The burn is only temporary but the glory will live on for an eternity! Our all new Extreme swap out meals will help hardgainers learn to eat right to build muscle while the classic X-Factor foundation plan will help veteran athletes continue to build muscle without adding any unwanted fat.
For the complete 90 days, our team will answer questions, modify exercises and work to get you through the program. The program average 5 days per week with each workout clocking in between 10 minutes for some intense conditioning work to about 60 minutes depending on your ability to withstand the finishers! This is Digital Download service, the course is available at Coursecui. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.
Log in. Click to enlarge. Inga Dubodelova - Dance Stretch stretching exercises Next product. Rated 5. Note: Digital download to email address. Add to Wishlist. Add to wishlist. This was obviously pretty easy to achieve. Doing things like this has brought on a new found confidence in the gym. Although the PT and her client were fairly close to me they had plenty of room to move if they wished, and normally I would of felt pressured to get out of their way but I stayed and did what I was there to do.
Something I did notice through these first 4 weeks was that I was not as exhausted at the ends of the workouts as I had been when I was doing my own thing. This is down to doing not more weight, but targeted exercises specific to that muscle group and a different rep range. I do remember my PT saying I had good muscle recovery and endurance, so this might be a key to my future progress.
I also bought with the program the videos of Jeff doing each exercise. Andy has a complete write up of the inconsistencies between some of the instructions www. These videos appeared after Andy posted a review of the program and recommended videos be provided to assist participants complete the program and reduce the chance of injury from incorrect form, something that Athlean-X charge more for now. The timing of this release is not my point here, rather that I also feel that this material should be included as part of the standard program, either by increasing the standard price, or by and what would be considered the right choice in mind of the customer including the material as part of the standard package and releasing it to all those who have previously purchased the system.
Athlean-X has no magical ingredient or exercise that is going to make you 10x stronger than anyone else. What it does offer is a 12 week program, that will probably never get boring, will keep your body guessing as to what is going on and as a result make adaption slower , and tie in all muscle groups together in most exercises which results in, I feel, a much better exercise regime than solely going to the gym and benching weight.
The Athlean-X eating plan, I have read, has an estimated calorie intake per day. I found this very useful and would recommend something similar for people starting out. Similarly, our chests and backs get a bit of stimulation when we train our biceps and triceps. One of the most important parts of building a good hypertrophy program is choosing lifts that are good for stimulating muscle growth and that we can do properly.
Right in the very first video, Jeff Cavaliere explains that this program is good for helping beginners who are struggling to put on their first 15—20 pounds of muscle and for advanced lifters. That creates a bit of a problem. The more complicated a lift is, the harder it is to stimulate muscle growth. It may also—debatably—increase our risk of injury. For instance, a lot of beginners have trouble doing back squats to a decent depth without jamming at their hips, which can prevent them from working their quads through a deep range of motion , and thus makes the lift worse at stimulating muscle growth.
Using a partial range of motion also means that we need to load up heavier weights in order to challenge ourselves, putting extra stress on our knees. Instead of starting with a barbell back squat, why not something like a goblet squat? Goblet squats are also easier to set up, stimulate more growth in our upper backs, and they teach us how to squat through a deeper range of motion.
The only downside is that once we become very strong, we need to lift something heavier than dumbbells. Mind you, Jeff also mentioned that this program can be used by advanced lifters. And in that case, I think the exercise selection here is fairly reasonable. Lots of squats , deadlifts , bench presses , bent-over barbell rows , chin-ups , skull crushers , barbell curls, and so on.
Could the exercise selection be better for an experienced lifter? For example, I think the flat bench press is a better lift than the incline bench press for building a big and powerful chest. It allows the chest and shoulders to be worked harder at longer muscle lengths, which can improve muscle growth.
It also works our mid-chests harder, which is where most of our chest size comes from. Both lifts are great. Similarly, I might choose front squats instead of back squats.
For a seasoned lifter, though, these lifts are pretty good. As mentioned above, Jeff Cavaliere recommends doing partials on the squat and bench press, lowering the weights down to pins instead of bringing them to full depth.
He says that this makes the lift safer, and to be fair, there are certainly people who benefit from restricting the range of motion of their lifts. But it also creates some problems:. We develop better general strength, our workouts are easier to recover from, and we can stimulate more muscle growth. For example, goblet squats and front squats are amazing for teaching people how to squat deeper. On a similar note, Jeff recommends training our muscles at various points of the range of motion with separate lifts.
One lift to stimulate our muscles in a stretched position, another for the mid-range, and another for the contracted position. At the moment, the evidence points in the other direction. If we look at the research, we see that training our muscles at longer muscle lengths stimulates almost three times as much muscle growth meta-analysis.
For example, if we look at a recent study on hamstring training, we see that lifts that train our hamstrings at longer muscle lengths stimulate more growth than lifts that train our hamstrings at shorter muscle lengths.
We get the best of both worlds simply by trying to sink deep into our lifts. Training with a deeper range of motions stimulates more muscle growth and gives our lifts a better stimulus-to-fatigue ratio. We get faster muscle growth, less wear and tear, and we recover more easily. Not everyone can lift with a deep range of motion on every lift, but most people can find lifts that allow them to improve their mobility and train with a good range of motion.
This program features a lot of isometrics. They have their uses. This program uses a lot of isometrics, which may not be the best use of our time or energy. When I was a skinny guy who was desperate to bulk up, I just wanted to build muscle. For example, when I was first bulking up , I started by doing pure hypertrophy training.
But after a few months of that, I added in two minute cardio workouts every week to improve my overall fitness. Every workout, I would try to improve my performance. There was progressive overload built into my training, even for cardio. So no issue there. There are random challenges tacked onto the end of each training phase. Jeff Cavaliere is a big advocate of making things as painful as possible, and these are designed to be brutally hard. Will that increase muscle growth?
Not really, no. But some people enjoy being challenged just for the sake of the challenge. The Max Size workout program starts off with 10 sets of 10 repetitions right from the very first workout. That means that if we start with an extremely high training volume, we cause excessive muscle damage, which can reduce muscle growth.
Plus, that high training volume will also cause crippling muscle soreness, impairing our ability to do our next workout properly, and thus further reducing our muscle growth. If someone wanted to experiment with German Volume Training, a more sensible approach would be to start by doing 2—3 sets per exercise and gradually working their way up week by week. Most people cap out at around 6 sets per exercise which is why German Volume Training is usually a bad idea , but some people are outliers that can benefit from higher training volumes.
Those outliers could continue adding sets all the way up to 10 sets per exercise. As we progress through the Max Size workout routine, the rep ranges and exercise order are shuffled from workout to workout, and the training methods are changed from phase to phase.
Some people find that way of training more interesting, but it also makes it harder to measure our progress to see if we need to adjust our training. It just makes our progress harder to gauge. There are also some peculiar methods being used here, such as doing concentric-only training one day and then doing eccentric-only training the next day.
I suspect it would be more effective to keep the phases more similar to one another but to put more emphasis on progressive overload. It starts off way too intense right out of the gate and then variables are shuffled around from week to week to keep things interesting. Better to eat a diet that we enjoy, can afford, that fits our schedule, and that we can digest well.
I love that. Some of the diet advice is more questionable. He subscribes to the old bodybuilder method of eating every 2. But with that said, some hardgainers find it helpful to eat lots of meals and snacks. We often have smaller stomachs than the average guy, and so eating smaller meals more frequently makes it easier to eat enough calories to gain weight.
Simple carbs are easily converted into energy, and so most athletes eat quite a bit of sugar or starch. Our muscles are literally full of sugar. Muscle glycogen is sugar. Our muscles are powered by sugar.
Some advice is missing, too. Most research shows that we can maximize muscle growth with 0. To build an appreciable amount of muscle as a skinny guy, we need to eat in a calorie surplus. Sleep is an underrated aspect of building muscle. By improving our sleep, we can build muscle faster and gain less fat while doing it study. We generally recommend a little more sleep than that, but his advice lines up the recommendations of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine source , so no problem there.
But his advice is solid, and I appreciate that he mentions it at all. I think the sleep and overall lifestyle recommendations in this program could be more detailed.
On the other hand, not every bulking program needs to have everything in it. What then? Who knows. For people who know to eat enough calories and protein, it will deliver on that promise.
I was able to gain twenty pounds during my first three months of lifting. These workouts are enough to stimulate muscle growth. If this program gets you motivated to train, absolutely buy it. His specialty is helping people build muscle to improve their strength and general health, with clients including college, professional, and Olympic athletes.
In my opinion, I really think you should keep on analyzing programs like this. Also, it helps us to save a lot of money lol.
Anyway, just want to let you know that your articles are awesome, seriously. Congrats for the good work! Combine a halfway decent workout routine with a good bulking diet and people do grow. And then from there, people can continue to learn more and improve their workout routines. But if you guys really like these reviews, we can write more. I love calisthenics and they are challenging but look cool when you can do them. After doing b2b for over 6 years when corona took away my gym it was hard to do body routine workouts from what I learned in b2b not enough variety got me bored.
This pushed me into no equipment workouts with calisthenics. They are fun but hard to progress in. My cardio was lacking as well from getting too cushy in my gym routines. After 3 months I am slowly getting better at these new routines with calisthenics but I think it might be very challenging for skinny guys with no previous lifting experience.
My year-old nephew who I was training at the gym in the b2b ways, loved the b2b training but gave up after 2 sessions of calisthenics. Yeah, I can take a look to see if he has any bulking programs. If so, I could probably review it. It gives a framework for how to gain muscle size with calisthenics. You could take those principles and apply them to the exercises that ThenX teaches in his videos.
Personally, I find it much easier and more enjoyable to stimulate muscle growth by lifting weights. But calisthenics can work! The program just needs to be built around the same hypertrophy principles as any other bulking program. I started my strength training with you guys several years back and have always appreciated your thorough and evidence-based approach — I feel like I know what you guys value in a program.
Thanks for the info! Thank you very much. Your review was fair and well thought out. I am at the beginning of my journey and your review educated me and will Help me make better decisions going forward. This was a great article, as a skinny guy who is trying to build muscle, I stumbled upon their channel, but was a bit confused by their routines, but this article clarified the fact that a short and simple progressive overload routine can be much more effective.
And then from there, the emphasis is on outlifting yourself every workout, always aiming to add a little weight, squeeze out an extra rep, or add a set. That said, I appreciate what you said about sticking to your main experience in muscle building for hard gainers. Marco cut his teeth as a strength coach by helping college, pro, and Olympic athletes build muscle.
When I was a skinny guy who was trying to bulk up, I was really frustrated by the lack of options that were available. Then, a couple of years after we made our program, Precision Nutrition re-launched their Scrawny to Brawny program. But after a couple of years, they closed it down to focus on helping overweight people.
And I get that. Over half the population in developed countries is overweight or obese. Only around 2. It gets more complicated because almost all of the best strength coaches make content for advanced lifters. Those are all great. Firstly, I really enjoyed reading this article!
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