Ectomorphs Secret Revealed: 6 Keys To Gain 41 Pounds of Muscle In 6 Months

Got this from Vince DelMonte Fitness Blog and he enumerated his key strategies after realizing he needed to begin a career in personal training.



1. I ate EVERY 3 hours for six times a day. I ate breakfast, lunch and dinner and added three homemade meal replacement drinks for the other three meals (one was planned immediately after my workout).

Breakfast
--- consisted of 3-4 whole eggs with 6 egg whites. A few cups of veggies and 2-4 slices of toast with natural peanut butter.

Lunch
--- consisted of two tuna sandwiches on whole wheat bread and a few cups of whole milk. I usually skipped out on veggies this meal because I couldn’t get into eating veggies.

Dinner
--- consisted of some sort of meat my mom would cook, i.e. chicken, beef, salmon, fish etc., combined with rice, pasta or potatoes, and always vegetables (because she cooked them for me).

My shakes
--- consisted of 30-60 grams of protein powder, 1-2 cups of frozen berries, natural peanut butter and sometimes I would put oatmeal and/or ice cream, which was easily 1,000 calories!

2. I recorded every workout in detail. I recorded the reps, sets, rest, exercises, order, how I felt and any extra comments so I always knew what to strive for during the next workout. I made constant progress for six months straight. Approaching a workout, I would know how much weight or reps I needed to increase to beat my previous workout.

3. I focused on making the last set of every exercise an ALL-OUT SET. Just like our track days, the last interval was always the hardest. We would always collapse after the last interval. I applied the same intensity to the last set of EVERY exercise.

4. I focused on full-body workouts because they recruit more motor units and muscle groups than split training. Full-body workouts elicit greater increase in testosterone and GH than split routines too. By training each body part more often, you yield a greater anabolic effect, and since a body part is usually recovered within 48 hours not training that muscle again within 48 hours is wasted time off. Protein synthesis is increased for up to 48 hours after a muscle is trained and then begins to drop back to normal.

5. I focused on compound exercises that positioned me to lift the heaviest weights possible and maximize the most muscle in the shortest period of time. The list for this is short - bench presses, bent over rows, overhead presses, deadlifts, squats, dips, chin ups and hanging leg raises.

6. I switched reps and sets almost every workout to stimulate slow twitch and fast twitch muscle fibers and to gain knowledge of what rep and set ranges created the most hypertrophy. I had a variety of rep and set schemes that varied from 3 x 15, 4 x 10, 5 x 5, 2 x 25, 4 x 12, 6 x 6, 10 x 3, 8 x 8 and guess what? They all worked.

Photo courtesy of:
www.vincedelmontefitness.com