How To Get Huge and Stay Lean
Ken Kraynak
How To Get Huge and Stay Lean
Gaining lean muscle mass is a challenge, and boy can that contend for the understatement of the century when you’ve been lifting month in and month out, slowly inching forward in progress. Staying lean throughout the process can prove to be an even larger challenge!
The simple fact is your body doesn’t want you to grow. It’s happy staying at its genetic set point, and more than happy to make the process of achieving more lean mass as much of a pain in the ass for you as it can! Additionally, an excess of the right amount of calories are required for growth, making it almost inevitable to gain more mass, without getting fat in the process!
I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of this back and forth game of cycling bulking phases with cutting phases. Forget that! I’m in it to be the biggest, leanest, and most heavily muscled guy around, and taking
3 steps forward, 2 steps back by cycling won’t cut it. So if you’re down with making continued gains in lean mass, while getting lean at the same time, this article is for you.
Achieving Alpha Male Status
“Everybody wants to get big, but ain’t nobody wanna lift no heavy ass weight!” said one of bodybuilding’s most iconic figures in history, Ronnie Coleman. And it’s true. With strength comes size, and when strength gains come to a grinding halt, gains in mass aren’t far behind to follow. We all know the importance of changing up our routines every 4-6 weeks. However, how often do you change up your rep schemes? So often we are told to lift in the 8-12 rep range to build new muscle. But what’s the point if we’re barely, if not slowly inching forward in progress and using more or less the same weights month in and month out? The key is this. 8-12 reps is the most ideal rep range for building raw, lean muscle mass. However, if you want to gain size faster, you have to get stronger. Why? Because the stronger you get, the more weight you can handle in the higher rep ranges. Who’s going to have bigger shoulders? Will person “A” who can do dumbbell side laterals with 40’s for 12 reps, or person “B” who can do dumbbell side laterals with 70’s for 12 reps? Ok then, you see my point!
Furthermore, the body rapidly adapts to training in any one given rep range. As I made light of above, your body doesn’t want you to grow, and anytime you shock your muscles with a stimulus they are not use to receiving, your body responds with growth, then adapts, and stops growing! The solution? Keep the body guessing;
so let the guessing begin!
Power Time Baby! Weeks 1-2
“Four reps, that’s all I need” you say under your breath, as you get ready to hit the next set. For the first 2 weeks, we will be working in the 4-5 rep range. Doing so will recruit muscle fibers that can generate explosive force and allow you to handle extremely heavy weight. We will be using large, compound movements to stimulate the greatest number of muscle fibers possible, with larger muscle groups being trained with 9-12 sets, and smaller muscle groups being trained
with 6-9 sets each. Our positive rep speed will be explosive, yet controlled, and the negative portion of each rep will be performed in 3-4 second negatives. Explosive reps train the central nervous system to be capable of recruiting maximal amounts of muscle fiber. The more fibers recruited, the more fibers you can stimulate. The more fibers that get stimulated, the faster you
grow. Finally, allow 2-3 minutes of rest in between sets. The more energy grow. Finally, allow 2-3 minutes of rest in between sets.
Tips for success in Power Week
• Keep a log book of all of your sets and reps. You will need this to constantly push yourself to use 2½ lbs more or 5 lbs more, or to force out 1-2 more reps.
• Don’t feel like a wuss using baby weights. Let me explain. The 2½ lb plates can be one of your greatest allies in gaining strength. Slide one on each side of the
barbell and now you’re doing 5 lbs more than you did last time. While the difference is minute and barely noticeable, those 2½ lb plates will add up quickly over the
course of a few weeks. Sudden weight increases are harder to accomplish and come with a greater probability of injury.
• Make the “BIG 3” your foundation above all else; bench presses, dead lifts, and squats.
• Consume 2 capsules of Mass FX Maximum Strength 30-45 minutes pre-workout. Doing so heightens the alpha male mentality, boosting levels of aggression, intensity, and ultimately
overall power output which is key for generating optimal levels of muscular contraction.
Hypertrophy Time! Weeks 3-4
Now that you’ve added some new strength, you can work with heavier weights in the higher rep ranges. Your muscles are composed of numerous diverse fibers. Some allow for explosive movements to be made, allowing you to lift some VERY heavy weights. These fibers, while phenomenal in their ability to lift incredible amounts of weight, fatigue relatively fast. Other fibers allow for an in creased number of reps to be performed due to their increased mitochondrial energy stores. While these fibers aren’t capable of lifting the extreme weights, they can lift slightly lighter weights for a FAR greater period of time, prior to fatiguing. The bottom line is, all of these fibers are capable of growing, and we’re going to exploit that by training in a variety of ranges to achieve maximum muscle hypertrophy.
Tips for Massive Growth in Hypertrophy Week
• Your first exercise for a given body part should be performed in the 8-9 rep range. Your second exercise for that given body part will then be performed in the 10-12 rep range, and the third exercise performed in the 13-15 rep range. This will ensure optimal stimulation of all possible fiber types, maximizing your hypertrophy potential.
• On the very last set of a given exercise, make that set an all out, balls-to-the-wall, absolute shocker, by incorporating some of the most gruesome intensity training techniques. Use drop sets, triple drop sets, giant sets, supersets, pure negatives, partials, and whatever devious form of torture you can bare to put yourself through on that last set in each exercise.
• Continue to keep a log book, so that you can look back on each workout and push yourself further on each set than you went the previous week.
• Consume 2 capsules of Mass FX Maximum Strength 30-45 minutes pre-workout. Doing so heightens the alpha male mentality, boosting levels of aggression, intensity, and ultimately overall power output which is key for generating optimal levels of muscular contraction.
Pete and Repeat
Weeks 5-6 you will cycle back into the Power Phase, weeks 7-8 will be Hypertrophy weeks, and so on until you have completed a full 12 weeks. At this point it is a good idea to take 1 whole week off from all training to let your joints, muscles and nervous system completely recover. This is tough, I know, as you will literally feel like you are shrinking and losing the progress you’ve just made.
Cardio: Your Secret Weapon to Gain Lean Mass.
I don’t know how many articles I have read in the past stressing that if you want to bulk up and get big, you have to cut out the cardio. For years I have followed this supposed truth, and every year I got fat. And every spring, I had to strip off that fat and lose pounds of hard earned muscle in the process...
The process is a waste of time in achieving your bodybuilding goals. It is time wasted that could be spent adding quality size to your physique. So I am going to go completely against the grain of other articles written before me and say this, “Cutting out cardio is the absolute BIGGEST deception when it comes to bulking.” If you want to get big, you must perform cardio in your weekly sessions. Why is that? Having excellent cardiovascular endurance provides athletes with far greater energy and stamina for lifting weights. This means that you will be able to push yourself harder and longer than you normally could before, which ultimately means that you’ll be able to stimulate a greater number of muscle fibers for enhanced growth.
Another huge benefit of doing cardio is the increased efficiency with which your body can deliver nutrients and oxygen to your muscles. One reason muscular fatigue occurs is due to a lack of oxygen being supplied to your muscle cells. Oxygen is a fuel source for your muscles to burn through when lifting. Increasing the efficiency of your cardiovascular system will also increase the amount of oxygen that can be delivered to your muscles. The more oxygen you get to your muscle cells, the more reps you can crank out. And the more reps you can crank out, the more of a growth stimulus you can create. So what’s the best type of cardio, and how much should I do? High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) has accumulated a large body of supporting evidence for its effectiveness at burning body fat while at the same time protecting and even building muscle mass. Cardio sessions should be no longer than 20-25 minutes, and will include frequent bursts of all out sprints for 20-60 seconds, followed by 30-60 seconds of low intensity cardio. A typical session would start with a 1 minute walk at a brief pace, followed by 30-60 seconds of an all out sprint, and then back to a 1 minute brisk walk, and then followed by another brief burst of sprinting for 30-60 seconds. of low intensity cardio. A typical session would start with a 1 minute walk at a brief pace, followed by 30-60 seconds of an all out sprint, and then back to a 1 minute brisk walk, and then followed by another brief burst of sprinting for 30-60 seconds.
There is plenty of room for variation in this routine, depending on your current level of cardiovascular conditioning and fitness. Start out with brief 20 second bursts of sprinting, and gradually work your way up to brief bursts of 60 seconds over the weeks, or months, as your cardiovascular conditioning becomes accustomed to this style of training.
HIIT style cardio, combined with strategic cycling of your rep ranges throughout the weeks, will undoubtedly kick start your progress to making new gains.
 
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