ARE YOU A HARDGAINER AND CAN'T PUT ON WEIGHT?

How To Gain Weight The Natural Physique Way.

Quite often I have someone email me or come up to me in the gym and ask how they can put on weight as they find it impossible. After they tell me they eat a ton of food I ask them to tell me a typical days nutrition. 9 times out of 10 I find they are eating way too little. A sandwich, packet of crisps and a Milky Way won’t go far when you have the metabolic rate of a Bugatti Chiron!

Winning the Junior Mr Europe at 20 years old in Holland 1992.

When I was a teenager just starting training I didn’t realise the importance of nutrition and getting in enough calories. My nutrition was based around cornflakes, jam sandwiches and whatever my mum cooked for dinner! It’s just food, it stops you being hungry I thought. Well, after a long chat with the owner of the gym I trained at, who was an IFBB Professional bodybuilder, he convinced me of the importance of food. It’s worth a try this food lark, lets up my food intake and see what happens!

Well, he wasn't wrong! After thinking what the hell can food do, I had a complete turn around of thinking. I grew like a weed, a couple of stone on in just a few weeks. There’s something in this eating game! The muscle went on, I got so much stronger and not long after training I had plenty of compliments from gym members about my gains, that does wonders for an extremely shy 16 year old!

The day before I won the ANB South East Junior Championships at 19 years of age 1992.

My jam sandwiches and cornflakes made way for eggs, steak, milk and weight gain protein drinks. Increasing your calorific intake is like training with weights, you have to build the calories up over time and be very disciplined. Over time my daily food intake was 26-30 whole eggs, 2lbs of steak (I had a friendly butcher who helped me out) 6 pints of milk and plenty of chicken! It is a lot of food and sometimes I had trouble eating it all but I wanted to gain size and naturally so bad.

So if you want to gain weight and muscle and you are not putting on weight then seriously think about the amount of food you eat. If the weight isn’t going on then your calories are too low. Increase your calories say by 500 calories a day, after a week if no weight has gone on then add another 500 calories until the weight starts to increase. It really is as easy as adding calories! Pick good calorie dense foods, combine with a good training program and see things happen. If weight still isn’t going on then keep raising your food intake. I never said it will be easy!

Here’s an example of my nutrition as a junior natural champion in the off season. I’m not saying follow it to the letter but rather what I had to do personally to gain weight/muscle without putting on too much fat -

Breakfast

12 whole egg omelette or boiled eggs

1 very large bowl of oats made with full fat milk or cereal like bran flakes

1 pint of milk

Mid Morning

Weight Gain drink made with whole milk

3 bananas

Lunch

1 lb of fillet/sirloin steak

2-3 jacket potatoes with cheese

Plenty of veg

1 pint of milk

Mid Afternoon

Weight Gain drink made with whole milk

3 bananas or pack of rice cakes

Dinner

1lb of minced steak

2-3 potatoes or big serving of rice

Plenty of veg

Big bowl of ice cream

Before Bed

12 whole egg omelette or boiled eggs

1 very large bowl of oats made with full fat milk or cereal like bran flakes

1 pint of milk

If you need someone to guide you through this and want continued support have a think about my online coaching and I can be there every step of the way.

Thanks for listening!

Peter Chown

My Mindset! By Peter Chown

Mr Natural Universe?  My life?  What was the mindset that I had to achieve what I have achieved in natural bodybuilding?  Hey, its no secret, it was just the way I lived my life!  But none the less I am more than happy to share with you my 'secrets'.  

I started competing as a natural bodybuilder in 1991 after 2 and a half years of training and over the years have won several Under 21 Junior titles including the Junior Mr Britain and Junior Mr Europe.  Later on in my career my achievements extending to winning the INBF World Heavyweight tile in 2005 in NYC and a year later winning the heavyweight title and overall champion at the INBA Natural Mr Universe in Los Angeles, California where I earned my natural bodybuilding professional status.  Plenty of moments I will remember for the rest of my life.  

ANB SOUTH EAST AGE 23, WINNING THE HEAVYWEIGHT CLASS AND OVERALL IN 1996.

Getting yourself into the mindset to train for a bodybuilding competition can be hard!  You know you have many weeks, or even months if you have more than one competition lined up, of hard dieting, hard training, 24 hour commitment, tiredness.  What the hell made me want to do this?!  Well, it is a sport I love and luckily for me its a sport that I was encouraged to compete in from early on in my training as I was actually good at it!  I'm not very good at many things so this was my opportunity to excel in a sport.  When I'm passionate about something my drive towards my goals is intense.  Even before I started training I knew I wanted to be a bodybuilder, I wanted to win the Junior Mr Britain title, to be one of the best in the world.  

One other thing that drove me as well was that I was scared of losing!  I wanted to win, I wanted to feel special, I wanted to inspire others to build a body that they want, if I can do it then so can others.  I was a very shy teenager, I worked in retail where you get many customers look down at you, I wanted to prove that with drive, determination, consistency that this shy teenager in a dead end job could work hard and become a World Heavyweight Champion, a Mr Universe, who could train in Golds Gym in Venice California and be recognised for the physique he built.  

What else drove me to have this intense mindset?  It was seeing how much the body can take in the gym, as I have always been lifetime natural I didn't have the option of drugs helping me build my physique.  I didn't want to limit myself either with the mindset that as I was natural then I'm limited to only building a smaller physique, a physique that could only lift a limited amount of weight.  My goal was to build a physique that wouldn't of looked out of place amongst 1980's style physiques, as to me this was one of the best eras of bodybuilding.   If I told myself that I can't do this because I'm natural, I can't do that because I'm natural then I would limit myself to what I could achieve.  I was a bodybuilder, thats it.  I trained harder than anyone else, I was known for crazy intense training sessions, especially leg workouts.  I got the respect of high ranking non natural competitive bodybuilders.  It's amazing how much punishment the human body can take.  I'm not saying this is the way for everyone to train as everyones goals are different, but this was my mindset, every workout was a challenge, I trained intelligently, but like a nutter too!  

A massive tool that helped me too was visualisation.  I'll cover this inmate depth in a separate blog another time.  In my mind I had what I wanted my body to look like.  Every workout I trained my body, I could 'see' the fibres contracting, the muscle growing.  My body just had grow into what was in my mind.  Every time I ate a meal, every gram of protein was building my body, every step of cardio pre contest was turning my body into a fat burning furnace.  Visualisation really works!

One other thing that is really important, and something I learned later in my competitive career is a balance in life.  Even though I was very intense with it all I learnt to switch off as well.  Pre contest I still made time for others in my life, not early in my career, but the last few years I did.  In the early years I thought everyone should understand what I was going through.  I didn't make much time for others pre contest.  It was when an ex of mine competed I found it really hard to be the partner who wasn't competing, not going out, the arguments.  This was coming from someone like me who had competed several times!  I thought if I found it hard then what must people think who aren't into the sport who's other half is competing, it must be hell!   From then on when I competed I always made time to do things with my other half, no matter how tired I was, my cool bag can come with me and we can have days out.  It helped and I then had more of a balance, certainly not perfect, I did have competitions coming up but I made the effort.  Now when competitors tell me their husbands or wives don't understand, its causing problems in their relationship, I can help.  Competing certainly isn't worth losing a great relationship over and no-one forces us to go through this, we can stop at anytime.  

This sport isn't for everyone, I've seen many people diet for a show and they've suffered badly mentally, they just haven't got the right mindset, they're almost losing their mind, they get angry with everyone, ranting, its really not worth it.  Competing should be fun, seriously hard, but fun seeing the changes your body can make with hard work.  If its not fun then take another sport or activity up, life too short! 

Anyway, I waffled on enough I think but I'll cover more on mindset, visualisation etc. in the future. If you have anything you'd like me to cover then just let me know!  

Peter Chown

Congratulations!

I just wanted to say a big congratulations to my client Fanni for her recent success at the Pure Elite competition.  Fanni's goal was to transform her body for her first bikini competition and that she did! Although she didn't place you have to admit that her transformation was fantastic!  She put in the hard work,  dieted hard but sensibly and naturally, no unnatural unhealthy fat burners, and the results show.  She also enjoyed the whole prep ( so she tells me 😜).   

Congratulations Fanni! 

PETER CHOWN TRAINING TIPS

Chownie's Quick Tips - Parallel Grip Pulldown  

To add variety to the pulldown movement, try various grips and bar attachments. You'll hit the muscles from different angles resulting in your progress moving forward.  Here's the parallel grip, wide grip pulldown, filmed at Muscle Limit Gym.  Work on that mind-muscle connection, focusing on the muscle working, feeling it stretch and contract. 

Join Us For A Leg Session!

Taking Michelle Holkham Through A Leg Session. 

Every week I put Michelle, one of the trainers here at Natural Physique,  through a training session focusing on developing her legs further.  So one Saturday afternoon, at Muscle Limit Gym, we thought we'd film the session!  If you want to make improvements, you have to put in the effort, you only get out what you put in right? 

Train Hard!  

Peter 

How I Transformed My Physique In Under A Year!

Progress Is Impossible Without Change.

By Peter Chown

While I was competing at the 2006 BNBF British I heard so many comments about how much size I had put on in only a few months. I also heard a few comments that was music to my ears and that was how balanced my physique was! No longer did I hear that my legs over power my upper body. I have been trying to achieve this balance for years and have finally done it!

So what are my secrets? Well, for years I was doing the same type of training, each body part once a week, low sets and heavy weight. My size had pretty much stayed the same for years, maybe the odd pound or two of muscle was added. I started to feel frustrated, surely I haven’t reached my size limit? I wanted to be bigger, better and no way was I going to accept the size I was. So I decided to go back to the drawingboard, and what I decided to do was go against everything that I believed in.

After the 2005 BNBF British I had a week off from the gym, then once back, hitting the weights hard. I started a 12 week strength training phase basing my workouts around the bench press, deadlift and squat. The sets were high and the reps were low, around six sets never going higher than 5 reps usually down to 2-3 reps. My strength increased dramatically, just what I wanted so once I enter my hypertrophy phase I would be able to do higher reps with a lot more weight than before which would equal more muscle mass.

This phase continued into a personal training course I was studying in Cyprus and once my strength training was over I ended up having six weeks off from training so Icould concentrate on my studies and enjoy my time there. I did feel a bit guilty about the long layoff but my studies were very important to me and it ended up being a blessing.

On my return from Cyprus I was so fired up and couldn’t wait to hit the gym and start adding the size I desperately wanted to improve my physique. A big change I made to my training was to increase my training from 3-4 times a week to 6 times, training each body part twice a week. But training each body part twice a week surely I would over train? You’ll be surprised. Once you increase your frequency and volume of your workouts the body will adapt and recover a lot quicker which means training body parts more often resulting in more muscle gains and we all want that right?

I split my body over 3 days, the first 3 days I trained heavy, keeping the reps in the 6-8 range. I then repeated my body split the following 3 days but training lighter and upping the reps to 20 and my rest down to 30-60 seconds.

I started this training in April 2006 and by July I had put on 7lbs of lean muscle. I was shocked. I hadn’t made that much progress since I first started training and here I was 17 years into my training and making gains like I was a beginner!

So I challenge you to radically change your training around and see what happens.

Good luck! 

Peter