Becoming a Mass Monster

 In February of this year, I published a post entitled "Winter Bulk Building" where I outlined the program that my son Matthew started on Thanksgiving of last year in order to gain a lot of mass.  In a few months, he went from around 210 pounds to just over 250 pounds - I believe it was 251, to be precise.  That was the point when I wrote the bulk-building piece.

Fast forward to Thanksgiving of this year, and I thought I would give an update on my son's training, and how he went from being "bulky" to being an outright natural mass monster.  Now he is a little over 260 pounds, but he didn't just gain 10 pounds of muscle since my last post on his training, he also reduced his bodyfat, and there is a noticeable difference in his "look" now as opposed to then.  Here are a couple of pics that I took of him yesterday while he was training arms in my garage gym:

Matthew Sloan performs dumbbell triceps extensions with a pair of 80s for sets of 12 to 15 reps

Matthew Sloan doing alternate dumbbell curls

First off, here are the tips from my Winter Bulk Building article that explains what Matthew did to initially gain all of his bulk.  After that, I'll explain the changes he made since that time.

1. Eat big to get big.

2. Consume plenty of milk, eggs, cheese, beef, chicken, pasta, and breads to pack on the muscle.

3. Don't be scared of carbohydrates.  No one ever got massive eating keto.

4. If you are really serious about bulking, then consume 20 times your bodyweight in calories daily.  This is exactly what Matthew did.

5. Train frequently.

6. Train heavy with enough volume, but not too much so that you can train the bodypart again in another 3 days.

7. During the course of the week, make sure you are squatting heavy, pulling heavy, and pressing stuff overhead heavy.

8. Don't JUST bench press for your push day.  Matthew made sure that he did plenty of overhead work, too.

Matthew still does all of the above, but here are some additional things he's done since then to become a true mass monster.

• Matthew continues to consume about 20 times his bodyweight in calories on a daily basis, but they are now fairly "clean".  NO junk food.
• In order to get enough protein, about half of his "meals" come in the form of shakes.  He starts each morning with a protein shake consisting of raw eggs, whole milk, peanut butter, and protein powder.  It is usually between 60 to 75 grams of protein per shake.
• He does most of his training at a local commercial gym.  Now that he is considerably massive, this allows him to do more "isolation" work than before he gained all of his mass.  Word of note: you should never do isolation work the way my son does unless you also have the mass that he carries (or something close).
• He varies his training style more than before.  On his multi-exercise, isolation workouts, he might do 4 to 5 exercises per bodypart for several sets of high reps.  On other days, he trains in a "power" style where he will stick with one exercise and work up to a heavy set of 5, or a heavy triple or double.
• He trains arms on a separate day from his other bodyparts.  Even though his arms are large at over 17", they can "look" small because of how massive his chest, back, and shoulders are.

I will add one other thing.  He is consistent.  He never misses a workout, and he hardly ever takes more than 2 days off, if ever.  Consistency, with both diet and training, more than anything else, is the key to achieving the results you want.

And just remember: eat big, train big, get big!