Some people may not be aware that they are what you call a hardgainer. Hargainers are individuals who can train equally as hard if not more than other people but yet still somehow fail to gain any increase in mass or strength. First of all these people need a lot more than just hard training to see gains. In order for these people to achieve there weight gain and muscle building ambition they need to incorporate many different principles. It can be very frustrating and believe me I know, I had to find out the hard through years of testing and altering both my dietary intake and training regimes. Many other bodybuilders also get to discover the hard way and this results in lost time, energy and waste of money.

The majority of people starting off trying to gain mass and build strength are of the belief that there is no such thing as training too hard, too long, or too much. They do not bother with setting thereselves effective targets, planning regimes for themselves or even monitoring themselves. This is clearly down to lack of knowledge on their part and was the big killer in my past regimes and progress or should I say lack of it. This hefty misconception is the devil behind most youngsters and hard gainers progression in gaining mass and building strength, don't! let it be yours.

Training like this for a length of time ultimately leads to lack of muscle growth, lack of motivation, and a total breakdown of dedication. To counter these problems many people think that if they trained harder nd longer then this can help, they're wrong! In fact you could actually end up losing strength and losing mass from training too much and too often without the proper knowledge needed to effectively start to grow.

In the dedicated sport of bodybuilding; effort and effect do not show any evidence of a close relationship. On the contrary, our bodies are fuel burning entities which are very complex and depend upon balances. Improper and excessive training breaks down these balances. In simple terms, if you begin to burn your energy reserves faster than you are refilling them then you'll only begin to deplete the whole mechanism of strength, stamina, and the abilty to recuperate.

In case you are a beginner bodybuilder or you are planning on trying to gain mass and strength, you must slowly build your body up to cope with the strenuous task which it very rarely is used t in the past. It is very wise for a beginner not to lift anything they cant lift for more than 8 reps, and its also worth taking into account the length of their workouts and the amount of them per week. Beginners should keep their workout sessions to a maximum of three a week and always try to workout every muscle group in each. Bare in mind however if you do exercise A one day for a muscle group then make sure you do exercise B the session after, each with a three set total. Remember to train to total failure of the muscles, if you feel you can't lift anymore LIFT AGAIN!

Split training is something that advanced bodybuilders do a lot of. If your workout schedule consists of training four days a week, seperate your workouts so you end up concentrating more on one half of the body one day and then concentrate on the other half of the body another and so on and so forth. Make sure you also split these muscle groups up as well from front to back. Eg. Say I do my biceps, chest,obliques one day, I'm then going to do my shoulders, triceps, back the next day.

As a bodybuilding addict you are going to need to increase your calorie intake and your protein intake. As soon as you substantially increase your protein consumption your muscle will begin to slowly increase in size. In actual fact, if your are a hard gainer then this may be your root problem. As a substantial study showed that people need at least 2 grams per pound of bodyweight. A 150 pound man for example would need at around 300 grams of protein a day, depending on the intensity of his workouts. Don't get me wrong protein is'nt a magical cure, you need a hefty increase in everything you eat and it needs to be whole foods. By whole foods I mean no junk foods, or foods that don't have a lot of nutritional value. If you look after your body and feed it what it needs to grow then it will.

Lastly, the importance of using freeweights while trying to build mass and strength is great. Free weights allow for muscle stimulation and in turn increase the muscles more effectively.