Articles
Does Turkesterone Work? (Explaining the Scam)
Is turkesterone a good supplement for building muscle? It’s been promoted everywhere lately—Joe Rogan, More Plates More Dates, Greg Doucette, and Vitruvian Physique have all discussed its benefits. The idea is that it can boost testosterone production, allowing us to build muscle faster and more leanly. But is there any good evidence to back those claims up? And if so, what kinds of results can you expect?
Our specialty is helping skinny guys bulk up. Cutting-edge supplements are a bit outside of our wheelhouse. That’s why we spoke with Eric Trexler, Ph.D. He’s got a doctorate degree in sports science, has published over 30 strength and hypertrophy studies, and professionally reviews research for Monthly Applications in Strength Sport (MASS). This is exactly his area of expertise. We also have a few studies to review. And then there’s the official position of the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN).
So, does turkesterone live up to the hype? Can it help you build muscle?
Read More
Are Pre-Workout Supplements Good for Building Muscle?
We’ve seen some heated discussions about ingredients and dosages founds in pre-workout supplements. Does this particular brand have at least six grams of citrulline malate? Is it the correct ratio of citrulline to malate? Is there theanine alongside the caffeine to blunt the jitters? Are they using proprietary blends to hide subpar dosing? Unless you’re super into supplement research, it can be hard to parse.
But the more important question is, will taking a pre-workout supplement actually help you build muscle? Instead of diving right into min-maxing the ingredients and dosages, maybe we should take a step back and see if pre-workout supplements even work.
Read More
Are You a Non-Responder to Weight Training?
There’s no doubt that genetics play a role in building muscle. In fact, especially when looking at outliers, genetics can have an enormous impact. If two people do the same workout routine and eat the same bulking diet, one of those people might gain twice as much muscle.
What’s more contentious is the claim that some people can’t build muscle at all. And there’s some truth to that idea. When most people start lifting weights, they build muscle. But not everyone. And these people who don’t gain muscle have been referred to as “non-responders” or “low-responders” in the research.
So what’s going on here? Weight training is supposed to cause us to adapt by gaining muscle size and strength. Why do some people fail to adapt?
Read More
Should You Build A Dumbbell or Barbell Home Gym?
Let’s say you want to build muscle at home. You’ve got a few different options. You could use your body weight, but bodyweight workouts are painful and difficult. So maybe you decide to get some resistance bands, but they aren’t very good for building muscle. Exercise machines are good for building muscle, but you’d need a different machine for each lift, which is highly impractical. That’s why most people turn to weights: barbells and dumbbells.
Both barbells and dumbbells are great at stimulating muscle growth, both are reasonably affordable, and both can be used to do hundreds of different exercises, allowing you to follow a full hypertrophy training program. Still, barbells and dumbbells aren’t quite the same as one another.
Strength training is known for favouring barbells, bodybuilding is known for favouring dumbbells (and exercise machines). For building muscle, we want to use both strength training and bodybuilding lifts. We want to use aspects of both styles of training. So which should you choose? Barbells or dumbbells?
Let’s go over the pros and cons.
Read More
The Best Workout Splits for Gaining Muscle—Explained
A workout split refers to how you organize your exercises throughout the week. Should you do 2, 3, or 9 workouts? Should you stack all your chest exercises into one of those workouts, split them between two, or do a few sets every workout?
There are a few different workout splits, each of them good, but each with its own pros and cons:
- Body Part “Bro Split:” This split focuses on one body part per workout. Monday is Chest Day, Tuesday is Back Day, and so on. This type of split is incredibly popular with bodybuilders—and for good reason.
- Upper/Lower Split: This split severs your workouts into upper-body days and lower-body days. This split shifts more emphasis toward your lower body, making it great for gaining strength and athleticism. When Marco was helping professional and Olympic athletes bulk up, he had almost all of them on upper/lower splits.
- Push/Pull/Legs Split: This split organizes workouts by movement pattern. Pushing exercises work the triceps, chest, and shoulders. Pulling exercises target the back and biceps. Leg exercises focus on the entire lower body. It’s more logical than a Bro Split but also less clever and efficient.
- Full Body Split: With full-body workouts, you train your entire body every workout, which is ideal for beginner and early intermediate lifters. I gained my first 50 pounds this way. It’s an incredibly powerful split for building muscle in a hurry.
- Hybrid Splits: This split combines different ideas together. For example, maybe you add an upper/lower split to a push/pull/legs split, giving you a 5-day workout routine for gaining strength, athleticism, and muscle size. Or if your arms are lagging behind, maybe you add an Arm Day to your full-body routine.
Without further ado, let’s break all these splits down so you can find the one that’s best for you.
Read More
How to Build a Dumbbell Home Gym
This article covers how to build a dumbbell home gym, which is ideal for people living in smaller apartments or on a tight budget. With two adjustable dumbbells, you can build just as much muscle as you can with a full barbell home gym. Your workouts may not be quite as efficient, but there are actually some interesting advantages to dumbbell training, too—especially for your arms, chest, and shoulders.
There are several different types of adjustable dumbbells, and some are much better than others. When I built my first dumbbell home gym, I made the mistake of buying the wrong type. They were rickety, it was difficult to adjust the weight, and I couldn’t rest them on my legs, making it hard to do the dumbbell bench press. They were such a pain to use that I wound up disliking dumbbell training. But we’ve learned a lot since then. Buying better dumbbells makes all the difference.
Finally, there are some great accessories you can add to your dumbbell home gym, including a workout bench, a chin-up bar, a couple of kettlebells, and maybe even some parallettes or gymnastic rings. These are totally optional, but we’ll go over the advantages they offer.
Read More
How to Build a Barbell Home Gym
Let’s say your goal is to build muscle, and you want to do it at home. If you don’t have a spare room or garage available, you can build a dumbbell home gym, and that’s great. But if you have room for it, a barbell home gym is the ideal way to train. You can do all of the best compound lifts, all of the best accessory lifts, and you can gradually add a little bit of weight to those lifts every workout. Not only that, but barbell training is by far the most efficient way to train. You’ll stimulate a ton of overall muscle mass with every repetition.
The problem is, building a barbell home gym can get confusing. I help people build muscle for a living and I still found it confusing. There are so many different brands, setups, and pieces of equipment. Even when picking a barbell, there are many different types, ranging from power to bars to weightlifting bars. And each type of barbell can have various coatings, ranging from zinc to cerakote.
So what we’ve done in this article is outline a basic setup that’s ideal for building muscle. Then we’ve recommended the best brands and pieces of equipment, going from the most affordable options to the best quality options. I’ll also show you my own barbell home gym and give you links to each piece of equipment I bought.
Read More
The Best Macros for Bulking: How Much Protein, Carbs & Fat to Eat
When figuring out our ideal bulking macros—how much protein, carbs, and fat we should eat—there are a few things we need to consider. First, we can look at the research to see which macros allow us to build muscle the fastest. Second, we can see which macros help us avoid gaining fat while bulking. Third, we can look at which macros make it easier to get into a sustainable calorie surplus.
But a lot of us care about more than merely building muscle. We also want to improve our general health as we do it. So we can also look at which macros have the best impact on our health as we bulk up.
So, what are the best macros for bulking?
Read More
The Best Chest Exercises for Building Muscle
A few compound lifts have earned a reputation for being the best chest exercises: the barbell bench press, dumbbell bench press, weighted dip, and push-up. And it’s true, all of these are great lifts. But there’s a bit more to it than that. These are big compound lifts, working several different muscles at once. Depending on how you do them, you can be limited by your chest, shoulders, or triceps, changing which muscles get most of the growth stimulus. And if you’re trying to build a bigger chest, you need to make sure that your chest’s strength is what limits you.
A few isolation lifts are commonly used to bulk up the chest, too: the dumbbell fly, the cable crossover, the chest fly machine, and the pec deck machine. Again, all of these are great exercises. All of them will help you bulk up your chest. But you can speed up your muscle growth by quite a bit if you focus on working your chest under a deeper stretch, and some of these lifts are better at that than others.
Finally, we have the upper chest, which is often treated as a whole separate beast. What are the best lifts for building a bigger upper chest, and what kind of priority should you give them in your workout routine? For example, should the incline bench press be your main chest lift? Or should you favour the flat bench press?
So, what are the best exercises for building a bigger chest? What are the best lifts for building a bigger upper chest? And how should we organize them into a workout routine? Let’s dive in.
Read More
How to Build a Bigger Chest (Even If It’s Lagging Behind)
The chest is one of the biggest and most powerful muscles in our bodies, but it’s also notoriously difficult to grow, and many people find that it lags behind. In fact, if you’re a naturally skinny guy with narrow shoulders or a shallow ribcage, building a bigger chest may seem downright impossible. I’ve been there.
There are a three principles that reliably improve chest growth:
- Choose exercises where your chest the limiting factor, ensuring that it gets most of the growth stimulus. And if your upper chest is lagging behind, the same rule applies: choose lifts where your upper chest is the limiting factor.
- Challenge your chest under a deep stretch, improving how much muscle growth you stimulate with every set. As we’ll cover below, this can double your rate of muscle growth.
- Make sure that you’re achieving progressive overload, getting stronger over time, gradually lifting more weight or doing more repetitions. This includes eating enough protein and calories to recover and grow from your workouts.
If you can get stronger at lifts that are limited by the strength of your chest, then your chest will grow. And if those lifts challenge your chest under a deep stretch, it will grow much faster.
So, which lifts are best at challenging our chests through a deep range of motion? And how can we make sure that our chests are the limiting factor? Let’s dive in.
Dive In