Action Steps

1. Start Squatting with Free Weights

Even if you’re just looking to develop your upper body, free weight squats should be the core of your lifting routine. Squatting works more muscles than any other exercise and places incredible demands on your body. As a result, it stimulates hormones like HGH and testosterone that help reduce fat stores and build lean muscle. Once the levels of these hormones go up in response doing squats, they actually help grow every muscle in the body. Curls alone will grow your biceps, but squats plus curls will be a lot more effective. If you lack a spotter, and can’t do barbell squats safely, do squats holding heavy dumbbells. Try to avoid leg press machines or smith machines for squats. These machines guide the weight you move along a track, freeing your body from the responsibility of balancing that weight in 3 planes. A lot of the benefits of squats (especially to athletes looking to improve balance and coordination) come from the balance challenge presented by the exercise. Doing squats on a machine cheats your body of those benefits.

2. Cycle in Heavy Negatives Once per Month

A heavy negative is a low rep set with high weight, in which you lift the weight up at a normal pace, but bring it back down over the course of 6 to 16 seconds. The “negative phase” of any lift is the portion where the weight is moving with gravity. In a bench press, this is when the weight is moving down towards your chest. In a Lat Pull, this is when you are releasing the bar back up towards the ceiling. Heavy negatives place immense stress on your musculature. As long as you don’t do them too often, your body responds to this stress with muscular growth. Work each muscle group in your body with a few sets of negatives one day each month. It's tough to do this without a spotter, so try to find a lifting partner, or ask a trainer at your gym for help.

3. Get Serious About Recovery

No one overtrains as frequently as hard-gainers looking to build muscle mass. Muscle grows when you are resting, not while you are working it. Heavy, intense workouts require a lot of rest (and food) for recovery. Short change the rest and you’ll end up spinning your wheels. One week out of every month should be dedicated to rest and recovery. This doesn’t mean you have to stop working out entirely. A good system is to spend three weeks lifting hard, then lift light for one week, go back to lifting hard for three weeks, then take a week entirely off. When you are hitting the gym, work out no more than four (max 5)days per week, try to sleep at least 8 hours per night, and take naps in the early afternoon if you can.