When it comes to building larger muscles people tend to want to over complicate the process.
In a world full of resources, knowledge, and technological advances that are supposed to make nutrition and working out easier to manage, they have often done the complete opposite of that; they’ve made it TOTALLY CONFUSING FOR PEOPLE!
I’M HERE TO TALK ABOUT THE 5 MOST EFFECTIVE WAYS TO BUILD LARGER MUSCLES!
Some of this information is beyond your average cliche bullshit floating around the internet.
It’s not information that necessarily sounds perfect, but it’s the truth!
#1 – NOBODY EVER GOT BIG EATING LIKE A BIRD
I didn’t build the bulk of my size eating low calorie foods that fit the “diet-like mold” for perfect eating! You see, there is no such thing as perfect nutrition.
I ate a lot of high calorie foods ALONG WITH CLEANER FOODS on a regular basis when I was trying to grow.
It was nothing for me to have 1 cheat meal every single day on top of eating cleaner foods such as chicken, tuna, rice, and eggs.
If you’re not gaining weight then you’re simply not eating enough calories.
Calories are energy and muscular growth takes energy reserves. Muscles simply cannot get larger without more available energy!
Foods such as sub sandwiches, pasta, cheeseburgers, and God knows whatever else I ate, became regularly consumed foods during the course of my growing phases.
Also, don’t worry about getting fat until it actually happens! I see far too many guys who are scared to death of getting fat when they’ve never actually been fat before!
You’re worried about something before it even happens. Many people would be shocked at how much more they can consume before they actually get fat.
Another thing that I think guys are forgetting is that muscle is a fat metabolizer. The more muscle you have on your frame, the more efficient your body becomes at burning fat in a resting state.
Sure, if you’re fat now then you’d ideally want to diet off the fat first, but with new muscle comes more energy output and the foods necessary to facilitate muscle growth and recovery become more essential!
This isn’t hard to figure out here; eat too light and you become weaker. Eat enough and you become stronger. Stronger muscles mean larger muscles!
So if you’re not gaining weight then you’re not gaining muscle mass.
Stop worrying about what percentage is going to be fat and what percentage is going to be muscle mass and start eating more calories to grow!
#2 – THE MOST DEMANDING EXERCISES BUILD MORE MUSCLE
Exercises that most people want to constantly avoid are the exercises that work to build the most muscle.
Exercises such as bent over rows, deadlifts, wide grip pull-ups, overhead shoulder presses, squats, and chest presses work to build large muscles!
Sure, once you have built a solid foundation then you can venture into more advanced training techniques such as time under tension, drop sets, static holds, and extreme stretches;
But to build a foundation simply requires consistent progressive resistance.
You need to be focused on getting stronger and stronger on a consistent basis.
Every week you go to the gym you should be throwing more weight on the bar and adapting to an increased workload.
Someone who bench presses 135 lbs should not be worried about anything other than getting to the point where they can bench press 145 lbs, then 155 lbs, and so on and so forth!
You’re not going to get the same results as a seasoned bodybuilder who has trained to develop a mind/muscle control that allows them to continue to make progress using smaller weights.
You’re not the same as that person, and to think that you can develop an incredible amount of muscle mass training like that person is simply wasting your time!
We all had to tough it out at one point or another and constantly work towards lifting heavier and heavier weights.
You aren’t going to be someone that is 6 months into the gym and solely train on isolation exercises and achieve great size from it.
I call this the shatter effect. If I do a bigger compound movement I’m stimulating my body more as a whole.
So say I throw a rock through a giant window; the rock will go through the window where it hit the glass but the entire window is cracked.
Your body is a lot like that window.
Those compound movements are effecting the body as a whole, even though the rock directly struck your back, or legs, or chest.
Stick to the basics at first. The basics work!
#3 – BRUTALITY BUILDS STRENGTH
This one is simple enough; if you walk into the gym and simply go through the motions then you’re just not going to get the same results as you would when you go at the gym like war!
If you’re in there to do a set and then take a break and talk for 5 minutes then you’re going to get nowhere.
If you want to text message people and snap selfies in between each set then you’re never going to do shit!
Who comprises the bulk of the people snapping selfies and bullshitting around in the gym?
LITTLE PUSSIES, THAT’S WHO!
There are enough distractions in life as it is, why do you need to constantly create them in the gym also?
If you go to any powerlifting meet you’ll see guys that act like they’re going to kill someone!
They don’t warm up in the back room and snap selfies and text message 20 people.
No, they chalk up and take a whiff of an ammonia capsule and yell out “LET’S FUCKING GO BABY!”
And then they go to war with the iron!
It’s simple; it’s a killer instinct sort of mentality. There is no place for weakness here.
Make your training hard and put 100% of your focus into it and it’ll provide results…period!
When you’re doing a set you don’t stop every time it gets hard to lift.
You need to tell yourself that you won’t stop until the weight physically stops moving.
It’s fine to fail with 100% effort. It’s not fine to hit failure with 90% effort and a pussy mentality.
Start telling yourself that these sets are a test of your strength of character and not just motions.
Get brutal with it and go to war! Anything less will simply get mediocre results!
#4 – YOU WILL ONLY GET AS BIG AS GENETICS AND THE RIGHT ANABOLIC ENVIRONMENT WILL ALLOW!
It’s simply not realistic to think you’re going to grow much over 200 lbs of lean body-mass unless your body is in the right anabolic environment.
See, you can eat everything in sight, but when your body isn’t making more of the building blocks to grow then it’s sort of putting yourself through the ringer for little in return.
Now, I’m not talking about someone who is brand new here to lifting weights.
I’m talking about the guys who have paid their dues, lifted heavy and hard, and simply cannot seem to break through the wall anymore no matter what they do!
This is when you need something that will promote a more anabolic environment. When I first began using performance enhancement I was a fairly lean 205 lbs at a height of 5’9 (175.26 cm).
I probably wasn’t going to grow much larger without a decent amount of fat accumulation to add to my body.
This was the point where I needed to ask myself if I was willing to be content with my size or if I wanted to take the next leap forward, because just food and hard training on it’s own wasn’t giving me the same results I was once getting.
I’m not saying not to bust your ass with whatever you can here, but I must be honest with you all as well; YOU WON’T BE MY SIZE NATURALLY.
I haven’t been natural in almost 20 years now.
Natural is fucking boring to me. I feel better building something and not just going through the motions.
I feel like bodybuilding would be harder to stick to without the means to accomplish my goals.
Nope, no fake natty over here, sorry!
So whatever your goals may be, hard work comes first but you also need to be realistic about it. If you choose to stay natural then just know that you’re only going to get so big and then you need to learn to be happy with it.
Don’t think there is some missing piece of the puzzle when you talk to some bigger guy and he solely preaches diet and training to you.
HE’S PROBABLY NOT NATURAL.
#5 – CUT THE DRAMA AND STOP LIVING FOR EVERYONE ELSE
Many people have far too many nonsense distractions going on in life to focus on self-improvement.
They let drama fill up their daily existence and they really have nothing for themselves anymore.
We all know those guys who solely live for their spouse and have given up everything they ever had that made them happy.
Their identities become their jobs or their children and they really have nothing for themselves.
I say that if you want a good body and to feel good then drop all of the meaningless bullshit that consumes you!
When you leave work then turn it off.
If someone you’re with doesn’t like the idea of you trying to better yourself then you need to have a talk with them about wanting to have something for yourself in this life.
If someone cannot accept the fact that you’re trying to better yourself then it may not be a good situation to stay in.
I could leave my house twice in one day for the gym and my wife doesn’t say a damn thing about it! She knew this was what she married and bodybuilding was an important part of my life. That is never going to change.
I don’t have a large social circle and I don’t get wrapped up in social media and other time wasting endeavors.
Basically, I don’t exert myself on things with little value or meaning to my ideal world.
I don’t make my world something I don’t enjoy.
Often times I think about how I truly want to live and I make that ideal world a reality for myself.
I try not to get wrapped up in politics and debates with people who quite frankly have nothing in common with my beliefs or my own way of life.
I see so many people protesting and bitching about things they have no control over and I don’t understand how that makes them feel good about their lives.
Wouldn’t time be better spent trying to build something and improve your own life?
You sort of may have to be like a ghost here, but once you get into the habit of not giving a fuck about everything you cannot change it gets easier to do it more regularly.
You’ll soon see that you don’t need to be involved with everything to have a fulfilling life!
I say do fewer things but do them better! Create your own Zen and live by your own code.
Your children will see a father who is proud of himself and likes what he sees in the mirror and this will have a positive influence on the way your kids grow up!
My code is to be jacked, spend time with my family, and live a simple life!
Drop all of the drama, distractions, and trim away life’s bullshit.
So what about “going out”with random idiots and letting everyone else into your life. If you’re not at peace with yourself then none of it matters!
FUCK WHAT EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING, THEY CAN HAVE IT!
Train hard! -JD
Great article like usual John. I have a question for us guys carrying more fat than average guys. What do you suggest for those of us that still want to get bigger but want to lose some fat at at the same time? Do I keep my calorie intake a bit higher than maintenance or should I go a bit lower? In becoming a bull you said to just do a bit more cardio and have less cheat meals but it seems like you’re saying to keep bulking. I dont care about getting visible abs until I’m happy with my size, but at the same time I dont want to get any fatter.
Just keep building and keep a t-shirt on. Don’t worry abt that yet, it’s like pissing in the wind doing both. If you had achieved a desirable size then fuck it, decrease cals. But it sounds like you aren’t where u wanna be yet size wise
This is just real good stuff. I really like the way you write. Maybe 1 to 2 people in the gym at any given moment actually “go to war”. But 100 take the 5 minute rest and BS with there buddies. Thanks, Todd
Solid advice as always.
I told a skinny kid in the gym one day. Straight up “You will not look like me or magazine models naturally”.
They gotta stop telling these guys that they can look like Zeus or Achilles naturally.
Agreed man, thanx for reading -JD
Quality article, simple and brutal.
John, I’m fucking myself over by being in two minds about giving Red Growth a go. I’ve been training 10 years and I’m now 26 and I haven’t yet decided to take anything. Too much of a pussy to jump on the real gear just yet.
Any advantage in waiting until I’m 30 to try anything, as in will my natural test production be able to bounce back better etc or is it prime time now?
I know they say its best to max your natural limit before the plunge but I can’t realistically see my self gaining more than a few pounds over the next 4 years naturally, so part of me thinks fuck it!
Cheers for everything John
By the time I was 26 yrs old I knew that this was going to be a part of my life for as long as I could do it. Which is pretty much as long as I’m able to breathe. The only thing thatheld me from absolutely going full speed ahead consistently was the thought of wanting children one day. So I cycled on and off for about the first 9 years of using steroids. I had to come off a decent 6 months to be fertile, but I made it happen.
The one thing in life I did plan out was a kid. Are a few cycles and time off going to hurt you long term? Nah, I don’t think so. Red Growth is a good choice to use to see how you react with a more natural testosterone booster that doesn’t need as long of a recovery. Try it out and see what happens for you. I don’t think you’re going to do a few cycles of anything and absolutely fuck yourself. But to answer your initial concern, if you’ve been training 10 yrs consistently, yea you’re probably at the genetic ceiling honestly -JD
Nice one appreciate the reply John.
I enjoyed becoming the bull so I’ll give straight from the underground a go before I try anything.
Thanks, yea I explain a whole lot in there that other steroid guides definitely leave out -JD