A 10-Week Mass Building Regimen for Lifters Struggling to Pack on Size I don’t like the term “hardgainer.” I don’t mean to imply that some lifters don’t find it harder to pack on muscle size than others. Some certainly do. It’s just that when a lifter is labelled a “hardgainer” he (or she) often resorts to the kind of training that may not necessarily be what they really need. I won’t go into all of the details here for why I find that to be the case. If you want more information on that , then read my essay from last year “ The Myth of the Hardgainer .” The gist of my theory, however, is that many lifters struggle to pack on muscle size because they do standard high-volume workouts, only to find that sort of training doesn’t work for them. After that, they proceed to low-frequency, “high-intensity” workouts, but those don’t work, either. It’s at that point that the lifter, or his lif...
Build Massive Muscles and Monstrous Strength with Heavy, Old-School Dumbbell Training I don’t know when it happened, or how it happened, but when it comes to strength and power training, we think of barbells and little else. I’m guilty of this myself. I’ve written before about using the “ two barbell workout .” It’s a sound theory, don’t get me wrong. Basically, if you start your workout session, any workout session, with 2 big, compound barbell lifts—say, front squats and power cleans—you can then do whatever else you want for the rest of the workout and you will get great results. Or, heck, you can just do 2 compound barbell lifts and nothing else at each workout. But there was a time not that long ago, when the largest, most massive, muscular, and strongest lifters on the planet—the so-called “Bronze era” of the late 19th century, early 20th century—when strongmen did most of their training with dumbbells and not b...