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BONY
TO
BEASTLY
Written by
MARCO WALKER-NG
& SHANE DUQUETTE
Photography & Videos by Jared Polowick
(Illustrations done with the help of his wife, Michelle Polowick)
© 2012 - www.bonytobeastly.com - All Rights Reserved
This publication is fully copyrighted and does not come with giveaway or resale rights. You may not sell or
redistribute this report. It is reserved solely for bonytobeastly.com members. Copyright and illegal distribution
violations will be prosecuted.
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Disclaimer:
The information contained herein is for educational purposes only. There are inherent risks
associated with participating in any form of physical activity. The activities set-out herein may be
dangerous if performed incorrectly and may not be appropriate for everyone. As such, you should
of course seek the opinion of a certified physician prior to engaging in the activities as set-out
herein. We cannot and do not offer any guarantees. All of the information contained herein is for
educational purposes and for you to use at your own discretion.
Remember, the choice of what you do with your health and your body is yours! This is simply the
result of our own research and experiences, and we really hope you enjoy and find value in it!
Be inquisitive:
We highly encourage you to ask lots of questions. One of the great things about this program is the
community and coaching. We’re really passionate about this stuff and really want you to kick some
serious bony ass. We’re happy to coach you through any challenges and we want to make
absolutely sure that you make great progress towards your beastly goals.
Please don’t share this!
The three of us put a lot of effort into putting this program together and we really
appreciate your using it for your own personal use only.
Do, however, share all of our public stuff, like our Facebook page and blog.
That’d be awesome.
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CONTENTS
Introduction:
Goals & Expectations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
•
What a Muscular Physique Will Do For You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Chapter 1:
Take One Last Look at Skinny. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Chapter 2:
The Bony to Beastly Philosophy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Chapter 3
Training Fundamentals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
•
Building an Impressive Physique. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
•
Strong, Functional & Aesthetic Posture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
•
The Importance of a Strong Core and Posterior Chain. . . . . . . 37
•
Proper Technique—Lifting Like an Athlete. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
•
Muscle-Building Habits & Lifestyle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Chapter 4:
Muscle-Building 101 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
•
Training for Rapid Functional Muscle Growth. . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
•
The Big 5 Muscle-Building Cues. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
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Chapter 5
Eating for Muscle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
•
Naturally Produce More Testosterone & Build More Muscle. . 65
•
Why You’re Little. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
•
Reprogramming Your Skinny Genes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
•
Healthy vs. Ethical vs. Muscle-Building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
•
Heating, Processing & Pasteurizing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
•
Balancing Nutrition & Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
•
The Calorie Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
•
Adjusting Your Diet Based on Your Results. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
•
Is a Calorie a Calorie?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
•
The Secrets of Nutrient Timing—More Muscle, Less Fat. . . . . . 89
•
Waking up Your Testosterone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
•
Normal Meals (Steady Muscle Growth) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
•
Peri-Workout Nutrition
(The Most Underestimated Secret) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
•
Muscle Meals (the Anabolic Phase). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
•
How Much Protein do I Need?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
•
The Perfect Day. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
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Chapter 6
Muscle Foods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
•
The Best Proteins For Muscle Growth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
•
The Best Carbohydrates For Muscle Growth . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
•
Fats & Anabolic Hormone Production. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Chapter 7
Supplements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
•
The Best Supplements For Ectomorphs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
•
Experimental Supplements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
•
Money-Wasting Supplements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Chapter 8
The Four Phases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
•
Phase 1: Foundations & Mass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
•
Phase 2: Performance, Symmetry & Mass. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
•
Phase 3: Burly Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
•
Phase 4: Burly Strength. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
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INTRODUCTION:
GOALS & EXPECTATIONS
F
irst off, welcome to the program. You’ve just taken a pretty huge step
towards dramatically changing, well… nearly everything. In a few weeks
you’ll be handsomer, healthier, hulkier, hunkier, happier, more charismatic and
living a radically improved life—on many levels.
So let’s get started. The absolute 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 healthy? And what’s it worth to you?
That question opened up a whole can of worms for me. My parents would
say they were worried about my health, tell me to eat more and tell me to play
more sports. My friends thought of me as the skinny kid, and they’d playfully
tease me and push me around. My girlfriends and dates would joke about how
they would protect me if danger ever came our way—and wow, when I was
single I wanted a strong and masculine body more than ever, thinking that it
would help me attract the girl of my dreams.
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No matter how much ectomorph anguish I was feeling, I would usually
take the defensive route and tell whoever it was that I liked being skinny. To
make matters worse, I’d even try and tell myself that I liked being skinny. I
convinced myself that it was out of my control, so figured I had better learn to
embrace it.
But I secretly wanted to be muscular … and that probably wasn’t as much of a
secret as I hoped.
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 this time around it will work. In fact, the most thorough study done into
muscle-building genetics to date found that skinny guys are able to build muscle
more quickly than anyone else (study). Some of the guys in the study added
more than two inches to their arms and more than doubled their strength in just
12 weeks. Back then I never would have believed it. Now it’s something that I
see guys accomplish every day.
Anyway, when I decided to change I told my parents I was trying to be
healthy, I told my friends that it was something I was trying out for fun, and I
told the girls I was dating that it was an interesting three-month experiment I
was doing—you know, to make it sound academic. All of those reasons were
true (and the “experiment” line actually worked pretty well at getting people
intrigued instead of skeptical, so you’re welcome to use it). The real truth is that
while all of that was true… it wasn’t quite the whole story. Not even close.
I wanted to feel like a man around other men, not like their scrawny kid
brother. I was tired of having a little boy’s body and the strength of my little
sister. I wanted to fit properly in t-shirts, and I wanted to look strong when I
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took that t-shirt 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 effortlessly pick up a girl and throw her on top of a piece of furniture. I wanted
my body to be a symbol of virility, manliness, strength and health—not of an
unhealthy lifestyle and an inability to control my cravings (or lack thereof).
So I had a goal. One that I wanted more than anything … but it 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 see
me as fit, strong and athletic instead of skinny? How powerful a physique did
I need to build before the girl I loved would feel safe and feminine around me?
How big did my shoulders need to be to draw stares from women and respect
from men when I walked into a room?
I was spending hours hunched over in front of the computer researching
and speculating instead of actually accomplishing anything, but knowing the
answers to all of those questions made it really hard for me to strive towards
a specific outcome. Moreover, not having a specific program to follow made it
really hard to know where to start.
So the first thing you’ll need is a goal. Then we can help you accomplish it.
That true underlying reason that we want to bulk up is often a hard thing to
come to terms with. Turning that into a goal that you can measurably strive
towards is no piece of cake either. The girls you like probably go weak at the
knees over fit and athletic guys—sports superheros and actors. That’s very different from the “more muscle the merrier” attitude that many gymgoers have.
As you’ve probably heard a couple dozen hundred times, according to
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women the best bodies out there are ones like Brad Pitt’s in Fight Club. Bodies
that aren’t excessively lean or ludicrously muscular. Bodies that exude strength,
health and masculinity.
The best thing about being a guy with one of those bodies is that you can
be strong and healthy. If you ask a beefy guy, he’ll likely tell you that the ideal
male body is four times that size. Ask a seasoned bodybuilder and he’ll add in
that you need a quarter of their body fat percentage. 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. So figure out what you want from your body. If you can
achieve the health, strength and physique of your dreams it will be more than
enough to get the woman of your dreams.
WHAT A MUSCULAR PHYSIQUE WILL DO FOR YOU
Another 20-30 pounds of lean, functional, full-body muscle mass
We suggest that you aim to build 20-30 pounds of lean muscle mass. Imagine a
pound of lean red meat from the grocery store. It’s likely a fair bit bigger than
your fist. Now imagine 20 or 30 of those strategically added to your body. Start
adding a couple dozen hunks of meat to your shoulders, biceps, triceps, chest,
glutes, thighs and back and you’ll have a drastically transformed physique, both
in terms of athletics and aesthetics. That much muscle will result in a whole hell
of a lot of extra strength and size.
For some of you that might get you the body you’ve been dreaming of, and
for some of you it might inspire you to grow even bigger. No matter where you
are now though, it will produce a very dramatic positive effect. From there you
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can decide to maintain your size or grow even bigger.
That isn’t the only reason we recommend that number though. Another
big part of picking a goal is making sure that it’s one that’s acheivable in a
reasonably short period of time. If your goal would take you five years to accomplish, you may lose steam and give up. Most of the members in the Beastly
community are able to gain over 20 pounds within the first three months
though—when they’re just over halfway through the program.
So pick a number in the 20-30 pound range depending on your current
level of scrawniness and the size and height of your frame, write it down, and
measure your progress towards that goal. If you’re over 6’ and under 150
pounds you might want to shoot for closer to 30. If you’re 5’9 and already 150,
then 20 pounds should get you a pretty muscular body.
Gaining 30 pounds over 5 months as a beginner, even if you’re a hardgainer like us, is a very achievable goal if you know what you’re doing. That’s only
1.5 pounds a week—a very reasonable amount of lean mass to gain week by
week at this stage in the game. You’ll probably gain a lot more week by week at
the beginning and then maybe have a couple weeks later on were you wind up
gaining a bit less.
You obviously won’t be able to consistently gain 1-2 pounds of muscle
each week for years, but for the next couple months I’d be very surprised if you
couldn’t. By the times your gains slow you’ll be a new man.
What will even just 20 pounds from this program get you?
That will likely bump you up a couple clothing sizes. Over the course of those
four months I went from wearing slim-fit medium shirts to a slim-fit extra-large.
My waist measurements stayed about the same while my shoulder, chest and
back muscles bulked up significantly.
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“Sickboy” Jared went from being too small to wear a small, to properly
fitting into my old slim-fit mediums. (He also got over a lot of the chronic pain
issues that he was having in his forearms and knees.)
Attractiveness
It will bump you up 3 points on the 1-10 attractiveness scale, according to the
research done by Tim Ferriss (bestselling author and guest lecturer at Princeton). His research has found that 20 pounds of body recomposition (fat loss
or muscle gain) seems to be the magic number for going from, say, a 6 to a 9. I
wouldn’t have included this point if I didn’t believe it to be true, either.
Even your face will look markedly better. Check out Christian Bale in the
Machinist, after he lost 63ish pounds of muscle. I’d say he went from a 9 to a 3.
You can do the opposite.
Masculinity
There will be a noticeable difference in your body’s chemistry. You’ll be producing more growth hormones, making it easier to put on muscle and harder to
put on fat. Your testosterone production will be through the roof too, which
is wonderful news if you have a girl or want one. You’ll perform better sexually and produce gut-level attraction in women that get close to you. Your body
won’t just turn heads—so will your hormone secretions.
Posture
When I first started out I didn’t care about posture at all. Little did I know that
it plays a huge role in how good you look and how well your body performs.
Once you correct your posture you’ll be taller, look healthier, your body will
hold its muscles in a more attractive way, and you’ll be a ton stronger in the
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gym—allowing you to pack on muscle much quicker than the gorilla-like boys
around you with internally rotated shoulders and anterior pelvic tilt. Good
posture can also improve testosterone output, your mood and, surprisingly,
even your confidence levels (and how confident you look to others).
balanced
upright
posture
forward
head
rounded
shoulders
flat/sway
back
optimal
alignment
strong core
weak
abdominal
muscles
strong
glutes
We designed our exercise plan to fix modern man’s lower and upper crossed
syndrome—a postural problem that attacks amateur gym-goers and computer
junkies alike. Soon you’ll be standing tall.
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The “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 a skinny egg to having a V-shaped 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.
An athlete’s physique.
No matter how tiny you are now, adding 20 pounds of functional and proportional lean muscle to your physique while improving your strength, posture and
alignment will make you look and feel far more athletic. And you will be. This
program will have you leaping higher, running faster and punching harder.
A likely side-effect of being sexy
The higher levels of testosterone and other hormones that you’re going to
produce are totally natural and perfectly healthy. You won’t have any steroidlike problems, since the testosterone is being produced internally and naturally,
and not being injected externally and artificially. It does still have a masculinizing effect though, so your muscles will grow, your bones will become denser,
your body hair might become more prevalent, and you may wind up having
your sex drive grow along with your muscles. The side of effect of being sexy, it
seems, is wanting more sex.
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Strength
A massive increase in strength. I’d expect anywhere from a 30-300% increase.
The skinnier you are, the more rapid your strength gains will be… but even if
you’re already a fairly strong dude, your newfound strength will be enough that
you’ll notice it tremendously in your day-to-day life.
There are a lot of strength benchmarks to hit, and a lot of them may currently seem out of reach. Being able to put two plates on either side of the
barbell (225lbs) when you set up for your bench press will seem surreal. Luckily
for all of us, Marco is an incredible strength coach with a skinny-boy background, and once Jared and I came into contact with him we were finally able
to make steady and consistent progress each week on the big lifts.
Having a muscular body is one thing, but you’ll notice that having the
strength and athleticism to match it is surprisingly satisfying. This program is
designed to give you form (muscle size), with function (strength and athleticism)
as an intentional byproduct. There’s no reason why we can’t have our steak and
eat it too.
You may be wondering what you need to lift in order to impress the
woman you fancy. There’s a simple answer to that question: what you’ll be
lifting will probably be much heavier than what she lifts, so it doesn’t really
matter. If you can carry her around the house without breaking a sweat and
make her feel safe in your arms, you’ll be a hero in her eyes.
Body Fat
Most of us naturally skinny guys, even if you’d call yourself more the skinny-fat
type, are pretty good at enjoyably and healthfully maintaining a lean physique
year-round. I personally recommend shooting for 10-12%. It’s aesthetically
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pleasing to women, looks impressive to other men, and exudes health. Plus it’s
a realistic goal that you can achieve and maintain with exercise and nutrition
habits that aren’t too crazy, time consuming or restrictive.
That might just sound like a percentage to you, and everyone stores fat
a bit differently, but there are some commonalities. With a muscular 10-12%
you’ll have slightly visible striations in your shoulders (aka visible muscle
fibres), “power veins” running down your biceps, visible serratus muscles (the
ab-like muscles under your armpits), and a washboard stomach. You also won’t
look like you live on boiled chicken breasts and spinach, or like you’re spending
all your time obsessing over your biceps in the gym—and you won’t be.
If you’re hardcore enough that you don’t just want to be healthy, exude health and
impress women; but you also want to impress bodybuilders and personal trainers, well, you can get even lower (say 8%). That’s a little trickier, as each additional
percentage point gets harder and harder to achieve once you drop below about 9.
Hop over to the forum and we can help you get there though. I dropped down really
low once because I thought it was kind of cool. I found it a little gross — and so did
everyone else — but it definitely IS kind of cool.
If you’ve tried bulking up before you might not be a stranger to fat. I’m not.
I followed a really bad training and meal plan once and wound up with quite
a bit of it (20+ pounds of fat). Jared affectionately calls those my “fat Shane”
days. That won’t happen to you this time around. If you have abs already don’t
worry—they’ll stick around. If you don’t have abs, we have a guide to help you
lean out while still building muscle here.
Now that you’re on a good plan, fat should be the least of your worries.
The more healthy food us skinny guys eat the faster our metabolism gets, filling
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us out with muscle while staving off the fat (study). This is one of the advantages to being a hardgainer—we’re able to build muscle while avoiding fat (study).
Any fat we do have will be stretched thin over our growing muscles, and those
muscles will develop deeper striations, making us look even leaner. As we continue to hit the gym our body will continue to adapt, and provide those muscles
with a better nutrient delivery system by building more and bigger blood
vessels, making us more vascular and improving our performance. These big
and hungry muscles will burn even more calories, making it hard for your body
to hold onto any fat at all. Add into that the anabolic hormone production that
this program is designed to stimulate, and you’ll have another muscle building
and fat burning system in place.
Moreover, weightlifting increases insulin sensitivity (study), and having
more muscle mass also increases insulin sensitivity (study). This makes it easier
to maintain a lower bodyfat percentage in the longer term.
So don’t skimp on your diet for fear of putting on some fat. If you follow
this program your abs will be bigger than ever by the end. And if you don’t
have abs or a flat stomach yet, you’ll have them soon.
Lifelong Health, Strength and Abs
One big bad downer about getting old is that your metabolism grinds to a halt.
Once you hit 25, well, you’ve peaked, so you’d better treasure those abs while
you can!
…Or at least that’s what everyone tells you. It’s become such a prevalent
myth that everyone has started to believe it. The truth is that peoples’ metabolisms do go down as they age, but it has absolutely nothing to do with their age.
The only reason people experience a drop in their metabolism is because they
fail to exercise, consume anything resembling a healthy diet, and live a healthy
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lifestyle. If they thought they had a good metabolism before, it’s because they
used to bike or play sports in college, or even skateboard with friends. As the
decades roll by, their muscle mass and strength gradually wither away, and they
may even find themselves growing a bit of a pot belly.
Perhaps more relevantly, studies looking into this have found no measurable difference in ability to build muscle in all of the age groups tested (18 to
60). Droopy physiques and low energy levels don’t have so much to do with
your age as your lifestyle.
So what’s the best plan? Strength training and proper nutrition, Bony to
Beastly style. That will keep you looking and feeling strong, lean and youthful
for many decades to come.
We realize you probably aren’t a senior citizen yet, but the point we’re
trying to make here is that if you can develop a healthy lifestyle now, by learning how to eat and train to build and maintain muscle mass, you’ll be in total
control of your body all through your life. If you can get this under control
now you’ll look, feel and perform like a beast while you’re dating and getting
married, you’ll be a beast as you raise your kids—hell you’ll even be a beast of
a grandfather!
360° Physique
This program will improve your physique from all angles at all times. It’s important to get out of the mirror-muscle mentality where you only monitor your
chest, shoulders and arms because that’s what you can see in the mirror. If
you’re concerned about your appearance, you’ve got to keep in mind that the
babe at the bar will be checking you out from the side and back, too. The posterior chain (the muscles that run down the back side of your torso) actually con19
tribute more to your attractiveness than the mirror-muscles do, so this program
doesn’t neglect them!
If you’re concerned about your strength and athleticism you’ve got to
build a balanced muscle structure—one that works as a system. Most weightlifting programs focus on the sagital plane. Lifts like squats, deadlifts, bench
presses, chin-ups and curls all involve moving up and down, front and back.
These are two dimensional lifts. Mario could do them on your GameBoy.
The problem is that training in just one movement plane can lead to imbalanced strength and oftentimes even injury. So we also need to lift in the frontal
plane (out to the side, like with a lateral raise), and in the transverse plane (antirotation, like one-arm bench presses). This will not only make you look like a
badass (and give you a truly fearsome core), it’ll allow you to perform like an
athlete and perform feats of strength in the real world.
Feel free to monitor your progress (aka flex your pecs and ‘ceps in the
mirror) but keep in mind that we’re developing muscle everywhere.
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.
Sound good?
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TIME TO GET
BEASTLY.
Sign-up here and we’ll send you this full eBook instantly, along with the
full training program, the exercise videos, and the muscle-building recipe book.
You’ll also get a membership to the community and coaching from us to make
sure you reach your goals. We leave no bony behind!
If you’re wondering if this program is right for you, just shoot us an email
at us@bonytobeastly.com and tell us a bit about your situation.
*We have a full refund policy.
We fully believe in this program, and we stand behind it 100%. No fine print.
You don’t know us yet, so we’ll assume the risk.
We hope to see you in the member community!
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CHAPTER 1:
TAKE ONE LAST LOOK AT SKINNY
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n a lot of ways transforming your body is 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
someone else. Staying with her is safe and comfortable, but you know you’re
ready for more, and now that you’ve made the (right) decision you’ve got to
break the news.
Time to put all her things in a box—you know, the chips, juice, cookies
and Kraft dinner—and send her on her way, box in hand. Re-stock with some
steak, eggs, olive oil, milk, yogurt, cheese, potatoes, rice, fruits and vegetables
and start re-building your life.
I’m not going to lie to you, being without skinny is tough, especially if all
of your friends are in unhealthy relationships with physiques like skinny (or
her best friend chubs). Some people just ride it out, never living up to their full
potential. I’m not going to sugarcoat things: the more of those people you know
the more challenging this will be. Going out gyming on Wednesday night to try
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and meet a new body is tough, especially if all your friends are back home on
the couch eating chips with chubs.
At some point you might even crave taking skinny back. She’s been calling,
telling you things will be different this time around, and hey, things were comfortable, safe and easy. Building muscle isn’t. It isn’t unachievable, and it isn’t
even unpleasant, but you might find that you long for that safe, comfortable
and familiar life you once had with skinny – even if you know you weren’t all
that happy. Remember that time you skipped breakfast together? That was kind
of romantic, wasn’t it?
The good news is that if you can resist temptation and stick with your
decision, you’ll soon find the physique of your dreams. If you keep eating the
foods that make you look and feel your best, and you keep deadlifting with
perfect form … sooner or later you’re going to meet someone new. (I’m hesitant
to call any kind of “her” a beast, so let’s call her dreamboat.) If you can resist
temptation and take the right path – the harder but more rewarding path – then
soon you’ll be with dreamboat, and things will be pretty damn fantastic. Not
only is dreamboat smokin’ hot – she’s also energetic, 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.
Now, before you break up with skinny once and for all, it’s time to take some
half-naked photos of her and post them online.
We’re kidding. Not about the photos – we’re dead serious about that –
but we’re kidding about skinny being a girl. Luckily for us she isn’t, and in all
seriousness, analogy aside, we really do want you to take and post those photos.
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There are a couple of things you need to take care of first before making this
transition, and once you start building muscle it will be too late to go back to
where you are now – this will almost certainly be the last time you ever see
skinny again – so whatever you do don’t skip this step!
Why? Once you’ve completed this program you’ll want to be able to look
back and see how far you’ve come. Believe me, if you can make it through
this program there will be a very dramatic change. Plus, let’s be real here –
this program isn’t that hard to
follow, so if you really want to
change you can definitely make it
through. A few months from now
you won’t even recognize that old
body you were once with. So let’s
do this, and let’s do this right.
Things to do when you start:
1. Take photos
Get into some tight underwear, jorts, or your sister’s
short shorts. Try not to make
the same mistake Jared did,
where you opt for the cool
masculine modern gym shorts and wind up with mystery thighs that are
impossible to monitor. On that note, learn from our other mistake too
and ditch the short jorts I chose to go with – neither of those options were
doing us any favours. The goal here is to show some thigh though, so
basketball shorts, while cool, may not be your best bet. Just this once
pretend you’re like Daisy Duke, where the more visible your thighs are, the
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better. Next, find an area with a white-ish wall and some half decent
lighting. Overhead light works well to highlight musculature. Take a
relaxed front view, a flexed front view, a flexed side view and the infamous
back-double-bicep. If you only have manly shorts add in a photo of your
thigh by lifting up your short leg a bit. Your thigh growth will be really
damn impressive so don’t hide it. On that note, feel free to add in a couple
extra flexing photos for good measure.
2. Take measurements
Take circumference measurements of your neck, shoulders, chest, flexed
bicep, waist (narrowest point), hips (widest point), thigh and calf.
3. Weigh In
Measure your weight first thing in the morning after peeing and before
having a massive healthy breakfast. Measure yourself once a week every
week—but only once a week. We recommend Sunday or Monday morning.
Weighing yourself every day can be tempting, but it will pick up your
body’s natural weight fluctuations (how salty your meals were and how
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much you had for dinner last night) more than your lean muscle and
fat gain. If you measure yourself once a week those fluctuations will be
negligible and your muscle gain will be significant (‘cause we don’t mess
around). It also gives you a goal: gain weight before the next weigh-in.
4. Consider your goals and why they’re important to you.
5. Post your photos, goals and introduction on the forums
Nothing will motivate you better than putting yourself out there and
committing to transform. If you’re embarrassed of posting photos of your
girly shorts or bitty biceps that’s understandable—but post them anyway.
Everyone else in the community has, so you’ll hardly be the odd man out.
(While you’re at it, take a look at some of their transformations.)
Plus, If you post your before photos on the forum we can give you feedback on your posture and trouble areas too, which will allow us to make
sure you’re getting the most out of the program and getting the most out
of this that you can. Arguably the most valuable part of this program is the
community and the coaching, so be sure to take advantage of it.
6. Find a training buddy and take to the forums
You can find a friend to do this with you if you like. This is totally optional of course, but it’s often a little easier to do with someone than on your
own. Having a friend who will be there every step of the way will allow
you both to hold each other accountable to the nutrition and workout
plans. If you’re doing this alone it’s all the more crucial that you post your
starting situation, challenges, successes and weekly and monthly progress
on the forums—that’s what we’re all there for.
Don’t feel like you need to do this alone.
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7. Print out the Phase One workouts & nutrition checklist and start
recording your progress
Recording your training progress is incredibly important. It let’s you know
what to lift each workout, it lets you monitor your strength gains and it
ensures that you’re actually getting stronger at a beastly pace.
Gradually increasing the weight and/or volume that you’re lifting is called
progressive overload, and it’s an incredibly important – if not the most
important – factor when it comes to building muscle.
Similarly, the nutrition checklist will help you keep your diet on track and
measurably track your progress throughout the phases. This is equally important, and it’s often what holds us thin guys back the most.
8. Watch the videos several times and practice whenever you can
We put a lot of effort into making sure the training videos on the forum
cover everything you need to know about the lifts we’re having you do.
Lifting with improper or reckless technique as a thin guy is bad for two
reasons. First, your muscles, tendons, ligaments and bones have not yet
adapted to the point where they’re bigger, stronger and denser. Thus, you
have a higher chance of getting injured. This could range from something
as trivial as a little muscle pull to something more serious like a herniated
disc or a mouthfull of barbell. Second, when things get tough, you tend to
revert back to your old habits. If you cultivated bad habits in Phase One,
this could set you up for injury, shoddy progress or inconsistent results in
later phases. Like they say, you’re only as strong as your foundation. These
videos will help you build a rock solid foundation and have you getting
the most out of your workouts right from Phase One: Day One. (Not to
mention we lift a little differently from bodybuilders in order to get the
27
best results, so if you think you’re already familiar with some of the lifts ...
you may not actually be.)
9. Grocery shopping
Read the nutrition section, choose a couple recipes from the recipe book,
and stock up on the diesel grub. Hard to eat like a bear when your
cupboards are bare.
We’re always posting new recipes in the community too, so be sure to
check out the recipe section. The beastly eggnog recipe that one member
helped us invent is pretty fantastic. It tastes like dessert, it packs more
protein than three chicken breasts, it’s one of the most balanced and nutritious meals we’ve come across, it’s cheap, it’s extremely calorie dense …
and yet it fills me up about as much as a glass of milk.
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29
CHAPTER 2:
THE BONY TO BEASTLY
PHILOSOPHY
N
ow that we’ve said goodbye to being skinny it’s time to move onto the
heart of the program. Warning: This is NOT your typical bodybuilding
program! The Bony to Beastly training program has two purposes:
•
Make you jacked by adding 20, 30 or more pounds of muscle to your
frame over the course of four phases.
•
Improve the way you move so that you’ve got a beast of a physique
that looks great and performs even better.
That being said, the approach we take is slightly different than what you might
have learned elsewhere. As you might’ve already read in my story, when I was
setting out on my journey to deezedhood my initial logic was, if I want big
biceps, a large chest and huge traps, I should do as many exercises for those
body parts as I can. As impressive as my logic was at the age of 16, and even
though I knew everything…it was unfortunately the wrong approach.
How could I be wrong though? I was following an advanced bodybuilder’s
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program (Arnold’s Encyclopedia) and he was huge! So why not me? Well for
one, I wasn’t an advanced bodybuilder. I also didn’t have his genetic makeup
… or his pharmaceuticals. The reason you will not get the same results as those
guys is because that is what they are doing now—at an advanced level. They’ve
already gained a large amount of muscle mass and are just adding the finer
details. If you follow an advanced lifter’s program you will get horrible results.
However, if you follow a program that is tailored to your level of training, that
is when you will flourish.
Think of it this way: what I was trying to do in high school—training the
body in an isolated fashion and blasting each individual muscle group on its
own individual day—was kind of like when I put 26” black chrome rims and
neon lights on my navy blue 2005 Nissan Sentra. At the end of the day, the rims
and lights were cool, but it just looked weird because it was still a Sentra. If I
had a Bugatti, I wouldn’t even need rims to look badass, because the car itself
is amazing. Your body works the same way. As a beginner, you need to spend
time working to develop a nice car with a solid engine by doing compound
exercises that stimulate the body as a whole (squats, deadlifts, chin ups, rows
and presses). You will get the majority of your muscle mass and strength doing
these. Not only will you have to spend less time in the gym, your results will
be dramatically better than before, because you are training the body as a unit
instead of training muscles individually. Once you have a nice car, you can add
in accessories to make it even sweeter. This is when you would throw in more
bodybuilding style exercises to target certain muscle groups. We’ll help you with
that is you progress into the later phases.
This program is not designed to be sexy. This program is designed to make
YOU sexy. It is not filled with crazy workouts with super fancy exercises or reps
schemes. There is a reason for this. If you are reading this ebook, you have most
31
likely been trying to get jacked without significant results. Not getting results
isn’t an option here. Each workout is designed with small progressions in mind,
so that by the end of 5 months you will have made one giant progression. Go for
small changes. Remember small improvements every day will make you a beast
and will allow for consistent progress and a maintained hunger for jackededness.
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33
CHAPTER 3
TRAINING FUNDAMENTALS
T
o reach the upper echelons of your potential in anything you need to
spend time building the foundation. Elite athletes know this—that’s why
most of them spend years honing fundamental skills like dribbling or shooting a puck. You will not be amazing on your first day. You’ve got to attack
this program, and your goals in general, with the mindset that each day you
can learn and improve. That’s when the results you’re looking for will all of a
sudden sneak up on you. It may sound cheesy, but you have no idea what your
true potential is until you do everything in your power to reach it. It’s much
higher (and more handsomely muscled) than you think. To reach it though, you
must spend time developing the foundation. This is the foundation that will
allow you to be the beast.
Now does this mean you won’t see immediate results? Far from it. Beginners experience something we refer to as “newbie gains” when they first start
eating and training for muscle intelligently. If you follow this program to a T,
you’ll see phenomenal gains right out of the gate. If you’re relatively untrained
34
you may gain 10 or even 20 pounds within the first month alone.
We can’t promise you those gains though if you don’t follow the plan.
When you decide to start this program you need to fully commit to the diet and
training we’re recommending. I know it might seem cool to add a smidgen of
this program or that program—but we urge you to resist!
In other words, don’t #@$% with the recipe.
That may sound cocky or arrogant, but it will save you time, save you from a
ton of hassle and confusion, and most importantly: get you dieseled. If you start
half-following our program, or using bits of somebody else’s methodology we
can no longer guarantee that the system will give you results. We know that this
system works. If you trust in it, it will work for you.
Has your girlfriend or friend ever tried to talk to you when you were
playing video games? Either your character died, or your girlfriend got mad at
you. The same will happen when you can’t choose a single program to focus on,
so stay frosty mates.
BUILDING AN IMPRESSIVE PHYSIQUE
The foundation for an impressive physique relies on three key things:
•
Optimal posture, enforcing a strong core and a strong posterior chain.
•
Proper training technique
•
Optimal lifestyle and eating habits
35
STRONG, FUNCTIONAL & AESTHETIC POSTURE
Optimal posture is when your body is aligned well enough that it recruits the
right muscles for the right tasks, making you better able to use your body in
any circumstance and less likely to hurt yourself while doing it. Whenever your
body deviates too much from the norm, it alters the way your muscles work together and causes dysfunction. This dysfunction can lead to serious injuries, or
more commonly minor frustrations. What happens is that some muscles slack
off because they are constantly being stretched, which makes them weak. Our
bodies are versatile, so other muscles are able to pick up the slack and take over
for them—kind of. Unfortunately, these muscles weren’t meant to be used for
these new functions, become frustrated, and decide to explode. Well not really,
but they tend to become stiff and will be far more susceptible to injury. For
example, if someone’s glutes do not function properly, when they sprint they
will rely mostly on their hamstrings and lower back to propel them forward.
Ever pull your hamstring sprinting? Well it wasn’t because your hamstrings
were weak. They were simply fed up with your lazy ass (literally) for leaving all
its unfinished TPS reports on their desk.
How does this apply to putting on muscle mass? Well, if you’re trying to
develop a thick and wide upper back, but you’re lifting with your lower back
… well you won’t be developing a very impressive upper back. It doesn’t matter
how much weight you’re lifting—if you’re using the wrong muscles to lift it, the
wrong muscles will be growing. As you can imagine this won’t translate into
a very impressive physique, real world strength, athletic performance and full
body muscle growth.
36
THE IMPORTANCE OF A STRONG CORE AND
POSTERIOR CHAIN
These are the two areas that tend to be mostly affected with our typical upper
and lower crossed syndrome, like you can see in this illustration.
balanced
upright
posture
forward
head
rounded
shoulders
flat/sway
back
optimal
alignment
strong core
weak
abdominal
muscles
strong
glutes
Since your body is constantly being pulled forward, both by gravity and prolonged sitting, it makes sense to correct it by stretching the front of the body
and strengthening the muscles along the back of the body (posterior chain).
Since the pelvis and ‘core’ are the centerpieces of your body, it’s essential to be
37
able to have complete control over them. As soon as your pelvis is displaced, it
can alter the rest of your body. When you strengthen weak muscles, and stretch
the tight muscles, the body will slowly shift closer to optimal, or at least within
a range that keeps you healthy.
Optimal posture will also allow your newly developed physique to look
much better. Good posture has even been shown to have a neuroendocrine
effect, causing men to release more testosterone, limit cortisol production (a
muscle-killing hormone) and improve self-confidence. Not only that, it also
indicates power and status (in all species). Ever see Superman slouching? Didn’t
think so! Take two guys of the same musculature, one with bad posture and
one with good posture. Who will look better, perform better, have more rapid
muscle growth, have more leadership ability and suffer fewer injuries? The guy
with good posture.
You might want to talk to your life coach about this, because I know that
relying on your body for your confidence can be poisonous. True confidence
must come from within. However, standing taller, looking better, feeling better
and gaining more muscle can’t hurt, right?
O
ur training philosophy is based on an approach popularized by strength
coach legend Mike Boyle. It’s called the Joint-by-Joint approach, and
it’s based on the fact that the body is an alternating series of mobile and stable
joints. For example, the foot must be stable, the ankle must be mobile, the knee
must be stable, the hips must be both mobile and stable, the lower back must be
stable, the thoracic spine must be mobile, the shoulder must be both mobile and
stable and the cervical spine must be both mobile and stable.
When you fall into that upper and lower-crossed syndrome a couple bad
things happen: you lose stability in places where you need it and gain mobil38
ity in places you don’t want it. A great example of this is in the hips. When you
sit all day and develop tight hips, the body must find a way to produce movement. So what does it do? Well the body is one resourceful ass mother^@#$%.
If you’re doing a deadlift and you’re getting low to grab the bar but your hips
aren’t mobile enough to provide the necessary range of motion, you’ll take
mobility from a stable joint. In this case, the lower back is the unfortunate one
who is now being called on to make up for your hips’ lack of mobility. This is
your typical scene of a guy lifting a lot of weight with a completely rounded
back.
weight moves
straight up
totally *&$%ed
spinal alignment
stable
lower back
flexible
lower back
head in line
with spine
flexible
hips
stiff hips
Since the lower back is supposed to be used for stability and not mobility,
you’re now risking a back injury, and you will lose most of the muscle-building
benefits for your glutes. And this won’t only affect your back. When you deadlift in this manner, you mess up the whole chain. Your thoracic spine will stiffen
up in an attempt to make up for your lower back, and your cervical spine will
39
have too much mobility. In essence when one part is messed up it throws a
wrench in the whole system.
This whole program has a huge emphasis on getting movement from the
right places and stability from the right places. That’s why the core training in
this program is designed to increase the stability of your lumbar region instead
of developing mobility, like normal crunching movements tend to do. Some of
you may not really care about this, and that’s understandable—I know when I
was skinny I only wanted to look good. However, what if you could have your
steak and eat it too? That is in essence what will happen. When you train in
this manner, not only will you look great, you’ll feel incredible and you’ll increase your athleticism as a fortunate byproduct. When you feel good not only
can you train harder, but also you won’t have to take days off or try to push
through your injuries. Your body will be bulletproof.
PROPER TECHNIQUE—LIFTING LIKE AN ATHLETE
Proper technique is performing an exercise in a way that uses the muscles the
way they are meant to be targeted in a safe and biomechanically sound manner.
This should be your main focus while training. Videotape yourself, ask someone
who knows what they are doing to watch you, get some feedback and improve
your technique. The technical foundation you set in phase 1 will carry over to
your success in the long run. The tricky part comes when you have to decide if
you’re focusing too much on technique and not lifting enough weight. In the beginning, for major exercises like the squat, deadlift, and bench press, keep every
rep perfect. As you progress and become more stable, a very slight deviation in
technique is acceptable when trying to push max weights. This must be moni-
40
tored closely however because poor technique can lead to injury. For example,
if you were doing a max squat and your hips rose up a bit, that would be ok.
However, if your knees caved in and you rounded your upper back I would
lower the weight.
MUSCLE-BUILDING HABITS & LIFESTYLE
Optimal lifestyle is simply achieving an environment that will allow you to
grow physically and mentally. This program is focused on growing physically, of
course, but improving your lifestyle and eating habits will carry over into other
areas of your life. Here are a couple points that will help you pack on muscle:
•
At least 7 hours of quality sleep each night. Different people need
different amounts of sleep, so if you need 9, you need 9.
•
Limiting the amount of negative stress you have in your life—both
physically and mentally. Negative stress has been linked to increased
cortisol levels, which can slow your progress.
•
4-6 meals a day.
•
Drinking approximately 3 litres (a bit less than one gallon) of water
per day. Training and eating a caloric surplus both increase your body’s
need for water, so be prepared to drink more of it than you’re used to!
•
Plenty of exercise (we got you covered with that!)
•
Enjoying your drinks, but keeping it moderate. Much more than two
drinks a night will start hurting your results (and your health).
•
Having fun, whether it be the work you do, or other activities
you enjoy.
•
Spending time with loved ones.
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I could go on, but I think you get the point. We aren’t trying to turn you into
a gym-rat or nutritionazi, but you may need to make some significant lifestyle
changes in order to have your dream physique and get yourself in great shape.
At the end of the day, some people will never have ‘perfect’ posture because
of what they do for a living. For example, an elite tennis player will never be
completely symmetrical, and someone who’s worked a desk job all their life
may never have ‘perfect’ posture. Yet they can achieve a nearly-optimal posture
that keeps them pain free, strong and looking great. Likewise, a nurse won’t
have a normal sleep schedule so they have to optimize their situation by sleeping as best they can when they can. A server rarely has time to eat while they’re
working so they must eat more before or after, or find ways to sneak in quick
snacks during their shift. Make the most out of your situation, and whatever
you do don’t use it as an excuse for failure.
Keeping numbers one and two on your mind during your training will
allow you to make quicker and better progress, while paying attention to
numbers one and three on a daily basis will put the gravy on the steak and
really accelerate your gains.
While you’re doing this program don’t skip steps! We know you’re in a hurry
to get dieseled. We designed the program with that in mind, don’t worry. This
program is put together in a way where you must complete and be proficient at
each phase before moving to the next. Think of it like constructing a building.
If you start with a strong foundation and slowly build it up using good materials you’ll have steady progress until one day you wind up with a rock solid well
contructed building. If you skimp on the foundation and go right to building
the penthouse suite, sure, you might have a sweet suite and a great view, but
42
the building is a piece of crap that might tumble down at any moment. Not
to mention it looks kind of funky except when you’re in the penthouse and
looking at yourself in mirror.
Besides, we know what it’s like to be skinny and to want results right
away. That’s why we’ve made sure that each phase will get you to your goal
as quickly as possible. Even phase 1 will pack some pounds on you incredibly
quickly, so luckily there’s no reason to go skipping through anything. Trust us :)
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44
CHAPTER 4:
MUSCLE-BUILDING 101
Ever see the face of an elite boxer before? The areas that get hit often, such
as the nose, eyebrows and cheekbones, get bigger. What’s happening is that
because they keep getting hit there, the body, being so gracious and wanting
to preserve the organism at all costs, puts more padding in there to soften the
blows. A very similar thing happens when you load the body with weights. You
apply a stimulus, tell the body that it needs to adapt or die, and it will most
likely choose adapt—and give you nice muscles. So how does this happen?
Every time you lift a weight you’re stressing the body and actually doing
damage to the muscles. After the damage is done, if the body has the right environment, i.e. right amount of nutrients and hormones, it will repair the muscles
and make them bigger and stronger. Keep in mind that the body only grows
when it recovers from the stress. So how do you maximize your muscle gain
and achieve a powerful physique?
45
You need to apply the right amount of stress—not too much or too little —and
create the proper environment for recovery.
What is the right amount of stress? This will vary for everyone, but for us
skinny folk less is more. People with small amounts of muscle mass can grow
off of only 40% of their one rep max (1RM). For some just using an empty
barbell will help kick start muscle growth. The secret to achieving a powerful
physique in a short amount of time is that you also have to stress the body in a
way that will make it respond and grow as a whole, rather than piece by piece.
This is where big compound movements come in. The stronger you get in the
squat, deadlift, bench press, rows and chin ups the more muscular you will be.
What is a proper environment? This is where having an optimal lifestyle
comes in. Proper nutrients, sleep and stress reduction are key here so that you
can optimize muscle growth.
We’ll teach you the secrets of recovery and growth in the nutrition sections, but first let’s deal with applying the right amount of stress.
TRAINING FOR RAPID FUNCTIONAL MUSCLE GROWTH
Periodization
I’m sure you’ve probably read about periodization before. It’s simply a
structured calendar of training to allow the body to optimally adapt to and
progress from a training stimulus. It’s kind of like the curriculum at school,
where they teach you year by year, unit by unit so that at the end of high school
you are an expert at sneaking out of your house and lying to your parents
about where you stayed last night.
46
The type of periodization used in this program is called linear periodization. It is very similar to a linear graph. Phase 1 starts with higher reps, less sets,
lighter loads, and relatively simple exercises. With each phase, the reps decrease,
the sets increase slightly, the load increases significantly and the complexity of
the exercises increases.
Rep Ranges
In this program, there are a variety of rep ranges that we use. Many believe that
each rep range has a magical power and that as soon as you move from 8 reps
to 7 reps, you enter the “power” zone. While I used to believe in this quite a bit,
I’ve learned from people much smarter than me that while each rep does create
a slightly different stimulus, you can get big and strong with pretty much all
reps ranging from 1-12. Especially when you are a beginner. You could even do
sets of 25 and still get stronger, however you will get stronger much faster using
a larger load.
One of the main reasons we change the reps is to change the stimulus.
While each rep range can make you big and strong, they also have their specific
benefits. People tend to use less weight with higher rep ranges, which makes it
perfect in the beginning to let the tissues adapt. On the other hand, lower rep
ranges cause more neural adaptations and allow you to contract the muscle
harder. They also produce more of a hormonal stimulus. Therefore, both can be
very beneficial and are used in this program. They’re just used at different times.
To make the fibres grow, we must progressively overload them with heavier
loading and more volume to keep them growing. This is why we slowly lower
the reps to allow for heavier loading and increase the number of sets to up the
volume. This will allow for quicker strength gains and more hormonal stimulation, which helps you recover and build muscle faster.
47
Recovery and “This program is too easy”
I usually hear this from guys with more training experience, as this program
tends to be pretty different from what they’re used to. As a comparison, when
I was trying to achieve 18 goals at once I would train up to 3 times a day—
basketball practice, upper body and then jump training. I worked my ass off,
but unfortunately had nothing to show for it. I assumed that more was better.
Unfortunately for me then (and fortunately for us now) that wasn’t the case.
Typical bodybuilding training tends to advocate really blasting muscles into
oblivion, taking sets to failure and doing lots of “negatives” (cheating the
weight up and lowering it slowly). Going back to the principle of recovery: to
gain muscle one must stimulate the muscle with the correct amount of stress,
then rest so the muscle can rebuild itself bigger and stronger. The problem with
always going to failure (and beyond) is that you’re placing too much stress on
the muscle and then not allowing yourself to recover from it.
What this means is that to get the desired result from lifting heavy things
there have to be several things in place. How much weight you can lift and how
many sets and reps you can perform will heavily rely on other areas of life like
how much food you’re consuming, how much sleep you’re getting, and how
stressful your life is. Unfortunately, nowadays most skinny guys have very busy
lives, don’t eat enough and don’t sleep enough. When you combine that with a
bodybuilding program with a ton of volume, you will have a hard time seeing
progress. Especially since a lot of bodybuilding programs are designed for
people taking anabolic steroids, which drastically speed recovery.
The truth is that you don’t need that much volume to grow, especially
early on, unlike someone who’s 60 pounds of muscle heavier than humans are
supposed to be and fighting against their body’s genetic potential. All you really
48
need to achieve maximum muscle gains is a progressive overload approach to
training. That is why the program starts with short, sweet and simple workouts.
Each workout you should try to increase the weight a little bit. Each week,
the total volume of work increases too (i.e. more sets). This means that you’re
taking a small step forward with each workout, and if you’re eating well, sleeping well, and keeping stress as low as possible, you should be progressing pretty
quickly. If phase 1 is too easy, it simply means that you aren’t using enough
weight, or you are not focusing on proper technique hard enough. If you make
the right weight choices and follow the rest times, you should be pretty gassed
by the end of the workout.
Warm up
For many, the typical warm-up involves swing the arms around a bit … and
that’s it. Remember though, if you want typical results do a typical program.
That’s why for your warm-up you’ll be breaking the norms. There are two
reasons to perform a warm-up:
1. Getting the body prepared to do work. Countless studies have shown
that a dynamic warm-up increases vertical leap, sprint speed, maximum
strength output (tested via 1 RM squat), etc., more so than not warming up or
static stretching. It’ll also loosen up tight areas and activate certain muscles,
which will allow you to achieve the positions needed to maintain proper exercise technique. If you have trouble squatting, the warm-up will help you loosen
your hips so you can squat deeper. This section of the program will help to
develop the mobility needed for optimal exercise technique, and thus optimum
muscle growth.
2. Injury prevention. Cold muscles are less flexible and pliable and tend
to be injured more easily. As an example, if you have really stiff quads, you are
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more likely to suffer from back and knee pain. So rather than leaving it at that
we’re going to fix it. Besides, it’s much harder to get jacked if you’re injured.
How to determine what weight to start with
Start light. For rack pulls (and all other deadlift derivatives) I always have first
timers start a set with just the bar to get the technique right. This also allows
them to see how heavy the bar feels. To be on the safe side, I would just throw
some ten’s on, do 2-5 reps to see how it feels, and then go up accordingly. While
in the first workout there are only 2 “work” sets, you can take several “feeler”
sets prior to that to determine the proper weight. You really only need to do a
couple reps to see if it’s a good weight. For the first week keep the weights light
so you can really perfect your technique, and then as your technique solidifies
itself more and more, you can start pushing your boundaries little by little.
The three rules of weight selection:
1. You need perfect technique for every rep. If you cannot keep perfect technique for each rep go down in weight.
2. You need to be able to feel the correct muscles working. This is directly
related to technique. If you can’t feel the right muscles working, you must
adjust your technique. If you still 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!
3. 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. Going to failure every set and using improper technique will sap
your body of energy and develop bad habits that can limit your success in
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the long run. That being said, the set should still be challenging and you
should need that allotted rest period.
For many, this will be their first time lifting seriously or following a program.
This means that your foundation must be rock solid for you to see great results
in the end. That’s why we’re sticklers for technique. Many trainees select big
sexy weights that make them look like a beast when they shoddily lift ‘em,
instead of picking the weight that will make them a beast, both in and out
of the gym.
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.
However, if you follow these rules by using the cues and checklist, while being
as objective as possible, it will be much easier to use proper weights. Don’t
be scared of trying new weights; instead be honest with yourself about where
you are and how your technique is. I can guarantee you will make some mistakes, just try to be as aware as possible and learn from each one. Choosing the
proper weight allows you to stimulate the muscle enough to promote growth,
without risking injury and decreasing recovery. If you felt like you went too
light on your first set, feel free to count it as a warm up set and add in another
set. Remember, quality trumps quantity.
Warm-up sets
Once you get stronger, you will need to do some warm up sets for the bigger
exercises. For example if you’re squatting 150 lbs for 8 reps, you would do
a warm up set with 95 lbs for 5 reps, then 135 lbs for 5 reps, then move to
your “working set” with your working weight of 150 lbs for 8 reps. This will
allow you to lift more weight and do more reps at the given weight while also
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preventing injury. This helps because you’re basically telling your muscles to
get ready for the shitstorm that’s about to hit them so they can put up barricades and sandbags. Your muscles are on your side—no surprise assaults. Each
warm-up set helps to get more blood into the muscles so they’re more pliable,
while also stimulating your nervous system so that the muscles are activated
and ready to contract. You will get much more out of the exercise when you
properly warm up.
This is also a perfect time to practice your technique before you lift heavier
weight. When your only habit is excellence, there’s no room for anything less.
Progressing Weights
Progressing weights can be a tricky game. This is because most people try to
improve their numbers every single workout. If this were possible there would
be a lot of people lifting crazy amounts of weight. The amount of strength you
have for each workout will vary due to many factors. Sleep, other life stressors, food intake, and your recovery from the last workout can all impact how
strong you are on any given day. This is why it is important to write down your
weights but also how you are feeling.
If you’re a true beginner it’s not uncommon to see rapid increases in
strength even before you see big increases in size. This is due to neural adaptations, which allow you to contract your muscles harder. In the beginning it
should be fairly easy to increase weight every time, however don’t be surprised
when your gains slow down. It’s common to see a sharp increase in strength,
then perhaps a decrease or a time where the weights don’t budge.
I’ve seen many people focus solely on the numbers each session. What
happens is that their technique slowly deteriorates to the point where every lift
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is a max lift in an effort to continuously improve. You must expect gains that
come in an up and down fashion. It’s not always linear.
That being said, here are the rules for progressing weights:
1. Perfect Technique. I think you guys know this by now …
2. If the current weight is easy, up the weight! Only if you can stick with
number one though.
3. Adjust for how you feel each day. This will take some time to master,
however, pay attention to how the weights feel each day. Know that sometimes you can crush weights and sometimes you can’t. If one day you’re
really feeling it, don’t hesitate to push your limits. On the other hand,
if you didn’t sleep much and after you’ve started lifting the weights feel
heavier than normal, don’t worry as much about the numbers. This would
be a time to stay at a weight you can smash and focus on your technique.
The body is weird; sometimes you will suck during the first lift then kill
the rest of your workout. Adapt to how you feel each day. If you are a true
beginner and your form is tight, you should be upping your weights a little
bit every workout. This will continue for a few months and slow down as
you get stronger and stronger. Although you should progress fairly quickly,
if you focus on progressing the weights quicker than you can handle it
your technique takes a back seat and you set your course for the dark
side. Once there it’s hard to swallow the bitter pill of dropping down your
weight to work on “technique”. I only speak of this because I spent much
of my training on the dark side and was below my potential for quite some
time. Therefore, before you get to that point, always make sure when you
up the weight you can maintain perfect technique. It may seem blasphemous not to take every set to failure, but you have nothing to lose and
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much to gain. If you are keeping perfect technique and the weight is right,
each exercise should be very challenging. All this being said, if you go for it
and the weight is too heavy or too light, do your best to be aware of your
body and your technique so you can choose the best weight.
Progressing Sets
A few weeks into the program you may find that your first sets in the first
circuit are difficult, even though you crushed a similar weight the week before
and felt like you recovered well. This is to be expected. Your central nervous
system (CNS) requires a certain amount of warming up before it kicks into
beast-mode. When your lifts start getting heavier you’ll notice that the first
heavy sets of the day are often the hardest, even though you might be thinking “I’m fresh and un-fatigued—why is this tough!?” Don’t get discouraged
and mentally set yourself up to get wrecked on the following sets. Many trainees get psyched out at this point and underperform. Little do they know that
you should be able to lift heavier, with better form, and have better control in
the following sets. Once your CNS is in gear you’ll be ready to rock out some
pretty solid sets.
•
During the first real set you’re fresh, so use that energy to crush out
some reps with perfect form. This will get your CNS primed for the following sets. Make sure to keep a few in the tank.
•
Your second set should be one of your best. You should be able to
crush it. You aren’t fatigued yet and your body is primed for the
onslaught.
•
The third set should be physiologically very similar to your second set,
so you should be able to crush this one too.
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•
On the final set you’re fully in gear. You might be a bit tired, or you
might find yourself adding 10 pounds to the bar.
Similar Exercises in All Days
You may notice that some exercises are the same for each day—there’s a reason
for this too. When you want to get good at something how do you do it?
You must practice it … a lot. Malcolm Gladwell’s research found that it takes
10,000 hours of dedicated practice to become a world class master at any given
skill. While you don’t need to be a master of the squat to get huge, the better
you can be at these “big bang” exercises the more muscle you will be able to
put on faster. That’s why in this program you’ll be doing some form of squat,
deadlift, press, row and pulling exercise in each workout. This will allow you to
improve at all of those movements. Developing better technique in those movements means that you can lift more weight, and in turn build more muscle while
preventing injuries.
De-load week
At the start of each phase you will have what is called a de-load week. This
week serves as a “rest” week when you are learning the new exercises. You can
do more warm up sets if you like, but make sure you only do two working sets.
What this decrease in volume will do will allow your body to recover more so
that you can get even bigger and stronger. During five weeks beforehand, doing
the previous phase, you’ll have put a lot of stress on your body. Your body
only grows when it recovers from the stress, so when we drop the sets that first
week, it gives you time to recover from the last five weeks of training and helps
to speed your progress. It will also be a nice break, as the workouts will be
shorter. If you leave the gym hungry for more, then you are doing it properly.
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What’s with all these cables and funky stances?
You may have noticed that we use lots of exercises with cables as well as ½
kneeling and split-stance exercises. The cables are great because they offer
steady and continuous resistance, whereas with a dumbbell there are points in
the exercise where there are variations in tension on the muscle. For example,
in a bicep curl with a dumbbell, the resistance is the hardest at the bottom of
the lift and gets easier as you move up. While the muscles always get stronger as
they shorten, the cable will keep tension on the muscles throughout the
whole movement.
The ½ kneeling exercises and split stance exercises are great because they
are reflexive. This means that without thinking too much you will be activating
a ton of other muscles. Since in this type of stance you won’t be as stable, you
now have to engage your glutes and your core to keep you solid to properly
perform the movement. This makes the entire workout a core workout!
Different muscles should be trained differently
Your different muscle groups serve a variety of different purposes. It’s no surprise that these different muscle groups need to be trained differently to get the
best results, yet most people train their chest and backs using the same mindset
and tempo, not realizing that there are subleties to each lift that can make it far
more effective.
Your legs can sprint, jog, leap and walk, and they respond best to a combination of explosive movements, heavy strength training, higher rep training,
higher volume training, etc—it all depends on whether you’re training your
hamstrings, glutes or quads and for what purposes.
Your chest, shoulders and triceps are for heaving, throwing and punching. These are powerful “performance” muscles that respond well to explosive
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movements followed by emphasis on the eccentric (lowering) part of the lift.
Your back and biceps allows you to climb cliffs and carry big rocks. These
are stable and immensly strong muscles, not twitchy explosive ones, and as such
respond well to a slightly different tempo—one that involves more holds and
less emphasis on the eccentric (lowering) part of the lift.
Your core allows you to transfer force from your lower body to upper
body, allowing your body to work as a system. As such it should be trained to
be stable and rock solid under pressure.
We don’t got into much detail about this in the book, as it’s much easier to
see it in action. I’ll walk you through how to properly work each muscle group
for maximum strength and growth in the exercise videos. And be sure to watch
for tempo differences on the exercise sheets depending on which muscle group
you’re working.
THE BIG 5 MUSCLE-BUILDING CUES
I touched on the Joint By Joint Approach in the previous chapter which covers
how the body is a series of stable and mobile joints. Knowing that we should
get motion from certain areas and stability from certain areas is really important, but how do we bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and real life
training sessions?
The answer is simple, to train in this way all you gotta do is follow the Big
Five Coaching Cues. I learned these cues from the athletic performance guru
Mike Robertson:
•
Neutral Neck
•
Neutral Spine
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•
Neutral Wrist
•
KOST (Knee Over Second Toe)
•
Tripod Foot
Following these cues make it so you can train the body while getting stability
and mobility in the right places, making for a beast of an athlete! Let’s examine
each one a bit further:
Neutral Neck
Neutral neck is the having a neck position that is centered directly over your
spine, with the crown of your forehead high and the chin tucked in. Try to
picture an African woman carrying a large water jug on her head. The head can
only safely support the jug if it is centered properly over the spine. This is also
where you want your head if you are a football player delivering a bone shattering tackle. Your head position tends to dictate the position of the rest of the
spine. If your head is forward then you’re more likely to round your back. If
you are squatting with your head thrown back like someone just hit your butt
with a tazer, you’re more likely to arch your back excessively, which alters the
way your muscles fire. When you keep the neck in the neutral zone, also called
“packing the neck” your upper back will straighten out, and your lower back
will also stay in the neutral zone. This will help take stress off the lower back,
upper back, neck, and shoulders.
Neutral Spine
Once you have the head position locked in, it becomes easier to achieve neutral
spine. Neutral spine refers to how your spine looks. Like I mentioned earlier,
people tend to have a very rounded upper back and a very arched lower back.
While the spine has natural curves, when they become too extreme, that is
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where injuries happen and where you stop recruiting the right muscles with
exercise. To achieve neutral spine, one of the easiest ways is to stand with your
back to the wall with your feet about a foot away. Make sure your head, upper
back and butt are touching. Now get as tall as you can and pack your neck.
Then place one hand behind your lower back. Now push your lower back
towards the wall until it touches your hand while keeping the neck packed
and your upper back tall. Now hold this position. Step off the wall and keep
that spinal alignment. Does it feel weird? Good. It will help to spend as much
time and get as comfortable as possible in this position. This is where you want
your back when you are deadlifting, squatting, benching, rowing and chinning
upping. Yes that is a verb. This will allow you to activate your glutes when you
squat and deadlift instead of always relying on your quads and lower back.
Neutral Wrist
When you go to punch someone, what do you do? I wouldn’t know because
I only do roundhouse kicks, but I’ve seen people do it in movies. They clench
their fist and their wrist is straight as an arrow. It is rock solid and helps to
transfer the energy. I know that to break a wrist you simply have to fall on it
with the wrist extended. This means that when you do any exercise, your wrist
should be locked in. A good way to know is that when you hold a weight, or
your girlfriend’s hand, there should be a straight line going from your wrist
through the tip on your thumb when viewed from the top. Keep it there at all
times. If you don’t that area becomes an energy leak and you can either damage
the wrist, or you won’t recruit the muscles of the chest and back as well.
KOST (Knee Over Second Toe)
This cue is important for two reasons. It makes your glutes fire harder, and it
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keeps your knees healthy. Basically, when the glutes fire harder and create stability in the hip, they keep the knee in line with the second toe, also providing
stability to the knee. If the knee goes too far outwards, or inwards, problems
start to happen. If you jumped off a desk and landed with your knees pointing
inwards, there is a good chance both your ACL’s will explode. If you squat with
your knees that way, while they may not explode, it will only be a matter of
time before they start to ache.
Tripod Foot
The last of the great cues, this will teach you how to make an arch in your foot
so that you move using your ankle instead of pronating your foot and making
it flat when you do a squat or deadlift. Having flat feet is usually related to an
anterior pelvic tilt, or weak feet muscles caused by a lifetime of wearing thick
running shoes. To get the tripod foot, you want to have three points of contact
with the ground. The three points of contact will be the ball of your foot, directly underneath your big toe. The second is he ball of your foot directly underneath your pinky toe, and the third is your heel. Try to make these three points
the primary contacts with the ground. Other parts of your foot will touch, just
try to emphasize these ones.Try to make a nice arch with your arch of your
foot. It helps to lift the toes up to the ceiling. Once they are lifted up try to put
them down splayed apart. This will be very difficult, since if you’ve worn shoes
all your life your toes will be jammed together. Do it anyway and practice it
until it gets better! When you can keep an arch in your foot as you lower down
in a squat, it will allow the knee to better track over the second toe, which will
then allow the glutes to fire more, which will save the lower back.
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A
ny of these cues on their own are good, but if you’ve learned anything by
now it’s that the body works together as a very intricate system. We go
over them in more detail in the exercise videos, and teach you how they apply
to each lift. When you can use these cues together naturally without having to
think about them, that is when your movement skills are back to where they
were meant to be. Until then, practice, practice, practice. These cues will not
only help you build the right muscles, they will help you build the right muscles
for the rest of your beastly life!
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CHAPTER 5
EATING FOR MUSCLE
Y
ou’ve got your basic workout principles down. You could print off your
workout sheets, watch the exercises for Phase One: Day One on the
forum and head off to the gym right now.
However, working out without also mastering nutrition is a lost battle.
Due to the extra calories you’ll be burning, you could very well wind up smaller
than you were when you started. It’s happened to me on several occasions. The
gym is like a wrecking ball and food is your building material. In order to tear
down your muscle shack and build yourself a muscle skyscraper you’re going to
need a LOT of food. Without proper nutrition you’ll wind up with a damaged
and crumpled little muscle shack … and who wants one of those?
So don’t expect weightlifting to solve all your skinny-man woes. However,
it doesnt’ need to be that complicated, at least for now. If you’re eager to get
lifting, here’s a simple and flexible nutrition plan that’s optimized for muscle
growth, convenience, appetite and budget. This simple little plan will allow you
to gain the twenty pounds we promise, if not more.
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If you want more of the science behind muscle-building nutrition though, let’s
begin by covering the fundamentals. The purpose of the gym is to break down
your muscle fibres and trigger an adaptive response from your body that causes
you to repair those muscles to a point where they’re bigger and stronger than
they were before. You’ll be releasing all sorts of powerful and masculinizing
hormones like testosterone, human growth hormone (hGH) and insulin-like
growth factor 1 (IGF-1) that encourage your body to pack on muscle, burn fat
and grow chest hair. Doing this repeatedly results in your muscles gradually
getting bigger, your tendons gradually getting stronger and your bones steadily
getting denser.
And that’s good, right?
Yes—but only if you’re giving your body the proper nutrients to fuel that
growth. If your body doesn’t have enough fuel, well, it will use your muscles
and fat as fuel. Your body will consume itself. If you’re a 5’10” woman who’s
trying to be a runway model then fantastic, but that isn’t so good for guys like
us. It’s like taking a wrecking ball to a shack and then trying to build a skyscraper with those same broken pieces. It’ll probably end up looking worse
off than before! To make matters worse you’ll likely get frequent colds, your
muscles will be perma-sore-as-hell and your energy levels will suffer.
We’ve experimented with some bad training programs, sure, and they’ve
resulted in sub-par or unbalanced results … but the only times we’ve gotten no
results was when our diet was off.
You’ve also got to get the right balance of macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates and fats) and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) if you want
to really maximize your muscle growth. The good news though is that once
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you get this figured out you may realize that you aren’t a hardgainer at all. You
may have incredible genetics for developing the perfect physique but you’re just
sorely malnourished. Not even the best car can win a race with no fuel.
Right now you don’t have the physique you want, so obviously something’s got to change. If you want a drastic change in your physique in a short
amount of time, chances are you’ll need to drastically change the quantity and
quality of what you eat.
NATURALLY PRODUCE MORE TESTOSTERONE & BUILD
MORE MUSCLE
You need to eat like a lumberjack. You know, eat large amounts of hearty masculine foods with masculinizing effects—like a lumberjack. The problem is that
if you’re anything like I was, you just aren’t the kind of person that gravitates
towards several large-ass testosterone-producing meals a day. I have friends that
wake up ravenous and wolf down a huge omelette. They’re starving again by
lunchtime and eat whatever they can get their paws on. By dinner their stomach
is growling and they’re pounding back first, second and third servings—followed by a hearty dessert (or three). On top of that, they need late night snacks
to fight off cravings. No surprise these guys tend to be pretty massive—either
massively fat or massively muscular.
Me? My stomach is pretty easygoing most of the time. Back when I was
little-sister-sized sure I’d have a big meal here and there, now and then. I’d have
some pretty bad cravings on occasion. Sometimes I’d even eat a whole cake or
tub of ice-cream. I would also do the complete opposite, where for many consecutive months in a row I’d go on a healthy-eating spree where the quality of
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the food I was eating was perfect. It’s too bad I was never consuming any kind
of caloric surplus with that quality food. I never gained any weight. The way of
eating that felt natural to me had me looking like a twig.
Luckily we’ve got it pretty good. The guys who naturally like to eat
massive amounts of unwholesome foods all day long end up going on miserable
low carb and low calorie diets, and then fighting off their hunger cravings. We
don’t need to do that. Once we get a few key pieces of the system in order, our
bodies get and stay ripped pretty easily—even as we age.
We get to eat whole eggs, omelettes, turkey sausages, steaks, chicken
breasts, cheeses, nuts, oils, fish, milk, butter, stew, chili, fruits and fruit smoothies. We get to eat a lot of really great food. Foods like these, that are rich in
healthy fats, cholesterol, minerals and B-vitamins will have you producing
testosterone and growth hormones like a monster. The problem is that most of
us skinny guys don’t eat enough of them. We need to eat a lot of really great
food to build the most muscle that we can. For the first little while you’ll need
to push your little stomach to its limits. You’ll need to force yourself to eat
that 900 calorie omelette for breakfast. You’ll need to ask for double meat
and double cheese next time you order a sub. You might have trouble finding
the hunger to eat that big bowl of stew for dinner. But you’ll eat, your body
will respond by producing more anabolic hormones, more digestive enzymes,
increasing protein synthesis and increasing protein turnover. And you’ll grow.
Soon your stomach will catch up to you, you’ll be enjoying food more than
ever, and you’ll be naturally building muscle like a monster.
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WHY YOU’RE LITTLE
When I would occasionally eat large amounts of food it was never with any
kind of consistency. The large amounts of junk that I would eat were never
frequent enough to result in significant fat gain, and in my day to day life I was
losing weight anyway, so even if my weight did go up, it wouldn’t stick around
for very long. When I was eating enormous healthy meals (which I would often
feel inspired to do) I wasn’t doing it regularly. A few days, weeks or months
later I’d be back to where I was before. I had so many muscle-killing habits in
my lifestyle—ones that I didn’t even know about—that no muscle had any kind
of chance of surviving.
You might think that you’re cursed with skinny genes that will keep you
from filling out even your skinniest of skinny jeans. You aren’t—you’ve just
been cursed with an appetite that keeps you in a perpetual “negative energy
balance”. This means that even though some days you might eat at a caloric
surplus, that as the weeks and months add up you’re using more energy than
you’re consuming. If you’re a classic ectomorph part of this is due to your high
metabolism, part of this is due to your fidgety and high-energy activity levels,
and a huge part of this is due to your too-small hunger for muscle-building
foods. We don’t crave foods in the same way that other people do.
Yet.
REPROGRAMMING YOUR SKINNY GENES
If you want to build serious muscle you’ve got to consistently eat like you want
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to build serious muscle. Sure, if you take more steps forward than backwards
and you haphazardly work to improve your habits, you might be able to make
modest gains over a long period of time. Many years from now you may wind
up with a great physique and a healthy lifestyle … but this program is set up to
give you quick, healthy, steady and maintainable results over a short timeframe.
At a certain point in our lives the three of us decided that we didn’t want
to be skinny anymore. We wanted to do everything we could do change, we
wanted to change quickly, and we wanted those changes to last. In care you’re
in that same situation right now, we want to give you the training and nutritional tools that you need to change as quickly as you want. There are some
human limitations, of course, but we’ve set out to stack things in your favour.
In order to achieve this we’ve prepared a systematic approach to reprogram your skinny approach to eating. Similar to how Marco has structured
the workout program to systematically transform you into a high performance
beast, we’ve structured the nutrition plan to build up muscle-building nutrition habits that will accelerate your results as you progress through the phases.
Right from the get-go you’ll be building muscle rapidly, even if you haven’t
mastered all of the habits yet. That way you can end up with the body you want
in a few challenging months instead of several easygoing years.
The first task? Eating like a lumberjack. Consistently. If you can master even
just those two things in the coming 5 weeks you’ll experience huge gains.
Keep in mind as you finish reading this section that you don’t need to memorize
all of the information yet. The more understanding you have of the principles
the better, so I do recommend reading it now, but if you’re new to muscle-build-
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ing nutrition don’t be overwhelmed—we’ve got nutrition checklists that spell
out your goals phase by phase.
HEALTHY VS. ETHICAL VS. MUSCLE-BUILDING
Healthy food is food that’s good for you, but there’s more to building muscle
than just eating food that’s good for you. You can have a healthy diet that’s
radically protein deficient for the amount of muscle gain and natural hormone
production that you’ll want, for example. The simple sugar dextrose (also called
glucose) might be considered unhealthy, but sipping on it while working out
can actually provide your body with the exact kind of nutrients that it needs
at that particular time, making it a surprisingly good for you at that particular
moment. And yet at other moments dextrose is a nutritional catastrophe.
Conversely, there are lots of supplements, drugs and weight-gainers that
aren’t too great for your health at all, but that can result in pretty impressive
physiques. We’ll cover those and list all of their pros and cons, although our
recommended program has your health in mind and we advise that you stay
clear of most of them—especially the ‘roids!
Luckily sometimes health and fitness go absolutely hand-in-hand. Organic
food is almost certainly better for you (although research is still young). Foods
without hormones injected into them are definitely better for you, and can help
you avoid growing unsightly womanizing features, like man-boobs. However,
eating non-organic food can still make you big and strong! If you can’t afford
massive amounts of organic food, don’t fret! Massive amounts of non-organic
food will do just fine.
Ethical food. Ah … this one’s tricky. I don’t really understand why things
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like vegan candy bars are sold in health food stores. They aren’t healthy. No
animals were harmed during their creation, and that’s fantastic—really—but
why are they in a health food store? There are plenty of things out there that
have nothing to do with animals that are also pretty bad for you.
There’s overlap here too though, of course. Free-run hens are both happier
and healthier hens, and they really do lay healthier and more nutritious eggs
with better fats in them. As a bonus, since free-run hens aren’t caged they’re
able to take care of their duties in a different place from where they lay their
eggs. This reduces the chances of the eggs being contaminated with salmonella
… and makes the eggs far more appetizing. Those ethical and healthy eggs will
make you big, strong and help solve a ton of modern-day health issues, like
problems with cholesterol.
This nutrition plan has your health in mind, so you’ll likely end up happier,
better looking, more energetic and have a slew of other benefits. You’ll probably
also feel really damn full for the first few weeks. Taking in large amounts of
healthy calories is often a lot harder than taking in a large amount of unhealthy
ones. You’ll probably need to eat more than you want to eat at first. Soon you’ll
get used to it though, and then it’ll be a piece of cake (and every once in a while
you can even have a piece of cake).
We’re kind of obsessed these days with the research being done into nutrition and we’re pretty up-to-date and pretty savvy when it comes to spotting
bogus fads. We’ll be working furiously behind the scenes to make sure that this
product (and you) stay up to date, so be sure to check in on the member area
and make sure you have the absolute latest edition. The forum is a great place
to stay up to date too.
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*Don’t get all of your calories from canned foods. Well, unless there’s
some sort of nucleur war and that’s all you’ve got. Cans are often lined with
BPA (bisphenol A) or a similar alternative. These substances were designed to
keep the food from interacting with the metal of the can… which is good.
Unfortunately, the BPA can leech into your food—especially if the can is
stored in hot temperatures or has acidic foods inside (like tomato products).
This includes soft drinks too, of course. BPA is a xenoestrogen. It can result in
cancer, man-boobs, heart diseases, reproductive disorders, love handles, diabetes, a chubby bum, etc.
You’d need to eat quite a lot of it to see any of the negative side effects, but
still, you don’t want to be consuming that much of it. This is one reason that
getting most of your calories from minimally processed whole foods is a wise
rule of thumb.
HEATING, PROCESSING & PASTEURIZING
There are a lot of reasons to cook your hamburgers all the way through, and
lots of validity to the raw food health movement. So who’s right? Should you be
trying to eat your food raw, or cooking it up?
Oftentimes the less cooking you do the better. Raw nuts, fruits and
vegetables are incredible for you. Don’t get us wrong—apple pie can be great
for you too—but eating minimally processed fruits and veggies is about as
wholesome as you can get. Some nutrition experts recommend eating about half
of your food raw.
But it really depends on the food. Cooking meat will denature the protein
in it. “Denaturing” protein sounds scary, but it actually allows us to better
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digest it and get more value from it. Plus, heating your meat will kill all of thebacteria in it, making it safe to eat. Cook it to a crisp though and you’ve also
killed a lot of the nutrients.
As far as meat is concerned mainstream culture has it down pat—rare,
medium and well done steaks are great for you, and raw chicken burgers really
aren’t. Cook and process it to the point that it becomes beef jerky, and you’ve
removed a lot of the benefits.
Similarly, you’ve seen Rocky you know how awesome raw eggs are. They
still may not sound like something you want to indulge in—I didn’t for the first
little while. But I mean eventually you just have to try ‘em, right?
If you don’t want to be cool like Rocky and drink raw eggs from a glass
you can always toss a couple into your smoothies—you won’t taste a thing!
There are advantages and disadvantages to raw eggs. The yolk is healthier
for you raw, and the egg whites are more easily digested when cooked. Raw
eggs can be a great way to boost the protein and micronutrient content of
your smoothies. There’s a very very small risk of getting salmonella poisoning
though, so, as with everything, there are pros and cons.
Boiling, microwaving and baking. When you heat things you risk
losing some of the vitamins and minerals, and this is true whichever way you
heat them. They each have their advantages and disadvantages though. Microwaving has the advantage of being a very efficient way to heat food. It can often
do it very quickly, this minimizing the loss of nutrients. Some people are scared
of eating too many microwaved foods, but I haven’t seen much research to
indicate any dangers there. Baking often tastes better than microwaving though.
When boiling veggies you lose some of the vitamins in the water. The trick there
is just to drink the water—make a soup or stew or something.
Chicken-fried steak? Deep frying things can make them taste delicious.
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Plus, cramming some extra fat, breading and whatnot will also radically boost
the amount of calories in whatever you’re frying. The downside is that the
nutritiousness of the food goes way down, and the fats contained in the meal
aren’t all that great for you. This is something you generally want to do in moderation. A treat, not a staple.
What about pasteurized foods? Pasteurizing is the process of heating a
food to the point that it becomes sterilized, and then cooling it back down. This
slows microbial growth and prevents your food from making you sick, but it
also kills some nutrients and vitamins.
Some foods need to be pasteurized, some foods don’t. Honey only needs to
be pasteurized for infants, whereas the milk that you buy from the grocery store
needs to be pasteurized in order to be guaranteed safe. (Plus, milk pasteurization is fairly mild, and most of the nutrients remain.)
Fruit juice is richest in micronutrients when fresh, but in order to have a
respectable shelf life at the grocery store, it needs to be pasteurized. If you buy
fresh fruit juice or make your own, you’ll get the most vitamins and minerals,
but it won’t last nearly as long (which probably isn’t that big of a problem).
However, don’t judge the store-bought pasteurized preservative stuff that
harshly—they’re still a source of much-needed calories, the preservatives are
safe in the quantities you’d be consuming then in, they’re easy on the appetite,
they’re delicious, and they still contain traces of vitamins and minerals (and are
often fortified with vitamin C and such).
So try to consume plenty of minimally processed foods—fresh raw fruits
and veggies are great for this—but don’t be all too afraid of heating, processing
and pasteurizing.
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BALANCING NUTRITION & TRAINING
As mentioned earlier, the gym is only half the battle. You simply can’t get bigger
unless you’re eating enough of the right kinds of food. There are health benefits
to working out, irrespective of whether you’re eating enough food to get big.
There are also health benefits to eating well, regardless of whether you’re stimulating your muscles enough to spark muscle growth. This book is focused on
building muscle though, so you’ll need to master and balance both. Once you
get the gym and your diet figured out though, the good news is that you’ve got
a guaranteed-to-work formula on your hands. Follow it and you will absolutely
get a whole lot bigger and a hell of a lot stronger.
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THE CALORIE ALGORITHM
There are some simple multipliers and algorithms out there that can give you a
rough idea of how much you need to eat. If you multiply your bodyweight by
20 you’ll have a ballpark number of how many calories you’ll need to eat to
pack on muscle. As I’m writing this I’m 180 pounds, so that would mean that I
need to eat about 3600 calories to continue to bulk up. Unfortunately this isn’t
necessarily accurate. I actually find that I need to eat a bit more if I want to continue to put on muscle. Eating 3600 gets me nowhere.
Simple multipliers give you a very general idea but they aren’t a very reliable method. I’m 6’2, 180 pounds and 10-12% fat. That’s radically different
from one of my friends. He’s 5’9, 180 and maybe 25% fat. We’ve got different
lifestyles, activity levels, genetics, bodies, bone structures, and lean body mass.
It’s silly to think that a simple multiplier would work for everyone. So we’ve got
a slightly better way.
Body Fat Percentage
The first thing we’ll do is guesstimate your body fat percentage. Chances are as
a skinny guy your body fat percentage is not a health/athleticism concern—it’s
almost certainly already within the acceptable range. So, since our primary goal
is to get your fat levels optimized for the mirror, not your doctor, we’ll use the
mirror to estimate it:
•
30%—Santa. No visible muscle definition and a big belly. If this sounds
a lot like you, you er … may have accidentally bought the wrong
program. You may also be a Hell’s Angel.
•
20%—Chubster. No visible muscle definition and a chubby/pudgy sort
of look. You might want to cut some fat before you start muscling up.
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We’ve got resources for that on the forum.
•
15-19%—beefy or skinny-fat. As a muscular guy this looks okay, and
results in a beefy lumberjack kind of body. As a skinny guy though this
is dangerous territory, as it can often be the “skinny-fat” zone. You
might have slight separation between your shoulders and your upper
arm if you’ve got some muscle mass there, but if you don’t have much
muscle mass you likely won’t have any definition anywhere. You may
also have a little belly. This is a perfectly fine place to start off, and as
you pack on muscle you’ll wind up looking much leaner, and may even
lose some body fat as you do it. If you want to lean out first that’s
perfectly fine too—check out the forum.
•
12-14%—Lean or “cut”. This is where you start to look fit—once you
have some muscle on you. You’ll be able to make out the outline of
your abs, but you won’t have visible abs yet, even with flattering lighting. Your arms and back will have hints of definition, but you probably won’t have much definition in your triceps. There’s a good chance
you’re starting off here.
•
10-12%—Extremely fit, skinny or “defined”. Chances are if you’re a
typical skinny guy you’re starting out here—I did. You’ll have defined
arms, pecs, legs, back muscles, and your abs are visible when flexed
or under flattering lights. You’ll also have nice crisp triceps. If you can
maintain this level of fat as you bulk up you’ll go right from skinny to
incredibly fit. This level of fat is common in professional athletes.
•
7-9%—Ripped or emaciated. Some very skinny guys, like Jared, start
off here. You might be able to see some ribs and veins. You’ll definitely
be able to see abs under any conditions, even if you barely have any.
This level of fat is also common in professional athletes, although they
have a ton of muscle between the bone and the skin, creating a very dif-
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ferent kind of physique.
•
5-7%—Shredded: You’ll have muscle striations visible in large muscle
groups, like your shoulders. You’ll likely have veins running across
your lower abs and on your legs. This is uncommon even in fitness professionals and athletes, and most bodybuilders don’t live in this range
either. Come competition time though they’ll try their best to skip right
over it, and go from 12-14% straight down to 3-5% (or the illusion of
3-5%, by manipulating their water retention).
Having smaller muscles makes definition less prevalent, often causing skinny
guys to overestimate their fat percentage, so if you aren’t sure exactly where
you fall always err on the leaner side of the fence.
Calculating your RMR
Now that we’ve got a rough idea of your body fat percentage we’ll figure out
your resting metabolic rate (RMR). This is how much energy your body uses up
while at rest (lying in bed).
First we need to get your weight in kilograms (sorry, we’re Canadian).
Take your weight in pounds and divide it by 2.2. So I’d take my 180 pounds,
divide it by 2.2, and end up with 82 kilograms. I’ll plug in my own numbers as
we go so you can follow along:
weight in kilograms = weight in pounds / 2.2
weight in kilograms = 180 lbs / 2.2
weight in kilograms = 82 kg
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Next we need your lean mass (fat mass removed). Your weight in kilograms
multiplied by your body fat percentage gives you the amount of fat you’re carrying around. If you then subtract that amount from your weight you wind up
with your lean mass. So I’d take that 82 kilos and multiply it by 10%. Then I’d
subtract that fat out of my weight.
fat mass = body fat percentage x weight
fat mass = 0.10 x 82 kg
fat mass = 8.2 kg
lean mass = total mass - fat mass
lean mass = 82 kg - 8.2 kg
lean mass = 74 kg
Now we can use the following formula to figure out your RMR:
RMR = 500 + (22 x lean mass)
RMR = 500 + (22 x 74)
RMR = 2128
Thermic Effect of Food
Next up we’ll figure out the “Thermic Effect of Food” (TEF), which is the
energy your body requires to digest food. This can change depending on your
diet, since diets higher in protein having a higher multiplier. You’ll be on a relatively protein-rich diet, so multiply your RMR by 15%:
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TEF = RMR x 15%
TEF = 2128 x 0.15
TEF = 319
Activity Thermogenesis
Next we’ll figure out Activity Thermogenesis. This is the amount of energy you
spend on activities. There are two different kinds that we’ll calculate: non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) and exercise-related thermogenesis (ERAT).
First, finding your NEAT multiplier:
•
1.5 if you really don’t move much at all. You drive to work, sit at your
desk all day, drive home, and plop yourself on your couch. (This is an
excellent way to save calories.)
•
1.6 for people who move around a bit during the day.
•
1.7 for people that spend their day on their feet (like a bartender)
•
2.0 for people that have very active daily activities (like a construction
worker)
I’m a designer, so I spend my day in front of a computer, but I also walk everywhere, sometimes for a couple hours a day. I’m probably a 1.6, but I’ll give
myself a 1.7, because I’d rather play it safe and make sure I’m calculating in
enough calories. This doesn’t include working out (that’s ERAT, which we’ll
calculate elsewhere) so don’t factor that into your activity level.
Here’s the calculation:
RMR + NEAT = RMR x NEAT multiplier
RMR + NEAT = 2128 x 1.7
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RMR + NEAT = 3617
Now we just need to add in your TEF:
Daily calorie needs = (RMR + NEAT) + TEF
Daily calorie needs = 3617 + 319
Daily calorie needs = 3937
This explains why the typical multiplier which spat out 3600 calories never
worked out for me … us skinny guys often have such low body fat percentages that they underestimate our lean mass and spit out too-low numbers. 300
missing calories can be the difference between gaining and losing weight! Similarly, people with higher body fat percentages have their intake overestimated
and wind up getting even pudgier. My 180 pound friend with 25% bodyfat
should be eating 3242 calories per day based on this equation if he were trying
to build muscle—a radically different number from the typical multiplier, which
estimated 3600 (no wonder he’s a chubster).
Workout-day caloric needs:
On workout days you’ll need to add in ERAT. Our workouts involve heavy
weight training with a metabolic multiplier (MET) of around 6, and should
only be about 45 minutes long if you can hustle, but we’ll play it safe and say it
takes you an hour to do them. With those factors in play:
ERAT = Lean body mass x duration (hours) x MET
ERAT = 74 x 1 x 6
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ERAT = 444
So on workout days I’d need to eat an extra 408 calories on top of my 3937,
for a total of 4381. Our workout shakes take this into account, so it’s actually
pretty easy to get those extra calories in. My workout shakes alone rack up
1140 calories.
This may sound like a lot of food. It is a lot of food. If you aren’t eating
anywhere close to this number though that’s actually pretty good news. Once
you do start eating properly for your size and lifestyle you may notice that you
aren’t a hardgainer or ectomorph at all. You may be perfectly suited to building
muscle fast and just have a small appetite.
ADJUSTING YOUR DIET BASED ON YOUR RESULTS
If you use the number you just finished calculating as your starting point you
should do pretty well. It’s possible that you’ve miss-estimated something or that
your body’s a little bit different in some way, though. My body produces a ton
of heat, which wastes calories left right and centre, so I have to eat a couple
hundred more calories every day. Here’s how to tailor your intake
until it’s perfect:
Measure your weight once a week—and only once a week. Scales aren’t
THAT accurate, given that they depend a lot on how much water/food is inside
you. If you weigh yourself every day you’ll likely just be seeing daily fluctuations based on how much crap is inside you (literally), and not in how much
muscle you’re gaining. Once a week (say Sunday) wake up, go to the washroom, and hop on your bathroom scale. That will keep the amount of stuff
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inside you relatively consistent, and over the course of a week there’ll have
probably been enough change in your muscle mass that the scale will reflect it.
Here’s what to do based on the results you see on the scale:
Negative numbers:
Eat more! Try upping your daily intake by 500+ calories. Make sure you’re correctly drinking your workout drinks, eat a bigger meal when you get back from
the gym, start eating bigger breakfasts, and just generally eat more food everywhere! If you introduce exercise into your lifestyle without also increasing the
amount of food that you eat you can lose weight, because all of a sudden you’re
burning more calories than you’re taking in. I made this mistake far too many
times. Don’t let it happen to you!
0-1 pounds heavier: Decent results. Many months from now when you’re big, strong and pushing
against your genetic potential this may be the most you can consistently gain
week by week—but for right now you should be able to achieve much bigger
numbers. So eat bigger. The first thing you’ll want to do is increase the number
of carbs in your workout and post-workout drinks. The second thing you’ll
want to do is eat more in that first meal after you work out. The third thing
you’ll want to do is add in extra carbs to your breakfasts. Keep in mind these
are really good results, and you’re only a small tweak away from having it
perfect. If you’re already very muscular you might even want to stay in
this range.
2-5 pounds heavier: Awesome. This is the golden zone. Keep it up unless you look noticeably fatter.
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Very scientific, I know. If you are plumping up take a look at the quality of the
foods that you’re eating and make it a bit lighter on the sugars and saturated
fats and a bit higher in protein and unsaturated fats. Another trick to avoid
gaining fat is to spread your calories out over more meals. You’ll also want to
make sure that your incredible results are matched in the gym. If you’re gaining
this much muscle you should be noticing significant strength improvements in
the gym. If all of that checks out keep at it—this is exactly where we want you
to be. You’re on track to gain a minimum of 24 pounds in the next 3 months
alone. You should get onto the forum and share your diet. You’re kicking ass
and ready to take this to the next level.
5-10 pounds heavier:
You’re a muscle-making beast! This is possible sometimes in early stages, or if
you have atrophied muscle mass that you’re recovering. Jared gained massive
amounts of muscle in the first couple of weeks because his muscles had never
been stimulated or fed properly before. You’ve really got to check yourself out
in the mirror and make sure that you aren’t packing on a ton of fat. We never
really had a problem with that, even when we were gaining big numbers every
week, but we certainly checked! And, like in the previous range, you’ll want to
make sure that you’re seeing huge strength increases in the gym.
M
arco’s fond of saying, “You should always have abs.” His training programs involve a ton of core work, so if you’re lean enough you prob-
ably won’t ever need a washing machine again. You should be able to rock a
consistently washboard-like stomach throughout the entire program.
If your abs ever run away from you, you may want to adjust your calorie
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intake down by a couple hundred calories per day. Fewer surplus calories means
fewer calories that are at risk of spilling over into your gut. You’ll also want to
make sure that you’re actually following the program—training consistently,
eating well, and sleeping well.
If the rate that you’re gaining muscle is reasonable—somewhere along the
lines of 0.25-1 pound per week—and you’re following the program well, you
can move on to the more advanced fat-avoidance stuff like:
•
Cleaning up your diet. More whole foods, fewer processed foods.
•
Spreading your protein more evenly out over your meals. This will
increase your muscle protein synthesis and hopefully allow you to build
more muscle instead of storing fat. 20+ grams of protein in each meal is
good, 30-40 grams of protein (or more) is amazing.
•
Moving more. No need to get fancy here. Even walking more will do
the trick. You could also do HIIT, cardio, aerobics, sports, etc—whatever type of exercise you enjoy most. This will help burn up any surplus
calories that aren’t being used to build muscle.
If your abs are still looking great week after week, feel free to try increasing
your caloric intake by a couple hundred calories per day, even if you’re getting
great results already. You may be able to further improve upon your weekly
gains, especially if you’re still a very skinny dude. Many people never maximize
on their muscle-building potential, but you certainly can.
If you don’t have skinny-boy abs starting out and you don’t want to religiously track your bodyfat percentage using something like skin callipers, some
people recommend taking naval circumference measurements—i.e. measure the
circumference of your waist at the point where your bellybutton is. Healthy
men store most of their fat in their stomachs, so the best way to monitor fat
gain is to look there. If your girth increases it’s possible that you’re plumping
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up.
…However as a skinny guy trying to build muscle, this method poses
some problems. With all the extra eating that you’re going to be doing, chances
are you’re going to be pregnant with a food baby for a good portion of this
program. More food in your gut will cause your waist measurement to go up in
the first couple weeks whether or not you’re gaining fat.
Plus, while your typical dude trying to lose fat may not be building all
that much muscle, you certainly will be. Your lower back, obliques and abs are
going to get a fair bit burlier. They aren’t going to get that much—you’re still
going to develop a v-taper overall—but you may gain an inch or two of muscle
around your waist. That’s a good thing.
You can still track your waist measurement, just don’t get too worried if
the number moves up, especially in the first couple weeks (as you get used to
eating more food). Then, in the longer term, don’t be surprised if your waist
measurement goes up by an inch or two with every twenty or so pounds of
muscle that you gain.
IS A CALORIE A CALORIE?
Calories in vs Calories out (the thermodynamics approach). Is it really that
simple? That’s debatable. There are a lot of opinions about this approach.
Luckily there’s also a lot of good research and studies.
Simple science dictates that if you eat a surplus of calories your weight will
go up, and if you eat a deficit of calories your weight will go down. There is
some truth to that. Eating 4000 calories a day of cake will probably make your
weight go up, but I doubt you’d feel very good, especially about how you look
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in the mirror.
There are a whole slew of factors that the straight calories approach to
weight gain doesn’t take into account though. Here are two:
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 effect.
2. Your body processes different macronutrients in different ways. Protein
provokes a greater TEF (thermic effect of food) than carbohydrates and
fat, resulting in about 20% of its energy being converted to heat. Some
foods speed up your metabolism, some increase testosterone production.
Your body responds very differently to different types of food.
This isn’t a new fad—research into this has been going on for decades. In 1956
the Lancet, a well respected medical journal, published an article on a study
that put three different groups of people on a 1000 calorie diet (a starvation
diet, clearly). One group was given 90% protein, one was given 90% carbohydrates, and the third was given 90% fat.
•
A 1000 calorie diet of 90% protein resulted in 0.6 pounds lost per day.
•
A 1000 calorie diet 90% carbohydrates resulted in 0.24 pounds gained
per day.
•
A 1000 calorie diet of 90% fat resulted in 0.9 pounds lost per day.
Interesting, right? So while calories in and calories out are an important metric
to keep track of, we also need to keep track of what kinds of calories we’re
eating. This is especially true because we aren’t just trying to make your weight
go up. This program is about how to make your lean muscle mass go through
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the roof while keeping fat locked outside.
All this research has given way to high protein, high fat diets that restrict
consumption of carbohydrates, like the Atkins diet. That works incredibly well
for some body types in some situations, but it isn’t the right approach for us.
A little-known but incredibly important fact is that since carbs elevate your
insulin levels they’re considered anabolic—meaning that they put your body
in a muscle-building state. Some carbs, like beans, quinoa and oats, are rich in
nutrients and digest slowly. They’re fantastic for providing your body with a
steady stream of nutrients that will fuel muscle growth. As a result your energy
levels will remain constant over the day and you’ll likely feel energized and
satisfied. Other carbs, like white flour, white rice, and white sugar, are quickly
broken down, rapidly release sugar into your bloodstream and in some cases
can even mess with your insulin levels. Too much of that and you can wind up
with diabetes. Once you start training and eating Bony to Beastly style your
body will actually be pretty good at balancing blood sugar levels, so you’d
really only be at risk when eating large quantities of only crappy carbs, as
unhealthy people often do. The main disadvantage though isn’t that they digest
quickly, but rather that they’re processed and micronutrionally empty foods.
No fibre, no vitamins—just calories. Are we going to limit your carbs? No, you
should be eating plenty. We recommend that you get them from healthy sources
though. Don’t stress about the flour on your chicken breast strips, but the more
nutrient rich whole food carbs you eat the better.
This doesn’t mean that we’re putting you on a low fat diet either. Some
fats, like trans fats (as found in hydrogenated vegetable oil and canola oil)
increase the risk of coronary heart disease and provide about as much nutritional value as eating plastic. Saturated fats on the other hand, found in red
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meat, nuts, coconut oil and butter, can lead to improved cardiovascular health,
stronger bones, improved liver and lung health, a healthy brain and a stronger
immune system—not to mention rugged caveman-like strength. Unsaturated
fats, found in fish, avocados, nuts and vegetable oils, boast a pretty impressive
resume too. They can improve your metabolism, increase natural testosterone
and hGH production and keep your fat levels low. The right kinds of fats are
pretty much our nutritional muscle-building dream come true!
And protein? If you’ve stumbled across this book I’m sure you already
know that protein is on the menu. Protein is a crucial ingredient for the formation of muscle. As with fats and carbs though, not all proteins are created equal.
Turkey breast is rich in nutrients, chicken breast is lean and easily digested,
whey is even easier to digest, grass fed organic beef and Atlantic salmon are
great sources of unsaturated fats, and eggs are packed full of b-vitamins, essential fatty acids, trace minerals, vitamin A, folate, lutein, etc. There are bad
sources of protein, too. Too much processed soy protein, for example, can
wreak havoc on your hormones and result in high estrogen levels and manboobs. Remember how I said that healthy men store fat in their stomachs? If
you drink too much soy milk you’ll start to store fat in the same places your
mother does.
So what’s the magic balance of carbs, fat and protein? That actually depends
on what state your body is in when you eat. We’re going to get a little fancy on
you here, but if you truly want remarkable muscle gains and beast health here
comes the secret.
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THE SECRETS OF NUTRIENT TIMING—MORE MUSCLE,
LESS FAT
Nutrient timing is still a somewhat debated topic. Many believe that it’s a silly
way of complicating things unnecessarily. Here’s why we disagree:
•
Science/fitness geek Timothy Ferriss spent months of his life experimenting with nutrient timing by measuring blood sugar levels several
times a day, obsessively monitoring fat storage and muscle gain, and
experimenting with feeding times. His conclusion? It matters—a lot.
•
Top exercise nutrition expert John Berardi spent a year of his life
researching and personally experimenting with “intermittent fasting”,
which is essentially nutrient timing taken to its fullest exaggeration, and
found that it did indeed have a profound effect on his fat loss, muscle
maintenance, health, energy, cravings and training.
•
Research by Dan Benardot (Ph.D, R.D at Georgia State University) has
found that proper nutrient timing resulted in:
•
Improved glucose tolerance (less fat storage)
•
Decreased insulin response to meals (less fat storage, cravings and energy fluctuations)
•
Decreased blood cortisol concentrations (less breaking
down of muscle mass + more testosterone!)
•
•
Decreased serum lipids (goodbye heart disease)
•
Decreased adipose tissue (less fat storage)
•
Maintenance of metabolic rate
Our personal experience / experiments / results. We found that eating
haphazardly, improperly or irregularly resulted in cravings, energy
crashes and lethargy. We also experienced our best results when we
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were eating balanced meals consistently.
•
We saw a spike in strength gains and broke through plateaus when we
began incorporating workout nutrition into our program. We strategically added many hundreds of extra calories of pure sugar into our diet
surrounding our workouts, intentionally spiking insulin levels and improving nutrient delivery. As a result we experienced increased muscle
gain without any fat gain whatsoever.
•
There’s absolutely no downside to nutrient timing whatsoever, except,
perhaps, having to be prepared and knowing enough to do it.
So how do you do it?
Current research indicates that at certain times of the day your body is primed
for fat loss, at other times it’s primed for muscle gain (anabolism), at other
times it’s primed for fat storage, and at other times it’s primed for muscle loss
(catabolism). By understanding and taking advantage of those time slots you
can maximize muscle gain, minimize muscle loss, maximize fat loss, and minimize fat gain. While you sleep, for example, is one of the key times that your
body produces testosterone. Eating cholesterol heavy foods (like whole eggs,
butter, or beef) right before bed can spike your testosterone production, resulting in increased muscle mass and reduced fat levels. Pretty nifty stuff.
So let’s break down the day into those slots:
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WAKING UP YOUR TESTOSTERONE
We recommend that you make a routine out of waking up and eating a high
calorie balanced healthy meal within 60 minutes. This isn’t to jumpstart your
metabolism or anything—that’s nutrition myth. Breakfast isn’t important
because eating in the morning is important, breakfast is important because your
body is in a fasted state and will respond very positively to the first round of
food that you eat because you’ll be insulin sensitive from the overnight fast. It’s
time to get some good healthy nutrients back into you so that you can stimulate your appetite and get started on your daily calorie mission. The sooner you
start eating the easier it will be for you to comfortably get in all your calories.
How many calories should you eat? I eat about 4000 calories a day, and
I try to have an abnormally large breakfast. I eat four or five times a day, but I
try and consume around 1200 calories for breakfast. Your body will handle a
large amount of nutrients really well in your first meal of the day. For us skinny
guys a huge breakfast is also great because it primes our stomachs for large
meals later on. Stretch that little guy out! I found that if I had a small breakfast
it would often be hard to eat big meals later on. If I can manage to eat a large
breakfast the other meals are a piece of cake to eat—in fact I find myself eager
to eat them.
If your stomach can’t handle a large breakfast don’t fret, just head to the
blender. Smoothies can be calorically dense, extremely healthy, balanced and
easy to consume, even when you aren’t all too hungry.
Breakfast should be a balanced meal. We recommend 25-35% protein,
40-50% carbs and 25-35% fat. Some recommend a high-fat breakfast (30, 20,
50, for example) and some recommend a breakfast higher in protein (50, 30,
20). We’ve tried all of them and never noticed a change in results while bulking.
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A higher protein diet is superior when trying to lose fat and maintain muscle
mass, but while bulking your body can actually use a lot of the different macronutrients for a lot of the same functions. Carbs are protein sparing, for example,
meaning that if your body needs more carbs it can digest protein instead. Eating
plenty of carbs means that your body won’t have to use up your valuable
protein unnecessarily.
Your body can also derive its energy from any one of the macronutrients during regular day-to-day activity. It can burn fat calories, carb calories,
or protein calories. I’m confident that so long as you stay within the balanced
ratios above you’ll do just fine. When in doubt though err on the side of carbs.
Us skinny guys can benefit from eating a carb heavy breakfast when trying to
pack on weight. Up to 50% carbs is fine.
In order to boost natural hormone production at the beginning of the day
there are a few tricks you can use too:
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Have some fish oil. A few (3-4) caplets of salmon oil or krill oil will
jumpstart testosterone and hGH production.
•
Have some organic eggs from free-range hens (or normal eggs). These
are packed full of vitamins and minerals—and dietary cholesterol.
Don’t freak out about the cholesterol. When you eat a food that contains a high amount of dietary cholesterol your body down-regulates
it’s internal production of cholesterol (meaning less cholesterol problems). In fact, whole eggs have actually been shown to increase HDL
cholesterol (the good stuff) in relation to LDL cholesterol (the bad
stuff) that results in improved cholesterol balance and superior
blood chemistry. Here’s why we recommend whole eggs for muscle
gain though—they’re a hormone production powerhouse. The dietary
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cholesterol found in egg yolks has been shown to increase testosterone
production, help manage your appetite, and maintain a healthy level
of fat-burning hormones in your body. Yolks also contain lutein, a
powerful antioxidant that protects you from inflammation within your
body—a common cause of heart disease. They also contain calcium,
iron, phosphorus, zinc, thiamin, B6, folate, B12, vitamins A, D, E and
K, and panthothenic acid. Many of these vitamins you might recognize
from the labels of bodybuilding supplements and vitamins.
First thing in the morning is one of the two testosterone production hotspots,
making eggs and fish oil pills the perfect thing to eat when you wake up.
Another great thing to have for breakfast is fruit. Fruits are high in sugar
and often get a bad rep versus vegetables, but they’re high in fructose—fruit
sugar—and you really don’t need to worry about it. Fruits are nutrient powerhouses that are packed full of vitamins, and getting vitamins in you first thing
in the morning is key for producing anabolic hormones. Have a banana, peach,
apple, plum, blueberries, raspberries, pomegranate, etc. Have one of each, even.
One of the great things about having skinny genes is that since we’re usually
resistant to fat gain, fruits are a perfect asset in our arsenal.
So what might breakfast look like?
Breakfast 1: the Buff Teacher
•
half a litre of water upon waking
•
3 salmon oil capsules, a multivitamin
•
A fruit smoothie (full of whey protein, a couple raw eggs, a banana, a
peach, some raspberries, milk, whole-fat yogurt, almond butter, etc)
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•
An apple
Breakfast 2: the Fit Frenchman
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A four-egg omelette with mozzarella cheese, spinach, onions and hot
peppers (habanero being my favourite)
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A bowl of yogurt with slices of peach
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Coffee. Black.
Breakfast 3: The Powerhouse (Jared’s favourite)
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3 turkey sausages (or turkey bacon)
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3 sunny side up eggs with paprika/cayenne/pepper
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Fruit salad (bananas and raspberries)
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A glass of 2% milk
Breakfast 4: The Lazy Beast (nutritious, quick and dirty)
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4 raw eggs
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A homemade nearly-raw protein bar
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A half cup of yogurt (to dunk the bar in)
Breakfast 5: I’m at my girlfriend’s (makeshift)
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4 scrambled eggs (or a scoop of whey protein from the tub that you
hide in her cupboard)
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A muffin, cereal or other questionable source of last resort carbs
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A glass of milk
•
A couple spoonfuls of olive oil
•
Whatever fruit she has lying around
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Breakfast 6: The Buff Italian
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Chickpea frittatas (4 eggs mixed with a half cup of chick peas, parmesan cheese and rosemary)
Breakfast 7: Brunch With the Boys
•
Steak and eggs with some home fries + fruit salad
•
or eggs and sausages with extra eggs and extra sausages + a fruit salad
NORMAL MEALS (STEADY MUSCLE GROWTH)
These meals are marked by normal physiology. Their goal is to supply your
body with a steady flow of nutrients, allowing your body to recover from the
workouts and build up an excess of muscle so that you can perform even better
next time. These meals are somewhat similar to breakfast. You could actually
have any of the breakfast meals as a normal meal if you wanted.
Even better would be a meal slightly higher in fat. Your body should
have replenished most of its muscle glycogen from the meals surrounding your
workouts, diminishing your need for carbohydrates and meaning that a higher
amount of protein and fat is ideal here. Aim to have your meals be 30-40%
protein and 30-40% an equal blend of saturated fats, mono-unsaturated fats
and polyunsaturated fats. This is a great time to get your fill of fruits and vegetables, too, but there’s no need to put emphasis on consuming a large amount
of the more calorie dense carbohydrates. 20-30% carbs should be enough.
Spinach, broccoli, kale, green beans and other leafy vegetables are all extremely
low in calories, so you can actually eat quite a big pile of them and take in a ton
of great nutrients. Don’t underestimate the power of vegetables—they pack the
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micronutrients that turn you into a healthy anabolic-hormone-producing beast.
Some examples of what you could eat:
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Our beef and yam stew, which has plenty of hearty protein, lots ofhealthy fats and a reasonable amount of nutritious carbs
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Our ground turkey chili, with some cheese, vitamin-rich butter or olive
oil added to it for extra fat
•
Our southern comfort chicken gumbo recipe
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A big hearty steak (or salmon steak) with a mountain of broccoli
doused in olive oil
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A couple chicken breasts with avocado salad and some quinoa
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An omelette
•
A homemade protein bar
•
A litre of 2% or whole milk
PERI-WORKOUT NUTRITION
(THE MOST UNDERESTIMATED SECRET)
Your metabolic rate while you work out is six to eight times higher than
normal, meaning you’ll need to supply it with a much quicker supply of nutrients. Your body has a few options when it’s looking for nutrients. These nutrients can come from the food that you’ve ingested, or if those aren’t available,
from your body’s stores of muscle and liver glycogen, muscle mass, free amino
acid pool, adipose tissue or intramuscular triglycerides. If your body has to
break down your muscles to get the fuel that it needs, well, you’ll get smaller.
Luckily, if you eat enough before the next workout, you may be able to recover,
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put on a bit of extra muscle, and eventually wind up a bit bigger.
You’ll notice far more rapid gains though if you try and fuel yourself with
the food you’ve ingested. And that isn’t so hard to do. By ingesting certain nutrients right before, during, and right after your workout your body can draw
on the contents of your stomach instead of breaking your body down. The
result being that you’ll spend less time getting smaller and more time getting
bigger. I warn you though, what we’re recommending isn’t for the faint of
heart—this is real bodybuilding stuff. We consume our workout drinks with the
same fervour that we do our exercises with, and if anything they’re more important than the exercises. We don’t count a workout complete until we check
off our post-workout drink on our workout sheet. If you can’t stomach them
though, which is a real possibility, just do what you can and try and work
up to it.
If you can handle them though you’ll be the beneficiary of a slew of
awesome benefits:
•
Increased blood flow and nutrient delivery to the muscles
you’re training
•
Reduced muscle glycogen depletion (better energy for your muscles)
•
Reduced muscle protein breakdown (leading to muscle growth instead
of shrinkage)
•
Reduced levels of cortisol (cortisol breaks down muscles)
•
Improved immune function
So what’s the trick?
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The pre-workout meal
First, you should try and time your workouts so that they come about 2 hours
after breakfast or a normal meal. That way the nutrients will be almost fully
digested and available as an energy source. It will also have been long enough
that your stomach won’t feel stuffed full of food, and you likely won’t be too
hungry again just yet. Working out while feeling like you’re starving is no fun at
all. Working out with a stomach full of freshly eaten stew is no fun either.
I love coffee, and there are a lot of proven health benefits to having a single
cup of coffee every day, so on workout days I’ll often save my daily coffee for
right before I work out. I’ll have my coffee while finishing up work, and then
head off to the gym with my workout and post-workout drinks in my gym bag.
Workout Nutrition
Hitting the gym can produce some pretty nasty immediate effects, like muscle
glycogen depletion, decreased protein balance, and increased cortisol concentrations—all of which result in the breaking down and shrinkage of your muscles.
After all this damage is caused if you don’t feed your muscles properly you’ll
wind up with prolonged muscle soreness, minimal increase in strength, symptoms of overtraining and possibly even smaller muscles.
Luckily most of that can be cleverly avoided. During and immediately
after a workout you have a negative protein balance, which indicates that your
muscle is being lost during this time—and this can last up to 24 hours! Your
muscles get smaller for 24 hours after your workout. After that they build themselves back up and you wind up bigger. But think of all that valuable growing
time lost! There’s a solution though: massive amounts of rapidly digesting carbs
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and proteins ingested surrounding your workout.
A particular dosage of that simple mixture at exactly the right time will
supercharge your blood with nutrients while the workout causes an increase in
blood flow. That magic combination of rapidly digested nutrients and increased
blood flow will result in such a rapid muscular recovery that almost no catabolism (muscle breakdown) occurs.
Most trainees spend 24 hours getting smaller after every workout. If you
incorporate proper workout nutrition into yours you’ll spend that 24 hours
getting bigger. Here’s how:
Right before and during your workout you’ll want to be consuming
rapidly digesting proteins and carbohydrates for fuel as you pump your iron.
The simple sugar dextrose (also known as glucose) is the most quickly digested carbohydrate, costs almost nothing, and is your best bet. The starches
maltodextrin and waximaize are good choices too (and they aren’t as horrifyingly sweet). Some people blend dextrose and maltodextrin together, but for us
skinny muscle-builders either one on its own is just fine. Stay away from sucrose
(table sugar) and fructose (fruit sugar) if you can, because they digest using
a different process—but I’m being nitpicky here. Any simple carb will work
wonders. Whey protein is the most quickly digested protein.
Mix up 1.2 grams of maltodextrin (or dextrose) and 0.6 grams of protein
per pound of bodyweight, 10g of creatine and mix it with 16 or so ounces of
water. Drink a third of it 15-45 minutes before the gym, sip on the next third
while training and finish the final third within half an hour of finishing your
workout. If at any point you get thirsty (and you probably will) have some
water too.
This beast of a drink will produce a bunch of positive effects, like
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increased muscle blood flow (which improves nutrient delivery), increased
anabolic hormone production (HGH, Testosterone, IGF-1), and you will have
sparked your muscles to rebuild themselves bigger and stronger. It isn’t for
everyone though and it isn’t forever. Since it isn’t for everyone, I recommend
starting small—with half the total recommended dosage—to see how you feel.
Increase the dosage slowly, but if it ever makes you feel like crap then get those
missing calories from whole foods instead (with a bigger post-workout meal).
And, since it isn’t forever, once you successfully build 20-30 pounds of muscle
and finish this program cut the dosage down to about a third (or totally cut
it from your plan) and start getting your calories from whole foods instead—
there’re more vitamins in there. This drink is for skinny guys, and you won’t be
a skinny guy much longer! While you are a skinny guy trying to rapidly build
muscle though this drink can produce some incredibly fearsome gains.
(It’s possible to find pre-made and pleasantly flavoured drinks designed
specifically for this purpose. If you opt for one of them just make sure to be
consuming the proper amount of carbs and protein.)
MUSCLE MEALS (THE ANABOLIC PHASE)
After a workout your body is primed for a feeding frenzy. Normally eating a
bunch of calorie-heavy carbohydrates can result in fat storage, but during this
key period your body’s roaring metabolism will be taking all the nutrients you
give it and shooting them straight towards building muscle. You’ve already
given your body a fair amount of nutrients with your workout drinks, but now
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it’s time to add some nutrition-rich whole foods to the mix.
You have about 4 hours to consume large-ass meals with no real worry
about the types of carbohydrates you’re eating. There’s no real need to consume
large amounts of fats either—those digest too slowly and you get plenty of them
during your regular meals.
If you have any cravings feel free to indulge them now! Even eating ice
cream during this window has actually been shown to accomplish some good
things, so go for it. Just make sure to be eating a ton of protein and healthy
micronutrient sources too.
You should be shooting for meals that are about 40+% protein, 40+%
carb and with minimal amounts of fat.
Some examples:
•
Beef / yam stew with extra yams or a side of additional carbohydrates
•
Fish and chips + fruits and vegetables
•
Chicken, fish, turkey or beef with potatoes or rice
•
Booster Juice drinks, protein shakes, and smoothies
And avoid ultra-slowly digested casein protein sources like:
•
Greek Yogurt
•
Cottage cheese
•
Milk
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HOW MUCH PROTEIN DO I NEED?
To gain muscle mass you’ll need about 1.5 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight. If you follow our recommended diet plan you’ll end up with a slight bit
extra, so you shouldn’t ever need to worry about it.
At 180 pounds I would need around 270 grams of protein per day. If I
eat my target goal of 3937 calories and even just 30% of that is protein, I’ll
wind up with 1181 calories from protein. A gram of protein contains 4 calories, so that results in 295 grams of protein per day—more than I need! And on
workout days my intake would be even higher, due to the shakes.
That said, if you find you’re gaining weight but aren’t gaining muscle or
strength and you can’t figure out why, one of the things you should try is increasing your protein intake.
*There’s a popular theory out there that only 30g of protein can be digested per
meal. This isn’t true. There aren’t any credible studies to back that up, and there’s a
ton of evidence to support the contrary. One study in France found that a group of
125 pound 26 year old women were perfectly capable of digesting their entire daily
protein requirements (on average 77g) in one meal — and it’s quite likely that they
would have been able to digest even more had they tested for it.
THE PERFECT DAY
Does eating this much food sound like a huge pain in the ass? Well it can be,
especially if you laboriously prepare your meals one at a time and take 45
minutes to eat each of them, but you don’t have to. If you plan to eat four times
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a day and 1000 calories is more than your stomach can fit, well, you could
always have eight meals that are only 500 calories each. If eight meals sounds
like a huge hassle, well just eat bigger meals and do it four times a day. If your
stomach can neither fit 1000 calories at once and your schedule can’t accommodate eight meals a days there’s an easy solution for that too: throw in a few
100 calorie glasses of milk between meals, a few 300 calorie shots of olive oil,
swallow some extra large raw eggs at 80 calories a piece, or blend up some fruit
and dairy and down 1000+ calories in a smoothie. Liquid calories are easy on
your appetite and your schedule. Don’t stress about how many meals you eat—
that whole 6-9 meals per day thing is a bodybuilding fad. It takes many hours
to digest your meals, so eating even just 4 meals a day is more than enough.
I’ll typically wake up, have some water and fish oil pills (salmon or krill)
and then grab a homemade protein bar from the fridge, dollop out some yogurt
into a bowl to dip it in, and happily wolf it down before I’ve fully woken up.
That particular combination of foods I find both appealing and easy to fit in
my stomach—and it weighs in at about 1000 calories! Other mornings I’ll toss
some fruit, whey, milk, yogurt, spinach and raw eggs into a blender and quickly
blend myself a 1000 calorie smoothie.
A few hours later I’ll see what I’m in the mood for. I’ll sometimes have
another homemade protein bar (800 calories), sometimes I’ll warm up some
chili or stew that I always have in the fridge/freezer (850 calories), sometimes
I’ll be out and about and grab a litre of whole milk from a corner store as I pass
by (600 calories). When I occasionally go out for lunch I pick something relatively healthy and full of hearty protein.
For dinner I’ll usually have stew or chili, but if I have a guest over I’ll cook
something up. That’d be when I would make myself 2 chicken breasts, a mound
of quinoa and a giant pile of broccoli with melted cheese on top. Or some nice
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healthy hamburgers with some veggies.
I’ll usually have some sort of snack shortly after that. If I have a bit of a
sweet tooth I’ll often have a bowl of greek yogurt with a sliced peach thrown in
and a dollop of raw organic honey. Sometimes I’ll be in more of a salty mood so
I’ll have some flavoured almonds or peanuts along with a glass of milk.
Before bed I’ll have a slowly digesting meal full of the slowly digesting casein
protein. A bowl of greek yogurt with a half cup of blueberries in it is great, or a
bowl of cottage cheese with a bit of unsweetened strawberry jam. A glass of milk
is great before bed, too. And I’ll usually have a few fish oil pills (salmon or krill).
Bonus points for downing a couple of eggs before bed, too. Those things really get
your testosterone going overnight. And if I’m a couple hundred calories short I’ll
have a shot of olive oil to top things off. Another common myth out there is not to
have large amounts of food before bed. In healthy guys our metabolism is just fine
overnight, so you don’t need to avoid carbs or anything. In fact when first start out
you might find that you get to the end of the day and you’re 1000+ calories short.
Time to eat big if you want to get big.
Had I read that a couple of years ago it would have sounded pretty ridiculous.
My eating habits were pretty bad and as a result I was pretty unhealthy and
emaciated, but hell I had the “freedom” to skip breakfast whenever I wanted,
skip lunch whenever I wanted, eat whatever I wanted for dinner, and have a
bunch of junk food late at night whenever I craved it. A healthy eating plan like
the one above would have seemed ridiculous.
What I soon realized though was that while I had to be more conscious of
what I was doing, pre-prepare some food in advance, and spend more money on
groceries, I was also actually getting a ton more done during the day. I felt better,
my cravings for junk food went away entirely, I had more energy than most of my
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friends and my productivity and focus skyrocketed. Best of all I looked healthy and
fit. Not to mention I could lift more than most people that were twice my size. The
secret to being a beast is eating like one.
I
f this sounds like a lot of information to take in you’re right—it is. And we don’t
expect you to master it all at once. The more of our healthy recipes and muscle
building nutrition techniques you can build into your daily the plan the better, but
for the first phase you’ll be able to see incredible gains just by consistently focusing
on these three key things:
1. Calories. You absolutely 100% need to get your calories in. Your body will
not increase its weight without them.
2. Protein. Once you start eating a healthy and balanced diet this takes care
of itself, but for the first phase we want you concentrating on getting
quality protein in with every meal and tracking how many grams of
protein you consume each day.
3. Consistency. Eating well on and off may or may not get you the results
you’re looking for. The only way to guarantee great results is to follow the
plan consistently. How consistent do you need to be? 90% should be good
enough to get unbelievably incredible results. Feel free to add a dessert to
a meal here and there or have a couple drinks with friends. Any less than
90% and you’ll likely notice that your results will decrease.
To make this easy to remember and easy to track we’ve made a Phase One
nutrition sheet that you can print out and stick to your fridge. Successfully fill
in that sheet and you’ll be doing everything you need to rapidly build muscle
without having to keep track of a hundred new principles at once. If you aren’t
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taking in enough calories to gain weight and you aren’t taking in enough
protein to build muscle, you damn well shouldn’t be worried about balancing
acidic and alkaline foods or stressing over your omega 3 to omega 6 ratios.
We’ll take it one step at a time in order to assure that you’re successfully building muscle right from day one.
After completing Phase One you’ll be ready to start focusing on refining
your nutrition even further in order to really maximize your results, so we’ve
created a second sheet that keeps track of more advanced health and muscle
building metrics. By the end of the second phase you should have that down pat
and be ready for Phase Three, etc. Once you get these basic habits down a large
part of customizing and refining your nutrition plan will be done on the forum,
where we can really tailor your diet to your specific body type, results, challenges and level. If you successfully fill out the nutrition sheets we can properly
adjust the plan to make sure you’re maximizing on your muscle gain and minimizing your fat gain, all while feeling great and improving your health.
If you already have experience with dieting for muscle gain, or you know
for a fact that you can internalize a lot of new habits at once, then you can
advance through the phases until you start running into habits that you don’t
already have. If you have never successfully and consistently put on muscle
mass before though we recommend that you stick to the Phase One sheet for
the full five weeks.
By the end of the program you may be thinking that we’ll have you obsessively keeping track of everything down to the point where you can tell us how
many micrograms of selenium you’ve consumed. Don’t worry—we actually want
the exact opposite: for you to have healthy lifestyle habits internalized, so you don’t
need to keep track of anything and can just go about living a healthy and enjoyable
life with a beastly physique to show for it.
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If you trust this system we can guarantee results. In the wise words of sports
performance nutritionist John Berardi though:
“Do less than we tell you to do, and you’ll achieve less than
what we promise you can expect.”
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CHAPTER 6
MUSCLE FOODS
N
ow that we’ve got the nutrition fundamentals down we’ll go into more
detail about the different macronutrients and give you a list of the differ-
ent powerhouses of healthy muscle-building nutrition. We haven’t covered every
single beneficial food out there, but these are the absolute best foods for building muscle, and they’re also extremely healthy. If you incorporate these foods
into your diet you’ll see some pretty incredible improvements to your health,
physique and strength.
Like we said before, we don’t expect you to completely change your eating
habits all at once. You can either start constructing all your meals out of these
foods, or you can slowly work on incorporating more and more of them gradually into your diet phase by phase as you continue to bulk up. For easy reference we’ve also included a grocery list along with the nutrition sheets that you
can take to the grocery store with you.
The more foods you use from these lists the quicker you’ll be able to pack
on muscle and the more resistant to fat gain you’ll be. But keep in mind that if
you’re just starting out on your journey to muscle town, the three non-nego-
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tiable factors for putting on muscle are eating enough calories, eating enough
protein and consistency. Eating mountains of extremely healthy spinach won’t
make you muscular unless you have those three key factors handled, so make
them priorities number one, two and three. Once you’ve got that handled and
you’re crushing the scale dig into the details and really perfect your nutrition to
further improve your results.
THE BEST PROTEINS FOR MUSCLE GROWTH
Any type of intense exercise increases your body’s demand for protein, so as a
soon to be strength training trainee, protein is about to become extremely important to you. It will give your body the building blocks it needs to repair and
build muscle. In addition to that, a higher intake of protein has beneficial effects
on anabolic hormones, most notably IGF-1 and testosterone. These hormones
are famous for reducing fat levels and increasing muscle mass—good stuff.
The benefits go beyond the obvious, too. A diet that’s high in protein will
result in increased concentrations of the hormone glucagon, which will lead to
less fat storage when overfeeding, like we will be; it will increase the quality
of your muscle, since your body will be able to use your high protein turnover
rate to replace old muscle with newer and stronger muscle; and it will keep our
levels of creatine, branched chain amino acids (BCAAs), and conjugated linoleic
acids (CLA) high, enhancing our performance, strength, recovery and muscle
growth abilities.
With that said, not all proteins were created equal. Vegan sources of
protein, like soy, result in markedly lower levels of anabolic hormone production. The scarier side of soy is that it will also elevate your estrogen levels,
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which will not only make it harder to put on muscle, but can also result in feminine fat storage (man boobs and love handles). Soy is also incredibly unhealthy,
hard for your body to process, and can result in fertility problems.
The other thing to consider is leucine. The amount of leucine found in a
protein source plays an important role in Muscle Protein Synthesis (MPS). An
increase in MPS results in an increase in your body’s ability to produce muscle
growth. Dairy, eggs and meat (animal based protein sources) are known to be
protein sources that are higher in leucine, and give you more bang for your
calorie. We call these high efficiency protein sources, because you get more
muscle-building power per calorie. Plant-based foods with protein in them—
like nuts, beans and quinoa—are low efficiency protein sources, and you’d need
to eat a way higher quantity of them to get the same benefits. Since those foods
are also way higher in carbohydrates or fats than protein we’ve put them in
their respective sections. They’re great foods that are great for you, but not as
primary protein sources. This is why you rarely see vegan bodybuilders, unless
they’re extreme genetic muscle-freaks of nature. You can still attain a muscular
physique as a vegan, but the road will be much longer and much more challenging. If you’re a vegan don’t worry we’ll help you out on the forums. We leave
no man behind!
For the omnivores and vegetarians out there, here’s a list of high quality protein
sources that are great for packing on muscle:
Red meat
This stuff is full of iron, magnesium, zinc, leucine and saturated fat—a combination that’s known to skyrocket anabolic hormone production. It is high
in dietary cholesterol, but with recent studies showing that dietary cholesterol
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doesn’t result in any cholesterol problems whatsoever, this guy’s looking better
and better. Our stew recipe features red meat, steaks are a breeze to prepare,
and you can easily substitute lean ground beef into our chili.
Most farmed meat in North America is grain fed, resulting in a different
fat profile from organic free-range grass-fed animals. A naturally raised grass
fed cow will be rich in polyunsaturated fats, more similar to Atlantic salmon.
It’s a great choice if you can afford it.
Turkey
Turkey is one of the leanest sources of protein out there, and it’s full of folic
acid, B vitamins, zinc and potassium—all key muscle building nutrients. These
nutrients also help with cholesterol, fend off cancer and heart disease, aid in
nerve growth, boost your immune system and regulate blood pressure. Some
of them, like zinc, are rapidly depleted with intense training and are commonly
supplemented with by bodybuilders. Our chili recipe is packed full of turkey
and easy to prepare in bulk.
Chicken
Chicken breast is a classic lean protein choice. It’s full of niacin, which is essential for the conversion of proteins, fats and carbs into energy. It’s also full
of selenium, which is great for boosting your immune system. And it’s got B6
vitamins, which are great for your energy levels and metabolism.
Salmon
Atlantic salmon is rich in healthy unsaturated fats and omega-3 fatty acids.
Pacific salmon naturally has a lower fat content because the water is warmer
and the fish don’t need to build up as much fat to keep themselves warm. The
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advantage of Pacific salmon is that it’s far less likely to have been farmed. The
problem with farmed fish is that it’s got more of the undesirable PCB in it (Polychlorinated biphenyl), and less omega-3s. That said, farmed salmon is still far
better for you than no salmon. Wild Atlantic salmon is the gold standard, as it’s
low in PCB, and incredibly high in polyunsaturated fats. Any salmon is great for
you though. It’s also low in mercury compared with other fish, so you can eat it
more frequently.
Tuna
An incredible source of protein, easy to eat on the go, and great for you in small
doses—but make sure not to eat more than 2 or 3 servings a week or you might
set yourself up for mercury poisoning!
Oysters
A little-known fact is that these guys are extremely rich in zinc, making them
an incredible all-natural testosterone booster. A single oyster gives you more
zinc than a normal person needs in a day, so eating even a few of them a week
puts you way ahead of the pack. Frying these guys kills some of the nutrients
though, so steer clear of the frying pan if you can. I don’t eat these guys often,
but if I see them at a restaurant I’ll always grab them as an appetizer.
Jerky
Feel free to grab beef, buffalo or turkey jerky on occasion. Try to get the
“healthy” brands that use good cuts of meat and don’t add too much sugar into
the flavouring. It is heavily processed though—so don’t make it a staple in your
nutritional arsenal.
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Whey
Whey is an isolated/concentrated protein that’s a natural byproduct of the milk
creation process. In the past, before its nutritional value was known, it was then
simply discarded. Now you can buy it in a powdered form and it’s one of the
leanest and healthiest types of protein out there.
Whey is the more quickly digested protein naturally found in milk, as
opposed to casein protein, which is the extremely slowly digested protein found
in milk. This makes whey protein great when mixed with other foods that slow
its digestion (like in our homemade protein bars), or when taken while working
out alongside sugar, when your body needs bioavailable protein immediately.
We consider whey a “whole food” in the same sense that we consider cheese
and greek yogurt whole foods. It’s also a “high efficiency” protein that is high
in leucine and will promote healthy hormone levels. (you’ll find milk in the carb
section.)
Eggs
If there’s a natural secret weapon to bodybuilding it’s eggs—they’re quick to
cook, edible raw, versatile, easily transported when boiled, and absolutely jampacked full of nutrients that pack on muscle. If you have eggs in your fridge go
eat some right now.
To get all of the benefits you need to eat the whole egg. Don’t go yanking
out the yolk—if anything the yolk is the healthiest part. A whole egg is full
of antioxidants, B-vitamins, vitamin A, folate, choline, lutein, calcium, iron,
phosphorus, zinc, thiamin, panthothenic acid, vitamins A, D, E and K. It’s also
packed full of essential fatty acids (EFAs). Sounds like the description of some
fancy and expensive health/bodybuilding supplement, no?
Free-range organic eggs are the way to go. They’re more expensive, but
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they’re worth it. They’re more nutrient dense, ludicrously unlikely to contain
salmonella, and will have a better impact on your anabolic hormone production. They’re bigger and taste better, too.
One of the main benefits of eggs is their incredibly high level of dietary
cholesterol—an extremely masculinizing nutrient that’s fantastic for testosterone production. Will that give you a cholesterol problem? Almost certainly not.
Recent studies have shown no correlation between dietary cholesterol and your
body’s internal production of cholesterol. A recent University of Connecticut
study actually found that men who ate 3 whole eggs every day had increased
good cholesterol levels (HDL), which has been linked with improved
heart health.
Will raw eggs give you salmonella? I strongly encourage you to do your
own research, but based on the research we’ve done you’ve got nothing to
worry about. The chances are ludicrously small (something like 1 in 833,333),
as a young male it would likely result in an unpleasant half-day stomach flu,
and most of the eggs we comfortably eat regularly (like sunny side up) aren’t
cooked fully enough to decrease the risks anyway. If you are worried about salmonella you’d have to hard boil your eggs.
Cottage cheese
Cottage cheese is one of those foods that bodybuilders secretly stock up on
because of its high casein protein content (the cheese curds are made up of
casein). Casein digests extremely slowly, providing a steady supply of protein to
your body and thus making it a popular bodybuilder’s pre-bed meal. The liquid
part of cottage cheese is largely made up of whey, which is also high in protein.
As with all dairy, the fats found in cottage cheese are a good balance of
saturated and monounsaturated, so there’s no need to get the low-fat versions.
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Greek yogurt
Greek yogurt is a new nutritional phenomena and is finally becoming easy to
find in grocery stores. Greek yogurt is made by taking regular yogurt and filtering out the whey and milk sugar, leaving the remaining “greek” yogurt with
a much higher protein content (from the casein) and a lower sugar content.
Regular yogurt is great for you, and we’ve slotted it in the carb section. Greek
yogurt is great for you too, and almost entirely made up of protein. As with
other milk products this guy’s rich in calcium, which is great for your bones.
This is a perfect substitute for cottage cheese as a pre-bed meal, especially when
eaten alongside nuts or other healthy fat sources.
THE BEST CARBOHYDRATES FOR MUSCLE GROWTH
Most people who don’t care about their diets eat too many carbohydrates,
because crappy carbs are cheap, accessible and tasty. Most people who do care
about nutrition mainly stick to vitamin-rich vegetables that are low in calories,
because most calorie-dense carbs have hardly any nutrients in them (pasta,
white bread, white rice, muffins, etc). All carbs are converted into glucose,
which can easily lead to fat storage. This causes carb-terror in the health and
weight conscious. Don’t fall for it! Us skinny guys need our carbs, and we need
‘em bad.
For the purposes of this program we have the surprisingly controversial
belief that a balanced diet is best. Tell that to someone who loves having pure
carb breakfasts (like cereal + juice) and they’ll freak out. Similarly, tell that to a
girl who’s trying to lose 10 pounds and she’ll say “A balanced diet that includes
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carbohydrates?! Are you trying to make me fat?!” Luckily for us you aren’t a
girl who’s trying to lose 10 pounds, so stack that plate full of potatoes! We’re
here to build muscles, not runway models.
It’s important for carbohydrates to make up somewhere between 20% and
50% of your overall diet, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish and
what your activity levels are. Too many simple carbs in isolation and you may
wind up with too much glucose in your system. The immediate effect of this is
insulin spikes, resulting in sugar highs followed by lethargy-filled sugar crashes.
In the short term this will make you fat, and in the long term that fatness could
lead to health problems, like diabetes and increased cholesterol levels. There’s a
really simple solution to that though—eat balanced meals + don’t get fat.
Too few carbohydrates and your body will start converting the protein
that you’re eating into glucose. Since protein is expensive as well as crucially
important for putting on muscle we don’t want any of it going to waste. Too
few carbohydrates can also drastically limit your body’s ability to pack on
muscle. Your body, after all, needs glucose—it’s our primary source of energy.
When we’re lifting hundreds of pounds in the gym our body is fuelled by
glucose (stored in our muscles and liver as glycogen) and we need a ton of it.
Try going to the gym on an empty stomach and see how long you last.
So, as skinny guys looking to take to the gym and pack on muscle we fall
into the 40+% carbohydrate category. If you’re really emaciated you might even
want to be getting 50-60% of your calories from carbohydrates. If you follow
our nutrient timing advice you’ll notice that most of these carbs are concentrated around the workouts, while on rest days you’ll be eating more protein,
veggies and fats. The goal is to feed your body carbohydrates every single time
it needs them to get maximum muscle gains, but avoid them when they’re unecessary, and thus avoid putting on fat. Don’t stress about this nutrient timing and
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carb cycling stuff too much though. Instead focus on eating balanced meals and
getting in your daily macronutrient requirements.
Most calorie-dense carbohydrates that you run into are 100% devoid of
micronutritional value. Processed sugar, which is the main ingredient in most
questionable foods (like store-bought juice), has no micronutrients in it. Neither
does processed starch (white rice, muffins, pasta, etc). Refined starches and
sugars can be great immediately post-workout, but otherwise it’s often best to
steer clear of them.
That said, fruit and vegetables are also carbohydrates and incredibly good
for you, no matter what your goals are. They’re nutrient rich, and the types of
sugars they contain actually digest really slowly. They’re full of fibre too, which
is great for your digestion (and your bowel movements). Another big benefit
with fruits and vegetables though is that they’re basic (alkaline). The typical
North American diet is high in proteins and grains, which are both very acidic.
By adding in lots of fruits and vegetables we can fix our body’s acid-base ratio
(pH level), which is great for bone density and prevents muscle wasting. We
won’t go into that much in this eBook, but if you want to maximize on your
health and muscle gains make sure to get in your fruits and veggies!
There are some calorie dense carbohydrates that are healthy and fantastic
for packing on muscle too, and as skinny guys trying to build muscle we’ll need
to eat a lot of them. Legumes (beans, chick peas, lentils), ancient grains (like
quinoa and wild rice), potatoes and yams, and calorie dense fruits (bananas,
cherries, grapes, etc) are indispensable when trying to put on muscle. When
trying to put on weight these are incredible building blocks, so eat your fill of
them!
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Fruits
These guys are full of fibre, folate, antioxidants, phytochemicals and vitamins.
They’re also full of fructose (fruit sugar), which debatably make many of
them a bad choice when trying to lose weight. Luckily we’re not trying to lose
weight, so we can skip that debate and pack our menu full of fruit. Fructose
is tougher to digest than most other types of sugar, so eating fruit along with
meals shouldn’t cause sugar highs or crashes. For our purposes though this has
a slight downside—we lose precious calories as our body processes the fruit. If
your diet is high in fruit you may need to eat a bit more. With that in mind,
we recommend:
•
Apples, grapefruits: full of flavenoids, which prevent
diabetes and asthma
•
Bananas: high in calories and full of potassium, making them good for
reducing blood pressure
•
Blackberries, Cherries: rich in an antioxidant called anthocyanin, which
prevents strokes and cancer
•
Blueberries: a superfood degree of antioxidants
•
Figs, pears: high in fibre and good for your heart
•
Goji berries: tons of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants
•
Grapes: full of the antioxidant resveratrol, which is found in wine as
well, and also rich in flavenoids (which are not found in wine
•
Kiwi: good for your bones, cartilage, teeth and gums
•
Oranges: full of vitamin C and good for cholesterol
•
Pineapples: good for digestion
•
Pomegranates: full of tannins, which are good for your heart
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•
Prunes: these are a laxative, because of the sugar sorbitol. If your
bulking diet is low in fibre and your bowel movements are few and far
between these could come in handy.
•
Strawberries: anti-inflammatory
•
Tomatoes: nutrient rich and they may reduce cholesterol
•
Watermelons: deceivingly low in calories, watch out!
Super vegetables
Pop-eye had it right—these are the most nutrient dense and healthy foods out
there. They’ve got iron, calcium, potassium, magnesium, vitamins K, C, E, and B
vitamins. When I first heard that, it sounded healthy but not all that exciting—
until I realized that those vitamins and minerals are crucial components for
anabolic hormone production. Another really cool thing about these vegetables
is that they counteract the effects of common chemicals that we’re exposed to
known as xenoestrogens. I realize that might sound like gibberish, but the key
part of that word is the “estrogen” part. Lots of men these days have unaturally high levels of estrogen. This results in men with feminine fat storage and a
reduced ability to put on muscle. These vegetables will help put your hormone
levels back in balance and hopefully even tip them more in favour of the anabolic muscle building and fat burning hormones. How? They have phytonutrients, like indole-3-carbinol (I3C) that combat the effects of these chemicals.
I3C can have a pretty profound effect on your hormones, and has been proven
to cut the female hormone estradiol in half in men, leaving the boobs for the
babes. They also have a slew of other phytonutrients like beta-carotene, lutein,
zeaxanthin and even small amounts of omega-3 fats. Here they are:
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•
Broccoli
•
Cauliflower
•
Brussels sprouts
•
Kale
•
Bok Choy
•
Cabbage
•
Spinach
Regular Vegetables
Other vegetables are pretty great for you too and shouldn’t be ignored. Sweet
potatoes are a great addition to your bulking arsenal, as they’re a healthy alternative to the calorie-dense but nutritionally questionable white potato that’s
often used as weight-gain staple food. Corn is a good choice too, and is used by
farmers to bulk up their chickens. It works on humans too, and is full of fibre.
Garlic
Not a heavy hitter whatsoever when it comes to calories, but garlic’s still got
some tricks up its sleeve. This guy’s full of allicin, which inhibits the production
of cortisol. Cortisol is a muscle-killing hormone that also limits testosterone
production. Consuming allicin means less cortisol and enhanced testosterone
production. Garlic is also incredible for your immune system. These benefits
may even make it worth the bad breath that will certainly follow. Many of our
bulking meals include garlic for this very reason, so if you opt to use our recipes
we should have you covered.
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Quinoa
This is the protein-filled ultra-healthy calorie-dense alternative to rice. Chances
are you’ve already heard whisperings of how great this stuff is for you, but I
bet you didn’t know that it’s a relative of spinach … weird. It’s full of manganese, which is good for your hormones as well your blood sugar levels. It’s also
got tryptophan in it—an amino acid that helps regulate your appetite, improve
sleep and elevate your mood. You can also find tryptophan in all the meat and
dairy you’ll be eating, but it’s nice knowing quinoa has your back too.
Oats
Oats are full of dietary fibre and phytochemicals, as are vegetables. They digest
slowly and are great for your blood sugar levels. And they’ve got a reputation
for being a great source of energy when it comes time to hit the gym. An oatfilled meal a couple hours before the gym is a perfect fuel. Oats are probably
gluten free, which may or may not matter to you. Jared and I aren’t intolerant,
but we don’t tend to eat much gluten … except in our beer.
Raw (aka “unpasteurized”) Honey
This is the best alternative to sugar. It’s anti-bacterial, anti-viral and anti-fungal.
Some weird people do weird stuff with it, like applying it topically to acne and
cuts to sterilize and heal them faster (... weird people like me). When eaten it
helps with blood sugar control, it’s got a perfect glucose / fructose ratio for glycogen storage (which is valuable when weight lifting), it’s good for cholesterol,
it raises blood levels of antioxidants, and it can boost immunity. All of these
benefits go out the window as soon as you pasteurize it though, so eat your
honey raw.
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Wild rice
Wild rice looks kind of like a black version of the white rice you know and
love, but it’s actually a long grain. When you buy wild rice you need to make
sure you’re actually buying wild rice, not some mix of white, wild and brown
rice. Wild rice has a fair bit of protein, and it’s got a slew of great muscle building nutrients in it, like B vitamins, magnesium and zinc. I warn you though it’s
more expensive than you might expect. I recognize the importance of investing in my health and I love the taste of it, but even I almost always opt for the
cheaper alternatives (like beans and sweet potatoes).
Legumes
Beans, lentils and chick peas are all rich in calories, full of fibre, rich in nutrients, slow to digest and even have some protein in them. They also have more
zinc than any other vegetable, which is key for testosterone production. The
trick is not to get them in cans, as cans are often lined with bisphenol-A (BPA)
which can elevate your estrogen levels. If you buy them fresh or dried though
they’re extremely cheap and perfectly healthy.
Yogurt
We’re listing this as a carb, but it’s also a great source of high-efficiency leucinerich protein and healthy fats. Go for a plain unsweetened flavour and add the
fruit or honey yourself to flavour it. Don’t get it with the fat reduced—the fat in
yogurt is great for you and an important component of all of the health benefits
that the yogurt provides. Yogurt, like any dairy product, is full of calcium, but
unlike most other dairy products the live cultures increase the absorption of the
calcium into your bones. If you’re lactose intolerant you can probably still eat
yogurt because it contains lactase, the enzyme necessary to digest lactose. And
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probiotic yogurt is great for your immune system. Yogurt has a balanced macronutrient profile that makes it perfect as a meal all on its own. I’ve heard that
you can mix in flavoured whey protein to create a high protein yogurt pudding
dessert, but I haven’t had much luck with it.
Milk
A great staple food for bulking. It’s full of nutrients—especially calcium —and
even though we have it in the carb section, milk is a balanced meal in and of
itself. A litre of milk is a great substitute for a meal, and if you need to boost
your calories try drinking a glass of milk alongside your meals. The fat in milk
is actually great for you too, so don’t worry about opting for skim. If you want
a protein boost mix in some whey protein. If you want a chocolate protein
boost, mix in some chocolate whey protein.
FATS & ANABOLIC HORMONE PRODUCTION
Lots of people underestimate the power of the fats, and some novice nutrionistas try and steer clear of them altogether because they mistakenly believe that
eating fats will make them a fatty. Eating fats will not make you a fatty, so
we’re actually recommending that you do the opposite. Many of your meals can
have a lot of fat in them. Surrounding the gym it isn’t all that useful, because
fats digest nice and steadily and will just slow your digestion of the carbohydrates and protein that your body craves. For that same reason though they
make a perfect source of energy for your other daily activities and before bed,
when your body needs a steady and moderate supply of energy. You’ll need a
good supply of fats to digest the fat-soluble vitamins you’re taking in too, like
vitamins A, D, E and K.
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The other exciting thing about fats is that they weigh in at 9 calories per
gram, making them more than twice as calorically dense as carbohydrates and
proteins, which weigh in at only 4 calories per gram. For skinny guys like us
this is great news. Getting more of our calories from fat means we need to eat
less food! A tablespoon of peanut butter has more calories than a mountain
of broccoli. Taking a shot of olive oil can quickly shoot your calories up by a
few hundred while seemingly taking up no space in your stomach. Adding a
couple spoonfuls of coconut or safflower oil to a stew or chili will add a couple
hundred calories to your meal and you won’t even notice it. Eating foods with
fat in them are a great strategy for eating the same amount and taking in more
calories: atlantic salmon instead of haddock, 3% yogurt instead of no-fat
yogurt, whole milk instead of skim milk, grass-fed red meat instead of chicken
breast, etc.
The exciting part about fats is that your body uses them to balance hormones—hormones that will make you big and strong, protect you against
diseases, turn you into a masculine powerhouse, and just lead to overall good
health. They also regulate blood-glucose levels.
Here’s a breakdown of the different types of fats you’ll want to be consuming and where to get them. Consuming the proper amounts of the different kinds of fats can be a little confusing, especially since almost all fat sources
contain a mix of the different types already. We’ve done our best to take care of
that for you by creating recipes that have a perfect blend of fats. I recommend
you re-read this section every phase in an effort to slowly progress towards a
perfect muscle-building and healthy diet. Here we go:
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Saturated Fat
Saturated fat has been linked to testosterone production, but the benefits don’t
stop there—it’s good for your heart (so long as you balance it with the other
types of fat), good for your bones, good for your liver, good for your lungs,
good for your brain, good for your nerves and great for your immune system.
Pretty important stuff. Saturated fats are pretty easy to come by, especially in
the diet we’re recommending, which is packed full of meat, dairy and nuts. Here
are some examples:
•
Butter
•
Coconut oil (the best oil for high temperature cooking)
•
Red meat
•
Milk
•
Cheese
Monounsaturated Fat
Monounsaturated fats (omega 9s) are next up on the list, and can be found in
red meat, milk, almonds, cashews, olive oil and avocados—so it shouldn’t be
too much trouble to get a good supply of them. These are good for your heart,
cholesterol and your skin. Here are some common sources:
•
Olive oil (the king of monounsaturated fats)
•
Butter
•
pork / bacon
•
avocados
•
Chicken
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Polyunsaturated Fats (aka EFAs and Omega-3s and 6s)
Polyunsaturated fats are the most confusing fats of all, especially since they’re
also called omega-3s, omega-6s, and essential fatty acids (EFAs). These are the
fats found in atlantic salmon, krill, safflower oil, eggs, etc. Omega-6s are the
type of polyunsaturated fat that you run into by accident, and thus you probably already get enough of them. Most people eat 10 times more omega-6s than
omega-3s (10:1), while the ideal is a 3:1 ratio. This is understandable, as omega3s are really hard to find, but also the cause of a lot of nutrition related maladies … and it can also hurt your physique aspirations. The best way to counter
this is to take fish oil pills, which are the best source of omega-3s out there.
Once you start supplementing with fish oil pills you can quickly bring that
10:1 ratio back down to a perfect 3:1. Fish oil pills also contain EPA and DHA,
which are some of the most powerful and healthy fats out there, bar none.
Omega 3s
•
fish oils (pills or liquid)
•
salmon, mackerel, tuna
•
free-range eggs
•
omega 3 eggs
•
walnuts
•
flax
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Omega 6s
•
vegetable oil (safflower, canola, corn, soy, etc)
•
nuts and seeds
•
bread, cereals
•
poultry
Trans Fats
Trans fats are the fats to stay away from. Eating trans fats is about as good
for you as eating plastic—our body has no idea what the hell to do with it. If
you’re a fan of junk food you should be checking the labels to make sure it’s
free and clear of this stuff. They’re pretty much poison. They wreck your cholesterol, raise your risk of stroke and heart disease, and can lead to diabetes. Sadly
butter has trace amounts of it, preventing it from being the perfect fat source.
We still recommend butter though.
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CHAPTER 7
SUPPLEMENTS
N
ow that we’ve covered the basics of training and nutrition we can
venture into the mysterious and intriguing realm of supplements. Most
people think that without a solid training and nutrition plan in place that supplements will give you pretty mediocre results.
That’s overly optimistic.
Supplements are a total waste of money without a proper diet and exercise plan
in place. There are no legal supplements out there that can pack muscle onto
your bony frame unless you’ve got your basics down.*
*Even anabolic steroids require a solid workout plan and diet to cause significant
muscle gain. We don’t recommend steroids. We’ve never tried them and never will,
because, quite frankly, we can consistently get the results that we want without them.
We’re confident that this program can even outperform steroids paired with an
inferior program. There’s a lot of over-hyped negative media surrounding steroids,
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but the truth is that they cause more problems than they fix in your typical trainee
and they’re pretty pointless unless you’re trying to go beyond what a human should
look like (ie Jay Cutler, Ronnie Coleman, etc) or trying to illegally reach the upper
echelons of sports performance (i.e. Barry Bonds). Not to mention it looks like ‘roids
killed Zyzz at 25. He was one of our favourite internet bodybuilding sensations…
and now he’s a just buff corpse :(
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 rock solid bricks to
build with (from the kitchen), then extra workers can work wonders and help
you build your skyscraper much much faster … but if you don’t have a cleared
construction site, and you don’t have a huge pile of bricks, well, all you’re doing
is paying extra workers to stand around.
If you aren’t already gaining weight already supplements will not make
any difference. They only come into play once you’re training properly, eating
enough calories to gain weight, and getting in enough protein to build muscle.
At that point incorporating a few key supplements into your regime can definitely speed up your results. There aren’t any magic bullets out there that will
make you a giant overnight, but there are some effective, safe and healthy ways
of packing on your muscles a little quicker. Most of the tried and true fundamental supplements have been around long enough that they’re extremely well
tested and fairly affordable, too. The really expensive stuff, luckily, is often
novelty junk with no clinical studies to back it up that will give you a few
pimples and a caffeine high.
Are supplements cheating? No, of course not. Wanting a more efficient
training regime is a far cry from being lazy. Keep in mind that none of these
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supplements will downplay the importance of consistent effort, both in the gym
and the kitchen.
Are supplements drugs? Well, kind of, in the same sense that aspirin, tea,
coffee and Coca Cola are. In fact Coke, made from artificial chemicals, packed
full of caffeine and packaged in cancer-causing cans lined with BPA, is far far
more harmful than anything we’re recommending here. A lot of these supplements actually come with health benefits as side effects. 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. All
they do is speed up the process a bit. Most supplements are extracts from really
great foods that would be ludicrously difficult to eat enough of. If you were to
eat a few dozen pounds of certain types of meat every day you could naturally
get your creatine levels extremely high … but supplementing with creatine is
far cheaper, easier and a hell of a lot healthier (eating that much meat every day
would be a nutritional nightmare).
When I first stepped into the supplement arena, weighing in at a scrawny
130 pounds, creatine was exactly what I was hunting for. I had virtually no
knowledge of what I was doing, a horrible program in place, and to make
matters worse I was horribly embarrassed to even be considering supplements.
I was so far outside of the gym culture that I hadn’t even heard of anyone that
was taking supplements. My workout buddy at the time, Willem, was a jacked
mesomorph that from what I could tell sneezed his way into a six-pack. My
other friends were somewhat out of shape and full of excuses about why they
should stay that way. I really didn’t want my friends finding out that scrawny
little me was considering taking the supplement of supplements: 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.
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Taking this stuff could boost my strength and make me 10 pounds heavier
just by increasing my muscles’ water retention?! (my understanding then was
limited)
I snuck off to a health food store and nervously asked the buff salesman
for help. I knew what I wanted: micronized creatine monohydrate, preferably Japanese, and preferably Creapure. The guy took a quick look at my bitty
biceps and, I suspect, saw an opportunity to make some money. He told me that
micronized creatine monohydrate ($15 for a few months supply) 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 work
in harmony with my muscles—$150 for a single month. (I may be exaggerating
a bit here—the truth is that I didn’t understand a word of what he was saying
and definitely can’t remember it.)
No no, I replied, I just wanted micronized creatine monohydrate. I had
read online about all these crazy concoctions and the real results of their
studies. I knew that they were about as effective as creatine monohydrate, with
the bonus of a really expensive sugar high, and none of the long-term
health guarantees.
So what did I walk out of the store with? A $60 tub of NOxplode. It didn’t
help me at all in any way and isn’t even remotely similar to creatine. It’s almost
as good as having a coffee before heading to the gym, if you don’t mind all the
artificial crap they’ve thrown into it. You might be confused as to how I wound
up with a completely unrelated supplement. He basically told me that it was
pretty much the same thing as creatine but that it was far more effective, ultra-
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modern, and that it was a top seller. Ah well. You win some and you lose some.
In his defense it was a top seller. It might even still be.
In an effort to keep you from the same fate here’s our supplement guide.
We’ve got absolutely no financial motivation to endorse or discredit any of
these. If we recommend something chances are that we’ve personally tried it
and found it useful. All of this stuff is legal, at least here in Canada, and as far
as we can tell, perfectly safe.
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THE BEST SUPPLEMENTS FOR ECTOMORPHS
Whey/Casein Protein Powders
I’m hesitant to even put this in the supplement section, since it has more in
common with food than supplements. Whey and casein protein powders are
simply a different way of ingesting the protein naturally found in dairy. They’re
incredible sources of protein, and they’re cheap, accessible, and quick to
consume. They’re perfectly healthy and a great addition to any healthy diet. The
only downside is that they don’t have as many of the vitamins and minerals that
most dairy and meats contain, making a balanced diet that also includes meat
and other dairy important.
Whey protein is extremely easy to digest, which is both an advantage and
disadvantage, depending on when you consume it. During the middle of the day
it isn’t the greatest source of protein, as your body processes it too quickly. It’s
ideal for before, during, and after training though, because your muscle benefits
from having quickly digested protein at its disposal. To offset its quick digestion
during the day it’s best consumed alongside slowly digested foods. The best way
to do this is to mix it with whole milk instead of water, which adds a ton of
calories to the mix and results in a slow and even digestion of your proteins.
Casein protein digests extremely slowly, making it ideal for before bed,
when your body will benefit from having a slowly digesting source of protein
that it will gradually use up over the course of the night. I recommend mixing
your casein with milk too, to boost the calorie content, but it’s perfectly
effective when mixed with water as well.
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Side effects: Some people don’t feel great after having whey. If you’re lactose
intolerant you should be okay—whey doesn’t have lactose in it. If, on the
other hand, you’re allergic to milk, you may need to opt for a different kind of
protein, like rice protein.
How to take it: it’s a pretty easy supplement to master, as all you need to do
is mix it with either milk or water. If you consume a ton of protein powders
though you may want to buy a couple different brands and types, so that you
aren’t consuming too many calories from a perfectly identical source. This could
result in your body building up an intolerance and making you feel bloated.
Cycling your protein powders is the best way to avoid that.
We recommend:
ON’s Whey Protein Isolate: An interesting (100% indie) study was
recently done into many of the popular brands of whey protein. The study got
a lot of attention because of how controversial it was – a lot of popular brands
were making false claims. This brand (Optimum Nutrition) wasn’t, and was
thus ranked the highest. (link)
ON’s Casein Protein: Their casein protein is just as good. I wouldn’t
necessarily recommend getting any unless you really plan to be consuming a lot
of protein powders though. A big tub of whey should be enough. (link)
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Fish Oil (salmon, anchovy, menhaden or sardine)
Fish oil is an incredible source of omega-3 fatty acids. If there’s a magic nutritional pill out there this is it. Seafood is the only source of DHA (docosahexanoic acid) and EPA (eicosapentanoic acid), which improve insulin sensitivity
in muscle cells while decreasing it in fat cells, directing more nutrients towards
muscle-building and less towards fat storage. It’s been shown to improve carbohydrate storage, improve protein storage, increase your metabolic rate, and
increase lean mass. And it’s an extremely healthy superfood!
Eric Norween, a nutrition coach from Precision Nutrition, conducted a
three week study where he prescribed his clients fish oil pills. That’s it. No other
changes to their lifestyle whatsoever. Three weeks later they were down two
pounds of fat and up two pounds of muscle.
This supplement is so powerful that many nutrition experts start their
clients off on a new diet by simply telling them to add in fish oil capsules to
what they’re already eating. They’re fairly cheap, take extremely little time and
effort to add into your diet, and they can produce some pretty profound physiological changes.
Even better than fish oil capsules is just straight up fish oil. The reason
for that is pretty simple: the purity is higher. It may sound gross, but fresh fish
oil doesn’t have a fishy taste, and some companies, like NutraSea, toss in some
lemon peel to offset any and all hints of fishiness.
The type of fish matters too. Go for salmon, anchovy, menhaden, sardine,
or a combination. Cod liver oil is sadly not a suitable substitute.
Side effects: better defense against cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes.
How to take it: take however much it takes to get to 2g EPA, 1.5g DHA daily.
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We recommend:
NutraSea: NutraSea has a rep for having the highest purity when it comes
to fish oil. There are a couple other brands, like Carlson’s, that do a great job
as well, but NutraSea is the top dog. If you do get NutraSea just take one tablespoon per day. I do it with breakfast. (link)
Krill Oil
Krill oil has all of the benefits of fish oil and more. Krill are cold water creatures
that look like tiny little shrimp. They’re actually kind of pretty, in a bug-like
way. Cold water creatures produce a different kind of fat. You’ll notice that
Pacific and Atlantic salmon have different fat contents—the cold water atlantic
salmon being superior. For the same reason this makes krill the superfood of
fish oils. Whales eat a lot of krill and look at how beastly they get.
Krill oil also all comes from the same reputable source, Neptune Technologies, meaning that they all have the same dosage. (There are many different
brands, but they all contain the same oil.)
Krill, like fish oil, has the muscle-building and fat-loss effects created by its
DHA and EPA content. With fish oil the DHA and EPA are hooked together in
a triglyceride form, while with krill they’re hooked together in a phospholipid
form, like the fat cells in us humans. This sounds a little like science babble, but
the implications are all really good. Krill will do wonders for your bodybuilding, it’s a powerful antioxidant (48 times more powerful than fish oil), it can
reduce UV-induced skin damage, it can be used to treat ADHD, it can help with
cholesterol problems, lower blood sugar, reduce aches and pains, and help with
rheumatoid arthritis.
... It isn’t, however, cheap. If you don’t want to fork over the money for
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krill though, no worries. Grab some salmon oil instead. It has many of the same
benefits and will still give you a great phsyique.
Side effects: reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes.
How to take it: Take it right before bed. You can also take a second dose in the
morning. Follow the directions on the bottle in regards to how much to take.
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Creatine
Supplementing with creatine draws water into your muscle cells, causing them
to swell. This can cause you to gain 2-10 pounds just from the water uptake
in your muscles. Some people think that this means that the weight you put on
from creatine is water weight, but it’s actually quite functional, unlike the water
retention that would come along with eating a lot of sodium. Creatine helps
your body replenish ATP (cell energy), resulting in an ability to squeeze out a
couple more reps in the gym, it increases anaerobic power and it boosts
muscle strength.
When you stop supplementing with creatine that 2-10 pounds will disappear, but you’ll keep all of the strength and lean muscle mass gains that you
achieved due to being able to do more reps with heavier weights, which will
likely be significant if you’ve been training and eating hard. Not only that,
having high creatine concentrations can also increase skeletal muscle protein
synthesis and muscle glycogen storage, meaning that you’ll get more out of the
food you’re eating while on it.
Creatine monohydrate has been around for a while and research has
proven time and time again that it really is quite safe. The only documented side
effect of creatine is mild gastric distress—a stomach ache. If you do get stomach
aches, well, they’ll go away. It doesn’t cause longterm damage or anything scary.
It’s just a little hard for your body to absorb when you aren’t used to it sometimes. You’ll need to make sure you keep your water intake high too, or you
might also get thirsty.
I remember when I first heard of creatine I was intimidated by it. I think
my trepidation was mainly caused by its reputation for working so incredibly
well. I was thinking how could something so cheap and powerful not be bad for
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you? And even if it isn’t bad for you, isn’t it cheating? I remember telling one of
my best friends about it when I first started reading about it. He was horrified
at first, and then spent the next hour trying to dissuade me from using it.
When I finally did try creatine I was pretty damn excited … and it did
absolutely nothing for me. It turns out that creatine doesn’t work on 10-20%
of people. I’m a non-responder. Ah well. Jared, on the other hand, blew up like
a balloon and had great results. He stopped soon after, but only because he was
getting the results he wanted with or without the creatine and decided to save
himself the hassle.
Side effects: possible mild and temporary gastric discomfort
How to take it: You want to be giving your body 5-6 grams of creatine per day
or more. You only need 3.5g, but when taken in powdered form a couple grams
aren’t processed by your body. Many advocate really complicated ways of
taking creatine, but all the studies are showing that it doesn’t really matter how
you take it, so long as you take it. You can mix it into some green tea, sprinkle
it on your cereal, mix it into some water, add it to your workout drink, etc.
We recommend:
AllMax Creatine: With creatine you ideally want micronized CreaPure
creatine monohydrate, which this is, from a trusted brand. AllMax is a brand
with a great reputation and we’ve always personally had great success with it.
(link)
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BCAAs (branched chain amino acids)
BCAAs are essential amino acids which we typically get from digesting protein.
They’re often overhyped or taken incorrectly and usually a whole-food protein
source is far superior. In certain circumstances though, like during a workout,
BCAAs can be incredibly effective.
BCAAs increase skeletal muscle protein synthesis while your body is recovering from a workout. If you mix them in with your workout drinks they
can further boost your insulin response, resulting in improved nutrient delivery
and perhaps even increased muscle glycogen storage. This is all a fancy way of
saying that taking BCAAs while you work out gives your body the nutrients it
needs to grow bigger—faster. This means less muscle is cannibalized and more
muscle is built. Pretty awesome stuff.
Another key advantage of BCAAs are that you get some of the benefits of
eating protein without any of the calories—which is of absolutely no interest to
us skinny guys. If you’re trying to lose weight BCAAs have some cool tricks up
their sleeves though.
Side effects: your body can only absorb so many amino acids, so if you take
a ridiculous amount of these you may impinge on your body’s ability to absorb
the other amino acids that it needs. You’d need to take a pretty serious amount
though, so don’t worry about it.
How to take ‘em: Toss 15 grams into your workout drink and 5 grams into
your post-workout drink. They make BCAAs in both pill and powdered form.
The powdered forms come in pretty wicked flavours, and the pills are pretty
convenient—your call. When we were taking BCAAs we bought a big tub of unflavoured pure BCAAs in powdered form. Simple, effective and cheap. We tried
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the flavoured powders too though and enjoyed them thoroughly. They also gave
me acne, but most people have more resilient complexions.
Glutamine
This guy’s used on burn victims to help them recover quickly, so it must be
serious, right? On a high protein diet our bodies have plenty of glutamine
already, but when we put our body through a rough workout we can sometimes
benefit from having a little bit extra. It can help boost your immune system,
improve tissue repair and, according to the legendary strength coach Charles
Poliquin, help with intestinal repair.
Intestinal repair? Why would one of the most famous and respected
strength coaches in the world be concerned about intestinal repair? Because
some of us scrawny guys have “leaky gut syndrome” which prevents us from
absorbing nutrients properly, and thus resulting in scrawny bodies. Glutamine
can cure this, so if you think you might not be absorbing nutrients properly
load up on glutamine during the first few days of the program. How would you
know? If you’re eating 5000 calories day after day and not seeing your weight
go up this may be why.
The typical reason that most weightlifters use glutamine is to speed muscle
repair and to help prevent soreness for the next couple of days. We used it for
this purpose for a while and Jared noticed less soreness. I didn’t notice a difference, but I don’t really respond strongly to any supplements.
Interestingly enough when glutamine is mixed with protein and carb
drinks it can trigger an even larger insulin response, which can lead to improved
glycogen storage and muscle protein recovery. This makes it a good addition to
your workout drinks.
If that wasn’t reason enough to supplement with glutamine, it has also
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been shown to neutralize acidosis. Protein shakes are highly acidic, and yet
aren’t typically paired with fruits or vegetables, which would undo the damage
and restore your acid-base balance. By adding glutamine to your protein drinks
you can neutralize the acidic effect of your drink, which will improve bone
density and prevent muscle wasting. You could also do this by adding baking
soda, which is extremely basic (alkaline). It has the added advantage of being
cheaper and more accessible, but doesn’t have the other benefits associated
with glutamine.
Side effects: Studies haven’t found any significant side effects
How to use it: For intestinal repair Tim Ferriss recommends taking 8 doses of
10 grams per day (80g total) for the first five days. He recommends taking the
10 grams every two hours until you hit your target of 80.
To prevent soreness, speed up muscle repair, and increase glycogen storage
add 10 grams of glutamine to your workout drink and 5 grams to your postworkout drink.
EXPERIMENTAL SUPPLEMENTS
Cissus Quadrangularis (CQ)
This is actually a joint repair supplement and was extremely hard to find back
when we were looking for it. We couldn’t find it anywhere in Canada and
wound up buying it from a Vitamine Shoppe in Manhattan. The salespeople
there were really confused as to why we wanted it, too.
Tim Ferriss recommends CQ for minimizing fat gain while overeating and
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for its anabolic effects while trying to put on muscle—perfect for what we’re
doing. I certainly didn’t get fat while taking it and overeating, but guys like us
don’t typically have that problem, and if you follow our eating plan you probably won’t either. The benefit with CQ isn’t so much that it will prevent you from
getting fat though, the benefit is that the nutrients that would have gone into fat
storage would instead be directed towards building muscle, resulting not only in
fat minimization but also in larger muscles.
The only reason we didn’t put this in the recommended list is because research is so young and we can’t really say for sure whether it works or not and
what the possible side effects are.
Side effects: As far as we know there aren’t any—but it hasn’t really been
studied as a bulking supplement. We can’t really say for sure though, so use it at
your own risk (as you do with everything).
How to take it: Tim Ferriss recommends taking up to 2.4 grams three times per
day before meals. He also recommends not taking it for longer than 12 weeks
just to be sure to dodge any negative effects.
Alpha-lipoic Acid (ALA)
This supplement’s more popular, and is often used for fat-loss. Like with CQ,
we’re less concerned about its fat-loss effects and more intrigued by its musclebuilding potential. By re-directing the nutrients that would otherwise be stored
as fat into muscle-building we can theoretically get bigger muscles in a shorter
timeframe, making this supplement promising.
ALA recruits GLUT-4 glucose transporters to the muscular cell membrane
and allows you to store the carbohydrates you eat in your muscles and liver
instead of in your belly. One of our skinny-fat beta testers used this supplement
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and managed to both pack on huge amounts of muscle and shrink his belly. We
can’t say for sure though that this was a result of this supplement, as our entire
diet is designed to do exactly that.
Side effects: it’s a powerful antioxidant, a free radical scavenger, it regenerates
vitamin C and vitamin E, and it increases the excretion of toxic heavy metals
like mercury (a very good thing).
As far as adverse side effects go it’s been tested up to 60mg per / kg bodyweight with no problems coming up. That means that I could have 4500mg
per day at no risk to my health! Even if I had it before every meal, took the
maximum dosage we’re recommending and ate 8 times per day I’d only be at
2400mg—a very safe level.
How to take it: take 100-300 mg before each meal.
Phosphatidylserine (PS)
This guy may prevent muscle soreness and improve well-being in athletes involved in intensive weight training. It combats exercise-induced increases in
cortisol levels and helps balance your hormones. It can also help if you have
other stressors in your life.
The problem with increases in cortisol levels is that it creates a catabolic
state (in which your body breaks down muscle mass), it slows down recovery,
and it can cause fat storage in your midsection. You likely won’t need to worry
too much about it, but if you feel like playing it safe you might want to give this
guy a try.
We’ve never tried it, and this training program isn’t that intense, so you
should be okay without it. We also don’t really know quite how effective it is,
although the clinical studies sound promising. Sports nutritionist John Berardi
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also speaks positively of it, which is encouraging.
ZMA (zinc + magnesium)
This supplement has very limited scientific research backing its effectiveness,
but many trainees find that they have trouble having a good night’s sleep and
this solves the problem. Zinc and magnesium are both involved in anabolic
hormone creation as well, so it’s a double whammy.
How to take it: take 3 capsules before bed.
Superpump (and equivalents)
This stuff doesn’t really contribute much to muscle gain at all, but you still
might want to try it. It’s pretty damn tasty and makes hitting the gym quite
enjoyable. It’s sort of like an ultra-coffee, and the arginine in it makes you look
pretty impressive after you finish your first couple sets. You puff up like a blowfish in a nice vascular way. Will it make you big once you un-puff? Probably
not. Will it make the gym more fun? Maybe. It has a bunch of questionable
ingredients and artificial sweeteners, but I still enjoy it as an occasional preworkout treat.
MONEY-WASTING SUPPLEMENTS
Nitric Oxide (NO)
This is the supplement I got conned into buying back when I first first started
out. Nitric oxide (not to be confused with nitrous oxide, Jared, which you put
in your car) is a free radical gas produced from the breakdown of the amino
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acid arginine (which you can buy separately). NO relaxes free muscle, prevents
blood platelets from clumping up, and increases blood flow. This increased
bloodflow, manufacturers say, is anabolic (muscle building). There isn’t any
evidence of that, though. There also isn’t any evidence that nitric oxide products
create any of these effects, likely because they don’t even contain nitric oxide,
but rather its amino acid precursors. Do those precursors result in increased
nitric oxide concentrations in your body? Who knows. The marketing of this
product, however, is pretty genius. Trainees everywhere want a “pump” (the
result of an increased amount of blood in the muscle). You’ll get a pump with
or without this product, depending on the type of training you do, but many
people report a better pump while using nitric oxide products. Does a pump
result in more lean muscle mass? Probably not.
Chasteberry (vitex)
This has been rumoured to increase testosterone levels in men. Unlike steroids,
which is an outside source of testosterone, this supplement would cause your
body to produce more testosterone itself. That’s a very important distinction,
as it keeps your gonads in the loop. Does it work? Perhaps a tiny bit, but it has
never been conclusively shown to improve muscle mass. If, however, you have
problems producing testosterone naturally this may help fix the problem. If
you’re getting old this may be an issue, but unless your doctor is telling you that
you have a problem I wouldn’t worry about it. We haven’t tried it and, since it
doesn’t look promising, don’t plan on to.
Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA)
I see this supplement all the time on shelves. It’s a series of uncommon fatty
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acids that are naturally found in dairy and beef. In animal studies this has been
shown to be a pretty powerful. It has an anticatabolic effect (less muscle breakdown) and allows more of the nutrients you consume to be shifted towards
muscle building rather than fat storage. There isn’t any convincing human
data, though, and chances are it doesn’t really do much for us. We’re going to
monitor this one. At this point we don’t recommend it but that may change.
Tribulus (goatsweed)
Tribulus, like chasteberry, is supposed to naturally increase your testosterone
production. We recently had a really buff ultra-fit guy tell us about how fantastic this stuff was. Guys coming off of steroids during a cycle have been known
to take this stuff to kickstart their natural testosterone production again and
maintain their gains. It’s marketed as a supplement that increases the male sex
drive (because of increased testosterone production). We thought it sounded
pretty powerful and interesting. We did some research and it seems pretty safe,
even at high doses. The research indicated that besides being safe, it didn’t really
have anything else going for it … but we decided to give it a try anyway. We
didn’t notice anything. No downsides. No plus sides. It isn’t expensive or dangerous or anything, but we don’t recommend it and won’t be taking it again.
Myostatin Inhibitors
This is an extract from algae. In some lab experiments it was found to bind to
and neutralize a protein that inhibits muscle growth (myostatin). Pretty cool.
But this was done in a lab, and there’s no conclusive research that shows it
would work in a human body. Myostatin is also found in the heart … meaning
that if it doesn’t work as planned it could result in some scary problems.
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Prohormones
These are kind of like crappy steroids. They’re kind of legal depending on where
you live, because they contain the precursor to testosterone production rather
than testosterone itself. This makes it far less effective, but it still has many of
the same downsides of its illegal brother, steroids. Taking them can lead to increased testosterone production (the good part) and increased estrogen production (hello man-boobs and love handles). Once you ditch the prohormones your
body will go back to normal and you won’t be left with much. Since they aren’t
all too effective to begin with though, you probably won’t have gotten much to
begin with.
Any and every other testosterone booster
They don’t work. At least not in any kind of statistically significant way. If you
really want to increase your testosterone the best way to do it is by sleeping
well, lifting heavy and eating beastly. If you’re really looking to take it to the
next level just follow these instructions.
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CHAPTER 8
THE FOUR PHASES
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PHASE 1: FOUNDATIONS & MASS
forward
head
postural
alignment
rounded
shoulders
beastly
back
full body
muscle growth
weak
abdominal
muscles
strong
core
flat/sway
back
beefy
buns
(Note: if you’re already a seasoned lifter, I recommend doing our advanced
training program.)
The first thing you need to know about Phase One is that you’re going to experience some pretty rapid muscle gains. As soon as you start training and
eating right you’re going to start collecting your “newbie gains”. When I
started testing out this program I shot up 15 pounds in Phase One alone—and
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I thought I’d already used all my newbie gains up! If you train and eat like a
beast expect to be cranking out 2-4 pounds on the scale every week.
As far as the gym goes technique is priority number one. Getting a solid
grasp of technique in this first phase is crucial, as it will set the tone for the kind
of results you will get in the following phases. The more practice you get in the
better, whether that’s a couple bodyweight squats in front of the mirror before
school / work, or practicing proper deadlift technique whenever you go to pick
something up off the ground.
Phase One starts with relatively lighter weights and relatively higher reps.
While it’s true that lower rep ranges with heavier weight are the best for stimulating the release of anabolic hormones, starting with heavy weights without
developing a proper foundation will not give you the best results—not by a long
stretch. Slim guys can make strength and hypertrophy gains with just 40% of
their 1RM, which means starting off a bit lighter will still give you impressive
gains, while also allowing you to build up your technique and focus on making
every repetition perfect.
Why aren’t we started off with giant heavy exercises? Consider this
analogy: if you need to cut a piece of small paper you would use scissors, right?
You wouldn’t need to use a chainsaw yet because scissors will be the safest and
most efficient tool for the job. The scissors will accomplish the job faster too,
and produce BETTER results. However, when we’re about to cut down a giant
red oak tree to harvest it for school supplies, that’s when you’ll need to bring
out the big guns, as scissors just won’t do the trick anymore. That is how this
program is designed.
If you’re sitting there thinking “psh I’m ready for the chainsaw” don’t
worry. Going into Phase One I could bench 225 and squat 315 for 6 reps—not
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the most impressive numbers in the world, but not too shabby either! Phase
One still ballooned me up in size and ratcheted up my strength. This definitely
isn’t sissy stuff. As for your anabolic hormone production we haven’t neglected
that either. Three full-body workouts composed of compound multi-joint movements are the absolute ideal for natural anabolic hormone production, not to
mention the hormonal powerhouse of a diet you’ll be eating.
The second goal of this phase, and program in general, is to improve your
postural alignment. Why is this important? For one, if you take two guys with
the same muscular development, the guy who has the best posture will always
have a more attractive body. More importantly though your body will function
much better, and you can rid yourself of chronic injuries and essentially bulletproof your body. If you value feeling good this is essential. I know muscle size
is important, but training is ten times more fun when you’re not in pain. The
confidence you get from a well functioning body is awesome! To achieve this
goal the program focuses on the key areas of weakness—Upper back, core and
glutes. Not only will this help improve your posture, it will make you a beast.
The third goal is to work your posterior chain and core (back, butt and
abs). Not many people have well developed backs and glutes. Try to imagine
how you would look and function if your core was made of jello. Every time
you went to do a squat, your upper body would fall over, you would get no
power from your legs and would have trouble even standing. Now imagine if
your core was made of a series of interwoven steel cables – pliable but rock
solid. Imagine how much more weight you could lift, how much faster you
could run, and how much more total power you could produce. To truly be
a beast, you need a strong and capable core, something that is not made by
endless crunches.
An impressive back speaks for itself. Women, time and time again, have
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found powerful backs the most attractive muscle-related feature in a man. This
is because your back is a true indicator of raw strength. Ironically, men typically
spend their time working their chest and biceps, which pulls their shoulders
forward and ruins the shape and power of their back and shoulders. This is a
true indicator of gym-rat machine-strength. Sadly, spending time at the computer will hunch you in too. The result? Most men have terribly unattractive and
dysfunctional backs. But you won’t.
The next goal is connective tissue Strength. Before we get into the heavier
loading it’s important to not only strengthen and develop the muscle tissues, but
also the connective tissues, such as tendons and ligaments. Since the reps are
higher and there is more time under tension, this helps to better stimulate and
strengthen the connective tissues. This will help to keep your body solid as you
progressively shift to heavier and heavier weights. This is an area most trainees
neglect, and mastering it will help you shoot way past your fellow gym-goers as
you continue to train.
As far as eating goes there’s just one primary goal in Phase One: pack on
the pounds. In order to do that we want you focusing on accomplishing just
three things: getting in enough calories, getting in enough quality protein, and
doing both of those things consistently.
Ready to get started? Open up “the Program” pdf and print out Phase One.
You’ll find all of the exercises explained in detail in the training section of the
forum. Speaking of the forum, remember to post an introduction before you get
started. We can’t wait to hear from you!
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PHASE 2: PERFORMANCE, SYMMETRY & MASS
Phase 2
huge strength
Gains
full body
muscle growth
improved
alignment
After having completed Phase One, you should expect to be anywhere from
5-15lbs heavier depending on your starting weight and bodyfat percentage. If
you started out with a higher bodyfat percentage you’ll likely gain less weight
on the scale, however the way your body looks will have changed dramatically
despite the smaller weight difference, since your body’s composition will likely
have changed quite a bit. If you started off skinny-ripped and ate your heart
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out, you’ll likely have been able to put on a remarkable amount of weight.
Gaining even more than 15 pounds is certainly a possibility depending on how
consistent you’ve been with your training and dieting.
Going into Phase Two you should feel very confident squatting and deadlifting with proper form, meaning it’s time to up the difficulty. The time under
tension is a bit shorter, however you’ll now be using heavier weights, which will
help stimulate even greater anabolic hormone production.
You’ll also notice that each exercise has progressed into something slightly
more challenging. If you really focused on your technique in Phase One, there
shouldn’t be much of a struggle to progress, as most of them are heavily based
on the exercises you’ve gotten familiar with in Phase One. This will allow you
to crank that weight up without having to worry too much about learning the
technique to a whole new set of exercises.
This month you should already have a solid grasp on the quantity of food
you need to eat to build muscle, so there’s more emphasis on cleaning the diet
up and mastering macronutrient breakdowns. Instead of focusing solely on
protein intake we’ll start focusing on eating a balanced diet that will really pack
on the lean muscle, resist fat gains and improve your health. You’ll still need to
get those calories in to grow, but by now it should be becoming easier and more
habitual. It may hurt to hear this, but now that you’re muscling up you’ll likely
actually need to increase that daily intake to feed that powerful, beautiful and
demanding new muscle you’ve built.
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PHASE 3: BURLY SIZE
huge size
increases
huge
strength
increases
physique really
begins to
take on a
powerful
shape
When you get to Phase Three you could be anywhere from 10 to 25 lbs heavier—a dramatic change already. For the truly skinny beginners, expect to be on
the higher end if you’ve been consistently eating like a boss.
In this phase, the exercises will progress to more challenging variations.
The reps and time under tension decrease once more to allow for more weight
to be used.
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As you start lifting heavier and heavier weights, you must be even more
conscious of your technique. This is usually the phase when people start to
forgo technique in place of weight. Getting stronger can be addictive, so I urge
you to follow the weight selection rules as you continue to progress. Don’t let
yourself be tempted over to the dark side!
By now you should instinctively know how to choose foods that are conducive to muscle gain, so this month we’re going to focus on finessing your nutrient timing. We’ll be making sure you’re eating properly for your body’s physiological state at different points during the day, and making the most of all your
anabolic muscle building windows so that you can really maximize your gains.
At this point in your training, with some solid training under your belt (and
your gains, hopefully, not under your belt), you might be noticing that certain
muscles are crying for more attention while others are exploding in size. This is
to be expected, as all bodies respond a little differently. You might be tempted
to go haphazardly fiddling with the program. Don’t go haphazardly fiddling
with the program.
Sometimes the best way to increase a muscle’s size is to train it less, sometimes the answer is to train it more, sometimes you need to train it heavier, and
sometimes you need to train it lighter. Give us a shout on the forum and we’ll
help you tailor your training to your goals. We’re on your side. We want you to
come out of this with the best physique possible too.
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PHASE 4: BURLY STRENGTH
beast
strength
cannonball
shoulders
brightly
polished
guns
muscles
become
denser
rock
solid
six-pack
Congratulate yourself on your hard work and dedication! Time to polish your
guns and chisel that body! By now your technique and musculature should
be rock solid, and you should feel very confident lifting weights in all major
movements. I think one of the most exciting things about this phase is that you
finally get to bench press! I know we’ve been holding out on you for a while.
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However, now your core and shoulder stability are much better; your arm, chest
and shoulder muscles should be strong and symmetrical; and you’ve built up
strength in all your stabilizer muscles. You’ll be able to get much more out of
the exercise. Prepare to start setting new personal strength records.
The other cool thing about this phase is that now we’ll focus more on
lifting heavier in the big lifts for more sets and do less work in the accessory
lifts. You should notice a big strength and size increase from this phase, and I
wouldn’t be surprised if you were hitting your weight goals by now.
With great muscle comes great responsibility. This phase we’re really
hammering home the finer details of nutrition that will take you into the upper
echelons of health, strength and performance. By now your dietary habits have
probably already made a 180-degree switch! This is important because the
heavier loading and increased volume from the workouts will take a toll
on your body.
During this phase we’ll be focused on maximizing anabolic hormone production (testosterone, IGF-1, hGH), minimizing catabolic hormone production
(primarily cortisol) and eating for maximum health, strength and performance.
During this phase it’s also time to take a look at where your strengths and
weaknesses are and address them, both in the kitchen and in the gym. Are you
experiencing any bloating, indigestion or having trouble sleeping? Do you need
to trim down on any fat? Is a particular muscle group lagging behind the rest
and in need of special attention? The forum will be an invaluable resource for
really tailoring this final phase to your particular needs.
If at that point you want to take it from Beastly to Beastlier, well, we’ll be one
step ahead of you ;)
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TIME TO GET
BEASTLY.
We’ll see you on the forum.
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