Gary Matthews' Maximum Weight Gain in Ten Weeks

As a former fitness trainer with the Australian Air Force, Gary Matthews' 20 years of experience in the fitness industry comes to the fore in his new publication. Perfect for both beginner and experienced weight lifters, Maximum Weight Gain covers all the bases.

What's Gary's main focus in Maximum Weight Gain?

It is to address the all-too-common phenomena of overtraining. Overtraining batters the body, making it susceptible to injury, and depresses the immune system, making you prone to sickness.

More importantly, it raises the levels of the natural stress hormone cortisol, a highly catabolic (muscle-wasting) compound. In other words, overtraining may be interfering with your ability to make gains!

According to Gary, working out too much is counterproductive, not only for building muscle, but for staying healthy. And he's not alone... in Pete Sisco's Train Smart (reviewed here), there's a definite focus to moving away from 4-6 training sessions per week to a few sessions every couple of weeks and even less.

There's no doubt that if your muscle-building gains have stalled -- despite rigorous training -- overtraining has something to do with it.

According to Gary...

"The two main components of strength training are the intensity of the exercise and the recovery after the exercise. Infrequent, short, high intensity weight training sessions, followed by the required amount of time to recover and become stronger is what is needed to increase functional muscle size".

In this program, training frequency is a variable. Training effectively means one must recognize the relationship between the increasing intensity of a workout, and the decreasing frequency of those workouts. You've probably found that it's nearly impossible to duplicate the intensity of an amazing workout on the following day. That's because you need time to properly recover first!

Maximum Weight Gain has you train to total failure on the first, and every other workout. This is necessary for the body to adapt to progressive overload, or the gradual increasing of resistance to avoid stagnation. At this point, there is a 4-day break before the next training session. As workout intensity rises, so does the required recovery time, and break periods will increase as the program progresses. Again, this is similar to the strategy recommended in Pete Sisco's Train Smart.

Focus is on quick, intense workouts, with multi-joint or compound movements being the norm. One set per exercise is all that's required (research has shown that volume training provides no additional benefits). Reps are varied between 6-16 over the course of the 10-week cycle. Higher reps will target slow twitch muscle fibers, and lower reps will stimulate fast twitch ones.

The program is fairly simple, and this sort of training is gaining a lot of converts among pros and seasoned bodybuilders.

At this point I should point out that Gary does at no point leave you to your own devices. Each recommended exercise is documented, with photographs and detailed instructions, should you be unfamiliar with the movement. You'll also get an entire meal plan, plenty of nutritional and supplement information, plus a training log, seven day eating plan, and complete nutritional charts.

For those of you who are new to weight training, you'll be given a complete overview of the benefits, as well as a debunking of common myths.

This publication also comes with the bonus file "Weight Gain without a Gym", which outlines the best strategies and exercises to implement if you do not have access to a gym or training equipment.

Aesthetically, Maximum Weight Gain is professionally formatted, easy-to-read Adobe PDF file. Gary's writing style is light and relaxed, and there's nothing intimidating about this publication. Highly recommended.

Learn more about Maximum Weight Gain here!