Maximum Muscle – The new rules for gaining lean, rock hard muscle

Developing a sculpted, muscular body has always been the Holy Grail for anyone that wants to both feel good and look great on the beach. This goal goes way back to the legendary Charles Atlas, once dubbed the Worlds Most Perfect Man in the 1920’s, when he sold his mail order weight training programs through magazines. We have been fascinated with building a perfect body that would help you stop getting sand kicked in your face at the beach and help you attract the stunning girl ever since. Over the past hundred years there have been many varying methods (some not so legal) used to help guys gain slabs of muscle. What I will present here are tried and tested rules that actually work for the hundreds of clients I train week in week out.

Rule 1 – Cover the compounds – Every single day I get a male client coming to me wanting to gain muscle and without exception they are not working hard enough on the basic compound lifts. You are staying skinny because you avoid the hard work of deadlifts, squats, pull ups, an overhead standing press yet you possibly work your socks off on bench press and biceps curls. I have never and I mean never, come across any guy that had an impressive physique and they didn’t train all the compound lifts hard. These same people want to look buff yet can’t do a single pull up and worry that squats and deadlifts will hurt their back. Let me tell you that nothing is going to help you put on pounds of muscle faster than a program that focuses on those basic lifts. Of course get good instruction on them first and once you have spent a week or two working on your form you must increase the weights. Time and again when I get guys under the bar they can suddenly lift as much as 50% more only because I tell them to keep going for another rep. Next time you are in the gym look at the guys that are in great shape and I guarantee they are pushing themselves harder than you and are always looking to get stronger.

All that running is not going to help you look buff and muscular

Increasing muscle mass is all about being able to keep returning to the basic exercises with progressive poundage’s i.e. no one ever got big lifting the same weights week in week out. I must also mention what some people call ‘the pump’ where trainees’ focus on doing multiple reps, sets and exercises for the same or opposing muscle groups. Only yesterday in my gym I observed a guy that was at most 10 stone (63kg) soaking wet giving advice to his mates on how to do a multiple sets for pumping up their biceps. My thought was who gives a fig about pumping up when your arms are no bigger than my sisters! Focus on the movements that involve the MOST amount of muscle not the least. I have never seen a guy do pull ups with an added 20-30kg hanging off him who didn’t have impressive arms yet I see tons of guys working their butt of doing excessive sets of endless biceps curls. That’s just embarrassing to be honest.

 Here is a video on the big compound lifts -

Make sure that the program you follow is balanced and be sure to start with a full body program done 3 days a week with no more than 4-6 exercises per session and after a few months when you have added a good amount of weight you can then focus on specialising. Too many guys become program hoppers. They jump from program to program in the desperate hope that this ‘new’ program (nothing new has happened for weight gain for over a 100 years by the way) will help them put on the pounds they want. My advice is finish the dam program and any good program will take at least three months to run and show gains. A basic goal I have for all my male clients are the following – a double body weight deadlift, a 1.5 times body weight squat, pull ups/chin ups with an added 20kg weight, a body weight overhead standing press. Focus on getting really strong and improved performance in the gym and the weight gain will come. Focus on pumping and you are never going to have a truly impressive physique.

Are the girls out lifting you?

2. Eat big – once you have your training down and you are pushing hard the next most common mistake I see is guys just not eating enough. Now they all tell me they are eating like a horse but when you break it down they are eating like a girl. Come on guys if you want to get big then you must eat big. I always put it this way – eat for the weight you want to be NOT the weight you are. This goes for fat loss as well as muscle gain. I weigh 90kg and have a sub 6% body fat year so pound for pound I have more muscle that needs feeding than 99% of the average person. When I eat with guys that complain about not being able to put on muscle they all eat like birds. I on the other hand would consider a snack what they think of as a full meal, plus I do this all day and not just for a single meal. You have to eat big at every meal not just once or twice in the day. I like to see my clients do at least six meals in a day broken down to three main meals and 3 snacks or mini-meals. These meals are best focused around plenty of protein; meat, eggs, milk and fish, lots of good fats; fish, olive oil, butter, nuts, seeds, coconut oil etc and then plenty of good carbs; fruit, veg, sweet potato, butternut squash, oats etc.

Yumm - chicken and sweet potato curry with veg

If you have just put in a hard session then you must put the building blocks into your body to help you put on those pounds of muscle you worked so hard to gain. I see the two main meals of the day as breakfast and the post-workout meal. Both meals should be the biggest of the day, as you need the most number of calories at that time. In October 2008 the always-excellent Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition did a review of all the data on nutrient timing - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18834505

They basically listed eight points on what all the available research has shown to work when you are looking at when and what foods to take around workouts to both promote recovery and build muscle. Points four and five went as follows –

Point 4.) Post-exercise (within 30 minutes) consumption of CHO at high dosages (8 – 10 g CHO/kg/day) have been shown to stimulate muscle glycogen re-synthesis, while adding PRO (0.2 g – 0.5 g

PRO/kg/day) to CHO at a ratio of 3 – 4:1 (CHO: PRO) may further enhance glycogen re-synthesis.

Point 5.) Post-exercise ingestion (immediately to 3 h post) of amino acids, primarily essential amino acids, has been shown to stimulate robust increases in muscle protein synthesis, while the addition of CHO may stimulate even greater levels of protein synthesis. Additionally, pre-exercise consumption of a CHO + PRO supplement may result in peak levels of protein synthesis.

Overall if you are not keeping your pre, peri and post workout nutrition on track you could be missing out on massive gains in muscle mass. There can at times be too much attention paid to increasing your protein intake but what you really need to focus on is increased protein intake up to roughly 1g protein per 1lbs of body weight and taking in more calories in general from the fats and carbs also. If you are not getting bigger yet are working hard on the basic exercises in the gym then look no further than your diet.

3. Eat like a pro – many people quiz me on my diet and training, as they too want that men’s health cover model look. They often say things like ‘God your diet must be really good?’ In my head I’m thinking what do you think buddy! Do you honestly think I look as good as I do by accident? My reply is always – well if you want to look like a professional then you better start eating like a pro. Top athletes, trainers and models look they way they do because they do not leave their nutrition to chance. Every meal is prepared and though out in advance.

Does Dominic look like a pro

Right now I am having a Myprotein whey impact blend shake http://www.myprotein.co.uk/products/impact_blend with a home made flapjack as a mid morning snack and know I will be having a chicken, avocado, black olive, lashings of olive oil salad at lunch. This might seem a little anal retentive but remember looking amazing does not happen through accident, it’s a 24/7 job that I thoroughly enjoy, as do all my clients that look great.

If you are still struggling to gain weight then you need to up your calorie intake at every possible opportunity. Post workout do I want to chow down on a piece of chicken or gulp down a Myprotein recovery xs http://www.myprotein.co.uk/products/recovery_xs , I for one want food that is going to be in my system acting fast to speed my recovery so I can get back into the gym sooner and train harder.

Another easy way to up the calories is to add nuts and nut butters like peanut, cashew, almond butter into your protein smoothies for an extra protein and good fat hit. Nuts are a great source of good fats which help to increase testosterone production and thus aid in gaining muscle mass. Keep in mind no one ever got fat on taking in too many good fats but plenty of people get fat on eating too many starchy and junk carbs.

If you want to look like a pro then keep focused on the stuff that really matters, such as, your nutrition, exercising most days of the week, being consistent and stop wondering about the minor things like inner biceps exercises and acai berries before you sort out the blatantly obvious major ones. 

4. You can’t flex fat – I see plenty of guys that want to gain muscle doing what they call a bulking phase. This is so old school and comes from bodybuilders that would spend a few months ‘bulking up’ i.e. eating anything and everything to just put on weight and then ‘cutting up’ i.e. spending an even longer time trying to drop the fat they gained. Would it just make more sense to gain muscle and very little fat? Many people say this is not possible yet I see this happen with my clients’ week in week out. Many of the guys that tell you they are bulking up are forever bulking up as they eat and drink what ever they like in the false justification that they will then strip away the fat gain. Let me tell you that once you gain those new fat cells they are not going to go away without a fight and you will work doubly hard to work it off. Eat right, use your supplements wisely and gaining mass is not an excuse to eat junk foods, though a little from time to time is fine.

Will the lean Dave Tate please stand up

The always-entertaining strength and powerlifting coach Dave Tate recently wrote an article and one section really caught my eye. He said that when he was just big and puffy no one really approached him for advice but when he got lean and defined everyone wanted a piece of him. Do you want to walk into a room and look like you lift weights or do you want to look big but in massive need of some fat loss?

5. Are you just asking – If you have read this far into the article ask yourself this simple question – are you just asking about how to gain muscle or do you REALLY want to know? Iget asked daily what I do to stay and get in great shape but many people are just asking. They don’t really want to know. The people that are just asking can also end up asking too many questions and it’s like they are never satisfied with the answers becuase they prefer to keep asking questions rather than getting down to the business of putting in good hard training sessions and being way more honest with their diet.

The clients I work with that do get and continue to get great results are the ones who REALLY want to know and not just know for knowledge sake but because they want to apply the info asap. They never feel there is no more to learn, they enjoy the challenge of a new program and can’t see their life without regular exercise and a clean diet.

I never get tired of answering questions on training, nutrition and health but sometimes I have to ask myself does this person REALLY want to know or are they just asking. If you really want to know you NEVER make excuses and you get the job done. If you are just asking then that’s ok and maybe one day you will get the push you need to stop asking, take action and get the body you deserve.

Tags: basic weights program, Dominic Munnelly, dominic munnelly personal trainer, dublin personal training, eating big, full body weights, lean muscle gain, maximum muscle gain, personal training, the transformation catalyst, why you are skinny