Rebuild Your Mind; Rebuild Your Body

Last week I wrote about how I had trouble fitting the first day of the Hardgainer Project X workout within an hour. It seems I wasn’t the only one, but while I wasn’t too worried about it because I knew that I’d be able to shave time off now that I knew how the program worked, still Jeff “Muscle Nerd” Anderson has come back with a response.

When I tested the program everything seemed to fit within the sixty minute window of opportunity there. Now when it comes to the arms and shoulders day if you go a little bit over, it shouldn’t be that much over. You just gotta make sure that you are really recording those times in between.

The arms are relatively small muscle group it’s not like you are really, it’s the same with the shoulders, you’re not really taxing a lot so you should be OK. You should be alright there.

Hope that makes sense to everyone. Drop me a comment if it doesn’t, and I will be giving out more of the Muscle Nerds advice over the next couple of weeks.

So this week I switched to the Hardgainer Project X. It’s time to put it through its paces and see what it’s really made of.

Now, normally you should never stop a program half way through – you’ll never make progress unless you stick with what you are doing. Flipping programs is one of the biggest reasons people don’t see gains. But as it happened, my previous program was an extension of an older one and the trap tear injury meant that I’d had two weeks out so it was perfect timing to try something new.

On that note, here is a training tip I picked up from a friend of mine who you may have heard of – Vince Delmonte (you can read more about Vince here). If you’ve been doing a workout for a while then your gains are going to start slowing down. One reason for this is that while you’ve grown the muscles you are targeting, the other muscles which you use have not grown as much. Take as an example shrugs which target the traps. It’s not unusual to reach a point where your grip strength isn’t up to the loads that you need to keep improving on the traps. So, take a break in your program, target the forearms for a month, then go back. This time you’ll be able to hold onto the bar or dumbbells long enough to start working those traps. You can do this with almost any exercise.

Back to the Hardgainer program. When you start a new program always drop back on the weight. The first time through is always a case of feeling your way to find the right balances. It might take two or three weeks to work up to the right weight, but that’s OK. Now for me, this program has a lot more volume than I’ve been working with, and it’s very intense. So I’ve dropped back on the weight and not really pushed myself.

I started out with too much weight on the squat, I’ve trimmed it back now and today was much better. Other exercises such as the shrug I was too light, but as a result I know a better weight for next time.

The first day is a long workout, and it took me more than an hour. The others I completed in comfortably less than that. Now I know what I’m doing, I can shave time off and certainly I expect to bring the others down to about forty minutes. That first one I’ll get under the hour, beyond that I’ll have to see.

Got any training tips you’d like to share? Add a comment below, I’d appreciate your thoughts.