T-NATION ARTIGO

4 Reasons You Suck at Building Mass

If you're small and weak, this is either going hurt your feelings or help you get bigger and
stronger.

The 4 Reasons You Can't Build Mass

Why can’t you build muscle mass? Well, probably because you suck at eating and training.
Here’s how you can stop sucking and finally put on some size.

1 – You Suck at Eating

Meal frequency is important. You need to use several strategies to get in more calories. Also,
stop it with the intermittent fasting crap.

Guys who are weak and small all think they eat a lot, but they actually really suck at it. Oh, you
ate two large pizzas once? Okay, did you do that six times that day? No? You only ate one
other meal? And then the rest of the week you ate like a runway model?

Skinny guys have the same misconception about eating as fat guys do about how jacked they
are. Neither lives in reality. The fat guy always thinks he only needs to lose 15 pounds to be
ripped when in reality it's more like 50. And the skinny guy thinks he eats a lot when in reality
he eats, well, like he looks. Small.

For a while, intermittent fasting (IF) was the big rage. Why? I have no idea. If you're trying to
build as much mass as possible, then how does going long periods of time without eating seem
logical in any way, shape, or form? Spare me the "fasting increases GH production" nonsense.
It doesn't increase it enough to make a difference. I saw lots of guys who did IF. They were all
really lean. And they all weighed about 160. No one cares about your abs if you're 160. If
you're trying to gain mass, then let me quote Obi-Wan and tell you, "This is not the diet you
are looking for."

Granted, there have been lots of studies that say meal frequency doesn't have an impact on
fat loss or weight gain. Well, I've been in this game for 26 years, and every jacked and massive
individual I've ever known ate a lot of food at each meal, in addition to eating frequent meals
every day. If you're eating four meals a day, regardless of caloric intake, what do you think
happens with a fifth meal? You get more calories in, of course. A sixth meal? More calories.
Seven meals?
I know, you're having trouble comprehending the destruction of that tactical-nuke knowledge
bomb I just laid on you, but I swear it's that simple. This seems like really basic knowledge, but
you'd be surprised how many guys cling to a study that says meal frequency isn't important,
then ignore that every swole guy they see eats multiple times a day. At what point does 30
years of meal frequency producing legions of jacked-up lifters outweigh a few studies?

"But I have trouble eating a lot." Honestly, I do too. And I'm not asking you to wake up Monday
morning and start shoveling in 10,000 calories a day when you're used to eating 2,000. This is
no different than setting lifting goals. You don't set a goal to deadlift 800 when your best
deadlift is 500. You set your sights on a 515 deadlift next. Then 535.

Easy ways to help your body adjust to eating more food:

Add a shake after every meal or between every meal. Even if you're only eating three meals a
day, throwing in a shake after each meal is a very simple way to up your calories. If you add a
tablespoon of olive oil to each shake, that's 119 extra calories. If you have just three shakes a
day, that's an additional 357 calories just from olive oil.

If you're using protein powder and use two scoops, that's give or take about 220 calories, plus
the 119 from the olive oil and that totals 339 calories per shake. At three a day that's over a
thousand extra calories a day. If you find it too hard to add the shake in after each meal, drink
one between meals. Either way, it's an extra 1,000 calories, and drinking calories is easier than
eating them.

Have one big shake a day. Back in the day, all of our shakes were made using blenders. The
powders pretty much required it, but this also allowed you to easily add in lots of stuff and you
could create some pretty delicious shakes. Try it. Buy a blender, add protein powder, egg
whites, peanut butter, bananas, milk, etc. until you fill it to the top. Over the course of the day,
sip on it. Set a goal that you're going to finish every last drop by end of the day. If you want to
be anal and track your "macros" then just add up what you're putting into it.

When I was 17, I used the following recipe to go from 170 pounds to 210 pounds over one
summer. Of course, I was also eating to the point of gagging almost every meal (which was
every two hours, mind you), but I also managed to get this in each day as well:

2 cups of milk

3 raw eggs

2 cups of ice cream

2 scoops of protein powder

1 TBSP peanut butter

Hershey's chocolate syrup

1 Banana

2 TBSP Karo syrup

If your response to this recipe is that looks like diabetes waiting to happen, then you're
probably one of those really skinny guys that can't gain weight or whose muscles "disappear"
when you put on a T-shirt. Look, when you're 150 pounds with negative percent body fat, you
probably don't have to worry about getting diabetes because of sugar intake. You should be
more worried about the fact that girls half your size are outlifting you in gyms all over the
world.

Eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Make three. Eat one between meals. You can carry
them around with you anywhere. And if you don't like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,
then you're probably a sociopath or hate freedom. Most likely, both.

2 – Your Training Intensity Sucks

Put on your gym-face. Add intensity-extending techniques into your program.

I can't tell you how many times someone's said to me, "I saw you training at my gym the other
day. I was going to come say hi, but you looked pissed off." I'm not pissed off. I'm training. I'm
in the gym to train, not to socialize. And to me, training requires a great degree of
concentration. Your gym-face should reflect your attitude about your training. Don't wear your
gym-face to the club, and don't wear your club-face to the gym.

In between sets, however, I do pay attention to my surroundings... at times. And I see a lot of
people in the gym wearing their club-face, socializing, and having a great time. And if that's
what you're there for, that's fine. So long as you don't impact my training, I don't care. Not
everyone wants to grow as much muscle mass as possible or get maximally strong.

But if you do, then you need to train like it and take your time in the gym seriously. People
often lose focus because they have very mundane routines that don't actually require them to
focus. In other words, there's no reason to concentrate or get your gym-face on because your
training program doesn't require it. Or maybe you just suck at training really hard.

Back in the day, one of the biggest staples of leg training was high-rep work. Twenty-rep
squats, 50-rep leg presses. You know, hard shit. Guys used set-extending techniques like drop
sets, rest/pause, running the rack, and all sorts of methods that drew the set out as long as
possible and created a ton of metabolic stress. They didn't even know what the term
"metabolic stress" was. All they knew is that when they trained really, really hard, they grew.
Now I see the net filled with memes like "anything over three reps is cardio." Look man, even
the hardest of three-rep maximal sets can't be compared with a high-rep all-out set of squats.
It's not that a three-rep max set isn't hard, but the two just aren't comparable. At some point
in your training life, you're going to have to sit down and come to the conclusion that if you
want to move forward in regards to progress, you're going to have to train your ass off.

The fact is, almost all of us get stuck in a rut of complacency, or we lose the desire to train
really freakin' hard. A great way to bust out of this rut is to add in some set intensity-extending
techniques that force you to set personal goals at each training session. My personal two
favorites:

50% Sets – Even if you're having an off day, the working set of this technique gives you a "built
in" goal. After your warm ups, take the set to complete failure. Rest 60 seconds and do a
second set, trying to get at least half the number of reps you got on the first set. So if you did
315 x 10-12 on the first set, you'd need to shoot for at least 5-6 reps on the second set. This
works great for pressing and pulling movements.

Goal-Focused Rest/Pause Sets – The goal each week is to beat the total number of reps you got
the previous time you did rest/pause sets. If you don't know what rest/pause training is, you
do a set, rest 30 seconds or so, do a second set, rest 30 seconds or so, and then do a final set.
If you got 100 pounds for 15 reps on your first set, 9 reps on your second set, and then 5 reps
on your final set, that's 29 reps total. The goal for the next week is to beat 29 total reps.

I prefer these two set intensity-extending techniques to all the others (drop sets, super sets,
giant sets, etc.) because goal setting is involved. You can do a conventional drop set and not
put a lot of effort into the set, but if there's a number you must match or improve upon, it'll
increase your focus and intensity tremendously.

At some point there has to be more weight added to the bar, or more reps done with the same
or more weight. This doesn't mean you sacrifice form or movement execution for weight on
the bar. It simply means that progressive overload, especially for the small and the weak,
should be the cornerstone of your training ideology.

3 – You Suck at the Exercises You Hate

The best way to make progress is to do movements you don't like doing.

This actually applies to just about anyone who gets stuck in a rut. However, let's just be honest
here, there's an infinite amount of curls done every day in gyms across the world compared to
squats. The reason is quite simple – squatting is hard while curls aren't. But outside of that,
one reason why lots of guys don't grow or improve is because they keep doing all the things
they love to do while avoiding all the shit they hate.
If your goal is getting jacked to the gills and strong, you need to sit down and make a list of
movements you really hate doing that are applicable to building mass. Why do you really hate
them? Because they're hard for you to do. Why are they hard for you to do? Because the
muscles involved in performing them are weak and small.

4 – You Suck Because You Don't Train Enough

Overtraining is rare. The truth is, most people don't train often enough.

If you can't move very much weight, then there's really no way you're going to "overtrain." In
fact, it's pretty damned hard for even an advanced guy to overtrain if his diet and sleep are on
point.

One of the most popular training splits from back in the day was the three-on/one-off split. Lee
Haney made this split popular back in the 80's and 90's, and because he won the Mr. Olympia
eight times, people thought maybe he was on to something. It's been shown repeatedly that
training frequency is a major factor in regards to hypertrophy. So why are you training your
bird-like chest once a week with a 185-pound max bench when you should be training it at
least twice a week?