Mid Life Fitness

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.

Having come back from a weeks holiday where I will admit that I didn’t eat according to any proper sort of nutrition plan. I was careful when we ate out and we were self catering so I was able to influence what we ate. But we had pizza twice and ready meals as usual. We did only have a cream tea once…

So this morning I get on the scales, which I only do once a week and and I’ve lost a couple of pounds. Was it muscle? Was it fat, water or what? I only exercised once while I was away which was bad and I’m ready to start back on Monday into my programme.

Truth is though that gaining weight for me is difficult.

Which is why I was interested to come back to see that a friend of mine has just issued a couple of free reports (audio and pdf) about the research behind the new program which he is launching next week.

One thing I did do while I was away was to do some people watching, and I was surprised to see just how many guys, mature guys that is, who are frankly skinny. At least that is in terms of musculature. That creeping middle age spread starts coming in from the early thirties so there are a lot of men who fall into the skinny fat category.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am adding muscle even though I do easily fall into the hardgainer category, but I’m waiting for the launch with interest. Jeff has given me copies of the free reports and I’m suitably impressed so far with his logic. He isn’t revealing all to me just yet, but I can say with confidence that I will be getting a copy of the programme and seeing how well it fits with my own.

Click Here to get your own copies of the free MP3 and ebook

Check it out and let me know what you think. I had to laugh though because I am guilty of telling hardgainers that poor nutrition is a primary cause of them not gaining weight. I’m not going to back track on that, but I am willing to consider if I’ve been wrong on the subject – at least in some cases. I’m more interested in finding something that works better than in being embarrassed by being proved wrong.

Click Here to get see the guinea pigs who tested Jeffs new three step training programme.

I really recommend that you go and check the free reports out and see if you recognise yourself in any of the guys there. One of them is the skinny fat shape which I think many of us fall into, so I’m going to be very interested in seeing how he gets on.

Site link once more.