The 3 Reasons Little Guys Can’t Grow Muscle

1.) no time under tension

2.) no true progressive overload

3.) strong belief in diet myths


Time Under Tension

Watch the tempo of someone who has built piles of muscle and you’ll notice that he’s long learned to embrace the discomfort of effort. Forget about the weight on the bar for a moment and watch how much time his muscles are withstanding the load. Now, watch a toothpick-limbed waif and you see this herky-jerky nonsense. Always. To this day, every guy I’ve ever met who “can’t seem to put on size” I GUARANTEE does not control weight while it moves WITH gravity. The eccentric tempo is 0 seconds. Deadlift drops to the floor. Bench press plummets to the chest. Squat catapults into the ground. There is no embrace of the effort. There is an explosive jerk, albeit weak, followed by nothing. The weight burps up from its place of resting and promptly hurtles itself back into the earth.

To overcome this is going to take A LOT of ego check. Most guys who think they’re 300lb dead lifters should actually be using 110lbs. Guys who think they’re 225lb bench pressers are 65-85lb benchers. The good news is that in 3-6 months you’ll be using your prior weight, except with control and some actual muscle on your frame.
​

Progressive Overload

Skinny guy squats the 45lb bar. In a year he squats 200lbs. NO PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD. Why? Because when he squatted 45lbs, he used his entire range of motion, controlled the weight, and managed it under muscular tension for almost 60 seconds. Now, with 200lbs, he does a 1/8th to 1/16th squat for about 8 seconds looking like an epileptic chicken.

Progressive overload means MORE when comparing apples to apples. You can’t just put more weight on a bar. You can’t just fudge the accomplishment. OBVIOUSLY. Look at your limbs. They haven’t changed because you flee from effort. You run away from discomfort. You REDUCE tension and stress. And that is why you don’t progress.
Check ego. Reference time under tension. Reduce the weight on the bar. And continue progressing the SAME movement in the SAME way. No more short-changing the range of motion and the duration of effort.

This is most critical with regard to lower body training, because this is where the heaviest loads will be managed, therefore promoting growth hormone signaling, which we will cover shortly.


Diet

Every guy or gal who’s come to me complaining about an inability to build muscle is eating about 1/10th of what it took me to gain muscle and then whining about how much they’re eating.

It’s actually stupid simple. If you aren’t growing, you aren’t eating enough. It doesn’t matter what you think is enough AT ALL. All that matters is what it takes. If you can’t grow at 4,500 calories per day, go to 6,000. If you aren’t packing on size at 6, go to 8. Elite endurance athletes LOSE weight eating 10,000 calories per day because their energy expenditure is so high: https://sportsmedicine-open.springeropen.com/.../s40798... . It really doesn’t matter at all what you think is enough. All that matters is what it takes.

The inadequate eating is often paired with superstitions about carbohydrates. Carbohydrates exert almost zero impact on beneficial hormones (with the exception of the insulin increase during or after intense workouts, which still pales in comparison to the effect of being in a hypERcaloric state). Dietary fat inculcates better sex hormone balance. Also, dietary fat is significantly more dense (2.25 times more calories per gram) than carbs. Thus, when looking to fit in a greater energy intake, little guys are barking up precisely the wrong tree with carbs. Moreover, during rest, carbs will not produce any advantageous increase in lean tissue. Only protein and fats will promote the gain people want. Thus, generally, little guys are eating too many carbs WHILE eating insufficient amounts of overall food.


Testosterone Is Not The Problem

There is a heavy fixation on testosterone among many people without adequate education on physiology. You can see this crop up in limiting beliefs about muscle gain and in philosophically-errant arguments about trans athletes.

Testosterone, albeit important, is ONE piece of a very complex puzzle. The person’s conversion rate to other hormones matters a lot more. An overstressed person with incredibly high conversion to estrone, dht, and cortisol will see a WORSENING of fitness if we increase his or her testosterone. What actually matters is RESILIENCE. For a few people, resilience improves with an increase in testosterone. But not for everyone, and certainly not in the same amounts or duration.

And what matters most for growth of athletic capability is on-site (within the muscle itself) IGF expression. That is, this is promoted mostly through training intensely and consistently followed by RECOVERY. I have shocking case studies on this, wherein a very consistent lifelong natural athlete with low testosterone is built and shredded, whereas an obese and weak former athlete and long-time steroid user has high natural levels of testosterone. You read that right. The guy with no drug use has LOW T and great results from consistency. The guy with long time drug use (discontinued years ago) has HIGH T and no results due to lack of consistent discipline.

Testosterone is an incredibly weak substance per molecule actually, while something like estrogen is much more potent. Women have two to forty times more testosterone than estrogen in their bodies. Amounts matter, but only in relationship to other physiological mechanisms. I’ve known super low stress guys who just seem to pack on piles of muscle (obviously, eating and therefore recovery increase). I’ve known super high stress guys who just get worse with even a tiny dose of anything we would expect to be anabolic.

I have older female clients who add 1mg of testosterone cream per week and reverse osteoporosis. I have older male clients who add 75mg of testosterone per week and reverse heart disease, diabetes, prostate growth, and cognitive decline. I have known peers who take 1,000mg per week and get little more than a fluid increase (bloat) with no obvious long term advantage. I have known peers who add 200mg and gradually keep recovering and no longer getting injured. Only a small handful of people seem to be able to tolerate (let alone benefit from) high doses, and even among them I tend to see almost no improvement in athleticism after 2-5 years.


Again, it’s going to come back to the top three:

1.) no time under tension

2.) no true progressive overload

3.) strong belief in diet myths

Without addressing these, it really won’t matter much what other avenues someone explores. I’ve been in the fitness world long enough to see up close the 10-20 year outcomes.

​Some people have receptors built for it. Some people don’t. Some people have great conversion and tolerance. Some people don’t. What we always see is that it comes down to resilience. If stress management doesn’t improve, long term outcomes are not good, because the body won’t be able to handle time under tension, progressive overload, or distribute the increased food appropriately.