are other things we can do to further minimize fat gain. Limiting dietary fat is one of those things. We do this because dietary fat can be directly stored as body fat, whereas protein and carbs need to undergo a very calorically costly conversion conversion process to transform them into storable fatty acids. This conversion process is so inefficient that most of the energy will be expended as body heat. For example, a recent study by Rising et al found that 76% of the

calories coming from carbohydrates were burned off as body heat, whereas 100% of the calories coming from fat were stored as body fat.

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IS IT JUST ME OR IS IT HOT IN HERE? If you want to get hotter instead of fatter, a diet high in protein and carbohydrates is far more effective than a diet high in protein and fat.

So, given that we're bulking, we need to be a little more more mindful of going overboard on the fats. Sticking close to the low end of the recommended fat intake would be a good goal. For an example, a 150 pound guy would want to be eating 60–150 grams of fat per day day.. Since fat has 9 calories per gram, that translates to about 540–1350 calories from fat. Since he’s trying to bulk leanly, he might want to keep his fat intake under 900 calories, or a little less than 30% of his total calories. As always, always, if you can spend most of those fat calories on a wide variety of whole foods, great. Keep in mind that vegetable oils, like canola and sunflower oil, are industrially processed. They’re about as processed as a food could possibly be, and arguably one of the main reasons that junk food is so unhealthy. unhealthy. You can still eat them on occasion, but since they’re not whole foods they’d fall into your discretionary 20%. Some examples of nutritious whole foods containing dietary fat include:

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Eggs

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Fatty fish / Fish oil

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Dairy (cheese, yogurt, kefir, milk, butter, etc.)

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Minimally processed oils (cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil,


virgin coconut oil, avocado oil, macadamia nut oil, etc.) •

Nuts and peanuts (“and” because peanuts aren’t actually nuts!)

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Avocados

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Chocolate, or at least the 70%+ stuff.

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And the stuff from the health food aisle of your grocery store— the flax, chia, miso and whatnot.

If you wanted to get really particular, you would want around 1/3 saturated fat (meat, coconut oil, chocolate, butter, etc), 1/3 monounsaturated fat (olive oil, avocados, eggs, nuts), 1/6 omega 6’s (nuts, fatty vegetables, etc), and 1/6 omega 3’s (fish oil, algae, flax). This would assure that you aren’t overdoing it on the vegetable oils or saturated fat, which can in some instances be problematic, depending on your genetics. However you probably don’t need to take it that far.

CARBOHYDRATES You don’t need carbs. Unlike with fats and protein, you won’t die if you don’t eat enough of them. However, when it comes to athletic performance, feeling amazing, building muscle and lifting big weights, around 1g / pound bodyweight would be a good practical minimum whether bulking or cutting. That’s not set in stone, and will depend on how many calories you’re eating and what your personal preferences are. When we’re talking about building muscle we really want to crank that carb intake high though. You’ll probably want 2–3g of carbs per pound bodyweight. Essentially, after you’ve estimated your protein and fat needs, you want to fill up the rest of your calories with as many carbs as you can. You don’t have to—lots of wiggle room here—but if it were me I’d eat plenty plenty.. 130


Carbs are the primary source of energy for all of your bodily functions, and they can even provide some of the structural components for the growth and repair of tissue. This section might seem a little weird. The mainstream fitness industry is being pretty hard on the carbs right now, now, and here we are recommending that you pretty much fit as many carbs as a s you can into your daily calorie intake. Disregard this if it's your doctor who is indicating otherwise. For example, with epileptics an extremely low carb (ketogenic) (ketogenic) diet can be effective at minimizing the occurrence of epileptic seizures. Your doctor knows your situation best.

A couple decades ago your neighbourhood Richard Simmons would have been anti-fat. Right now your neighbourhood CrossFit box is probably anti-carb. It’s not that carbs are bad, it’s just their turn to sit on the hot seat. There isn’t any scientific evidence to suggest that they’re bad for your health or bad for leanly building muscle. Far from it. All of the longest living cultures in the world eat higher carb diets. Rice in particular is a staple food in several of the healthiest cultures, and oatmeal gives whey protein a run for its money as being the most popular bulking food in the world. If carbs scare you, remember that virtually every centenarian on the planet gets the vast majority of their calories from carbs, and virtually every successful bodybuilder will spend most of the year bulking on a high carb diet. There’s a reason why carbs are so healthy and effective. Carbs are where you get your fibre, which keeps your digestive system healthy. They contain tons of vitamins and minerals, preventing nutrient deficiencies. They contain incredibly healthy and poorly understood nutritional powerhouses like polyphenols and antioxidants and whatnot. They’ll also keep your energy levels high and your metabolism raging 131


and roaring, since a carb-heavy surplus will boost your metabolism instead of causing fat storage. They’ll improve your performance in the gym. They’ll help you build muscle. And they won’t make you fat. If you’re you’re getting fat the problem is probably too little protein, too many calories, or too many of those calories from fat. It’s very unlikely that it’s due to too many carb (unless too many carbs is what's causing the overly high calorie intake). intake).

Then comes the question of good carbs and bad carbs. Is there such a thing? Sort of. There are carbs that contain sugar or starch, and those are the ones that tend to get vilified, especially if they’re heavily processed, low in micronutrients and don’t contain fibre (like high fructose corn syrup). These carbs aren’t bad in moderation, but they should probably stay within your discretionary 20%. You should get the bulk of your carbs from a wide w ide variety of fruits, veggies, grains, dairy, dairy, legumes and other plants. The wider and more balanced your carb intake the better. Here are some ideas, but feel free to eat whatever you fancy. Great carbs to eat if you’re you’re trying to eat more calories:

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Grains (whole grain bread, muesli cereal, quinoa, etc.)

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Potatoes* (white, sweet, yellow, yukon, etc—they’re all healthy)

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Higher fat dairy (whole milk, 2% greek yogurt, kefir, kefir, etc.)

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Legumes (beans, refried beans, lentils, chick peas, hummus)

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Dense fruits (bananas, mangoes, grapes, etc.)

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Dried fruits (raisins, prunes, figs, dried cranberries, etc.)


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Honey and maple syrup (in moderation)

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Flour and floury things (in moderation)

Good carbohydrate sources if you’re trying to eat fewer calories: •

Vegetables (carrots, cauliflower, green beans, broccoli, lettuce, peppers, peas, p eas, etc)

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Potatoes* (white, sweet, yellow, yukon, etc—they’re all healthy)

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Oatmeal (and buckwheat)

• Juicy and fibrous fruits (peaches, plums, pears, watermelon, watermelon,

apples, oranges, etc) •

Berries (raspberries, goji berries, cranberries, blueberries, etc.)

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Lower fat dairy (skim milk, 0% greek yogurt, etc)

I put potatoes on both lists because they’re filling and satisfying yet most people still love to eat them when building muscle—myself included. As we discussed before, there's plenty of room for creativity here. Slicing ‘em up and baking them in the oven can remove some of the water and make them less filling. Adding olive oil or butter can increase the amount of calories they contain. I thus recommend slicing them up, covering them with a bit of olive oil, and tossing them in the oven. Oatmeal is another weird one. It’s extremely popular with bodybuilders who are trying to build muscle leanly, since it's a very cheap, easy to prepare and a nutritious carbohydrate source. It's really filling though, and it's much easier to eat a big bowl of rice than a big bowl of oatmeal. 133


So feel free to eat from both lists, being mindful mindful of how filling the different foods are to help you accomplish your individual goals.

How to Count Macros We’ve broken down your diet into calories and macronutrients, but we fully realize that you don’t pop open the cupboard and select pre-measured serving sizes of different macronutrients. Professional bodybuilders and athletes are extremely strict, counting their macros down to the gram. They’re often living within very tight ranges at all times, with only perhaps 5 grams of leeway for every macronutrient. Every food must be placed on the food scale, and tupperware containers must be brought to social events. You don’t need to be anywhere close to that accurate unless you’re you’re a type-A kind of dude who enjoys that kind of challenge. With Wit h modern technology though it’s a lot easier to be anal than it used to be. Bodybuilders used to calculate out their meals with a food scale, a calculator and a spreadsheet. Now you can just use a website that does all of the work for you. Tracking your calories online can be free, fun and stupid easy. Here’s our guide for tracking your calories online. online . If you want totally optimal and consistent results and you aren’t afraid to work a little harder for it, this is what I’d recommend. With weightlifting, calories and protein mastered, this is the best way to further upgrade your results. You don't need to do it forever either. If you calculate out even just a few days of what you you’re ’re eating, you’ll you’ll be able to see what your typical macronutrient breakdown is. From there just make some changes to improve it a bit. Switch whole milk for skim milk, trim down the oil here, add a banana there, toss in a handful of trail mix—whatever gets your macros in order. You may find you 134


have room for more steak, beer and ice cream, or you may find that you need to cut back and eat more veggies. Focus on the big picture and moving things in the right r ight direction. Several weeks from now do another round of assessments and adjustment again. If you’re going to all this trouble, I also recommend writing down some notes about how you feel. Macros are highly individual, and you may find you feel better or worse as you switch up your carb and fat intakes. Remember that your body doesn’t need perfection! Your body can draw energy from all of the different macronutrients, so there’s some flexibility here. Whatever you do, don’t go making rigid and unnatural meal plans. This isn’t a competition to see who can follow the most OCD diet, this is a muscle-building program. You want this new approach to nutrition to closely resemble your natural and preferred way of eating. The main difference between this and how you were eating before should be the results that your diet gives you, not how much fun eating is. Also, if this ever gets overwhelming overwhelming,, feel free to ditch the calorie counting. Big deadline looming at work? No worries, just go back to focusing on protein/ calories. You’ll still make fantastic progress that way.

Optimizing Micronutrients & Fibre There are very few foods that actively harm your body when eaten as part of a balanced diet. Even things like high fructose corn syrup aren’t harmful when eaten in moderation. The reason processed foods shouldn’t make up the bulk of your diet is twofold: first, they don’t tend to be rich in fibre or micronutrients, and second, sometimes they don’t affect hunger how they should. Some heavily industrialized foods, like industrial trans fats*, well, that’s 135


another story. Eaten in even relatively small quantities those can actually be actively bad for you, and that’s why in some countries they aren’t even considered a food source. You could make a similar argument against processed vegetable oils. *Natural trans-fat foods like the making of butter where the liquid oil emulsifies into a solid are fine. Anything else by wary of because the manufacturing goal is an extended shelf life, not your life.

Generally there are also some advantages to making your own desserts. Cookies made out of sugar, flour, eggs, oats and chocolate chips are a treat, sure, but there’s nothing all too awful in there. Cookies that are mass produced to be as cheap and everlasting as possible? Well Well industrialized soybean oil, boatloads of preservatives and trans fats are probably not something you want to be eating that much of. Same deal with things like french fries. You can make your own by slicing up some potatoes, p otatoes, tossing them in olive oil, onion powder, cayenne cayenne powder and salt, and then popping them in a 350° oven for half an hour or so. Those fries are pretty nutritious, even if you have them with a side of ketchup. ketchup. But the potatoes that are double deep-fried in processed vegetable oil at McDonalds are not.

MICRONUTRIENTS Given that a lot of people do get a lot of their calories from foods that aren’t rich in vitamins and minerals, micronutrient deficiencies can be quite common. A recent study published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition found that people following the four most popular weight loss diets—Atkins, South Beach, DASH and Best Life—were on average 56% deficient in the essential nutrients they analyzed. Not good. Goes to show 136


that this stuff isn’t easy. The only reason micronutrients are buried this deep in the eBook is because if you’re you’re eating a non-restrictive diet that includes a variety of different types of foods and you’re getting most of your calories from whole foods, well, chances are you’re already doing pretty swell in the micronutrient and fibre departments. We’re a weight gain program with a very non-restrictive approach to nutrition, so we’ve got a huge advantage. We want you eating a bigger variety and greater quantity of food. Since we’re more or less putting you on the exact opposite of a typical weight loss diet, the risk of running into nutrient deficiencies is much smaller. Great variety of food means greater variety of micronutrients, and more food means a great amount of those micronutrients. m icronutrients. This is our sneaky way of trying to keep you healthy without burdening you with tons of little details about vitamins and minerals. As soon as you start restricting things like carbs, gains, gluten, animal products, etc., you risk running into the vitamin and mineral deficiencies that those food groups provide. For some som e people these restrictions are unavoidable. A healthy diet is one that takes into account your allergies, intolerances, moral convictions, and, obviously, what your doctor is telling you. So when removing things from your diet you just need to be conscious of them. As soon as you yank out a broad food group you need to make sure you’re getting a good replacement in there. …But you do probably have a vitamin D deficiency if you don’t get a lot of sun or if you live in a higher-latitude country, and there’s not much you can do about that with your diet, since the best way to get it is from sunlight. Since we don’t all live that close to the equator and don’t all spend that much m uch time in the sun, a D-ficiency is pretty unavoidable. For more on vitamin D supplementation 137


you can jump the supplement section, but keep in mind that this falls under the purview of your doctor doctor..

FIBRE Fibre (fiber, for Americans), are large carb molecules that aren’t broken down by our digestive systems. Some are soluble (can be dissolved in water) and some aren’t. The soluble fibres can slow the speed of digestion due to their thickness, and they’re also great for the health of our arteries. Insoluble fibres don’t affect the speed of our digestion, but they’re great for our gut health. When we’re trying to get our systems digesting food impressively well and building all kinds of muscle, it’s incredibly important that we give our guts what they need to take care of business. How much is enough? About 10 grams per 1000 calories. So if you’re bulking on 3000 calories per day you’d want at least 30 grams of fibre per day. If you’re using something like an online calorie tracker it will probably calculate fibre out for you. If you’re doing this by hand, you may want to track your fibre intake for a few days by looking at labels and whatnot. A simple guesstimation is fine. Some great sources of fibre include:

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Veggies (broccoli, cauliflower, celery, spinach, onions, etc)

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Fruits and berries

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Mushrooms

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Beans and legumes

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Whole grains


Too much fibre?! Believe it or not, that’s a thing too. You can go a fair bit above the minimum, but beware if you’re noticing that your fibre intake is double or triple the minimum. This can lead to abdominal pain, bloating, diarrhea or even constipation. Too much fibre can also be detrimental to your digestive health and get in the way of nutrient absorption. And since fibre is so filling, this also makes it hard to eat enough to build muscle. So yes, you can eat too clean! This is actually more common than you’d think, especially among bulking vegans.

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Summary •

Get 80% or more of your calories from whole foods, and build your diet out of convenient and affordable foods that you enjoy.

•

Variety is good. No black and white restrictions are necessary (except (ex cept based on allergies, moral convictions, etc).

•

Protein. Try to eat at least one gram of protein per pound bodyweight per day (or 2.2 grams per kilo). Good proteins sources include: whey protein, eggs, fish, chicken

breast, milk, greek yoghurt, cottage cheese, pea/rice protein powder and a little red meat. Whole grains, beans, soy and nuts have smaller but still significant amounts of protein in them too. •

Fat. Limit your fat intake to about 0.6–0.7 grams per bound bodyweight per day when bulking. This will probably be 30% of total calories or less. This will help keep your gains lean. However, However, fat is also essential for your body to function, so don’t ever drop your fat intake lower than 0.4 0.4 grams per pound for extended periods of time, even when cutting. Good fat sources include: eggs, fatty fish, dairy, nuts, avocados,

cold-pressed olive oil, virgin coconut oil, avocado oil, macadamia nut oil, chia seeds, flax, dark chocolate, and fatty meat in moderation. The fats to avoid are trans fats and heavily processed vegetable oils—canola oil, soybean oil and such. 140


•

Carbs. Carbs aren’t essential, but for most skinny guys trying to build muscle they’re extremely beneficial. You You probably want to eat as many of them as possible. When bulking 2–3 grams per pound is great (or about 50% of total calories). This will help keep your gains lean. Good carb sources include: rice, whole grain bread, oatmeal, potatoes,

beans, fruits (blended too), fruit juices, veggies, honey, etc. •

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Fibre. Aim to get around 10g fibre for every 1000 calories you eat. If you eat a decent amount am ount of fruits, veggies, grains and/or legumes this should be fairly easy.

1 2

TIER 2 LIFESTYLE RESTING WELL

In the first tier of the lifestyle sections we covered how to make musclebuilding a priority in your life (at least for a small period of time). And that being consistent with your workouts, calories and protein will be enough to get you started building muscle. We also covered how to use your current motivation to strategically set up good habits to build a truly muscular physique that can only be attained through dedicated training. This will allow you to reach your long term goals even when your motivation waxes and wanes. We encouraged you to use accountability to force you to do the hard stuff. Stuff like lifting when you’re tired, or eating more food when you’re full. This will improve your odds of following the plan long enough for habits to develop. However this doesn’t make the program easy. When you introduce something challenging into your life it’s going to sap your energy faster than a Quebecer can collect maple sap. In this case your body will get stressed from working out. Your body will 142

TIER 2 LIFESTYLE: RESTING WELL

also be working on digesting a lot more food. You’ll be using energy to process all this new information. You’ll be trying to transfer things you understand in your head into bodily movements. And it'll feel a little awkward, just like that one and last time you went dancing on a Friday night. Adding all of these new things into your lifestyle at once can leave you feeling pretty overwhelmed. Eventually you’ll need a break from all this new stress—a chance to recover. If you’ve been hitting the gym and eating big consistently, you may have already dropped some other things from your life to prevent burning out. For example, I was using an app on my phone called Duolingo to learn French so that I could communicate better with my wife’s family in their own native language. I really do want to learn French and it really is an important goal of mine, but any time I start a new challenge I “forget” to use the app. I don’t mean to forget, I just notice it happens, in hindsight, every single time I try to improve my lifestyle. There’s no urgency to learning French. No accountability system forcing me to put it at the top of my priority list. It’s important to me, but there isn’t anything forcing me to do it now. This means that when anything urgent or exciting comes along… there goes my consistency. Et voilà pourquoi mon chat Jerry parle mieux français que moi. This is normal. And this may be happening to you too. Maybe you’ve noticed that a couple things have mysteriously disappeared from your schedule. That’s okay. You can bring them back into your schedule once this lifting and eating stuff is no longer a stressor—once it has become a part of your regular routine. If you’re still having trouble lifting and eating consistently though, I have a question for you. Do you want to build muscle and reap all of the 143


rewards—size, strength, looks, health, energy, mood, etc—more than any of your other short-term goals? If the answer is yes, add in some accountability.

Stress Isn’t Bad—But Chronic Stress Is Our culture has a negative view on stress. This is totally understandable, especially given how exhausted many of us are, however stress is a totally normal response in the body. When it comes to lifting we stress our muscles, ligaments, tendons, and bones with heavy weights. Our body recognizes that stress, so it sends in some help to relieve it. With regular stress of the right intensity, we can even cause beneficial adaptations. This allows us to better handle that type of stress in the future. This is how we build muscle. Stress elsewhere in your life is totally fine too. Putting in some long hours to get a big project launched in time is great. Once it’s launched, working a little less intensely to catch up on rest is totally fine. Maybe you could tell your boss that companies like 37 Signals do 4-day workweeks in the summer, and work a little harder in the winter.

However stress can also be harmful, if it’s too much at once or there’s no relief. Stress is best done in similar to short little sprints. Sprint then rest, sprintt then rest, etc. You don’t want to run a stress marathon. sprin marath on. Your Your body can’t go that long without having a moment to recover. When you hear people talking about the dangers of stress, this is the type of stress they’re talking about—chronic stress.

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Pressing The Reset Button on Stress There’s a great stress illustration that starts with a bucket representing your ability to handle stress. Water begins flowing into the bucket from a faucet above. This water represents all of the stress in your life constantly flowing in. This could be a mix of things: financial stress, long work days, relationship struggles, general anxiety, upcoming tests or work projects, health issues, working out, adjusting to a new routine, traffic, etc. Even just reading that list might be adding to the amount of stress in your bucket. These things don’t do n’t always always have to be “bad”. In fact, many of them are a re noble stresses. Perhaps you’ve been putting in a lot of time at work lately to finish up a project that you’re passionate about. Maybe you met someone amazing, and you’re wondering if they like you as much as you like them. Maybe you just started lifting weights—that’s a stressor too. None of those things are bad, but nonetheless the bucket is filling up quickly. The more full the bucket becomes, the more it will weigh you down. If the bucket is too full for too long it can cause a whole bunch of problems. The good news is that you can drill a hole in the bottom of the bucket. The better you are at relieving stress, the bigger the hole you can drill. If you can drill a hole big enough to match the water flowing in from the faucet above, the stress will never have a chance to accumulate. This begs the question: how can you drill a humungous hole into the bottom of your stress bucket? Nutrition, exercise and sleep. These are the fundamentals that your body needs to relieve stress. We’ve written a lot about nutrition and exercise so far, so that just leaves sleep.

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Sleep Is The Big Bouncer That Kicks Stress Out Do we really need to talk about sleep? I mean—do we not just walk over to our bedroom, shut off the lights, and fall asleep? After all, we do get sleepy. sleepy. So much so, that almost all of us will fall asleep every night. But in the same way that we get hungry but don’t always always eat well or eat enough, even though we all get tired we don’t always always sleep well or sleep enough. Getting a good night’s sleep is so incredibly important in so many ways, but our modern lifestyles are sabotaging our bodies’ natural ability to sleep well every single night. Give me a few minutes of your time to convince you that you should put a tiny bit of effort into sleeping better, to improve your muscle-building and overally energy levels. My goal is to motivate you to sleep so much, that by the end of the chapter you’ll be sound asleep.

WHY YOU NEED BETTER QUALITY SLEEP SLEEP Because without enough sleep… •

You’ll have a harder time building new muscle ( study study). ).

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You’ll gain fat more quickly (study ( study,, study study,, study study). ).

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You’ll have less willpower to make good decisions and to manage your mood (Willpower, 2012).

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Your skin will age faster (study ( study), ), and you’ll look worse (study ( study). ).

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You’ll be less morally aware (study ( study). ).

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You won’t be able to learn new things as well ( article article,, study study,, study study). ).


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You’ll be less creative (study ( study,, article article). ).

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Your risk increases for a ton of diseases, such as: strokes, obesity, heart attacks, and cancer.( cancer.(study study,, study study). ).

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Your immune system will be weakened (study (study,, study study). ).

How to Get to Sleep, Stay Asleep & Wake Up Energized Sleep experts define d efine a good sleep as when you fall asleep quickly, quickly, don’t wake up during the night, and wake up feeling refreshed. Feels like a dream come true, doesn’t it? So how do we get to sleep, stay asleep, and wake up feeling energized? Exercise is a good place to start. If you’re already following the program then you’re you’re already doing this. If your exercise is starting to become routine, you may have already noticed that you’re beginning to sleep better. People rarely talk about it, but exercise is the most inexpensive and simple way of improving your sleep quality (study (study,, study study). ).

GET OUTSIDE EARLY IN THE DAY—AND FOR AS LONG AS YOU CAN Daylight helps regulate the hormones horm ones that keep you alert during the day. day. These same hormones will go through a chemical conversion process that then helps us become sleepy and fall asleep at night. If you’ve ever gotten up bright and early to go camping or fishing, you may even have been ready to pass out as early as 8pm. Just don't get sunburnt. Many researchers studying this field claim that we’re living in a daylight deprived society. If you live in a higher latitude city that has less sunlight than normal, you may even want to supplement with extra light (like the Philips Go Lite)) and some vitamin D (talk to your doctor). This is especially true during the Lite 147


winter, when we have less sunlight.

SLEEP ENOUGH ON WEEKDAYS SO THAT YOU DON'T HAVE TO SLEEP IN ON THE WEEKEND As the lifting philosopher Dom Mazzetti once preached, you shouldn't have any weekdays, just strong days. Sleeping enough every single night will improve your life in a few ways. First, you won’t feel tired during the week. Being tired, grumpy and mentally sluggish are some of the short term downsides of sleep deprivation. Second, when the weekend comes around, you’ll get to enjoy two full days off, rather than two half-days off. Third, you’ll always be able to fall asleep at the right time. Most people start off Saturday and Sunday late, then stay up late into the night because they aren’t tired at the right time, then wake up tired on Monday because they couldn’t get to sleep on time. With a regular sleep schedule you’ll naturally start getting sleepy at the right time always. And you’ll naturally want to wake up at the right time always. This prevents the vicious sleep debt cycle from ever gathering momentum.

SLEEP AT LEAST 7.25 HOURS, BUT TRY OUT SLEEPING UP TO 9 HOURS Researchers can’t give a broad recommendation for the optimal amount of sleep, since it varies so much between individuals. However, the vast majority of people need at least 7 hours of sleep each night. In this study study,, where the participants were exposed to a proper amount of sun during the day followed by an appropriate amount of darkness at night, they wound up sleeping far longer than usual. Many experts recommend going to sleep and waking up without an alarm clock. You get up out of bed when you feel well rested and then see how long you were sleeping for. You may find that you feel well rested after 7 hours… or 148


perhaps closer to 9. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute writes that people given an unlimited time to sleep are usually sleeping between 8–8.5 hours a night, and that some people required up to 9 hours of sleep. Some research research shows that your genetics determine how much sleep you need. Dr. Neil Stanley, Stanley, an expert on sleep, writes that your sleep time is similar to a shoe size. Most people have fairly average sized feet, but if you’re someone with larger feet than average, trying to fit into size seven shoes will lead to a lot of o f avoidable grumpiness. However, Howev er, there’s no firm consensus here. Sleep neuroscientist Jim Horne says that everyone should start with 7.25 hours. He likens excess sleep to excess food for those overweight. You need a certain amount to thrive, and having an extra Coca Cola or hour of sleep might feel fantastic, but that doesn mean it's doing you any favours. Start with 7.25 hours if you're not getting that much yet, and try out sleeping a bit longer and keep track of how you feel.

GEAR DOWN AT NIGHT It takes most people a little bit of a cool down period before they can sleep. There are no black and white rules here, the wind down is up to your own personal preference. Be honest with yourself though. Going to an Alexisonfire concert, getting a Destiny Merciless Medal in the crucible (do people still play that game?), or watching the newest intense crime series on Netflix might not have the same effect on you as having a hot epsom salt bath, drinking warm peppermint tea, or reading a novel with the lights dimmed.

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DIM THE LIGHTS, DITCH THE PAD Your body has a few ways to figure out what time of day it is. The main way is by seeing how much light you’re exposed to. Bright and constant lights tell our body that it’s daytime. The light from iPads, phones, and computers are specifically designed to showcase vivid & accurate colours. They use a “blue” coloured light that mimics the colour of daylight. This colour temperature renders colours most accurately to our eyes. This is great while we’re at work, since it helps keep us alert and awake. awake. This is awful at night for the very same reason.

Studies have shown that reading a physical book allows you to get to sleep faster,, stay asleep, and wake up more rested compared to reading on the typical faster blue-coloured-light iPad by up to an hour! If you can’t—or don’t want to—avoid screens, you’ve got some options. F.lux is a free app that changes the hue of your devices to a much less aggressive amber/yellow colour, and can dim the screen for you. This mimics candlelight or firelight instead of daylight. Our bodies understand that these colours and brightness levels are nighttime light sources, so if you let Flux adjust the colour of your screens to line up with sunrise and sunset, this allows your body to understand what it should be doing. This should help you to start getting sleepy at the right time. As of writing this, Apple is finally developing a night time mode called Night Shift for their mobile devices. But there are still no real options for TVs—aside from becoming a bit weird and buying Gunnar glasses. Android users already have have a handful of options.

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KEEP YOUR BEDROOM COOL, BUT NOT COLD Research has been showing that you’ll fall asleep more easily if your bedroom is cool enough to use at least one sheet (and possibly a blanket). There’s no exact ideal temperature since our own genetics, health, age, body-fat levels, and the humidity of your bedroom all play a role. However, one study found that keeping your bedroom between 16–19C (60–66 Fahreinheit) is a good starting point. That’ll probably allow you to sleep with sheets and blankets. Those sheets and blankets protect you from environmental temperature changes, and this allows you to stay “in the zone” to stay asleep longer, and have a more restful sleep.

BLACK OUT YOUR BEDROOM If you can make out the stuff in your room when you open your eyes at 3:00am, it’s too bright. If you live in the city, I can almost guarantee you that you’ll need to black out your bedroom. Light pollution is still being studied, but it seems like it could negatively impact our health on top of affecting our ability to get to sleep—even though I swear, I’m not trying to stress you out more with this chapter. Blacking out your room is super important for sleep quality but it does present a problem in the morning, since you won’t be able to let the sun gradually and pleasantly wake you. If you wake up by an alarm, you can simply roll out of bed and open the blinds. If you want more of a gradual and enjoyable wake up, you you could use a lamp that slowly adds more light to your room like the Philips Wake-Up Light or the Philips Hue lighting system. The best, however probably unrealistic, would be able to afford motor-controlled blinds with a timer that opened them at sunrise.

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PRACTICE GOOD SLEEP HYGEINE Ideally you won’t use your bed for anything else but sleep and sex. We know this is pretty unrealistic if you live in a tiny apartment, but it’d be better to not watch TV in bed (which is especially troublesome because of the blue light), and definitely don’t eat chips in bed (unless that’s one of your bulking tricks). You can also make your bed in the morning to keep dust out of your sheets.

BUY A GREAT MATTRESS AND PILLOW Buying a great mattress and pillow doesn’t need to be expensive, even though you’ll spend 1/3 of your life sleeping on them. Check out SleepLikeTheDead. com for com for the latest latest breakdown on everything everything sleep related. related. New companies like Tuft and Needle can ship you next-level beds in a small box for a few hundred bucks.

Summary It’s important for you to find balance. Muscle craves consistency. It’s good to start off strong with tons of motivation and energy. But it’s important to quickly find a way to fit lifting, eating well, and quality sleep into your daily life with balance. And we know that melting away all that daily stress with a deep sleep will allow you to reap a heap of muscular gains. Try experimenting with some of these stratagies:

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Get enough sleep to reset stress. This will be somewhere between 7.25 7.25 and 9 hours for almost almo st everyone.

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Keep a regular sleep schedule throughout the whole week. If your work forces you to be up early during the week, try to get up


early on weekends too.

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Use lighting cues to feel your best. Get lots of sun and bright light during the day, dim and/or change the hue of your lights as the day ends, and total darkness at night.

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Take it easy before bed. When your bedtime is approaching start gearing down and start relaxing.

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Your bedroom is for sleeping/sex in your bed . Do other stuff in other places.


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TIER 3 SUPPLEMENTS IF, WHAT, WHEN & HOW

Now that we’ve covered the basics of training and nutrition we can venture into the mysterious and taboo realm of supplements. Before giving you our highly curated list of the most powerful supplements on the market, a cautionary tale. At a bony 130 pounds I was embarrassed to even be considering supplements. But at a bony 130 pounds I was certain that supplements were my only hope in hell. So I decided to make a deal with the devil. This may sound a little dramatic, but I was so far outside of the gym culture that I hadn’t even heard of anyone who was taking supplements. In fact, my roommate was an outdoorsy mesomorph who sometimes spoke about how dangerous, overpriced and pathetic supplements were. People who took supplements were cheaters who were willing to pay absurd amounts of money and jeopardize their health for the sake of vanity. vanity. He was naturally jacked, I told myself. He didn’t get it. He wasn’t coming from a place of scrawny desperation, so of course the idea of muscle-building supplements didn’t resonate with him. 155

TIER 3 SUPPLEMENT OVERVIEW

All of my other friends were out of shape and full of excuses about why they should stay that way way.. They were artsy and intellectual sorts who thought that fitness was for vain people, even though on some level I'm sure they knew that they would have benefitted from it. So I really didn’t want my friends finding out that scrawny little me was considering taking the supplement of supplements: supp lements: creatine. Creatine?! Yikes. Even the word creatine scared and excited me. After having secretly read about it online I thought it was the barely legal version of steroids. Nowadays a lot of the longer term health benefits of creatine are scientifically established. It’s not just a supplement for ambitious bodybuilders and athletes anymore. It’s even being researched as a way to prevent brain issues, like depression and Alzheimer’s. However, I had no idea about any of this. To me, creatine was the legal version of steroids. After doing a little bit of research I snuck off to a health food store. I really did sneak off. I waited until my roommates were both at a 4 hour university lecture so that I could take the hourlong bus and subwa subway y trip to the mall, get my creatine, and get back home before them. I didn’t want to have to answer any questions about where I had gone. The supplement store was in the hallwa hallway y connected to the mall’s subway subway stop. I had passed by it dozens of times, always tempted to go in. This time I wasn’t wasn ’t tempted—I didn’t want to go in at all. But I knew it would be worth it. I walked in as if I knew what I was looking for, making sure to avoid making eye contact with anyone. I really didn’t want to explain to the guy with biceps the size of my head that I was looking for creatine. Somehow he noticed the sweaty skinny guy in the corner. I tried to look the other way, way, but I think he took my lollipop physique as a call for help. 156


I nervously told the guy what I wanted: micronized creatine monohydrate, monohydrate, preferably Japanese, and preferably the Creapure brand. He seemed a little bewildered by my extremely specific request, but that didn’t deter him. He told me that micronized creatine monohydrate was a thing of the past. He explained that what I really wanted was, you know, effervescent creatine ethyl ester magnesium chelate that’s been pre-mixed with a proprietary blend of glutamine, ribose, sugar and protein to improve absorption and harmonize with my training. I may be exaggerating a bit here—the truth is that I didn’t understand a word word of what he was saying and definitely can’t remember it.

A $30 tub of creatine would have lasted me a few months. What he was suggesting was $150 for a single month. “No no,” I replied, my voice cracking. “I just wanted micronized creatine monohydrate.” I had read online about all these crazy concoctions and I knew that they weren’t any more effective than a simple creatine monohydrate. monohydrate. They also had none of the longer term safety guarantees. So what did I walk out of the store with? A $60 tub of NOxplode. An arginine supplement. It didn’t help me at all in any way and isn’t even remotely similar to creatine. You might be confused as to how I wound up buying a completely unrelated supplement. He had told me that it was pretty much the same thing as creatine, but far more effective, ultra-modern, and a top seller. However Howev er it was also completely useless. I then went to a department store, bought a couple pairs of boxers, hid the supplement at the bottom of the bag, smuggled it home, and hid it in the back of my closet. Before going to the gym I’d take it out of its hiding place, secretly have 157


a serving, and then head off to the gym, confident that I’d be making extra gains. This happened to be the transformation attempt where I got fat, but for the next couple months, before Jared started calling me “fat-Shane”, “fat-Shane”, I thought I was doing pretty well. This is because supplements are a waste of money without a proper diet and exercise plan in place. Think of supplements as the equivalent of having extra construction workers to build your muscle skyscraper. If you have a wrecking ball come through to clear a construction site (from the gym) and a huge pile of bricks to build with (from the kitchen), then extra workers can work wonders and help you build your skyscraper much faster faster.. However, However, if you don’t have a cleared construction site and you don’t have a huge pile of bricks, well, all you’re you’re doing is paying extra workers to stand around. In an effort to keep you from the same fate, this is our supplement guide. We’ve We’ve got absolutely no financial motivation to endorse or discredit any supplements. We’ve personally tried all of them, all of them are based on good research, all of them are legal (at least here in Canada), and as far as we can tell they’re perfectly safe. In fact, a lot of these supplements, like creatine, actually come with health benefits as side effects. Still, if you don’t feel comfortable taking them though, feel free not to. We certainly aren’t doctors. And keep in mind that you don’t need a single one of them to reach your goals.

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Buying Supplements Safely BUY FROM REPUTABLE BRANDS This isn’t the time to go bargain hunting. The big brand names you recognize actually produce better stuff here, since their products are constantly being tested teste d by third party labs. They have a lot to lose, both in terms of credibility and from lawsuits, so their products are actually quite reliable. Smaller companies often can’t afford testing, aren’t big enough to be tested by third parties, and don’t have much to lose as far as credibility and lawsuits go.

AVOID AVOID PROPRIET PROPRIETARY ARY BLENDS When you see “proprietary blend” the goal is to have you think “ahhh, this is fancy and experimental” but what it really means is “we cheaped out, didn’t include much of the expensive/effective stuff, and we don’t want you to know how little of it is in here”.

LOOK AT QUALITY RESEARCH The gold standard here is the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition (JISSN). If there are no studies showing that it’s effective there, the supplement probably isn’t even remotely effective.

CONSIDER THE MAGNITUDE OF EFFECT Lots of supplements “work” in that they produce a positive effect, but it’s rare to find a supplement that works well enough to produce a noticeable effect. If you don’t see a supplement on this list chances are it’s just not worth mentioning because the magnitude of effect is so small that the supplement is essentially worthless. Feel free to ask us about any supplements you’re curious about though.

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ALW ALWAYS CLEAR ALL THIS STUFF WITH YOUR DOCTOR This is a disclaimer, but it’s also a legitimately good idea. Some medications and supplements don’t go well together, together, some medical conditions and supplements don’t go well together. Be safe. Check first.

Understanding Supplements We’re going to tell you the most powerful supplements out there, along with their pros and cons. Before that though, here’s a quick breakdown of the different types of supplements. This should help you understand how they would fit into your lifestyle, and whether you’d you’d benefit from them or not.

MACRONUTRIENT SUPPLEMENTS Some supplements replace macronutrients that you can get from whole food. Whey protein is a lean protein source like chicken, maltodextrin is an easily digested starchy carbohydrate like rice, and fish oil is the healthy fat found in fatty fish. You can get these from foods, but supplements make things easier. The main way that these supplements help you build muscle is by helping you hit your macronutrient targets more easily.

MICRONUTRIENT SUPPLEMENTS You could also call these vitamins, and they’re designed to help you deal with vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Deficiencies can reduce your energy levels and testosterone production, so fixing deficiencies can bring your ability to build muscle back to baseline. A multivitamin is supposed to plug any weaknesses in your diet, ZMA is supposed to give athletes the vitamins that they lose by sweating excessively, 160


and vitamin D helps people who don’t get enough sun.

PERFORMANCE SUPPLEMENTS These "ergogenic" supplements improve your performance in the gym. Performing better in the gym can allow you to better stimulate your muscles. Most of the ingredients you’d you’d find in a pre-workout supplement or energy drink are performance enhancing supplements. Caffeine is perhaps the best all-around performance enhancing supplement, both in terms of effectiveness and safety.

MUSCLE-BUILDING SUPPLEMENTS These are usually the exciting ones, since they offer you something beyond what a good healthy lifestyle can give you. Even with plenty of sleep, plenty of sun and plenty of good food, these supplements will still allow you to build muscle more rapidly. Creatine is the most powerful legal muscle-building supplement currently on the market. It’s safe, healthy and extremely effective. Beta-alanine and HMB are other good examples. If you’re already a fit guy with a good diet who spends a lot of time outside, you’ll likely get the most benefit from a muscle-building supplement like creatine. If your diet and lifestyle are less than awesome, you you might get the most benefit from supplements that address your macronutrient and micronutrient challenges first, like whey protein, fish oil or vitamin D. D. If you train first thing in the morning or you feel like your energy levels are limiting your performance in the gym, you may get a lot of benefit from something like caffeine, which will banish those feelings of fatigue. We'll go over the various supplements and talk about the pros and cons 161


of each. All of them are optional, and whether you choose to take them or not is entirely up to you and your doctor.

The Five Beastliest Supplements There are lots of somewhat useful supplements on the market, so it all comes down to what your goals are, how much money you want to spend, and how much you enjoy taking supplements. These are the very effective supplements that line up perfectly with our goals—building muscle very quickly and leanly in a healthy way. You could consider these the “official” “ official” Bony to Beastly supplements.

CAFFEINE

Caffeine is the world’s most commonly consumed psychoactive drug, and with good reason—the stuff is seriously badass at improving mental and physical performance. It used to be banned by the Olympics because of how potent a 162


performance enhancer it was.

What kind of benefits can I expect? When it comes to weightlifting, weightlifting, caffeine can help you eek out an extra few reps, you won’t tire as easily, and you won’t feel like you’re you’re trying as hard (study ( study,, study study). ). Performing more reps will stimulate greater increases in muscle protein synthesis and lead to better muscular gains.

Are there any downsides? Drinking a cup or two of coffee every day is mildly beneficial as far as your longer term general health goes ( study study). ). However keep in mind that caffeine and coffee are not synonymous, and it's coffee that's associated with better health. This could be because of the caffeine, but it could also be because of the other nutrients founds in coffee. But while coffee is beneficial and caffeine is quite safe for people in general, this may not be true for you in particular. Some people metabolize caffeine slowly and poorly, other people metabolize caffeine quickly and well. Plus, everyone has a slightly different hormone and neurotransmitter makeup, and when it comes to things like caffeine even small differences can be significant. Caffeine makes some people feel superhuman and others feel twitchy, anxious and weird. It’s not for everyone. If you like it, use it. If you don't, don't. Caffeine also interferes with sleep quality when consumed within a few hours of your bedtime. If you lift at night, caffeine will likely do more harm than good.

The Classic Protocol: Keep it simple. Have a coffee before working out. You'll be doing what guys have been doing for centuries, consuming a delicious drink that's rich in nutrients and 163


a potent all-around performance enhancer. It varies, but each cup of coffee may contain something like 100mg of caffeine. If you need an extra boost, put an extra shot of espresso in there.

The Chemist Protocol. Caffeine is structurally the same in tea, energy drinks, pills and powders, so you can pick your favourite source. If improving your workout performance is your goal, and your doc is confident that you are robust enough for it, the benefits of pre-workout caffeine cap out at 200–400mg. If you also consume that much caffeine on rest days your body will acclimatize to it and you'll lose the performance benefits.

PROTEIN POWDERS There’s nothing all that magical about protein powders. They’re primarily just a convenience thing. If you get enough protein from whole foods then you don’t even need them. Most guys who eat meat, eggs and dairy will be able a ble to hit their daily protein goals quite easily. Why are protein powders so popular if most guys don’t need them? Because the convenience benefit really is significant. Protein powders are often cheaper than chicken, easier to prepare, quicker to consume, and easier on your appetite. Some protein powder marketers m arketers even claim that protein powder p owder tastes better in smoothies than canned tuna. Plus, if you’re a vegan or if your diet is naturally lower in protein, protein powder can be a gains-saver. So which powder do you choose? Whey protein is a classic for a reason. It’s the oldest and most thoroughly researched protein powder, and in every 164


category it tops the charts: it's easily digested, it's quickly digested, it's extremely anabolic because of its high leucine content, it contains calcium and other micronutrients, it's cheap, and it's minimally processed. It's a by-product when making cheese. Dairy farmers used to consider it waste and toss it out. Now it's dried and fed to the best athletes, bodybuilders and bikini models in the world. Here are your options:

Whey Protein Concentrate. It’s 80% protein by weight and contains a few dairy leftovers. That isn’t bad. In fact, that means there’s some calcium and stuff in there. A 30 gram scoop would have about 24 grams of protein and 6 grams of carbs. Since we aren’t trying to avoid carbs, that's perfectly fine. If you’re you ’re looking for bang for your buck, this is your best bet.

Whey Protein Isolate. Isolates are made using a more sophisticated process to isolate the protein, meaning it has fewer dairy leftovers. A 30 gram scoop would have 27 grams of protein in it and just 3 grams of carbs. It’s more expensive though, so you’re paying a premium for a 3 gram difference, and you aren’t exactly on a low carb diet here. Still, if you’re looking for quality, this is your best bet. Whey Protein Hydrolysate. This is a totally different beast. It’s essentially pre-digested whey protein. It’s heavily processed, very pure, very quickly digested, very expensive, and it tastes awful. However, since there are virtually no dairy leftovers, it’s also hypoallergenic. If you don’t handle diary well or have immune problems then this could be for you.

No Whey, Man! If for some reason whey doesn’t float your boat—allergies, 165


veganism, you don’t like the taste—there are a few different types of protein powder on the market. None are as cheap or healthy as whey, but they’re all fairly effective nonetheless. A rice/pea protein blend is always a good choice.

With low protein meals: A 30 gram scoop of whey taken with a lower protein meal will guarantee that you maximize muscle protein synthesis.

To hit your daily protein goal: Take however many scoops you need at the end of the day to hit your daily protein goal. In a workout shake: One or two scoops of protein powder works well in workout shakes. This guarantees that you get optimal muscle protein synthesis at the time where it will have the most impact. You You can combine the whey with maltodextrin for added benefits. You You could sip on it while working out or chug it at the end of your workout.

CREATINE MONOHYDRATE I know we started this supplement section off with a story about me failing to get creatine, but I did eventually manage to get my hands on some. Unfortunately, that's where the story ends. I'm what's called a "non-responder," meaning the benefits aren't as obvious for me. I used it for a month, didn't notice any change, and stopped using it. I went on to gain 50–60 pounds without it. Probably a poor 166


choice on my part. Just because I didn't notic anything doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't working. If I were to start over again I’d take creatine. Here's why:

It will make you bigger. It will draw water into your muscle cells, causing them to increase in size. That extra water retention will be inside your muscles, not under your skin so you won't look bloated. This isn’t why people take creatine though. People take creatine because once your creatine levels are heightened you can build new muscle more quickly. What kind of gains can you expect? If you build zero pounds of muscle without creatine, with creatine you you’ll ’ll still build zero pounds of muscle. If you’re you’re already building muscle though, it’s very effective. It may initially increase the rate that you build muscle by as much as 50%. Instead of gaining, say, six pounds of muscle over the next couple months, you may gain nine pounds of muscle. These accelerated gains will eventually slow back down, but you’ll still gain at an accelerated pace.

Will you lose muscle when you stop taking it? Yes and no. As your creatine levels slowly go back to normal over the course of a couple months you’ll very slowly stop holding onto that extra water. All of the extra muscle you built while taking creatine will stick around though. Oftentimes guys will immediately gain a few pounds when they begin taking creatine, build muscle at an accelerated pace for a little while afterwards, and then not lose a single pound when they stop taking it.

Creatine is the broccoli of muscle. This isn’t one of those supplements hidden behind the counter and covered in warning labels because it’s so mysterious, 167


experimental and extreme. It has more in common with broccoli than steroids. I’m not even kidding. It's the muscle-building supplement that’s so wholesome, so healthy and so effective that you should probably get your whole family on it. I know that might sound crazy, crazy, but let me explain. It reduces blood glucose levels, it increases physical conditioning, it reduces fatigue, it increases strength, and it increases lean mass. All of these things are fantastic for your general health. There are other benefits as well. One study found that suffering from a creatine deficiency reduces brain performance, and other studies have been pointing to creatine as a way to help prevent Alzheimer’s and treat depression. Learning about all of that surprised me. I remember being scared of it. I’m not sure where the stigma against it came from though, since it’s not supported by any evidence whatsoever. Maybe there's a stigma about it because it's “too good to be true,” or because it could seem like an unfair advant advantage age (like caffeine). Some gurus have speculated that it could cause kidney damage, but decades of research haven't found any proof of that. The only downside that seems proven is that if you take too much of it without also consuming enough water you can get a stomach ache. Not in a scary way though—this stomach ache would be harmful in the longer term or anything. Just an indigestion sort of thing. To prevent it, you'd drink more water or split up your dose into two. Oh! And this concern came up in the community a couple of times: it’s also possible that it make make balding people bald a little more quickly. This hasn’t been shown in any studies, but creatine does increase the same masculinizing testosterone testosterone hormone (DHT) that causes some guys to go bald. This provides a possible mechanism for creatine to accelerate baldness in people who are already balding. We've had a few balding guys decide against 168


it for this reason. Athletes take creatine to improve their performance, bodybuilders take it to improve their gains, and it seems like in the future people may even take it for their general health. In fact, many m any have already started!

Which type of creatine is best? The most thoroughly researched type of creatine is creatine monohydrate. Despite many clever marketing attempts, none of the other various forms of creatine have been shown to be more effective. It also happens to be the cheapest and most common, so opting for simple creatine monohy monohydrate drate is a no-brainer.

The Caretaker Protocol. 5 grams per day along with breakfast. You can mix it with water, milk, coffee, your workout shakes, smoothies, eggnog, etc. So long as you get your 5 grams in each day it will work its wonders. This is what I would do. The Enthusiast Protocol. 20 grams per day divided up into 5 gram doses. This would get your levels up to max in a month instead of a week, since you’d be taking it four times as often. After that first week you’d take 5 grams once per p er day to maintain your elevated elevated levels. This is a popular approach, however however there’s no reason to think it’s more effective than loading up steadily.

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VITAMIN VITAMIN D Vitamin D is very intriguing. Depending on your situation, it could either do absolutely nothing for you or be a total game changer. This is because it’s the prototypical vitamin sort of supplement that only works if your diet/lifestyle isn’t adequate. If you’re deficient, then bringing your vitamin D levels back up to the optimal level can significantly boost your testosterone production and insulin sensitivity, improve your cardiovascular health, increase your bone density, improve your mood, and improve longevity. This becomes a muscle-building powerhouse. Vitamin D is the “sunlight vitamin,” and we synthesize it naturally when our skin is exposed to the sun. While we’re ‘supposed’ ‘supposed’ to get it from the sun, we can also get small amounts from eggs, fish and dairy. The problem is that what we get from food usually isn’t enough to make up for the fact that most of us live like vampires. You’d need to drink 20–30 glasses of vitamin D fortified milk per day to get the recommended dose.

If you don’t spend a significant amount of your week kickin’ back on the Caribbean beach be ach in a speedo, speed o, chances are you’ve got a D-ficiency. D-ficiency. The vast majority majori ty of people in North America (79%) and Europe have a vitamin D deficiency d eficiency.. Here in Canada it’s recommended to supplement with 800–4,000 IU each day. This can be especially helpful in the winter, when the days are short, we spend our times indoors, and when we're outside we’re shielded from the sun by our snowsuits and balaclavas. Most of the research shows the healthy upper limit to be closer to 10,000IU/day, so even the high end of that recommendation is conservati conservative. ve. 170


Since this is highly situational, we recommend going to your doc, getting your levels tested, and supplementing accordingly.

Sample Protocol: 3,000 IU of vitamin D taken with breakfast during a cold Canadian winter. winter.

MALTODEXTRIN This is one of those supplements that doesn’t get a lot of attention because it’s only useful for the 3% of people who are actively trying to gain weight. If you’re you ’re trying to gain weight, you’ve you’ve surely seen the marketing for it. I know this supplement may sound unfamiliar, but this is usually the primary p rimary ingredient in weight gainer and meal replacement supplements. Most weight gainer supplements are packed full of maltodextrin, and most weight gainer supplements are loftily priced and covered with wild claims. You ou'd 'd think maltodextrin was something crazy and expensive, but it’s actually a little alarming how cheap it is. It's so cheap that you may think you were buying a tub of flour… and you’d be correct! Maltodextrin is a glucose polymer. It’s made up of many glucose units bound together. It’s a starch, like flour, rice and potatoes. Unlike flour, rice and potatoes though, it can be added to protein shakes and consumed in liquid form. This makes it easier to consume in large quantities without your stomach feeling like it’s going to explode. It’s also very low in fibre, so it’s easy on the appetite and will clear out of our stomachs relatively quickly. I know this is the supplement that sumo wrestlers have been dreaming about but, perhaps surprisingly, if you take it at the right time it can actually 171


minimize your chances of getting fat. If you have it while lifting weights your

muscles will be very insulin sensitive, if you have it alongside whey you'll be spiking a huge amount of muscle protein synthesis, and even in a calorie surplus carbs aren’t very easily converted into body fat. Yes, you could add a little bit to smoothies and whatnot on rest days, and that wouldn wouldn’t ’t be so unlike having having a smoothie with a side of rice. Not a bad idea, but adding an extra fruit or some oats instead would in many cases be a little better for you.

Just to make sure we weren weren't 't missing anything anything,, we asked the leading nutrition researcher in this particular field, James Krieger. He answered, ”post-workout carbohydrates shouldn’t cause you any trouble in the long-run as you are extremely insulin sensitive after training. As long as you maintain a good diet, good activity, keep your body fat low, and your fasting blood sugar remains normal, then you should be fine.”

The Tester Protocol: Begin by using 30 grams of protein powder (about one scoop) and 60 grams of maltodextrin (about two scoops, if you use the protein scoop). This shake is 360 calories. The Beast Protocol: If you do the Tester Tester Protocol for for a week and feel fine, you have unlocked the option to use a double dose: 60 grams protein powder + 120 grams maltodextrin. This shake is 720 calories. The Sumo Protocol: After another week, you have unlocked the option to use a triple dose (90 grams whey + 180 grams of 172


maltodextrin). This shake is a whopping 1,080 calories, and only for the true hardgainer.

Supplements For Guys Who Like Supplements If your goal is to build muscle as rapidly as possible, we’d recommending stopping with those five beastly supplements above. Those will do a fanastic job of helping you pack on the pounds. Howeve However, r, if you like the idea of taking supplements and you have some extra time and money money,, here are some more!

BETA-ALANINE Studies show that it’s moderately effective at improving the rate that you can build lean muscle. Like creatine, it’s also being researched as a general health supplement. (study (study,, study study)) Beta-alanine is actually sort of like creatine’s bratty younger brother. It’s not as powerful but far more desperate for attention. With that said, it’s a lso far from worthless—it’s actually quite promising when it comes to increasing anaerobic muscular endurance in the bodybuilding rep ranges (8–12), which can then carry over into stimulating greater muscle growth. When it comes to building muscle the research is pretty young but pretty badass. Guys who were college level football players or wrestlers were put on an eight week workout program with the goal of gaining muscle mass and strength. The placebo group gained a pound of muscle, while the beta-alanine group gained two pounds of muscle. (study (study)) It could potentially have applications when it comes to maintaining lean mass while burning fat, too. In that same study, healthy male college wrestlers 173


were put on an eight week workout program with the goal of losing weight while gaining strength. The placebo group lost a pound of muscle, while the beta-alanine group gained a pound of muscle. The other human studies were done into women doing high-intensity interval training. They gained modest amounts of muscle too … but we can’t really infer much from that.

If you’re living the rap video lifestyle—lots of money to throw out the window of your escalade— then beta-alanine is a cool supplement to toss some bills at. Otherwise, stick to the basics.

Sample protocol: Like creatine, you simply take it every day at any time. The athletes in the study above took 4 grams per day, which seems to be a safe and effective dose.

FISH OIL (OR ALGAE) You don’t need to supplement with fish oil if you eat a lot of fatty fish and already get a lot of omega 3’s, EPA and DHA in your diet. If you eat fatty fish a few times per week you’re covered. But, as with vitamin D, it’s very rare to find people who actually get enough of this stuff without supplements. As far as body composition goes, fish oil performed well in studies on mice, so it was moved forward to human testing. Human studies are now finding that fish oil may help increase muscle size. It may also help us stay lean. The research is still young. However, fish oil does have very well researched and potent health benefits. (Several hundred studies.) The research shows that it reliably 174


increases feelings of wellbeing, it’s incredibly good for your cardiovascular health, it effectively reduces inflammation, it helps prevent cancer, it can improve intelligence, and it can reduce symptoms of depression. It seems to make anti-social male prisoners nicer too. It’s considered one of the healthiest supplements out there but, as with everything, it’s always wise to check with your doctor. This one is anti-inflammatory, so it can interact with some medication. If you want to improve your health while getting some extra fat calories, fish oil is great. I wouldn’t take it with the goal of improving muscle size though because, err, if they can’t even tell if it helps, well, the effects are not very dramatic. There are a few different types you could take. There’s “fish oil” , which is oil from sardines, mackerel, anchovy, salmon, cod, etc. There’s also krill oil, but it’s expensive. And there’s seal oil, however seals are very cute due to their large-eyed baby-like faces. This gives us a biological imperative to look after their wellbeing, as you would a baby, puppy or kitten.

Sample protocol: 3 tsp NutraSea + D taken first thing in the morning. Arguably the two healthiest supplements bundled together, together, and by a reputable company to boot. That gives you 3,000IU of vitamin D combined with optimal amounts of omega 3’s, DHA and EPA. If you’re vegan go for Vegetarian DHA.

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MULTIVITAMINS It usuall makes more sense to eat a nutritious diet that includes a wide variety of foods. With that said, if you’re not confident that you’re eating a wide and varied diet you may want to grab one of those tho se basic vitamins vita mins you’d see at the pharmacy pharm acy.. While they often under-dose, and while they may not necessarily help in any significant way … they’ll probably help more than they hurt. They’re actually really are pretty good at reducing common vitamin and mineral deficiencies.

ASHWAGANDHA ASHWAGANDHA A crazy new study just came out in a very credible journal about an anxiety supplement that seems to be able to produce better gains than creatine (study ( study). ). Ashwagandha is a relatively new supplement that’s typically used to reduce feelings of stress, but a November 2015 study has just come out showing that the stress reducing effects of ashwagandha (Indian ginseng)—an increase testosterone production and a reduce cortisol production—can increase strength, limit fat storage, and accelerate the pace that your body can build muscle. To To give you an idea of the magnitude of these effects, the study found a 15% greater increase in testosterone and a 44 pound greater increase in bench press strength compared to the placebo group. Even when factoring in the error rate the differences are still quite significant. These findings are remarkable, but given what’s known about its effects on cortisol and testosterone… not unexpected. The researchers chose to study this supplement in a muscle-building context precisely because it seemed well suited for it. What’s also interesting is that most of the muscular gains were in the upper body. The ashwagandha group saw huge gains in their chest and arms, almost no gains in their legs. 176


If this study can be replicated, and this supplement proves safe in the longer term, ashwagandha could become a new staple muscle-building supplement. There have been some longer term studies showing that ashwagandha is safe, however one study participant in one longer term study became more interested in sex and started having hallucinations. More research is needed.

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TIER 3 SUPPLEMENTS SUPPLEMENT PROTOCOLS

Without a doubt there are five supplements that stand above the rest: caffeine, creatine, protein powders, maltodextrin and vitamin D. There are some other useful supplements out there too—beta-alanine, fish oil, multivitamins—but most of the supplements you you'll 'll run into won't help you. They're for people trying to lose weight, there's there's no evidence to support the claims, or they're unsafe. So now that you know which supplements work, you may still be wondering how exactly all this stuff fits together. Do you put creatine in your workout shake or in your morning coffee? How do you make this stuff taste better? What should you pick up at the supplement store? At the grocery store? Let’s say you’re a guy who’s interested in building muscle as quickly and leanly as possible, you’ve cleared this stuff with your doctor, and you have a little bit of discretionary income to spend on supplements. Here are some supplement protocols that you may enjoy.

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TIER 3 SUPPLEMENT PROTOCOLS

The Beastly Workout Shake This workout shake is the single most effective nutrient timing and supplement supp lement protocol combined into one. We rolled out the “the classic” workout shake when we launched the program. It's a miserable drink that produces wonderful results. Since then, members have been eagerly trying to refine the drink to make it a little less miserable, a little more m ore wonderful. Most of these shakes provide 720 calories from protein and carbohy carbohydrates, drates, however you can cut the amount of protein and carbs in half if the drink is too much to bear, or increase the dosage if it helps you hit your daily calorie, carb and protein targets. For all of them, simply mix the ingredients up with a bit of water and sip on it while you rest between sets. That sounds simple, but even preparing this drink is surprisingly tough. If you don't shake the drink well enough the powder will form into clumps, creating nasty little powder bombs in your drink. This is a common issue, and there are workout shake bottles with little whisks built into them. These are great, but even an empty pickle jar will work in a pinch. If you're having trouble breaking up the clumps, try rotating your hand very quickly and forcefully with your forearm muscles instead of using your biceps to shake the bottle up and down. As for what to put inside your shaker, pick one of these:

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THE CLASSIC 60 grams of flavoured protein powder + 120 grams of maltodextrin + 5 grams of creatine monohydrate. The protein will help you hit your daily protein goals while guaranteeing that you maximally stimulate muscle protein synthesis. The maltodextrin will help you hit your daily carb goals, and it will also create a beneficial carb/calorie cycling situation. Creatine can be taken at any time, but it's especially well absorbed when taken alongside quickly digested protein or carbs. These ingredients all work together synergistically, combining into something that's more powerful than each taken individually individually.. 4 grams of beta-alanine could be added as well.

Flavour: 0.25 / 5 Muscle: 5 / 5 Appetite: 5 / 5 Health: 3 / 5 Budget: 5 / 5

THE HIGH SCHOOLER A litre of low fat chocolate milk. Admittedly not as fancy as a bunch of supplements. It's also not quite as high in calories. However However it is still extremely effective—especially effective—especial ly if your mother buys your groceries. Flavour: 5 / 5 Muscle: 4 / 5 Appetite: 2 / 5 (fewer calories) Health: 4 / 5 Budget: 4 / 5 180


THE VEGA-BEAST Combine 60 grams of pea/rice protein blend, 120 grams of maltodextrin, and 5 grams of creatine. Vegetarian Vegetarian protein powder is usually a little more expensive, bulky and processed, but it's still extremely effective. Most importantly, no beasts were harmed in the making of o f this beastly drink. Flavour: 0.25 / 5 Muscle: 5 / 5 Appetite: 4 / 5 Health: 3 / 5 Budget: 3 /5

THE SWAMP BEAST Combine 60 grams of unflavoured whey, 120 grams of maltodextrin, 5 grams of creatine, and 10 grams of spirulina. This tastes awful—like a swamp that a Sasquatch just finished bathing in. The spirulina adds in some extremely nutritious micronutrients while improving your ability to process carbs though. This is Shane's personal favourit favouritee variant. Flavour: [error: 1587]* Muscle: 5 / 5 Appetite: 5 / 5 Health: 4 / 5 Budget: 3 /5 *It seems like using a negative value broke the code. We're We're working on fixing this.

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THE HIGH ROLLER 50 grams of unflavoured whey protein, 120 grams of maltodextrin, 5 grams of creatine, a scoop of wonderfully flavoured BCAAs (7g or so). This is actually somewhat delicious and provides a possible slight muscle-building benefit, but at the cost of being far more costly. Flavour: 1.5 / 5 Muscle: 5 / 5 Appetite: 5 / 5 Health: 3 / 5 Budget: 1 / 5 The theoretical possible muscle-building benefit is tiny enough that I'm guessing this variant only rose to popularity because of the pleasant flavour boost. This gave rise to…

THE KOOL-BEAST Combine 60 grams of unflavoured whey, 120 grams of maltodextrin, 5 grams of creatine, and a serving of Kool-Aid or Gatorade to improve the flavour. This makes the Kool-Beast taste taste a little bit better than most of the options. Flavour: 2 / 5 Muscle: 5 / 5 Appetite: 5 / 5 Health: 3 / 5 Budget: 4 / 5

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THE AUSTRALIAN BEAST Combine 60 grams of chocolate flavoured whey, 120 grams of ground up oats* and 5 grams of creatine. This makes the workout drink nutritionally similar to having a bowl of oatmeal—very nutritious, but not as easy on the appetite. Marcel, our highly successful down-under member, popularized this approach, ap proach, and it caught on with a few other Australian guys in the community. Flavour: 1 / 5 Muscle: 5 / 5 Appetite: 3 / 5 Health: 4 / 5 Budget: 4 / 5 *You *Y ou can grind the oats up using a coffee bean grinder if you can't find pre-ground ones.

THE LAZY BEAST Buy a pre-made weight gainer. gainer. Serious Mass or something—maybe cookie dough flavoured. It might cost a little more and not be quite as customizable or pure, but it’ll taste a little better and reduce your kitchen clutter. Flavour: 2 / 5 Muscle: 5 / 5 Appetite: 5 / 5 Health: 2.5 / 5 Budget: 2 / 5

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THE VITA-BEAST Combine unflavoured whey, whey, 120 grams of maltodextrin, 5 grams of creatine, and a flavoured multivitamin powder. (Our favourite is Citadel Nutrition’s Multivitamin Powder.) Powder.) This will boost the micronutrient m icronutrient profile of the drink dr ink while also improving the flavour. Flavour: 2 / 5 Muscle: 5.1 / 5 Appetite: 5 / 5 Health: 5 / 5 Budget: 4 / 5 Spirulina can be added to this for bonus points.

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-Workout Pre -Workout

Shakes

JUST COFFEE This supplement protocol doesn’t have a fancy name because you are not a fancy person. Simply have a mug of black coffee before hitting the gym. The caffeine will perk you up, the coffee is quite nutritious. Flavour: 5 / 5 Energy: 4 / 5 Health: 5 / 5 Budget: 4 / 5

HYPHY MUD This drink was popularized by the infamous bodybuilder Kali Muscle. He made it out of non-supplement ingredients… because that’s all he could get in jail. This also works well for high school kids who need to get their “supplements” at the grocery store. Combine 1–3 teaspoons of instant coffee with a cup of Coca-Cola. Flavour: ??? Energy: 4 / 5 Health: 3 / 5 Budget: 4 / 5

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THE ENERGY ADDICT Buy a premade pre-workout drink powder or energy drink. Tier One is the highest quality and most evidence-based pre-workout supplement on the market while also being reasonably priced, but any pre-workout or Red Bull sort of energy drink will work well. These are usually pretty expensive and don’t contain any/ many calories. Considering they don’t provide a large muscle-building benefit over coffee, this is really only for guys who have some money lying around. Flavour: 5 / 5 Energy: 5 / 5 Health: ??? / 5 Budget: 1.5 / 5

THE MUSCULAR STRAIGHT-EDGE RAVER. Take a caffeine pill or two half an hour before you go to the gym. Very cheap, very effective. Make sure to drink water! Flavour: n/a n/a Energy: 5 / 5 Health: 3 / 5 Budget: 5 / 5

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Daily Supplements You may want to have 5 grams of creatine every day to boost muscle growth, a tablespoon of fish oil to improve general health, and/or a 3000 IU serving of Vitamin D to help optimize testosterone production. You'd have all three with breakfast every morning. If you have any questions, you’d like to discuss any supplements that aren’t mentioned here, or you want to see what other Beastly dudes are taking, here’s the place for that. that .

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TIER FOUR: MODERN SCIENCE

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TIER 4 LIFTING OPTIMIZING YOUR LIFTING

Now that you’ve been in the gym trenches for a while, labouring away, we figure you may enjoy learning more about further progressing and further optimizing your training. In this section, for your literary and muscle building pleasure, I’ll be discussing the finer details of lifting like a true beast. Some old lifting techniques have stood the test of time, others have crumbled under the scrutiny of modern research. Some new lifting techniques are allowing lifters to become bigger and stronger than ever before, others are ineffective, transient trends. In this section we’ll be giving you some tools that you can use to improve your results in the gym, debunking some som e common lifting myths, and discussing some exciting new weightlifti weightlifting ng research. First, we’ll begin by explaining exactly how and why a muscle grows.

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TIER 4 LIFTING SCIENCE

We We Three M’s: M’s: How Muscle is Built There are three ways a muscle adapts to stress. Since each begins with an “M,” these have become known among hypertrophy researchers as the three M’s of muscle. It’s important to start here, as these terms allow us to talk about the pros and cons of different routines.

MECHANICAL TENSION Lifting a weight through a given range of motion. This is the true heart of weightlifting. The more weight you can train your body to lift through a larger range of motion, the bigger and stronger you will become. The biggest, strongest men in the world know this, and this is why their training revolves around their heavy strength lifting. This is true for classic lifters like Arnold, who was winning powerlifting contests before he even began bodybuilding. It’s true for modern natural bodybuilders like Layne Norton as well, who holds powerlifting world records. It’s even true for untest untested ed Olympians like Ronnie Coleman, who is known for how much he can squat. Across every muscle-building category, the best lifters are those who are strong at the big lifts.

MUSCLE DAMAGE Muscle damage is when you cause small micro-tears in your muscles by doing a relatively high volume of resistance exercise. For the inexperienced trainee, just a couple goblet squats can lead to a severe decrease in stair climbing performance, making it difficult to even return home. For the experienced trainee, it might take far more sets of far heavier lifts. Eventually Eventually a lifter may be dedicating and entire workout to training just a single muscle group in order to get enough muscle damage to produce a hint of soreness.

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METABOLIC STRESS If you keep constant tension on the muscle long enough, keep your rest times between sets strict, feel the burn, and emphasize building up a muscle m uscle ‘pump’— this is called metabolic tension. Metabolic stress causes an acute hormonal response and it will stimulate muscle growth. It does it pretty well, too. That burning “pump” is the buildup of metabolites and lactic acid. Since metabolic stress lets you really feel the burn, you really feel your muscles working, and it’s really great for building up a mind-muscle mind-m uscle connection . It will also cause the body to put more workers and fuel in the muscle cell so that those cells can do more work, and this will also lead to a size increase. Keep in mind, within every style of lifting all three M’s will occur. However, the emphasis will be dictated by the method you choose. Strength training will emphasize mechanical tension, bodybuilding will emphasize metabolic stress, CrossFit will emphasize muscle damage, and a fully optimized routine will strategically strategicall y optimize all of them.

Power: Can It Be Used to Gain Size? It has been said that lifting explosively is a fantastic way of developing your fast twitch muscle fibres, the ones with the most potential for growth. Studies have now show that most of the benefit of lifting comes from the concentric action, especially when done with vigour. This means that time spent lifting the weight explosively explosively will lead to more muscle gain, making ma king time spent during the eccentric phase less useful for the pure p ure purpose of muscle m uscle building. Long eccentrics can be valuable when initially learning a lift, or retraining a movement, however, however, once your form is solid, lifting with faster eccentrics and 191


explosive concentrics is the best way to stimulate muscle growth. Here are some guidelines when applying this to your training: •

Be sure you have no history of unstable joints, or serious injuries with the exercises you choose. If you do, we recommend adding postural exercises into your warm ups until you are sturdy enough to undertake some riskier training.

•

While you are lowering the weight quickly, be sure to You ou are guiding and controlling the weight as maintain control. Y you lower it, not recklessly throwing it down.

You can utilize this tempo with any of the three M’s. For example, you can start the workout with 3 heavy sets of 5 to stimulate Mechanical Tension (e.g. heavy deadlifts), then 3 moderately heavy sets of 12 with an exercise that causes more Muscle Damage (e.g. walking lunges) then finish with 3 sets of 15–20 to stimulate Metabolic Stress (e.g. kettlebell swings). Godspeed, my son!

Resting Between Sets: Laziness or Cleverness? Since muscles are best built when stimulated maximally during the concentric phase, it makes sense that we want to rest enough to allow this to happen. Especially with big lifts like the squat, bench and deadlift, where your fuel supplies are drained in a hurry. While resting longer is the best way to make progress, as well as ensure a safer workout, it has also been shown that supersets can improve lifting performance. The important part here is to make sure you 192


do a lift that uses a different set of muscles, so not to fatigue the muscles used in the first lift. Here is an example:

A1: Deadlift A2: Bench Press

Even though you do use the same muscles in each lift, the degree to which you use your lower body versus your upper body is different enough to allow a complementary effect. Take your time, destroy your reps.

Bodybuilding vs. Powerlifting By now it should be clear that heavy weightlifting is a required to build muscle. As you move from the anaerobic muscle-building rep range into the aerobic range, your body stops building muscle and starts improving blood flow instead. But “heavy-ish” encompasses both bodybuilding training (bodybuilding) and powerlifting training (strength training). So which is best for building muscle, and which is best for building strength? There’s a myth that strength training doesn’t yield as much growth as bodybuilding. That’s not true. If volume is equated, strength training provides just as much growth as bodybuilding bodybuilding.. Dr. Schoenfeld’s 2014 study proved this (study study). ). The reason strength training isn’t optimal for developing size is because you’d need to perform several times as many sets, and those sets would be way heavier and harder ha rder on your body. body. To To equate volume, volume , after all, a powerlifter would woul d be doing ten sets of three reps (thirty reps), and a bodybuilder would be doing 193


three sets of ten reps (thirty reps). The bodybuilder would be done inside ten minutes and have a nice muscle pump to show for it. The risk of injury would be super low, and he’d recover quickly. The powerlifter would have a rough time though. He has far more sets to do, and since his heavy sets are so incredibly taxing on the body, he’d need to rest several minutes between each set. It would likely take over an hour to finish even just that one exercise, the risk of injury would be higher, and it would be very difficult to recover from. The Schoenfeld study proved this also. The powerlifters were were training for far longer, were feeling far more burned out, and were running into issues with joint pain. So you can see that the bodybuilder could finish a full workout inside of an hour and be ready to lift again a couple days later. The powerlifter would be spending his entire day in the gym, and he’d be a wreck for days afterwards. While they might technically get the same amount of muscle growth, it’s easy to see why bodybuilding is best for developing muscle size. There’s another “myth” “myth” that bodybuilding doesn’t yield as much strength as powerlifting. This depends on how you define strength. Let’s look at the legendary squat competition between Tom Tom Platz, the bodybuilder with the most impressive legs ever, ever, and Dr. Fred Hatfield, who can squat over 1,000 pounds—a world record. Tom Platz, from a career of bodybuilding, has far far larger legs. Dr. Hatfield looks like a chicken next to him, but has spent his entire career developing his powerlifting strength. Who wins? You’d think that the powerlifter would win, right? After all, he holds a world record in the squat. And you’d be right. Mostly. If it’s a one rep squat competition, Hatfield should win (and he did). However, if it’s a twenty rep squat competition, Platz should win (and he did). You can see that bodybuilders can be “stronger” than powerlifters, just 194


with higher rep ranges. This is a good example of how bodybuilding actually does develop strength incredibly well. Just a different kind of strength. It’s also a good example of how strength training is required to fully develop your max strength, potentially allowing you to become stronger than guys who are far larger than you—at least in lower rep ranges. So even with the goal of getting big and strong, the intensity with which you lift can change the type of strength you develop, and the ease with which you put on size. This raises a good question. Do you want to get good at lifting heavy things once, like a powerlifter, or do you want to get good at lifting moderately heavy heavy things a few times, like a bodybuilder? There’s a bit of a false dichotomy there though, because training for both is best. Bodybuilding is best for developing muscle size quickly and safely, and developing larger muscles gives you far more strength potential. Strength training is fun and athletic, and best for developing max muscle strength. That strength and athleticism can then help you lift heavier loads with your bodybuilding, improving the amount of muscle mass you can gain. That extra mass then improves your strength potential, making you a better powerlifter… and so on and so on. So you can see that both intensities work together synergistically. This isn’t just theoretical, it’s been shown to be true in randomly controlled trials as well. González-Bodillo found that powerlifters who switch out some of their heavy sets for lighter bodybuilding sets see greater strength gains (study (study). ). This should also make their workouts not just more effective, but also shorter and safer, too. too. This is why we begin each workout with strength training, but keep the strength training volume fairly low. We then spend the rest of the workout getting our extra volume from bodybuilding. This makes us optimally big, 195


strong, athletic and versatile without needing to spend all day in the gym or destroy our joints.

Cardio: Can it Help Build Muscle? Over the years, cardio training has gotten a bad rap. It was cast away into the shadows, with the thought that any cardio training would instantly kill muscle and strength gains. Fortunately it is making a nice comeback as people have finally realized that a well functioning circulation system can actually help you build more muscle. The reason being that your aerobic system is the system that fuels your anaerobic system. When you lift heavy weights, you are using a combination of 3 energy systems, the alactic, lactic, and aerobic systems. When using lower reps, your alactic system is in charge, as the reps increase, your system runs out of ATP (energy) and starts to use the lactic system to produce more energy. energy. The lactic system produces the burn in your muscles. The aerobic system is the one in charge of refuelling these two systems. Therefore a well functioning aerobic system allows you to not only recharge faster during workouts, but also recover faster after workouts.

HOW TO PLAN YOUR CARDIO TO COMPLEMENT YOUR GAINS Doing substantial cardio training after lifting weights can actually lead to a decrease in muscle protein synthesis, so it is definitely better to do your cardio on separate days. The simplest way to improve your aerobic system is the cardiac output method, this method entails doing a sustained activity for 30–90 min with a heartrate of 120–150 beats per minute. This method will improve your your hearts ability to take in more blood with each stroke, if your HR is too low, you won’t won ’t get enough blood to stimulate a change, and if it is too high, you will start 196


working on how fast your heart can contract (which is still useful but a different method) instead of how much blood it can take in. It also helps to do more m ore frequent training sessions to make improvements.

FREQUENCY 2–3 specific sessions last 30–90 mins keeping HR at 120–150bpm.

TYPE OF ACTIVITY Anything you enjoy doing—walking, stair climbing, hill sprinting, dancing, jogging, skill work work for sports, shovelling shovelling snow, snow, swimming, ice skating, skating, etc.

DURATION OF PHASE 8 weeks is good to see some progress, check your resting heart rate first thing in the morning, then re-check at the end to see your improvement, it should be lower.. If you have a HR monitor, it gives you more freedom lower free dom to do different diffe rent things thing s because you can keep track of your HR.

Postural Restoration: Curing Chronic Pain? When it comes to rehabing posture, we often recommend the techniques developed by The Postural Restoration Institute (PRI) in the early 1990’s. While still relatively new to the scene, their methods have become popular among physiotherapists and sports performance experts. Since people’s faulty movement compensations can cause them pain, their goal is restoring natural movement—movement without compensation. Because modern society often creates specific compensation patterns, much of their work revolves around fixing flared rib cages and forward pelvises. Their theories revolve around the fact that muscles need proper 197


positioning so that they can fire properly. This means that if you have flared ribcage, it may be difficult to see progress in your chest or upper back because the supporting muscles are in weaker positions. Therefore, you may benefit from intentionally repositioning your ribcage before lifting. For example, one of their techniques combines a 90/90 hip lift (lying on your back with your knees in the air) with the act of blowing up a balloon. The goal is to teach your body how to instinctively breathe properly while lifting. This technique is based in scientific theory, there are many anecdotal success stories, and researchers consider this technique promising, but it's still too early to know for sure how effective it is (study ( study). ). It’s still a hypothesis. All of their rehab exercises aim to restore balance and stop certain overworked overwork ed muscles from being perpetually “turned on.” Adding some postural restoration exercises exercises to your warm-up routine may be beneficial if you deal with any of these symptoms:

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Sore knees

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Shoulder pain

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Hip pain

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Tight lower back

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Tight hamstrings

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Abdominal pain

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Neck stiffness

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Tendinitis


Want to discuss restoring your posture? Do it here.

Periodization: Destroying Plateaus This is when you get out your spreadsheets out to start planning how you are going to get from point A to point B. It tends to involve cycling different styles and intensities of training with the goal of reaching a specific objective. Getting strong for your next powerlifting meet, developing more power for your next football season, or gaining lean mass for your next bodybuilding competition. In this program, we use it to speed up the rate that you can build muscle. For example, intuitively many people assume that focusing just on strength training would be the best way to gain strength for your next powerlifting competition. That would be a good way to gain strength, but the best way would be to alternate between periods of gaining new muscle mass

(bodybuilding), learning to use that muscle mass with maximal loads (strength training), getting used to very high volumes (overreaching), (overreaching), and then finishing by emphasizing recovery so that you show up u p to your powerlifting meet feeling fresh (a deload). A periodized plan can be broken up into macro cycles (yearly plans), mesocycles (monthly plans), and microcycles (weekly plans), with durations being different for each sport. It is rooted it Hans Selye’s model of General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS), where an organism will go through three stages in response to a stressor:

ALARM STAGE STAGE This is the initial shock that lifting has on your system. This is that initial period of reduced performance, where you may feel beaten up, tired and sore. 199


RESISTANCE STAGE This is when you body decides to take up arms against the weights and start a muscle revolution. During this stage, your body responds to the stress by adapting to it—building bigger and stronger muscles. This creates a new level of ability, and explains why someone can gradually lift heavier and heavier weights as time goes on. This is known as super-compensation.

EXHAUSTION STAGE This is when the stress placed on the body is too much for the body to adapt to, and the body begins breaking down. This is why beating your body to a pulp once a month might not cause any beneficial adaptations at all, nor would training intensely every single day. The amount of stress applied to your body must be strategic in order to produce solid gains. The goal with periodization is to organize training so that there is a reduction of stress near the end of the resistance stage, before exhaustion can set it. Most good training programs are strategically designed to stay out of the exhaustion ex haustion stage. This will allow the individual to recover, adapt and go beyond their original set point. With some advanced athletes, coaches will sometimes have them training in an exhausted state, then have them take a longer amount of rest with the hopes of achieving even greater super-compensations (gains). This can be effective, but is reserved for elite athletes under the direct supervision of a professional. Periodization is typically used to ensure continuous progress by going through periods of heavier and lighter loading while avoiding overtraining which will help you avoid both plateaus and feeling wrecked. 200


Just like a dog needs structure and consistency to be happy happy,, not total freedom, our muscles need a consistent stimulus in order to adapt. If you are constantly throwing mixed signals at your body by doing too many things at once or not lifting enough, you will not adapt beyond a beginner level. Periodization helps by giving your training focus and structure. We use something called linear periodization, focusing primarily on progressive overload. We start with the easiest variations of the basic patterns (e.g.. the goblet squat), done with lighter weights for higher rep ranges. Then, as (e.g the phase goes on, you try to use more and more weight while also adding more and more sets. Over the course of the month your training volume (how much total weight you lift) increases, with the final week having the highest volume. This ensures that the demands placed on your body are constantly increasing whether or not you're adding much weight to the bar. This ensures progress even as strength gains are harder and harder to come by. As a beginner this is effective, and as you progress it becomes essential. These phases are five weeks long because five weeks is the time it takes for you to start adapting to a new program. When that five week phase is finished, you advance advance right into the next one, keeping the gain train going. Your first week of the next phase has more advanced exercises (e.g. the front squat) but a significantly lower volume (e.g. just two sets). This is known as a deload week, and it is designed to allow you to recover from the previous phase while getting comfortable with the new lifts. This deload week, since it is a recovery and growth week, will often yield the most muscle growth as your body recovers from the intense stimulation from the previous week. Super-compensation in practice!

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Summary •

Cardio isn't necessary for building muscle leanly, but it can be used to improve your work capacity.

•

Lift heavy weights explosively while just focusing on moving the weight (lift powerfully), but lift lighter weights in a controlled manner while focusing on feeling the correct muscles working (feel the burn). Rest plenty between sets.

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If you have have pain, go see a doctor doctor or physiotherapist. It may also be beneficial to address your compensation patterns, alleviating stress from overworked muscles. We have a guide for this here here..

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When planning your training, try to focus on 1–2 things for five weeks at a time. Here are some qualities that go well together: Strength / Aerobic work (can be done on the same day) Muscle Maintenance / Aerobic work (done on different days) Strength maintenance / Anaerobic conditioning Power / Strength

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It is best to maximize the aerobic system before going after the anaerobic conditioning system. It is also not smart to try to improve both at the same time.

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TIER 4 NUTRITION OPTIMIZING YOUR NUTRITION

What you eat tends to be more important than when you eat. That’s a good rule of thumb, and a good place to start. However, However, there are many exceptions. For an obvious example, if you start drinking your wine in the morning and your coffee right before bed, you’re going to have a pretty hard time becoming employee of the month. (Unless you’re on a reality TV show.) On the other hand, if you have your coffee in the morning and your wine with dinner, no problem. Many people have had cocktails with brunch and then a Red Bull before going out at night. You You probably learned very quickly that the breakfast cocktail led to an unproductive afternoon, and the nighttime caffeine led to a less than stellar sleep. Unfortunately, muscle-building nutrition myths are not so easy to test. It can a long time before you notice that your abs have disappeared in the mirror. And even if you are getting some results, how do you know if they’re as good as they could be? What if this whole time you’ve been accidentally doing the bulking 203

TIER 4 NUTRITION SCIENCE

equivalent of having wine with breakfast? Or the fat gain equivalent of having coffee as a midnight snack? When it comes to building muscle there are indeed some nutrient timing strategies that can allow you to build more muscle more leanly. Unfortunately, there’s also a lot of nutrient timing mythology that muddy up the truth, and these myths are evolving so quickly that it can be hard to keep up. A few years ago your typical bodybuilder was dogmatically eating every 3 hours on the dot. Since a good protein-filled meal will spike insulin and muscle protein synthesis, this would be boosting his muscle growth potential throughout the day. day. He may even set an alarm clock to go off at 2:00am so that he can chug the protein shake that he had left beside his bed. Nowadays Nowada ys that same type of bodybuilder is experimenting with intermittent fasting to boost his growth hormone production. The idea here is that humans have evolved to go long periods without food, and that we can take advantage of numerous health and hormonal benefits if we go back to a more primal eating schedule. One of these benefits is an increase in growth hormone secretions. Another is that we may burn fat during the fasting period, build muscle during the eating period. This could lead to fat loss while building muscle. Which approach is right? They both sound fairly convincing and have research to back them up. And this is just the tip of the iceberg—we haven’t even made it past breakfast yet! There are theories about needing to avoid eating carbs before bed, about whey protein boosting muscle growth if consumed right after training, about “cheat days” allowing you to eat junk food without gaining fat, and reverse dieting to alter your metabolism. m etabolism. Is any of it true? Going based on personal preference and anecdotes, it’s extremely 204


hard to tell. Many of the guys using the wrong approach are still getting good results because nutrient timing isn’t as important as the quality of what you eat or the quality of your training program. Their fundamentals may be strong enough that they’re progressing in spite of whatever bogus theory they’re meticulously m eticulously executing. In the past couple of decades researchers have been evaluating all these myths scientifically and discovering legitimate, proven techniques that allow you to build muscle more leanly. Many of the most popular theories have been proven wrong, and many of the effective techniques aren’t mainstream knowledge yet. Without further ado, let’s dig in to the modern science of musclebuilding nutrition.

Optimal Workout Nutrition When trying to build muscle the primary things you need are protein, calories and weightlifting. To work on all three at once you can sip on a calorie-heavy protein shake while lifting weights. Or perhaps between sets. Let’s talk a little bit about why this approach can be so effective. In January 2013, two very important researchers, known for their sports nutrition and muscle-building research, teamed up to review all of the workout nutrition studies previously published. In January of 2013 their official meta-analysis was published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, which is arguably the most prestigious journal for sports nutrition research. As far as protein goes, you’ll you’ll see optimal results if you have a protein-rich meal within a couple hours before training, and another within a couple hours 205


after training. To get more specific, you’d want at least 20–40g of protein in both those meals. More specifically still, you’d want 0.2 grams of protein per pound bodyweight. The easiest way to do that is to just sip on 60 grams or so of protein at the gym. That fully covers you, and there isn’t a single conceivable health, performance or muscle-building downside to doing it. If you train in the morning this becomes especially useful, as there wouldn’t wouldn’t be time to digest a meal beforehand.

For carbs, eating them pre-workout have been shown to boost performance, and anything that improves your lifting performance will improve your ability to stimulate muscle growth during your workouts. Carbs are especially helpful if you’re doing long workouts (or running a marathon) while on a lower carbohydrate diet. As ectomorphs eating a high calorie high carb diet, we tend to be among the subset of people whose performance won’t be much affected by pre-workout p re-workout carbs. However, Howev er, you probably want 30–50% of your overall daily calories coming from carbs, which means that we should jump on any opportunity to eat more carbs. This is one such opportunity.

ENTER THE B2B WORKOUT SHAKE: Protein powder + carb powder + creatine and whatever else.

Liquid calories are easy on your appetite, the insulin sensitivity in your muscle cells skyrockets when you’re weightlifting, carb powders are quickly and easily digested, having protein in your system when training improves imp roves muscle protein 206


synthesis, and protein and carbs aren’t efficiently stored stored as fat when in a calorie surplus. (study (study,, study study)) This is an opportunity to spike yourself into higher-thannormal calorie surplus that will build extra muscle without the added risk of storing extra fat. If you want a blanket recommendation, 60g of protein and 120g of carbs would be appropriate for most skinny guys trying to build muscle (and would contribute 720 calories tow towards ards your daily totals totals). ). If that drink is too intense, start with 30 grams of protein and 60 grams of carbs (360 calories). If you need more calories, go up to 90 grams of protein p rotein and 180 grams of carbs (1080 calories). We’ll talk more about supplements later, but these calories can really come from anywhere. You could blend up bananas and oats with milk, or combine whey protein and maltodextrin powder. The main thing we’re after during this anabolic window are protein, carbs and calories. This means that you can skip the shake entirely and have a pre-workout and post-workout meal instead. Keep the fat low, the carbs and protein high. Those carbs can come from white rice, oatmeal, potatoes—what po tatoes—whatever. ever. And then any lean protein source will do—chicken, egg whites, cottage cheese, skim milk, white fish or something. The rules here are fairly loose, but make no mistake—optimizing your workout nutrition is one of the best ways to improve the quality of o f your results. Of all the nutrient timing opportunities opp ortunities out there, this is the most powerful. p owerful. If you want to further boost boos t your ability to build buil d muscle leanly lea nly,, we strongly recommend that you take advantage of this.

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Optimal Meal Frequency This is also known more simply as how many times to eat each day. Researchers have have looked into eating as few as one meal per day and as many as fourteen. While most relatively normal schedules are perfectly fine, some health issues seem to start coming up the more extreme you get. You’re going to start running into issues with glucose regulation, hunger and fullness when you start eating fewer than three meals per day or more than 6 meals per day day.. Since building muscle is your goal, another thing to keep in mind us that spreading out your protein intake over the course of the day can help as well. You ou’ll ’ll maximally stimulate muscle protein synthesis with a balanced meal that contains 30g of protein or more. Having a few meals spread out over the course of the day (4–5 hours between meals) that each maximally stimulate muscle protein synthesis should yield the most muscle growth possible. So to fully maximize your results from a meal frequency standpoint, eating four or five relatively evenly spaced meals per day with a decent amount of protein in each of them would be incredible. That could be as simple as three meals and a big snack—no need to get crazy here.

This isn’t super strict though, so long as you stay away away from the extremes. If you’ve you’ve got a particularly par ticularly small stomach or a particularly par ticularly large calorie goal feel free to add in a couple more meals, or snacks between meals.

Trail mix, milk, jerky, raisins & pumpkin seeds make great snacks.

There are a lot of myths out there about taking daily nutrient timing 208


further. About eating more fats at breakfast to increase your fat burning potential throughout the day, or about breakfast being the most important meal of the day, or about the dangers of eating carbs (or calories) before bed. None of these really matter for a healthy guy trying to build muscle. As the research currently stands, these are either myths or only applicable to a very specific subset of the population. We would instead focus on what has you feeling best. If a big breakfast gives you tons of energy or wakes up your appetite—great, eat a big breakfast. However, if having a big breakfast leaves you feeling tired and lethargic, have a light breakfast instead. If you’re unsure of what to try, a moderate amount of complex carbs and protein works well for most people. This will stimulate muscle protein synthesis while giving you a good amount of energy. energy. Something like oatmeal and a protein shake, some fruit and some cottage cheese, or even a Quest bar and some carrots if you’re you’re lazy or in a rush. Before bed just make sure to get all your calories in, ideally without triggering any acid reflux or anything. Some people handle giant pre-bed meals better than others. If you’re sleeping poorly, poorly, waking during the night, or having acid reflux then perhaps perhap s shy away away from eating a large meal before bed. Otherwise there shouldn’t really be a problem, especially as far as building muscle leanly goes.

Carb & Calorie Cycling Now we’re into the weekly weekly stuff. How can you spread out your calories out over the course of a week for the meanest and leanest gains possible. Lots of guys get this calorie cycling stuff miserably wrong. It’s popular these days to have a “cheat day” or whatever. Every Sunday 209


you take a break from dieting and eat a bunch of junk food. Junk food tends to be high calorie, which is fine when bulking, but with most of those calories coming from fat… which is not fine when bulking. If you have a “cheat day” where you go into a calorie surplus by binging on high fat foods you will gain a disproportionate amount of fat. If, to make up for that calorie surplus, you then need to lower your calories on the other days of the week, you can then limit the amount of muscle you’re going to build those days. This will reduce your muscle gains while increasing your fat gains. No bueno. Let’s take a step back for a moment. Is there any research showing an advantage to cycling your calories and carbs over the course of the week? Maybe! We don’t really know for sure—it’s still a very understudied topic. But since your muscle cells are so insulin sensitive after training, and since they’d be less sensitive on rest days, it’s arguably beneficial to pack more calories/ calories/carbs carbs around your workouts and keep your calorie surplus lower on rest days. You could yank out a couple hundred carb calories from your rest days and pop ‘em into your workout days, if you wanted to give that a shot. The workout shake we recommend tends to make this adjustment pretty easy. To be more specific still, you could have more carbs and calories in the few meals following your workouts, and then taper back in the few meals leading up to your next workout. So if you train Monday night, perhaps you have a larger and higher carb dinner that night, and then again at breakfast the next morning. If you keep those higher calorie days/meals within about 24 hours of your workout you’ll be doing well. This is when your muscles are primed for growth and soaking up calories. You don’t want to deprive your muscles of calories when it wants them, just as you don’t want to binge on calories when your muscles haven haven’t ’t been stimulated. 210


Another thing worth pointing out is that there’s also very little downside to strategically strategically fiddling with your calories on a day-to-day day-to-day basis so long as your weekly totals add up. Maybe you find it especially tough to hit your calorie goals on weekends, for example. In that case, you can drop your calories down to maintenance. Don’t drop down into a deficit, however tempting that may be, but feel free to drop down into maintenance for a couple days per week. To make up for dropping your calories lower on some days, you’d bring up your protein and carb intake on other days—perhaps workout days. A hefty protein/ carb workout shake is a great way to do this. And always always keep in mind that the best strategy is the one that most easily allows you to finish your week with all of your calories crushed.

Is a Calorie a Calorie? Is it really that simple? That’s debatable. Not debatable in the sense that there are good points on both sides of the argument, but debatable in the sense that it’s a contentious topic that lots of people like to argue about. The body of evidence is actually really quite clear, yet you even have the odd scientist here and there arguing against it. Simple nutritional science dictates that if you eat a surplus of calories above what your body needs your weight will go up, and if you eat a deficit of calories your body weight will go down. However, there are a whole slew of factors that we also need to consider. Here are three: 1. The amount of calories that you put in your mouth might not be

the same amount of calories that you digest. If the food you’re eating passes right through you, well, then it won’t have the same 211


effect. Our digestive system is impressively effective though, so this is rarely an issue. Barring a diagnosed d iagnosed medical issue we don’t need to worry about this. 2. Your body processes different macronutrients in different ways.

For example, protein provokes a greater TEF (thermic effect of food) than carbohydrates carbohydrates and fat, resulting in about 20% of its energy being converted converted to heat. Things get even more confusing with alcohol, since your body treats it like a poison. If you deviate from the macronutrient suggestions in this eBook you may find that your metabolism goes up or down by a few percentage points. 3. Eating 4000 calories a day of cake will probably make m ake your weight

go up, but I doubt you’d feel very good, especially about how you look in the mirror.

Understanding Insulin Insulin is one of the prime drivers of appetite. When you eat a meal your insulin levels will go up by a certain amount amou nt depending on what you eat, how much you eat, and how sensitive to insulin you are. As your insulin goes up, your appetite goes down. This creates a nice comfortable feeling of satisfaction, letting you know that you can stop eating. For example, a chicken breast will cause a hefty spike in insulin, then a similarly hefty feeling of satisfaction and fullness. Being sensitive to insulin tends to mean a combination of two things. First, our insulin levels rise eagerly in response to food: in goes food and up goes insulin. Second, we don’t require a big increase in insulin to feel satisfied: 212


up goes insulin, up goes fullness. Both of these things make it a whole helluva lot easier not to overeat. For someone who’s less insulin sensitive (or has chronically elevated insulin) it takes a lot more food to cause a surge in insulin and they require a lot more insulin before feeling satisfied. That means in goes food, in goes some more food, in goes even more food, and, eventually, down goes appetite. In extreme cases this can make it very hard to get satisfaction from eating reasonable quantities of food. So in the context of getting and staying lean, being sensitive to insulin is a very good thing. As skinny guys we hit the genetic jackpot here. There are also a lot of lifestyle factors that come into play too: already being lean helps, weightlifting helps, eating well helps, etc. Successfully combine all of those factors with a genetic predisposition for it, and it’s very easy not to overeat. Whatever your goals, this is good. We aren’t trying to replace one problem with another, and you probably don’t want to go from struggling with being naturally skinny to struggling with being diabetic. Having great insulin sensitivity is closely correlated with our overall health too, and it also allows us to properly enjoy food. So don’t avoid weightlifting weightlifting and eat junk food all day long. Exercising, eating well and being decently lean (under 17% bodyfat or so) are all great ways to optimize insulin sensitivity* ... and if you’re already sensitive to insulin just count your blessings and keep it that way!

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How to Maintain Gains on Fewer Calories Metabolic adaptation is a very very new idea being pioneered by Dr. Layne Norton. He’s been conducting research into metabolic adaptions for a couple of years now, but his first big review paper on it was just recently published. It’s a very hot and widely debated topic, and with good reason—it’s a very new and interesting idea. He’s essentially coming up with a totally new way of explaining the concept of “metabolic damage”, which many experts previously believed was just a myth. What Dr. Norton is interested in is what happens when dieting down to extremely low body fat levels. The types of metabolic adaptations that people make when dieting down to go on stage at a bodybuilding competition. As they diet down to lower and lower body fat levels, their daily caloric needs decrease to adapt to the new amount of food they’re eating. Those diets are pretty damn extreme, and some wild stuff can happen when these guys step out of the spotlight and start eating like normal people again. They get really fat really quickly—sometimes a dozens pounds of fat in just a couple of days d ays because their body is used to much less energy coming in. Norton’s Norton ’s research is all about finding a way to reverse those metabolic adaptions so that these extremely lean people can go back to eating a normal amount of food without gaining ridiculous amounts of body fat in the process. A “reverse diet” is his proposed way of doing that. After an intense cut they would slowly increase the amount they’re eating week by week, month by month until they’re eating a normal amount of food again. By adding nutrients back in gradually their metabolism adapts as they go along and there’s never a huge calorie surplus that would lead to all kinds of fat gain. 214


What does this mean for us? When bulking, the opposite happens. Instead our metabolisms becoming damaged we turn into metabolic powerhouses— our bodies start becoming very metabolically inefficient because we’re rolling in extra calories that it wants to spend. So we start producing more body heat, we start fidgiting and moving more, etc. This is especially pronounced in those of us who struggle to gain weight, since we tend to be the ones with very adaptive metabolisms. It’s those pesky adaptive metabolisms that do such a good job of keeping our bodyweight so damn low. Just like with cutting though, these metabolic adaptations aren’t aren’t forever. An annoyingly enormous metabolism isn’t an unavoidable consequence of being a beast. A pound of muscle only burns about six calories per day at rest, so if you’ve gained, say, twenty pounds of muscle over the course of doing this program, that extra muscle is only burning a measly 120 calories per day. No biggie. The problem is that oftentimes over the course of a bulk our metabolisms have revved up so high that we need to consume ridiculous amounts of food in order to even just maintain our gains. As a result we often run into the exact opposite problem that these dieters were running into. Sometimes we finish our bulk, suddenly go back to eating a normal amount of food, and since our metabolisms are so crazy high, we then lose weight. Admittedly, most of the weight we lose is gut contents and fluid (glycogen (glyc ogen and water retention), but we can also lose some muscle m uscle too, especially if we let our protein intake fall apart or we stop lifting. lifting. Enter the reverse beastly diet, where you slowly start consuming fewer and fewer calories to intentionally bring your metabolism back down to a more reasonable level. Begin by reducing your intake by 500 calories, bringing you out of a bulk and back to maintenance. During the first week you'll lose some gut contents and water retention, which is fine. Then each week you eat 75–150 215


calories fewer than the week before, you keep your strength up in the gym by training as consistently as ever, and you keep an eye on the scale to make sure you aren’t losing more than a couple pounds (which would likely be fat) as you go. Ideally you eventually get to a point where you’re eating a comfortable amount of food—the amount of food that your appetite is naturally telling you that you should be eating. This is where life should be lived, after all—we can’t always be in rapid transformation mode. We should point out that I’ve never seen a reverse diet like the one we’re proposing used anywhere else. Hell, even reverse cutting diets are a new thing. The point that many of us get to—eating a ton of calories and still not gaining fat—is actually actually considered a good thing by most people. Most people love eating tons of food, so having a huge metabolism helps keep them healthy by keeping them out of a calorie surplus. They get to indulge in their favourite favourite indulgences without needing to worry about things like diabetes. We’re rare in that we don’t always want to eat ridiculous amounts of food like that. As such I’ve never seen anyone intentionally try to bring down their metabolisms. The three of us do it though, and it allows us to put this muscle-building stuff on the backburner once in a while to focus on writing, illustration, coaching you and others in the community, community, helping our wives have children, or taking up new hobbies. That “reverse diet” way of easing into and out of cutting and bulking seems to work pretty well at keeping us lean and keeping us strong, but use it at your own discretion—as of now there’s still very little research into it.

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Summary •

Fundamentals first. The overall quantity and quality of what you eat is still paramount. Focus on calories, protein (or macros), and consuming mostly whole foods before you worry about nutrient timing.

•

Workout shakes are helpful but optional. To capitalize on workout nutrition all you need to do is have a balanced meal in your stomach from a few hours earlier still digesting away away while you’re you ’re training, and then consume another balanced meal within a few hours after training. If you’re you’re an ectomorph trying try ing to rapidly build muscle though… it can be very helpful, cheap and easy to consume a workout shake though. We recommend 0.2–0.6g protein combined with 0.4–1.2g carbohydrate.

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•

Eat a moderate number of meals each day for max muscle growth. Consuming 4–5 meals per day each with at least 30g of protein in them is ideal. Feel free to add in more snacks or meals if you struggle to hit your calorie goals though.

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Try “Reverse dieting” in and out of calorie surpluses / deficits. If you want to gear into maintenance mode and take an extended break from constantly being stuffed to the gills, you might find it helpful to gradually reduce your calorie intake over the course of a few weeks to give your metabolism time to adapt. You You could try dropping d ropping your calorie intake by a couple hundred calories per week until your intake starts to become nice


and comfortable. Keep lifting heavy weights while you do it. If you lose a couple pounds that’s okay—it’ll probably be fat/fluid anyway—but anyway —but if your weight continues going down week after week you’ve you’ve dipped your calories a little too low and you might want to bring them up a little.

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•

For all intents & purposes a calorie really is a calorie. However some nutrients have a large thermic effect of food (especially (especially protein) and some calories are more m ore easily stored as fat (especially fat). So long as your macros are decent this shouldn’t matter much.

•

Supplements are not necessary. However, they can be quite effective and quite safe. They can even be cheap!


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1 7

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS YOU ASKED, WE ANSWERED

We’ve answered tens of thousands of questions in the community over these past few years. So don't worry, this isn't some lame made-up FAQ full of questions that make the three of us look good. No, this FAQ is full of questions that will make you look good. Hopefully most of your questions have already been answered. When making this version of the eBook we tried to take all the most common questions and build the answers into the Quick-Start Guide. So pretty much everything here has also been covered earlier on. However, this eBook is long. If you skimmed it so fast that you not only missed our best jokes but also the answers to your questions, don’t fret—we fret—we've 've tried our best to sum up u p everything important here. Don't see your question here? Hop into the community and community and ask us there.

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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Beginner Questions How do I get started? Read the Quick Start Guide. That should cover the basics of lifting, calories and protein well enough for you to start building a solid pound p ound of muscle each week. Once you’ve read that Quick-Start Guide you can take your time working your way through the rest of the eBook. The more advanced stuff isn’t needed until you’ve you ’ve done at least a couple months of training, so you’ve got plenty of time.

How many days of rest do I need between the days? We’d recommend a day of rest between the workouts. Most guys like training Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Do I need rest time between the phases? Rest time between the phases? Yes! But that doesn’t mean that every sixth week you get to spend your gym time watch watching ing the Good Wife instead. No sir, you still need to be in the gym doing your tri-weekly lifting. However, you'll notice that the first week of every phase features far fewer sets per lift. Fewer sets means that recovering from those workouts will be quick and easy. easy. You You can consider the first week of a new phase as a deload or “growth” week, not a stress week. Weird, eh? You grow most on rest days, not training days. You grow most during deload week, not during the crazy intense lifting week.

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Should I do cardio? Your body can only make so many adaptations at once, but it can very easily maintain adaptations that you’ve you’ve already made. This means that a muscular guy

can do all kinds of cardio while easily keeping his muscle. Similarly, a fit guy can do all kinds of bodybuilding while still keeping all of his fitness. However, a sedentary guy who wants to become both muscular and fit should probably pick one goal to focus on first. This is not the kind of guy who will be able to handle adding cardio into his lifting routine, however he's exactly exactly the type of guy who will grow fitter just from lifting.

TO CARDIO OR NOT TO CARDIO If you’re already fit, feel free to stay fit. If that means playing sports, great. If that means jogging with your dog, also great. If you’re not already fit though, hold your horses. Just lifting alone will do wonders for your general fitness. If you finish the program 20–30 pounds hunkier and feel like a lumbering hulk instead of a nimble Tyler Durden then you can gear into some fitness training. In fact, we can even help you with that!

If you try to bulk up while using this program while secretely sneaking off to do marathon training while we aren’t watching… you’ll only sacrifice about 20% of your gains. Instead of gaining 20 pounds during the next 10–20 weeks, you’ll gain 16. Not bad.

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Where do I find dumbbell alternatives alternatives for cable exercises? Yeah, Marco really loves his funky cable exercises—especially with our older workouts. They’re pretty cool, but fortunately dumbbells are more m ore than enough to build muscle wonderfully well. There are dumbbell alternatives for every exercise both on the workout sheets and at the end of all the exercise videos. Even if your setup is simple, you won’t miss out on a single gain.

I feel like I’m not making any progress. What do I do? First of all, ask yourself the Boston question: is this more than a feeling? Put on a familiar song to start your day, hop on the scale, bust out some measuring tape. Are you making mak ing measurable gains? If you are, don’t worry—as you wander on, your gains will become as clear as the sun in a summer sky. sky. But let’s imagine your worst nightmare is indeed coming true. You’ve diligently followed the program for a week and you eagerly hop on the scale to greet your gains… only to find out that there are no gains “weighting” for you on the scale. This is not in any way a sign that things are even slightly hopeless. This simply means you haven’t consumed enough calories this week. Add 200 calories to your daily diet and see how the scale greets you next week. We know, we know. You’re already perma-full. Maybe busy and stressed too. One does not simply add 200 calories to his diet. This doesn’t need to be a huge hassle though. It can be as simple as having a pint of milk with dinner, having a handful of nuts as a snack, having a whey protein shake before bed, an extra brownie for dessert, or increasing your serving sizes ever so slightly.

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I’m getting heavier… but what if it's all saggy fat? If you’re you’re gaining a modest pound per week but you you’re ’re concerned that the weight you’re gaining is mostly fat, that’s actually quite a complex issue. It could be that you’re not lifting close enough to failure, that you’re not being consistent enough with your training or nutrition, that you’re you’re not hitting your daily protein targets, that you’re overly stressed, that you aren’t sleeping well, etc. Don’t worry, we leave no bony behind. We can work with you on that individually in the community—that’s what we’re here for. Make a post on the forum and we'll get to the bottom of this :)

I’m so, so, so sore sore after working out. What can I do? You may be especially sore because you were a little eager in the gym. If you leave a couple reps in the tank and do the prescribed number of sets and reps, the first week of training shouldn’t be that bad. But it can still be bad. People who aren’t used to lifting weights can really suffer when they first get into it. You can also find solace in the fact that the soreness will fade, and when it returns, it won’t be as intense. As your body gets used to the stress of lifting your body will learn to interpret that feeling differently. differently. Debilitating pain will begin to feel more massage-like. That doesn’t help you now though. For right now, avoid Advil. You aren’t sore because your muscles are damaged, you’re sore because your muscles are healing and growing. Your muscles are inflamed by all the nutrient-filled blood that your body is packing into your muscles. Advil will reduce this muscle-building inflammation. Tylenol would be a better choice if you must use a painkiller. An even better choice would be fish oil. Fish oil, like Advil, is also anti-inflammatory, but for whatever reason the net effect it has on body 224


composition seems to be positive? We can’t explain this one, but research has clearly shown that it works. Foam rolling works wonderfully too. too.

How do I find a good gym? What do I look for? Really any gym will do in a pinch. If you aren’t in a pinch, pretty much any gym other than Planet Fitness will do. They have this “non-judgemental” anti-bodybuilder stance. I don’t know how being against bodybuilding makes you non judgmental, but whatever whatever—you —you’d ’d think that would actually be pretty nice for a skinny guy who doesn’t want to be surrounded by bodybuilders… until you realize that you can’t do any bodybuilding there. How are you supposed to build muscle if you can’t do any of the lifts that build muscle?! Ideally you want to look for a gym with dumbbells that go up to around 100 pounds, adjustable benches, olympic barbells that you can load up with weight plates, and squat racks where the barbell isn’t attached to the rack. These things aren’t mandatory, but they will sure make building muscle easy. Beyond that, find a gym where you can see yourself one day digging the culture. For example, most colleges have two gyms. One is for the college athletes (great for getting amazing lifting advice) and the other is for regular people (great for people who don’t enjoy being around jocks). You can pick the gym culture that you prefer. Jared and and Shane were once training around the University of Toronto Toronto and chose the the jock gym because they had a better squat, deadlift and bench press setup. They got a ton of good advice too, since the people there could tell we were new to lifting.

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Aesthetics Questions How can I guess my body-fat percentage? This is notoriously difficult to guess with any degree of precision, so we’re going to talk about ways to roughly guess. First of all, don’t buy one of those scales that claims to be able to measure body fat (a BIA scale). Oh man those things are truly awful. Buying one of those scales is like hiring a person to call you fat once per week. If you want a better way to measure your body fat percentage go for skin fold callipers, but even just guessing based on what you see in the mirror is good enough for all our muscle-building intents and purposes. If you can always see your abs you’re probably around 10%. If you can only see your abs when you flex them in the best lighting conditions (probably your bathroom mirror) then you’re you’re more like 15%. If you cannot see your abs at all but don’t have a super mushy gut then you’re probably around 20%. If you have a soft stomach you are likely over 20%. If you can find a way to see your abs (under 15%) then you are lean enough to aggressively bulk, aiming to gain around a pound per week—especially if you’re still fairly skinny. If you’re already fit looking then you can aim to gain 0.5–1 pounds per week. If you can’t see your abs even when flexing in the bathroom then you may want to consider not posting so many bathroom flexing photos on Facebook. Once that habit is under control, you may find that you benefit most from a cut right now. If you’re still somewhat skinny you’ll definitely be able to build muscle while you cut. You’ll also be able to bulk more quickly in the long run because lowering your body fat percentage will improve your insulin sensitivity 226


and heighten your testosterone testosterone production. Bulking isn’t very fun when you’re conflicted about whether you should be building muscle or losing fat first.

If you are over 20% body fat then you should definitely cut. Bulking wouldn’t be the healthiest choice right now, and your gains won’t be the leanest, since your insulin sensitivity will be (slightly) impaired. Plus, you'll have a fairly easy time building muscle even in a calorie deficit while losing fat, so why go into a calorie surplus and risk gaining fat? If you need guidance on how to transition into a cut, post a new thread in the community so we can help!

What’s What’s the golden ratio? ratio? How big should should my shoulders shoulders be? Some guys talk about how it looks amazing if your shoulders are 1.618 times the size of your waist. For example, a 32” waist and 52” shoulders. However, this isn’t something you need to focus on consciously. Because you are a man, building muscle leanly will give you a disproportionate amount of muscle mass in your chest, shoulders and back. Your waist will grow as well, but not by nearly as much as the muscles around your shoulders. At first your waist will grow a large amount because of all the extra food in it, but this issue will disappear as soon as you stop bulking.

So even a balanced lifting program will improve your shoulders:waist ratio. ratio. Extra shoulder, chest and upper back exercises don’t hurt though, and who doesn't want to look even manly-manlier? So we’ve already added them to the program.

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How much weight should I gain over the course of the t he program? If you’re quite lean and skinny you can gain 1–2 pounds during the first 5–10 weeks of the program before slowing down to a more modest 1 pound p ound per week pace. By the end of the program you can expect to gain 25–30 pounds. If you’re already pretty fit looking (or you’ve already built some muscle) then just aim for that 1 pound per week right from the get-go, get-go, just to make sure your gains are pleasantly lean. So that means over the course of the program you can expect to gain 20 pounds. We get the rare guy who can gain 20 pounds in just a few weeks, which is ridiculous, but most truly skinny guys will gain a still-fairly-ridiculous 20 pounds within the first three months.

How do I get “hard” muscles? Muscles are hard. If you build muscle leanly, your body will become harder. If your muscles are “soft” it’s usually because your body fat percentage is higher. As for some types of muscle being harder than others, that’s something that hasn’t been studied very well yet. Does strength training (myofibrillar hypertrophy) build harder muscles than bodybuilding (sarcoplasmic hypertrophy)? hypertrophy )? Nobody knows. While further studies might shed more light on this, this means that the differences would be so small as to be unnoticeable from casual observation. For now you can think of lean muscles as being hard muscles.

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I have never seen my abs. What does that mean? It means that your body fat percentage has never been under 15%. It could also mean that your ab muscles are small. Perhaps both. If abs are a priority right now I would recommend solving both issues at once by cutting. This means you'll be eating plenty of protein and following our lifting program to develop your ab muscles, while being in a calorie deficit to reduce the fat covering your abs. Our cutting mini-guide is here. here .

How do I fix my slumpy posture? Lift weights, and don't ever skip the farmer carries! Your muscles lack the strength necessary to hold your bones in the proper position. Simply building muscle and strength will greatly improve your posture… provided that you don’t just lift by grooving your compensation patterns. You really want to focus on lifting with ever improving form. That will not only give your muscles strength and size, but also give the right muscles the strength and size they need to function optimally. optimally. And this should go without saying—but never skip the farmer carries. Beyond that, Marco has a great guide for improving your posture here. here. This is advanced stuff, so I would only start into that once you have finished a phase or two of the program.

How do I build bigger arms? More volume, i.e., more sets and reps per week that focus on your arms. Chin-ups are great for your biceps and bench presses are great for your triceps, but you also want to include plenty of curls and pushdowns and whatnot. We know you want bigger arms, so we’ve already included the extra arm volume necessary to optimize arm growth. No modifications are necessary necessary..

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I’m skinny and I desperately want to bulk, but I want to lose fat too :( Most guys in the world feel this way, but trying to find a program that will allow you to bulk while losing fat is like trying to find clothing that will be good for both skiing and swimming. You might be able to find something, but your skimsuit probably wouldn't wouldn't be ideal for either sport. This is because muscle is best build when there is a surplus of calories, whereas fat is best lost when there is a deficit of calories. You can sort of waver in and out of surpluses and deficits, but this just makes your progress hard to measure and discouragingly slow. Maybe you’ll look fit in time for the annual swimsuit competition at your retirement home. However, we would argue that it's best to pick a main goal for now. If you aren’t very muscular yet, cutting is probably your best bet. You’ll build a little bit of muscle while you do it, and you’ll you’ll be able to make leaner gains when you switch to bulking because being lean improves insulin sensitivity and testosterone. Most guys doing this program want to build muscle though. So if that is what you’re excited to do—go for it.

My right shoulder drops and my left pec is bigger? Everyone has this issue. Well, nearly everyone. Everyone who hasn’t consciously focused on improving their posture for several months in a row. We’re all born asymmetrical: one hand is dominant, our heart is on one side, our lungs expand to different degrees, etc. We can make ourselves visually symmetrical though, which has both aesthetic and performance benefits. Marco has a great guide for that here here..

I want to get

shredded.

Let's do it! We’ve got a mini-guide for this here. here . 230


Lifting Questions Do I

have to to

go to the gym?

No, but you do have to lift weights. You You can build a home gym with some heavy adjustable dumbbells (around 100 pounds each) and an adjustable bench. That’s all you need for fully optimal results.

My form doesn't feel right and lifting feels really awkward. We know you might feel awkward, but don’t be super hard on yourself. You know those first few steps a baby horse takes right after being born? That’s how you should look when you first start lifting. Awkward, clumsy, but eager to improve. You’re new to this. It takes time to develop coordination. Remember that the goal is gradual improvement, not lifting like a wizard on your first day. One good way to improve your technique is to practice with w ith light weights in front of a mirror. Another good way is to film yourself, post it on Vimeo or YouTube as privately as you like, and then send it along to us for feedback.

I love playing sports. How does this affect things? You're developing your ability to do basic movement patterns under load, improving your strength, coordination and mobility mobility,, so the program will almost certainly directly or indirectly make you better at the sport you’re playing. Okay, but how will playing sports affect your ability to build muscle? That depends on the sport! Sports are usually just fine alongside a muscle-building program, but sometimes you might want to reduce the number of workouts you do per week just to make sure you can recover from everything. Let us know in the community and we can help you figure it out.

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I’ve got a previous lower back injury. injury. What precautions should I take? It would be wise to get cleared by a sports spo rts doc or physiotherapist before you start lifting weights. Other than that, we already start with safe progressions that involve less spinal loading. We begin with a dumbbell sumo deadlift instead of a barbell deadlift, for example. If anything causes your back to flare up though, or if you’re worried about any lift in particular, just let us know and we’ll help you figure it out.

My knee’s are a mess, what should I do? Let Marco know and he can help you work around it. In the meantime, just avoid any lifts that irritate it. Squat variants will probably irritate your knees because of the knee emphasis in squat movements. Deadlift movements probably will not, since they’re more of a hip dominant lift

How do I find my starting weight for an exercise? Start with a light warmup set, then gradually grab heavier and heavier weights to see how they feel. When you find a weight that seems a little too light, do the indicated number of reps and see how many reps you can bust out. If you finish the indicated number of reps and you aren’t very near failure, count it as another warmup set and grab some heavier weights. For isolation exercises, if you finish a set and you think you might be close to failure but you really don’t know, bust out a few more reps and see what happens. We wouldn’t recommend this with the form-intensive exercises like the squat and deadlift though, where going all the way to failure can be dangerous for beginners.

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Do I go to failure? The closest you should go to failure during this program is lifting until you cannot lift another rep with proper technique. When your technique crumbles and you need to use all kinds of funky leverages, momentum and inappropriate muscles to finish the lift, you’ve gone beyond technical failure. That’s a little more dangerous and it also means you’re practicing and internalizing poor technique. This is not the path to becoming a great lifter. For optimal results though you might want to stop a rep or two shy of technical failure. This will still build muscle just as well, it’s safer, and it’s easier to recover from. Make sure you aren’t stopping three reps shy of failure though, or the muscle-building m uscle-building stimulus will be lower lower..

How come I’m not supposed to go to failure? Going to failure is a little more dangerous but provides a slightly better growth stimulus in the short term. In the long term though lifting close to failure allows for more growth. This is because a workout with greater training frequency per muscle group and greater volume per muscle group allows for much more growth. When you go 99% of the way to failure you recover much faster than if you go 100% of the way to failure. By leaving a rep or two in the tank you greatly increase your ability to recover from the lift, allowing you to do more good sets with that muscle group per week.

How do I know when to add weight to an exercise? You always want to be very close to failure. In order to keep that same intensity you’ll need to increase the weight or number of reps you’re doing pretty much every week if you’re a relative beginner. If you aren’t sure if you’re close enough to failure on a heavy compound lift (Circuit A), that's okay, err on the side of safety and try to lift a little more each week. If you aren't sure if you're close 233


enough to failure on an isolation lift though (Circuits B–D), B–D), try going all the way to technical failure to to see how many reps you actually had in the tank.

My chest won’t grow. What am I doing wrong? It’s pretty common to primarily use your pecs or your triceps when bench pressing, rather than your chest and your triceps. Shane's longer shoulder bones give his pecs better leverage in the bench press, so he easily activates his pecs but struggles to activate activate his triceps. Jared has the opposite problem. To activate your pecs more you can practice with lighter weights, higher reps, a wider grip, and flared elbows (flared out to 80* should do the trick while still being safe). Really focusing on feeling the contractions in your pecs. Try to work up a burn there. Bodybuilders call this establishing a “mind-muscle connection.” Powerlifters often just train the dominant muscle even harder, furthering the imbalance but Powerlifters improving their strength more quickly.

You can also experiment experim ent with dumbbell flys, machine flys, cable flys, pullovers. See which variant stimulates your pecs more and learn what it feels like to have your pecs contracting. Get a nice burn going, pump them up. As you do more volume with these isolation exercises your pecs will grow, grow, and they will learn to activatee more readily in the bigger compound lifts. activat As you improve your bench press technique you’ll get more pec p ec activation too. If you try to get your shoulder blades nicely in your back pockets and pressed tightly against the bench it can make it easier to use your pecs. As you improve your range of motion it can make it easier to use your pecs too. One day you’ll have so much control over your pecs that you’ll be able to do a pectoral dance performance for performance for your friends and family. 234


What’s What’s the best time of day to work out? out? The best time to work out is when you have time to work out. If you can work out at any time, then just choose your favourite time. If you like all times equally,, then around 6pm is a good default recommendation. Your muscles are equally all warmed up, you’ve probably gotten some good work done that day, it’s early enough that it won won’t ’t interfere with your sleep, and testos testosterone terone is typically nice and high at that time. First thing in the morning is another good time. It’s a great way to start the day. Wake up, have some coffee, have a warm shower to warm your muscles up, lift, then have another shower so your coworkers don’t give you a sweat-themed nickname.

How come there are no calf raises? Because your calves get a somewhat decent amount of work with all the compound lifts. It’s true that your calves won’t grow a great amount, but that would be true even if you did tons of calf raises. Calves are not really a muscle group with a ton of growth potential for most guys. If your calves do have a lot of growth potential, they’ll look gnarly with or without calf raises. If they don’t, calf raises won’t much help. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Unless you’re a bodybuilder, calves aren’t really a super aesthetic body part. Ideally they’re about the same size are your biceps, and chances are right now your biceps are a few inches behind your calves. By the time your biceps catch up I bet your calves will have grown a teensy bit too. Athletically calves aren’t that important either. You’re better focusing on the athletic movement patterns (as we do) and then allowing your body to grow accordingly. Part of the reason calf growth is difficult is because men have the most 235


androgen receptors in their upper body. However, Howev er, you can still feel free to add a couple sets of calf raises to the end of every workout. 8–12 reps, 2–3 sets. That will get you a fairly optimal amount of growth out of your calves, but don’t get your hopes up too high.

What are supersets. Are they different from circuits? Supersets are usually sets performed right after you finish a set of a different exercise. So if you do a set of chin-ups, you might immediately superset that with a set of bench press. p ress. We have rest between every set, even when switching exercises. You could call this supersets or circuits or whatever you you prefer. We We do this because muscle is best built when you are well rested enough to lift with good support from your stabilizer muscles and to fail based on muscle strength, not being out of breath or whatnot from not resting long enough.

How long should I be in the gym? That doesn’t really matter, but most guys finish the workouts in about an hour.

I’ve got some tightness in my muscles. Should I stretch? Probably not. Stretching won’t help, and just because a muscle is tight doesn’t mean it needs to be lengthened. If your hamstrings feel tight, for example, it might be because they are always stretched due to poor posture—more specifically your hips tilted forward, pulling them tight. Stretching them more would just worsen the problem. Well, actually it probably wouldn’t, since stretching isn’t isn’t very good at actually lengthening muscles. A better way to improve mobility and posture is to develop strength and work on your exercise technique and range of motion. If that doesn’t work, Marco has a more advanced posture guide here. here. 236


I don’t feel much burn. Am I doing it wrong? Feeling the burn is a sign that you’re stimulating your muscles via metabolic stress. That’s good. That’s one way that muscles grow. It’s not important when compared with metabolic tension though—how much weight you lift through what range of motion how often. Still, in higher rep sets (10+) it can be good to work up a burn, pump your muscles up, make Schwarzenegger proud. With anything less than 8 reps though not having a pump is fine.

I want to work out 4–5 days a week. Why shouldn’t I do this? You can! Just split up the Bony to Beastly workouts in half. Do the lower body lifts one day, day, the upper body lifts the next. Your week could become: upper body day, lower body day, upper body day, lower body day, rest, full body, rest, rest— something like that. This provides no advantage over working out three times per week though. We already have the program optimized for total number of sets per muscle group performed per week. We also have frequency optimized—how often you hit each muscle group (3x per week). You can break up the workouts in this way because it affects neither the weekly volume nor the weekly frequency per muscle group. It also leaves at least a day of rest before lifting with the same muscle group again.

I can’t do circuits at my gym. Are they crucial? Nope! Circuits just make the workouts more efficient while giving you a bit of a cardiovascular workout. Not doing the circuits will yield the same muscular gains. Just rest a little longer. 2–3 minutes between sets instead of 1–2 minutes.

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Nutrition Questions How do you track calories & protein? Just a guesstimation is often more than enough. You can look at labels of the food you buy to see how many calories and how much protein p rotein is in each serving. You can google anything that doesn’t have a proper label. If you’re not totally precise it’s not the end of the world, since your weekly weigh-in will tell you if you consumed enough calories that week or not. If you want to be more precise though, we’ve got a detailed calorie and macro tracking guide here. here .

I’m having trouble eating enough protein. The easiest solution of all is getting some protein powder. But you could also buy some greek yoghurt or cottage cheese. Shane loves his cottage cheese with a side of strawberry jam. You also buy some Quest bars. Or use more meat in your meals. Or have some skim milk alongside your meals.

After a couple days days of bulking I’ve I’ve got a big stomach stomach already. already. Is your stomach mushier? mushier? If yes, then there is fat on top of your stomach. However, after just a couple days of bulking, chances are that fat was already there. Noticeable amounts of fat are not usually gained in a couple of days, especially if you haven’t haven’t gained 5+ pounds on the scale. Is your stomach bloatier? If bloatier? If yes, it might be because you’re intolerant to or unable to fully digest something that you’re eating. For example, if all of a sudden you’re eating far more protein than you’re used to, you might wind up with a bloated stomach. And some really unpleasant gas. Slowly increasing your protein intake over the course of a couple weeks should solve this issue. Spreading your protein intake out over the course of the day could help too.

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Did you eat recently? recently? If yes, it might be a food baby. When eating very large meals you can expect to look like you’re you’re expecting. If this is unpleasant or unsexy, eating more modestly sized meals more frequently might work better than eating just a couple very large meals.

Can I bulk on a high fat diet? It’s easy to bulk by eating a lot of fat because fat is very very calorically dense. A gram of carbs or protein has just 4 calories whereas a gram of fat has 9—more than twice as many calories per gram. If you consider bacon, butter, ice cream and/or and/ or pizza delicious, you know that high fat foods can also taste pretty good. However, Howev er, dietary fat is very easily stored as body fat. If you bulk by eating a lot of fat you will wind up gaining a lot of fat. You will do better by keeping your fat intake to around 30% of your calories tops. Go wild with carbs and protein instead, you foxy paleo beast.

Can I do paleo? Sure! Dietary restriction makes things a littler trickier on the lifestyle side of things, but if you so desire you can totally align this diet to suit your preferences and interests. If paleo is your preference, have at it.

I’m a vegetarian. How do I build muscle? Just like everyone else. Not everyone eats everything everything,, and not eating meat isn't a huge issue. Yes, dietary restriction makes things a littler trickier on the lifestyle side of things, but you can still build muscle just fine so long as you hit your daily protein targets. Fortunately, a vegetarian diet is not very restricted. Getting enough protein is not that unrealistic. It just might mean more beans, nuts, grains, dairy, dairy, eggs, or some vegetarian protein powder.

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I’m a vegan, how do I build muscle? A vegan diet is quite restricted, which can make it more difficult to eat in social settings, especially when you can’t just opt for the pasta or whatnot because there’s not enough protein in pasta. So being a vegan can create a need to choose restaurants based on what dishes are available, and it can mean keeping some protein powder on hand for when you cook up a meal that isn’t rich in protein. You can still build muscle just as well as any omnivore though, it just takes a little more planning to get in enough protein to reach your goals.

Can I exercise in the morning before breakfast? Sure! Have a coffee, have a warm shower to get some blood flowing in your muscles, hit the weight room, shower again, have some breakfast. If you feel that showering twice would fully strip you of your masculine musk, you can skip the pre-gym shower and just spend a little time warming up before your warmups. This will get blood flowing. A full song spent Richard-Simmonsing should do the trick, or 5 minutes on a stationary bike.

Can I do intermittent fasting? I heard it’s good for lean muscle stuff. Meh. It’s okay for cutting cutting,, since it’s a novel and effective way way to pleasantly reduce calorie intake while still getting to eat indulgent dinners. Cool as a lifestyle experiment too. So when cutting feel free to try it. When bulking you want to find a diet to pleasantly increase calorie intake instead. This usually means eating more often. Plus, eating more often means more frequent muscle protein synthesis, which means more muscle growth. This caps out at 4–5 meals per day, day, so no need to go wild here. 3–5 meals per day is best. 6–7 is fine too if you really struggle to eat enough due to a small stomach.

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What brands brands of protein are the best? Most big brands that sell whey protein isolate do a pretty good job. Whey protein is cheap to produce and the industry is quite well established now. It’s not new or trendy or daring or edgy or anything. Whey is the potatoes of the supplement industry. industry. Easy to make, easy to sell. If the marketing makes it seem like more… it’s probably just hype so don’t pay it any attention. We're hesitant to recommend a brand, but we can say that Jared and Shane use and enjoy AllMax Unflavoured “IsoNatural”. It’s just straight up plain old whey protein isolate. It doesn’t even have any flavouring in it. When looking for a plant-based protein powder we opt for SunW SunWarrior. arrior.

Do I need to have a huge post-workout meal? If you have the whey/maltodextrin workout shake that we talk about in the supplement section you do not need to stress about workout nutrition at all. That beast of a drink has you totally 100% covered. Beyond that, you just want to make sure to hit your daily calorie and macro targets. As a general rule of thumb though—and especially if you don’t have the Beastly workout shake—you’ll want to have a fairly hearty post-workout meal that’s carb and protein dominant.

How soon after lifting can I have a drink? Ideally you'll you'll finish up your compound lifts first. Nothing much can go wrong if you’re a little tipsy while doing your bicep curls, but you wouldn’t want to risk being clumsy during a deadlift. So after circuit A—or even circuit B if you want to play it safe.

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How much can can I drink? Having a drink or two per day is fine. Maybe three sometimes. This won't reudce your gains, make you fat, etc. However, binge drinking isn't great for building lean muscle, and being hungover doesn't make for a good workout. Also, anything that gets in the way of eating good food is an issue. So basically just drink like a healthy healthy,, responsible man and you you'll 'll be totally fine. Anything bordering on reckless or unhealthy won't be great for your gains.

The workout drink tastes like death. What can I do about this? Try some of the other flavours in the Supplement Protocol section. Or plug your nose and think of the Queen. (Americans might prefer to think of the Founding Fathers.)

Can I use mass gainers? Yep! Use them in the same way that we recommend using our workout shake— have it while training, or right after training. If you absolutely must, you can even have a weight gainer on rest days. It’s not the end of the world, and it can allow you to hit your calorie and macro goals more easily. Just be warned that it’s also not the healthiest choice in the world. You want around 80% of your calories coming from nutritious whole foods and having a weight gainer each day makes this not very realistic. However, weight gainers are low in fat and easy on the appetite. Gains will be made, gains will be lean. So if you must, you must!

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My appetite isn’t growing, what can I do? You don’t need to bulk forever. You’ll be done bulking and you can go back to eating an amount of food that aligns with your appetite. However, while you may not be bulking forever, it may seem like you’re bulking forever. A few months can be way too long to force yourself to overeat. You’ll surely run out of willpower before accomplishing your goals. So if you’re feeling overwhelmed, take a break. Reduce your calorie intake by around 500 calories for a few days. Keep training, keep eating well, but take a break from gaining weight. When your stomach is happy again and your willpower is recharged, add those 500 calories back in. Or, if you simply can’t spare a few days—if you want to keep the gain train chugging—then maybe check out this sample meal plan. plan. It has some suggestions for creating a diet that allows you to eat more calories more comfortably.

Are you sure the calorie calorie formula works? works? I’m not gaining weight. The basics of weight manipulation are very well established. People lose weight in a deficit, gain weight in a surplus. This is basic science. However, when researchers instruct study participants to eat a certain amount, science seems to fall flat on its face. Let’s say you’re running a study looking into body temperature changes with calorie restriction in 30 year old overweight men. You instruct all your participants to eat 1200 calories per day, which is cutting their daily intake in half. You check in with them periodically over the course of the study, and everyone reports that they’re doing just fine. A month later you have a problem though. Everyone claimed to be eating these itty bitty amounts, yet surprisingly their weight didn’t budge. 243


This is a well known phenomena, and at first glance it can be very confusing. This is why many studies are done in a setting where calorie intake is controlled directly by the researchers. See, when there’s no subjectivity in calorie tracking, no sneaking in snacks, no guesstimating the meal at the restaurant—then calorie intake leads to very predictable weight loss. There’s some individual variation, and different metabolisms will respond differently, but the weight loss is still very predictable. You could say that the lesson here is that people aren’t very good at tracking their calorie intake. This is true. The average overweight dude will be off by a whopping 47%. That isn’t necessarily his fault, it’s just really tough to properly track calories. You might accidentally accidentally snack on a 1000 calories of nuts while watching a movie but log 300 calories because it didn’t seem like much. Similarly, you might log 1000 calories after eating this enormously huge salad with grilled chicken on top… which might only be 300 calories. I would argue that the bigger lesson here is that our feelings of hunger and fullness are imperfect. Sometimes we need to watch what we eat a little more closely. For us skinny guys, we might skip a breakfast one day without realizing. That might put us in an 800 calorie hole that we don’t make up for. That can have a big impact on our ou r weekly weight gain, or lack thereof. If you’re sure that you’re eating enough but your weight is not budging, then you aren’t in a calorie surplus yet. We'd recommend eating an additional 200–300 calories per day. That could be an extra glass of milk with lunch or dinner, a serving of trail mix as a snack, or slightly larger portion sizes. Continue increasing calorie intake like this each week as needed.

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I’m having trouble eating enough protein. People often miss an opportunity to build muscle by having a small or lower protein breakfast. You might want to buy some protein powder and make yourself a fruit/protein fruit/protein smoothie (or just mix it with water and have it alongside your first meal). You can have a couple scoops of the stuff, which will add 60 or so grams of protein to your breakfast and help you kick your day off properly. Now, if you wanted to really build muscle super quickly, you might want to split up your protein intake more evenly over yours meals so that you’re maximally stimulating muscle protein synthesis several times per day, but that’s pretty adv advanced anced stuff.

Can I have juice? Juice can be pretty processed, depending on what type you get. It can have have some nutrients in it too though, especially if it’s 100% fruit juice. Liquid calories are a good way to help boost you into a calorie surplus too. I have no problem with you drinking juice, especially if you you’re ’re having it alongside a whole food meal.

Okay. What about juicing tho? Steroids? When used under the supervision of a doctor steroids can be safe. If your doctor prescribes some sort of hormone replacement therapy or whatnot to treat an issue then that won’t interfere with this program at all. It might not help, either. Unless your testosterone levels are ridiculously high they won’t have a large impact on the rate that you can build muscle. A doctor would prescribe you an amount to make you healthy, not Arnold.

If you’re talking about illegally taking steroids, then, err, that’s probably a bad idea. There are the larger social issues of buying illegal drugs—a lot of the rape and murder in Latin American, for example, is financed by North 245


Americans buying illegal drugs for their own personal benefit—but taking steroids can also be a bad idea on a personal level. You’ll have no doctor managing the effects. No one making m aking sure you don’t wind up with boobs, acne, infertility, heart issues, a dysfunctional hormone system, etc. You don’t even have a guarantee that the drugs you you’re ’re taking are actually steroids!

I’ve just started the program and my stomach is already huge. You may have discovered an intolerance. You may also be eating more food, and thus more sodium, and thus holding onto more water. Water retention from a higher sodium intake will usually self-resolve self-resolve as your body adjusts to your new intake. You may even become more tolerant to the thing you’re having trouble digesting, producing more digestive enzymes to digest the protein and lactose in the extra milk you’re you’re drinking, for example. However Howev er it's more likely that the bulge is either due to more food in your stomach or tired abdominal muscles. More food in your stomach will make you look a little pregnant. So too will loosey goosey abdominal muscles that don’t hold your stomach and pelvis in a proper position. po sition. Food babies are okay. You could try eating smaller meals more frequently. Same amount of calories, smaller meals. This is not really an issue though, since it will be gone as soon as you stop eating like a monster. The weaker abdominal muscles are trickier. If you do the program properly—including the warmups and constantly trying to improve on your technique—over time your posture will improve and your abs will become stronger. This will help hold your pelvis in a better position, putting your abs in a more favourable position to contract. Your abs will also be substantially stronger. So that will solve that issue. It’s not a quick fix, but bu t it will be worth it.

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So i’ve been feeling...

gassy.

Are you all of a sudden eating a heck of a lot more protein than you’re used to? This is your body saying, “whoa look at all this nutrition! We aren’t used to processing this much amazing and wholesome protein!” Unfortunately, your body’s way way of saying thank you is with particularly potent gas. This is very temporary. Your body will start producing more digestive enzymes and soon you’ll be digesting protein like a pro. However, Howev er, if your significant other is starting to complain just slowly ramp up your protein dosages over the course of a couple weeks instead of all at once.

Bulking Lifestyle Questions How long should I sleep every night? This varies, but something like like 7.5 7.5 hours is good for most people. More can be considered indulgent, but some people legitimately do need it. As someone who is bulking, you may become one of those people who legitimatel legitimately y needs it. So sleeping for 8 or even 9 hours per night is not a horrible idea if you have the time for it. Or maybe you save the longer sleep sessions for after deadlift dead lift day. day.

I missed a few workouts—Where do I start? Right where you left off! Or, if by a “few” workouts you mean, like, 2 months, then restart at the beginning of the phase that you left off at. Halfway through Phase Two? Begin at the beginning of Phase Two.

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I just feel… tired. Are you sleeping enough? Are you tired after you eat humungous meals? Are you training all the way to failure even though you we warned you not to? Are you doing extra exercises? Do you have a super active lifestyle? Are you on medication? Or stressed out by something else? Let us know what’s up in the community and we can help you out.

My schedule is busy, any tips? Working out three hours per week and eating fairly decently is pretty reasonable. No matter how busy you are, you will eventually be able to find time for this. However, this may be a new thing. It doesn’t have a place in your schedule yet. And right now it’s not part of your routine, it’s something extra— it’s something that requires willpower. However Howev er there’s also the issue of eating a lot. Eating a lot of food can take a lot of time and energy if you aren’t smart about it. Check this post out. out . It’s got some ideas for crafting a very simple diet that makes it easy to eat a lot without taking up a lot of your time. As for the working out, if you don’t have time to go to the gym, you may be able to build a gym at home.

What should I do during vacation? vacation? We wrote a blog post about this that you might like . Basically though, if your holiday is only a couple weeks long don’t even worry about it all that much. Maybe pack some Quest bars so that you have a pleasant p leasant tasting fairly nutritious high protein snack (or breakfast) in a pinch. Choose dishes on restaurant menus that contain some protein—you know, the fish or chicken dish, not the vegetarian pasta. And finally finally,, try to eat enough to neither lose nor gain weight. That will help make m ake sure that you don’t lose muscle or gain fat, since you won’t 248


be training or eating a totally ideal muscle-building/muscle retention diet. You don’t need to work out. Two weeks won’t result in any muscle loss. However, you may want to keep in the routine of training a few times per week. Bodyweight workouts 3x per week are good for this. We’ve We’ve got a gymless workout program here.

I’m stoked on my results, but can I take a break from bulking? Reduce your calorie intake by around 500 calories per day. You can reduce your protein intake by a little bit too if you want—maybe want—maybe reducing it by around 30%. Keep lifting weights weights and keep active, but just a good solid workout or two per week is enough to maintain your gains. However, there are many many health benefits that come along with more physical activity. So if you aren’t inclined to take up cardio or sports, we’d recommend that you keep lifting a good 3x per week.

What if partway through through the program I have too many dates to have time to continue doing the program? Wear baggier clothes. It’s not a perfect solution, but it should help.

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TIME TO GET BEASTLY SEE YOU IN THE FORUM

A BIG THANK YOU! WE APPRECIATE YOUR SUPPORT Bony to Beastly was founded in 2012 by Shane Duquette, Marco Walker-Ng, and Jared Polowick. Since then they’ve had the opportunity to help thousands of skinny guys on their journey to build muscle—despite spending so much of their time writing in the third person. To date they’ve written dozens of completely free articles ar ticles on their websit websitee www.bonytobeastly.com www. bonytobeastly.com,, which you should definitely share with your friends. Thank you very much, we—err— they owe you one. Lastly here’s a plug to their sister program Bony to Bombshell, Bombshell, a musclebuilding & weight-gain weight-gain program for women, which launched in 2013.

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