If you want to learn how to gain weight if it is hard for you, then you are probably a hardgainer - someone who has a more difficult time gaining weight and building muscle mass. If this is the case, then one of the most fundamental ways in which you can learn to speed up your progress in the gym is to take a second look at how much weight you are lifting.

I see so many weight trainers, easy and hardgainers alike go day after day, week after week, and month after month pushing the same weight they were doing last month, and the month before.

They feel satisfied that they had a "good workout" because their muscles are pumped and well exhausted by the end of their workout after doing a bunch of sets of a bunch of different exercises for one muscle group. This is a BIG mistake.

No matter what you've read or heard, getting a good pump has very little to do with muscle growth. All the "pump" means is that there is a temporary increased blood flow in your muscle tissue. Though getting a good pump has a few benefits for building muscle, you certainly shouldn't gauge your workouts by them, especially if you are a hardgainer.

What's a hardgainer? Any naturally skinny body type with a fast metabolism that finds it near impossible to gain weight or build muscle mass no matter what they do.

So if you're looking for the fastest way to build muscle, then you must progressively add weight to your exercises. This is one of the most basic rules in weight training called progressive overload. I don't care who you are, you can't expect to build bigger muscles if you are using the same weight over and over again. You have to get STRONGER if you want to get bigger, and I don't mean increasing the weight once a month. Your main focus should be to add weight to your major compound exercises each week if you want to gain weight and build muscle as fast as possible. You can't expect to look like the Incredible Hulk if your sister is pushing the same weight you are.

Whenever you finish a heavy workout, your muscle fibers adapt by recruiting more fibers so they can cope with the weight if it is forced to try to handle it again. As a result, your muscles will grow bigger. As soon as your body becomes accustomed to a certain weight, it will no longer grow. It will no longer need to! You must constantly overload it with more weight then it is used to handling.

It is always a safer bet to measure your workouts not by how good of a pump you get, but by your increases in strength. Keep track of exactly how much weight you use for each set on each exercise, how many reps you did, and make it a goal to slightly increase that weight at least every other week.

It doesn't matter if you write it down on a palm pilot or the piece of toilet paper stuck to your shoe when you walk out of the bathroom, as long as you know exactly how much weight you used and how many reps you did your last workout so you can add a little more on the next.

Don't try to remember how much weight you used, because if you forget you will hold back your progress each week by using the same or less weight and therefore not getting any stronger, or by adding too much weight too soon which will lead to set-backs. When this happens often, then over the course of weeks and even months of training you will be wasting a lot of progress and momentum. Can you see how important it is to keep track of your poundage's?

When first starting out, you may discover that adding weight each week is not so tough and find you can be pretty consistent. However, as you continue to weight train for a while you will sooner or later hit what's called a "sticking point" on one or more of your exercises. This is completely normal. From here, your increase in strength will have to be slightly more gradual then before.

So instead of, say, increasing 5 pounds again next week, just stick with the weight you are stuck at until you can complete the full pre-determined reps. As soon as you can, try adding 2.5 pounds this time, or even 1 pound, instead of 5. Remember, for long term results, slowly but surely is the way to go.

You will always be much stronger after one year if you continue to add weight in this fashion rather then trying to add too much weight too fast and being stuck at that weight for weeks and even months at a time.

Knowing now that the key to increasing your mass is continually getting stronger, the next logical question is, what is the fasted way to getting stronger? Keep your workouts SHORT and SIMPLE. Marathon type workouts will only limit your growth and may even cause you to lose weight if you train too much for too long. You don't need to do 5 different exercises for your chest with 5 sets for each.

In fact, you will get a heck of a lot better results sticking to just 1 or 2 compound exercises such as flat or incline bench presses and just doing 2 to 5 sets each, 1 or 2 days a week. Why? You will have enough recovery time to add weight every week by narrowing in on just the major compound exercises with heavy weight.

So if you've been having trouble figuring out how to gain muscle and weight fast, this may have been the major factor holding you back. Make up your mind right now that you will train to become stronger each and every workout, and you will be on the right path to building some real quality muscle, whether you're a hardgainer or not.