Stuart McRobert

I’m a big fan of free weights. I’m also a big fan of good weight machines. I love all good gym equipment.

But more important than the gym equipment itself is how the training tools are used and by whom.

Bare-bones gym equipment used properly will yield better results than a comprehensive range of excellent gym equipment that’s not used properly.

But unless you’re properly using exercises that are well-suited to you, you’ll never realize your potential for muscle and strength.

Free-weight exercises, especially the major compound ones, are much more technically demanding than their machine alternatives. But most trainees never learn the proper form for the major free-weight exercises, so they never experience the potential great benefits of those wonderful movements. Many of those trainees get injured and some of them give up training as a result.

If you’re a powerlifter, you must squat, bench press, and deadlift. If you’re not a powerlifter, you don’t have to squat, bench press, and deadliftplumrocket

Mark Houghton (above), one of HARDGAINER 2.0's every-issue authors and a lifetime drug-free bodybuilder. Between 2007 and 2009, he was competing in bodybuilding shows whilst working shifts. His impaired sleep had a negative effect on his training and physique. By 2010, he was back on a regular work and sleep pattern. He believes his much-improved sleep contributed to his improved physique shown here, at age 47, in Manchester, England, 2012, at the British Natural Bodybuilding Federation’s British Championships, where he won the Overall Masters’ Champion.

Here’s Part 2 of my sleep guide for bodybuilders and strength trainees.

Improve your sleep, and in turn you’ll improve your health, workouts, and recovery ability. Then, provided you’re truly on a good training program, you’ll improve your progress with building muscle and strength.

This sleep guide is also applicable to anyone else who wants to improve their health, vitality, and physical performance.

Please read Part 1 of this articleplumrocket

Mark Houghton (above), one of HARDGAINER 2.0's every-issue authors and a lifetime drug-free bodybuilder. Between 2007 and 2009, he was competing in bodybuilding shows whilst working shifts. His impaired sleep had a negative effect on his training and physique. By 2010, he was back on a regular work and sleep pattern. He believes his much-improved sleep contributed to his improved physique shown here, at age 47, in Manchester, England, 2012, at the British Natural Bodybuilding Federation’s British Championships, where he won the Overall Masters’ Champion.

This article isn’t on resistance training, but on other critical matters you must get right if you want bodybuilding and strength training success. Otherwise, you could do a great job in the gym, but still make little or no progress. Such is the great importance of sleep.

An exaggerated focus on training routines, and the endless chopping and changing of them, are at the root of the lack of progress most trainees endure.

Of course, ifplumrocket

Rich Fitter, October 1999 (above). As a lifetime drug-free competitor, Rich‘s best placings were first in the heavyweight classes at the 2000 INBF Natural Hercules International and the 2000 INBF Natural Northeast America/Hernandez Classic. Every time he competed, he was polygraphed and urine tested for anabolic steroids and other banned substances. Photograph by Anthony Fodera.

Here are Rich‘s words from 2021: “I'm blessed to have followed my dream of living my life as a bodybuilder, but it would never have been possible if I hadn‘t discovered HARDGAINER magazine 30 years ago. If I‘d not used abbreviated training routines like the ones found on its pages, I wouldn‘t have achieved my bodybuilding success. Truly, the magazine changed my life.“

The lessons I teach aren’t based on just my journey. They are a fusion of the experiences and acquired wisdom of generations of drug-free bodybuilders and strength trainees.

Abbreviated training works big time for hard gainers when it’s appliedplumrocket

"Does hard-gainer-style training really work?" you may ask. That's what Chuck Miller asked nearly 30 years ago when he was looking for a much more effective and time-efficient way of training than the mainstream/conventional one. Then, in 1991, he came across Stuart McRobert's HARDGAINER print magazine and his book BRAWN. Chuck put the hard-gainer-style training into practice, and the above photograph shows the results. Chuck is a lifetime drug-free trainee.

If your training isn’t working, and provided you’re taking your workouts seriously, you’re almost certainly a hard gainer.

All drug-free women are hard gainers, but some are harder gainers than others.

Nearly all drug-free men are hard gainers, but some are harder gainers than others.

Doing more of what didn’t help you over the last few months isn’t going to help you over the next few months.

Stop wasting workouts!

It’s time to try a different approach.

“What’s the deal with the ‘hard-gainer’ label?”

What I’ve done from my earliestplumrocket