How To Bulk Up: Overcoming Poor Genetics, Time, And Money

When you are trying to make serious gains in the gym you are going to go face to face with your biggest mental, physical, and personal challenges throughout your journey – especially if you‘re young.

One of the worst things you can do for your confidence and progress is make excuses on why you aren’t seeing fast results.

Life is all about overcoming obstacles and in this article I’m going to share with you some personal experience on how myself and some guys I’ve coached have overcome not enough time, money, and bad genetics. Let’s get started!

Overcoming “Not Enough Time”

So you don’t have enough time to make gains? That is complete BS! You’re just poor at time management. Even if you’re going to school full time, raising 2 children, and have a full time job all you really need is 3 gym workouts per week at about 20-30 minutes per workout to see great gains.

If all of your workouts are focused on compound exercises you will see rapid lean muscle and strength gains.

The following is my favorite 3-day split that will take 60-90 minutes’ maximum.

For each of these exercises I want you to do 4 total sets pyramiding up to your heavy set.

There will be 2 exercises per workout, and you will be doing 8 total sets per workout. The goal of this split is to focus on increasing your strength and giving you a lot of rest between workouts since you are only going 3 times per week.

Workout 1: Classic Push-Pull Pyramid

Exercise 1: Barbell Bench Press

Exercise 2: Weighted Pull-Ups

Workout 2: Leg Day Pyramid

Exercise 1: Barbell Squat

Exercise 2: Dumbbell Lunges

Workout 3: Anabolic Pyramid

Exercise 1: Barbell Deadlift

Exercise 2: Dumbbell 1 Arm Row

Overcoming “Not Enough Money”

This is a big one for most guys in their teens and early twenties. Not having enough money for the food and supplements you think you need is pretty detrimental to your success – but there are certainly ways around it.

Let me start off by giving you a bit of life advice. Back when I was in college I started freelancing on the internet and picking up random writing jobs and misc. task jobs. It was extremely easy to work a few extra hours per week and make an extra $50-100 per week.

This adds up to $400 per month if you can earn at least $100 per week, and with so many freelance work sites like Upwork and Fiverr you should have no problem getting close to this, plus you will learn how to hustle which is a skill that will benefit you the rest of your life.

Now – you guys should be investing 95 percent of your extra money on bodybuilding superfoods, and NOT supplements except a protein powder as this is actually one of the cheapest sources of protein.

Let’s take a look at the cheapest bodybuilding protein sources:

1. Protein powder
2. Chicken breasts
3. Lean ground turkey
4. Canned tuna
5. Canned salmon
6. Eggs
7. Egg Whites
8. Wild caught cod chunks (I get them for $4.00 per lb. at Trader Joes)
9. Lean ground sirloin

Here is a list of the cheapest “bodybuilding carbs.” Keep in mind carbs are REALLY cheap if you know what you are shopping for.

1. Brown Rice
2. Sweet potatoes
3. Beans
4. Lentils
5. Quinoa
6. Red skin potatoes
7. Jasmine rice
8. Maltodextrin powder
9. Bananas
10. All other Fruits and veggies

Here is my list of “bodybuilding fats” that are relatively cheap:

1. Peanuts or peanut butter
2. Mixed nuts
3. Olive oil
4. Chia seeds
5. Avocado (Wal Mart has them for $1)
6. By product of whole egg consumption

By product of sirloin steak consumption

Overcoming “Bad Genetics”

This one really infuriates me. What exactly are “bad genetics” anyways? I’m sure most of you who are naturally skinny think you have piss-poor genetics but you actually have a lot of good things going for you.

Once you learn how to build muscle mass for your body type(which I’m sure you are if your watching our videos and reading our articles) – you will see that building a chiseled fitness model physique is a lot easier for your body type than a lot of other body types because you don’t store body fat very easily.

The muscle mass that you build will make you look like a monster because you are lean and chiseled. You have to think of every circumstance as a “glass half full” opportunity, and your “skinny guy genetics” is going to be a blessing in disguise.

I remember when I was 142 lbs. and could barely bench press 100 lbs. Since then I’ve packed on 50 lbs. of lean muscle mass while keeping my body fat levels really low and most people assume I’m well over 220 lbs. because I’m so lean.

Stay consistent and stay positive and NEVER blame your genetics on anything. You have huge advantages of a hard gainer – but you won’t ever realize these advantages sitting back and making excuses about your genetics.

As far as I’m aware – there is no genetic body type that makes it impossible for you to build a lot of lean muscle mass.

Your idea of “bad genetics” just means that you have to change up your workout routines a little more often, do a few more compound exercises, and eat a few more calories to compensate for your fast metabolism.

This is far from torture and in my opinion pretty awesome because you can scarf down an entire box of Fruity pebbles post workout and not get fat unlike 95 percent of the population!