The Stupid Simple Easy Weirdo Guide To Building Muscle & Strength.
Hey there Human!
Josh here.
Today it seems as though you and I have more in common than just being good looking and Weird.
Why?
Because a little birdie says you want to gain more muscle!
And…
Well…
Guess what…
I want to gain more muscle as well!
So instead of preaching, lecturing, and quoting studies, theories, and beliefs, I’m gonna jump right in and show you step-by-step exactly how I’m building strength and muscle for myself.
So grab your mommas shake weight and follow along!
Here’s where I’m starting:
These pics are of me today before my daily workout. For reference, I’m 5’7″ and when I weighed myself this morning, I weighed 137.2 pounds.
Mom…I know…
“You’re too skinny,” she says. “You need to eat more… Get yourself another piece of pot roast… Chocolate is a super fruit…”
And maybe she’s right. But in all honesty, I love my body, and I love how I look and feel but here’s the thing:
I’ve been steadily losing strength.
Here’s a quick pic from Monday’s workout log:
Let me decipher this because I realize it doesn’t make much sense. The highlighted number you see within those parentheses are the most recent number of reps completed on my most current workout. So a few months ago, I was banging out nine repetitions (with a hundred pounds on the bar) on my first Working Set, but at some point I began to lose strength and then I could only do eight reps instead of the nine. Now I’m at a point where I can only do seven.
For my second set, I was completing eight reps, but now I can only do six. Third set I was doing seven reps, now I can only do six. Mind you, this is not a one-time event where maybe I was just having an off day, or where I was tired, or stressed, or whatnot. If that were the case, I wouldn’t change anything. I’d simply show up the following week and not be so tired, or stressed, or whatnot, and I’d complete (at a minimum) my normal number of reps of 09, 08, 07, 11.
However, this degradation has been consistent for several weeks now.
I’m now at a point where I can only do reps of 07, 06, 06, 11, rather than the 09, 08, 07, 11 that I was doing a few months ago. No Bueno.
I am slowly losing strength.
Let’s talk about why and how this happened.
Why In The World Am I Losing Muscle
Even Though I Keep Working Out?
If you’ve previously read the ‘Stupid Simple Easy Weirdo Guide To Murdering Your Fat’ then you may recognize the below picture. This is a before-and-after of my own weight loss journey.
I lost a little over forty pounds, blah…blah…blah…yadda…yadda…yadda…who cares…
The important point I’m trying to make is that to murder all that fat (which was my original goal) I had to consistently implement three fundamental and specific actions, which were, (1) To start at the right spot, (2) To consistently eat less calories than my body could burn, (3) To simply not give up.
Now there are a million different tactics, tricks, hacks, diets, rules, workout programs, etc. to help you and I lose weight but to achieve the long-term goal of weight loss, each and every one of those different tactics, tricks, hacks, diets, rules, workout programs, etc. must conform to the three fundamentals of weight loss.
In my own way (using a system that works specifically for me and my lifestyle) I’ve structured my life around the ‘Three Weirdo Fundamentals of Weight Loss’ which is why I lost weight, but here’s the thing:
You and I, We Can’t Lose Weight Forever!!!
Neither of us want to wither away to nothing!
At some point, the goal must shift from weight loss to maintenance, or from weight loss to muscle building.
For me personally, once I murdered about forty pounds of fat and the scale was hovering around 140, I decided to stop focusing on weight loss and to start focusing on maintaining my body weight.
At that time, I wanted to stay as close to 140 pounds as possible.
I didn’t want to weigh much more than 140 pounds; I didn’t want to weight much less than 140 pounds.
My goal was to maintain.
Why?
Because at 140 pounds I feel great, and I feel like I look great, and the entire goal of this fitness and weight loss game is to reach a point where we are proud of how we look and feel.
Let me say this again in another way because it is that important:
The entire goal of fitness and weight loss is to reach a point where we’re living within a body we love rather than grudgingly living within a body we secretly despise.
With that said, after I lost forty pounds of blubber and reached a point where I was happy with how I looked and felt, my goal was to keep the muscle I had while also keeping the fat from coming back.
As you now know, I’ve managed to successfully keep off the fat, but in the process, I have slowly begun to lose muscle.
So why is this happening? I’ve not slacked in the gym. (Actually, if anything, I’ve added more exercises to my workouts to specifically target muscle growth in my legs.)
And I have not switched up my eating habits. On the vast majority of days, I eat at (or pretty close) to my Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE), which is the number of calories my body burns in a day.
So if my body burns 2,200 calories a day (which it typically does), then I replenish my body with no more than 2,200 calories per day. I don’t want to eat more calories than my body burns because that is how weight gain occurs. That is how I will get fat again, and in no way, shape, or form do I want to gain back those 40 pounds.
I don’t want to go backwards.
I don’t want to go back to the body I had. The one I hated. The one I despised. The one I was ashamed of.
But…
Here’s the weird and crazy thing…
This very fear of eating more calories is actually the very thing causing me to lose muscle.
Makes zero sense, I know. But in the game of fitness and weight loss there are three non-negotiable laws which must be followed:
The Three Laws of Fitness & Weight Loss:
- To lose weight you must consistently eat less calories than your body burns.
- To maintain your current weight, you must consistently eat a number of calories equal to what your body burns.
- To gain weight you must consistently eat more calories than your body burns.
In my case (because I’m so focused on maintaining my current weight and so fearful of getting fat again) I’m always consistently eating on the low side of my TDEE.
Some days I’ll eat 1,950 calories even though my body burns 2,200 calories.
Other days, I’ll eat 2,170 calories.
Other days will be 2,000.
Of course, every day is different, but on average I’m consistently straddling the line between eating a number of calories equal to what my body burns and eating a number of calories less than my body burns.
So I’m typically always in either a small calorie deficit or I’m eating at my maintenance level. Rarely am I in a calorie surplus.
Yes, I have the occasional cheat meal where I go hog wild and eat like a maniac, but this does not happen very often – maybe once or twice a month. And then I am right back to eating how I normally eat.
Here’s the lesson I have learned from this:
If you (or I, or any human) consistently eat less calories than our bodies can burn, then we will lose fat (Yah!!!).
However, if you (or I, or any human) consistently eat less calories than our bodies can burn, we WILL also lose muscle in the process (Noooo!!!).
Just as there are core fundamentals to murdering fat, there are also core fundamentals to maintaining or building muscle.
You can do any exercise, workout, diet, protein shake, creatine, hack, trick, internet-guru-ninja-tip you choose, but if you do not consistently adhere to the core fundamentals of maintaining or building muscle, you will not maintain or build muscle.
It’s as simple as that.
Without further ado, here are the four non-negotiable fundamentals for maintaining and/or building new muscle.
Weirdo Muscle Fundamental #1:
You must actually use your muscles if your goal is to maintain or gain new muscle.
Listen.
Come closer.
It’s important you hear this.
No amount of protein, creatine, or limitless pills are going to magically cause you to maintain or gain muscle if you do not ever actually use your muscles.
Your body is super-smart and super-efficient, and it will only maintain or build muscle if you actually need to maintain or build muscle.
Stick with me here: Let’s say you have an ugly orange pillow that’s shaped like a carrot. Your grandma gave it to you for Christmas. You love your grandma, but you hate this pillow. Mostly because you hate carrots. Yuck! You hide the dreadful thing in the darkest corner beneath your bed so you’ll never have to look at it again. One day, you decide to make a Goodwill trip. You reach under your bed and retrieve the pillow and you donate it to some Bugs Bunny loving fool. There, it’s gone. Forever. And good riddance. You never liked it. You never used it.
A month later, grandma comes over for spaghetti. And lo and behold, she walks in carrying wait…is that? You’re flabbergasted. You’re twenty percent embarrassed, thirty percent ashamed. You swallow your excuses and decide to simply spit the truth. “Grandma,” you explain, “I didn’t much like that pillow. I didn’t use it, and I wanted it to go where it would be better utilized.”
Cool.
Grandma understands.
But what does this stupid story have to do with maintaining or gaining muscle?
Look…if you treat your muscles like they’re all a bunch of ugly-orange-carrot-pillows, and you hide them under the bed, and you never use them, and you never acknowledge them, then your body will take all your ugly-orange-carrot-pillow-muscles and donate them to a place where they will better be utilized.
If you’re not using them, your body will find them a new home.
Where is this new home you may ask? Is it safe? Will my muscles be well cared for? Will they go to a well-kept house in a safe neighborhood with good schools?
Sorry to break it to you, sunshine, but, no, they most definitely will not.
Here’s the down and dirty the nice girl at the ‘Muscle Relocation Agency’ didn’t tell you:
Our bodies need energy to properly function and survive, and our bodies typically get this energy from the calorie’s we stuff in our mouths (AKA: Food).
But if you or I consistently provide our bodies with less energy than it requires, then our bodies will begin searching (far-and-wide) for the energy it needs.
Our bodies will toss the couch cushions and look under the bed. Our bodies will check the car seats, all its old pants pockets, peek inside the washer and dryer. And after our bodies have searched every nook and cranny, it will then look around and notice our unused muscles lounging and napping shamelessly on the recliner.
Just taking up space.
Being good for nothing.
Being useless.
“Hmmmm,” your body will think.
And then your unused muscles will be dragged off the recliner and taken into the garage where they will be grinded up, broken down, and fed to all the hardworking components of your body. This is done to ensure the hardworking components of your body can continue doing God’s Work. We’re talking about your immune system for example, which needs constant energy to fight off diseases and infections, and your heart, which needs constant energy to continue pumping blood throughout your body, and your brain, which needs constant energy to process your billions of thoughts, and your lungs, which needs constant energy to keep you breathing, and then add up all the other millions of significant things your body must do to keep you healthy and alive—what do they have in common? They all require a constant supply of energy.
Here’s the point:
If you want to keep or grow your muscles, you must tell your body you want to keep or grow your muscles, and the only way to convey this is by using the muscles you want to keep or grow.
Otherwise…
Well…
There’s no gentle way to say this…
But…
If you don’t use the muscles you want to keep or grow then those unused muscles are going to be hauled into the garage, savagely murdered, and then fed to your heart!
I know…I know…I know…
This fitness game is savage!
Obviously, the great glaring question now becomes:
How Exactly Do You Prevent Your Muscles From Being Butchered In Your Garage?
Now that we know you must use your muscles to prevent them from getting slaughtered, the natural slew of questions are: Which workouts should you do? What specific exercises? Which are the best workouts? Which are the worst workouts? How long should your workouts last? How many days per week should you work out? How many reps should you do? How many sets? How do you stay consistent? What if you don’t have access to a gym? Can you do body weight workouts? What splits should be done? Should you call the muscle police?! Should you be worried? Is Dexter Morgan coming for your muscles!!!???
Here’s the good news:
We’re gonna cover all these questions and more in Phase Two of this article, and then you’ll have all the necessary info to save your muscles from the chopping block.
But…
Here’s the bad news:
This is only the first of four non-negotiable fundamentals for maintaining and/or building muscle.
Unfortunately, there are still three more ways in which your muscles can be murdered.
Let’s breeze through these other three ways, and then we’ll walk through all the ninja techniques your muscles can use to fight off the thugs, the bullies, the murderers, the cannibals, the serial killers, the hoodlums, the vandals, the Dexter Morgans.
Weirdo Muscle Fundamental #2:
To maintain or build muscle, you must eat an equal amount of calories (to maintain muscle) or an excess amount of calories (to build muscle) than your body can burn.
Imagine you’re building a great new house for you, your family, and your growing collection of garden gnomes. Why you keep accumulating all these garden gnomes, I don’t know. Neither do you. Neither does your family. No one knows.
Regardless, the garden gnomes keep coming. Day-after-day, month-after-month, your collection grows.
Now it’s at a level where you must make a decision.
Either you get rid of your family, you get rid of the garden gnomes, or you build a great new house to accommodate them all.
You’ve decided on option three.
You’re gonna build this great new house!
You start with bricks. And with concrete. And with wood. And brick-by-brick, you actually build this thing.
It takes forever, but you do it.
First off, good job!
Your wife is happy.
Your kids are happy.
Your garden gnomes are happy.
You are happy!
Time goes by…
The seasons change.
A year passes. Then two. The garden gnomes multiply. “They’re like gremlins,” your wife comments one evening.
They sorta are, you think. Actually, sometimes they seem to multiple by night. You go to bed and there’s two on your nightstand. You wake up and eight porcelain eyeballs stare back at you expectantly.
You’ve begun to put them in the bathrooms. In the kitchen cabinets. In your daughter’s closet.
You decide it’s time to add an extra room to your great-big-house.
A garden gnome room.
Maybe even a full garden gnome storage shed.
Back to Home Depot where you get more concrete, more bricks, more wood.
And you do this because it is impossible to build more house without more materials.
In regards to our bodies and our goal of building muscle, this same principle applies. It is impossible to build more muscle if you do not have something to build more muscle with.
You cannot add more muscle if you don’t add anything to your body.
Just as you would need more materials to build an extra room onto your house, your body needs more materials if it is going to build more muscle onto your body.
Unfortunately, we can’t simply run up to Home Depot and buy more muscle and then scotch-tape, Gorilla glue, or Lego block it onto our bodies. Instead, we humans must get all our muscle building materials from a place called the kitchen.
Yep, that’s right…we just need to eat more food!
Just as the primary construction materials for building a house comes from concrete, brick, and wood—the primary construction materials for building muscle comes from calories.
Your body cannot add more muscle if you are not giving your body more calories than it burns.
Without extra calories to build with, your body will simply be kicking at dirt piles, and smoking cigarettes, and staring at their hammers. Your body must be provided with the concrete, the bricks, the wood—and you provide your body with these muscle building materials by putting calories in your mouth, down your throat, and into the callused hands of all the little workers inside your body, which I call the ‘Olympic Muscle Building Hypertrophy Team’.
What exactly does this mean for you and I?
Simply said: It means that if you and I are trying to build muscle, then we must eat more.
How’s that for good news!!!
Let’s make sure we’re both still on the same page.
Here’s where we’re at so far:
- You and I both want to gain more muscle.
- We tell our bodies we want to gain more muscle by using more of the muscles we want to make bigger and/or stronger. (Weirdo Muscle Fundamental #1:)
- Our bodies then laugh in our face. Our bodies look around in mock exasperation. “What…” they reply, “you think we can just build more muscle with our good looks and winning smiles?” Our bodies demand building materials. Our bodies make a list. And when we read that list there are only two words on it: MORE CALORIES!
The entire point of Weirdo Muscle Fundamental #2 is this:
To gain muscle or strength you must eat more calories than your body can burn.
Again, this leads to a slew of new questions such as:
How much do I need to eat? What should I eat? What should I not eat? How much is too much? How do I stay consistent? Can I have cheat days? How many cheat days can I have? When can I have my cheat days? Can I still eat chocolate? Can I still drink alcohol? Will this make me fat? How can I eat more calories without gaining weight? When do I stop eating more calories than my body can burn?
Here’s the good news:
We’re gonna cover all these questions and more in Phase Two of this article, and then you’ll know exactly how many calories to give the tiny little muscle building construction workers within your body.
But…
Here’s the bad news:
Before our tiny little muscle building construction workers can successfully build us more muscle, there are still two more things we absolutely must provide them.
The next weirdo fundamental for building muscle and strength is:
Weirdo Muscle Fundamental #3:
You CANNOT maintain or build muscle and strength unless you provide your body with a sufficient amount of protein.
Do you know what happens when you try to attach a hundred pounds of concrete to a hundred pounds of high-density polyethylene without using any type of joint compound, any type of glue, any type of adhesive whatsoever?
Nothing.
That is what happens.
You can’t connect these materials unless you have a way to connect them.
Next question…
Inside your body (with all the excess calories you have given them), do you know what happens when all the tiny-little-muscle-building-construction-workers try to build muscle—with all those calories—but with no protein?
Nothing.
That is what happens.
Because you can’t build muscle unless you have protein.
Think of protein as the nails, the glue, the duct tape, the adhesive that is required to build muscle on top of muscle.
If you don’t give your body a sufficient amount of protein, then your tiny-little-muscle-building-construction-workers will take all the excess calories you gave them (which they now cannot use because they don’t have the protein to build with) and they will store these excess calories inside of storage containers.
Makes sense, right?
If your body can’t use all these extra calories, why not store them for future use rather than throwing them in the garbage.
But…
Here’s the problem:
When this happens within our bodies, all those excess calories get stored away as fat, which causes our bellies to get bigger, and our thunder thighs to become flabbier, and our love handles to grow.
We gain weight.
We get fatter.
All because we failed to provide our body with a sufficient amount of protein.
The point of Weirdo Fundamental #3 is this:
You can do everything perfectly right—you can consistently use your muscles, which will tell your body that you need to maintain or gain more strength (Weirdo Fundamental #1), and you can provide your body with the calories necessary to maintain or build muscle (Weirdo Fundamental #2), but if you do not give your body the protein it needs to actually build muscle your body will have no choice but to store those extra calories as fat.
Again, Weirdo Fundamental #3 has now opened the door to more questions, such as:
How much protein do you need to eat? Where should your protein come from? What foods are a good source of protein? Can you eat too much protein? How do you know whether you’re getting enough protein? Will more protein build muscle faster?
Fear not, my fellow weirdo warrior, all these questions and more will be answered within Phase Two of this guide, but, for now, let’s tackle the very last non-negotiable Weirdo Fundamental to Building Muscle & Strength that must be achieved for your body to maintain or gain more strength and muscle.
Weirdo Muscle Fundamental #4:
You must provide your tiny-little-muscle-building-construction-workers with the necessary time to build new muscle and strength.
Look…
I get it.
I’ve been there.
You’ve been exercising for weeks and weeks, but it still seems as though you’re not getting any stronger. Your body looks exactly the same. There’s no new muscle tone or noticeable definition showing. You’re not slinging dumbbells to the moon.
Your clothes fit the same.
Your arms look the same.
Your abs look the same.
No one has uttered one word about how you’re getting bigger or stronger.
Nothing is happening.
All that time in the gym and no results.
All that precious time wasted.
All that energy and sacrifice for nothing.
Naturally you start thinking maybe it’s time to try something else. Maybe the ‘Get Shredded or Get Your Money Back‘ program you saw from an Instagram ad. Or maybe you could get a personal trainer. Or maybe you could try that new workout routine from Men’s Health Magazine. The one ‘The Rock’ does!
If it worked for ‘The Rock’ it coul—
Ehh…
Regardless, what you’ve been doing does not seem to be doing much of anything, and because the thing you’ve been doing does not seem to be working and because you’re in limbo of what to do next, you do nothing.
Sure…every now and again you hit the gym: rowing on the machine, grunting against the leg press—you do some arms, a little abs, and at least when you leave it feels you’ve accomplished something.
But at this point you’re dabbling with fitness rather than being committed to fitness.
And that difference is everything.
It’s the primary difference between being a Normie and being a Weirdo.
It’s the primary difference between being just like everyone else and being different.
It’s the primary difference between accomplishing your goal and failing to accomplish your goal. It’s the primary difference between living within a body that makes you proud and living within a body you grudgingly accept, yet secretly loath.
But again…I get it.
No one wants to keep exercising day after day, week after week and then not see any results. No one wants to exert all that effort only to discover the thing they’re doing flat-out doesn’t work.
There’s a word for someone that keeps doing the thing that doesn’t work.
And that word is called STUPID.
So now the question becomes…
Are you not seeing the results you want because the method or system you’re using doesn’t work, or are you not seeing the results you want because you’re quitting a perfectly good method or system too soon?
Here’s how you find out:
- Are you consistently using the muscles you want to make stronger or bigger? (Weirdo Muscle Fundamental #1)
- Are you consistently eating an equal amount of calories (to maintain muscle) or an excess amount of calories (to build muscle) than your body can burn? (Weirdo Muscle Fundamental #2)
- Are you providing your body with the necessary amount of protein needed to build more muscle and strength? (Weirdo Muscle Fundamental #3)
If you can answer yes to all three of these questions, then just keep going. Do not stop. Do not quit. Do not change things around. Just keep showing up.
If you are following all three of the above ‘Weirdo Fundamentals of Building or Maintaining Muscle’ but not seeing any results, then the only missing ingredient is time.
At this point rather than focusing your attention on the goal of building muscle, or of seeing six pack abs, or of being able to dead-lift your grandma’s old VW Beetle—set your goal in terms of time.
Can you remain fairly consistent with the four ‘Weirdo Fundamentals of Building or Maintaining Muscle’ for 1,000 days?
If so, then you will reach your goal.
With that said, enough with all the theories and fundamentals and blabbering…
Let’s jump to Phase Two of this guide and I’ll show you exactly how I’m putting all this together and building more muscle and strength onto my own body.
Let’s get to it.
Hey Weirdo!
Enough of the jibber jabber. Let’s Build Some Freaking Muscle!
Click the button below to begin:
The Stupid Simple Easy Weirdo Guide To Building Muscle And Strength! (Phase 2)