Gaining 35lbs naturally takes quite a while…unless you’re willing to eat 800g of carbs and train for 3 hours daily. Alex Hormozi decided to try it out for himself and the results are astounding.

What would happen if your family was kidnapped and someone told you that in order to see them again you would have to gain as much muscle as humanly possible in 6 weeks?

What would you do?

You wouldn’t just train for an hour 3 or 4 times a week, would you?

Me neither.

I mean even with all the articles and splits in muscle mags, have you ever wondered what would happen if you trained all day as a natural athlete and did everything right?

What could you accomplish if your nutrition was on point, you slept like a baby, trained like an animal, and emotionally bought into the program?

Better keep reading if you want to find out…

Gearless Gains

I ran the experiment on myself and 3 other fellow personal trainees who were willing to subject their bodies to 6 weeks of brutality.

Personally, I gained 35lbs in those 6 weeks, saw fantastic hypertrophic gains, and hit lifetime personal records (PRs) without practicing the lifts specifically.

Maybe I’m just a genetic freak?

…Perhaps. But that wouldn’t explain how the other three trainees also gained 22lbs, 26lbs, and 16lbs in the same time period following the exact same protocol.

So what did we do to get such great GAINZ?

You better get your mind right if you’re planning to follow in our footsteps.

Overtraining? Never Heard of it…

Essentially, everything we did flies in the face of common practice.

We trained the same lifts with incredibly high volume almost every day of the week, and we forced our bodies to deal with it. 

I’m not going to lie, the first 10 days of this program were soul wrenching. I felt hungover most mornings and my gastrointestinal system was taxed to its limit (more on the diet aspect shortly).

But as you might have guessed, our bodies were growing before our very eyes.

Alex Hormozi’s Training Split

Here is how the 6 week program is set up:

• 3 days on, 1 day off for the entire 42 day training cycle.  
• Estimated training session duration: 3 hours.

Programming Notes:

• Each new 3 day cycle, barbell bench is increased by 5-10lbs on day 1 and leg press is increased by 50lbs (Two 25lb plates). 
• Don’t lock out on the leg press, keep tension on the quads primarily throughout the movement.
• Incline DB flys can be substituted with incline stretch pushups off boxes.
• Keep the lat pulldowns moderate to light, the goal is more contraction oriented than weight related. 
• For part 2 of each day you should be primarily focused on pristine technique and forget about the weight. We’re primarily trying to focus on overloading the metabolic systems for hypertrophic adaptations. In other words, you should be primarily focused on chasing muscular fatigue and the pump. 

Programming Notes:

• Back squat are only performed every other 3 day training cycle (i.e. once a week).
• Mix up the set and rep combinations on quad extensions. We basically destroyed ourselves ala Tom Platz style.
• Utilize the same weight on barbell bench from day 1.
• Increase the leg press by 25lbs compared to day 1. 
• We utilized a minimum of 315 on shrugs which necessitated the use of straps due to the high rep scheme.

Programming Notes:

• A1/A2 denote supersets meaning the exercises should be completed nonstop, back to back for the allotted time period.
• EDT = Escalated Density Training
• Arm work exercise selection was rotated every 4 weeks but the concept remained the same – 15 minutes of EDT training.
• Utilize the same weight on barbell bench from day 1.
• Utilize the same weight on leg press from day 1.
• Cycle in banded lateral raises every 3rd shoulder workout for variety and growth stimulus.
• Calf work can be cycled with bodyweight calf raises (1 set of 80 reps – add 20 reps per session)

Your Stomach Isn’t Ready for This, Trust Me

If you’re interested in the study which sparked the idea for the nutritional side of this template, you can read about the study here. 

These are the exact macros I followed:

• 800g Carbs
• 300g Protein
• 50g Fat

You may need to drop the carbs to 600 depending on your size as some of the other trainees weren’t able to stomach 800 grams of carbs. Don’t fear carbs, they make you grow.

Also remember, you’re working out for roughly 3 hours per day, 6 days per week, you need the energy.

Alex Hormozi’s Diet and Nutrition

I basically ate the same thing every day:

Few things to note regarding my nutrition:

1. The amount of cereal I got down each day was determine by when I started gagging. However, I always made up for it later in the day.
2. Side note: no, I’m not sponsored by mini wheats. But after this, I should be. 
3. My daily fat intake came from the serving of sour cream in my chipotle bowl.

Supplementing For Size

There was no specific reasoning for using dextrose post workout as I’m well aware that the literature doesn’t show any additional hypertrophic benefits from extremely high dosages of carbs within the post workout period. However, at any point in time, you’re really just trying to slam as many carbs as possible for simplicity’s sake. 

Cool But What Actually Happened?

Before I get into the actual results from my crazy n=1 experiment, there’s a few things that I should note in general:

• I’m always had an easy time putting on mass and weight in general when it comes to training. 
• My lifetime high in bodyweight was 222 at one point but I had lost much of that due to work demands.
• I was returning from a layoff from training when I decided to complete these 6 weeks of insanity (i.e. muscle memory played a significant role).
• I’ve pulled 500 in my deadlift but we didn’t train or test it during this period.
• My squat increased drastically despite zero heavy squat training, only 3×20@60%.
• I hadn’t squatted anything heavier than 315 in a while due to a knee injury. However, my lifetime PR is 405×9 after a major peaking cycle.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

As you can see, these are pretty crazy before/after pictures. Ones that will be touted as steroid induced, photo shopped, or any other mechanism that internet trolls want to suggest. But it was real, it was natty, and it was awesome. I gained back most of the weight I had lost and then some.

Now, here’s where things get really cool when we looked at the results from the other trainers and the study overall:

• I gained the most weight out of everyone even though everyone followed the same protocol – genetics matter.
• One trainer lost 3% body fat while doing this, which goes to show how much activity you can accumulate during 3 hours sessions and being on your feet working all day.
• ALL of us gained a ton of muscle and strength.
• All trainers put at least 40lbs on their bench press.
• Everyone hit all-time PRs for Bench, Squat, & Deadlift by the end of the cycle in spite of the fact that we weren’t training heavy deadlifts or squats directly.
• Leg Presses will build up your squatting ability without really squatting (I don’t consider 3 sets with 60% a lot of squatting), which is very out-of-fashion in the strength world to say. Leg Pressing works to build stronger legs.
• 800g carbs/day = 4-5 bowel movements/day, regular night and day sweats (male menopause), and pretty regular feelings of nausea from fullness. This was truly force feeding.

Most won’t believe me and I’m sure many will say no one can recover from all this volume naturally but it’s obvious that you can so you need to change your mindset about what you think is possible. I am also not saying this is sustainable, I am just saying it worked for the brief 6 week stint.

This was eye-opening to me because it just shows how capable the human body is at adapting to new stressors. I went from one 60 minute workout per week to 6 workouts a week for 3 hours a day basically overnight. I was at such low volume because I had just opened a second gym and that took up most of my free time.

However, it tends to reinforce many of the beliefs I already had about training – most of the growth in my life has not happened over long periods of time, but in short bursts followed by long periods of maintenance. Not to mention my stance on hypertrophy: if you want to train something to grow, train it hard, almost every day, and I promise it will grow. Some people may respond better than others, but at the end of the day, you’ll respond more than you would have with less volume.

Silencing the Critics

I originally formulated this programming after coming across the following conclusion: if you’re stuck in the gym and haven’t seen any gains in a long time, maybe you aren’t at your genetic potential, maybe you’re just not trying hard enough.

I thought I was at my genetic potential at 170@6% body fat which is where I stayed for almost 3 years barely improving on my lifts. I thought that was it, and it would be a couple pounds a year from there on out.

I was okay with it, I just thought that that was life. I thought I had pretty good genetics and good work ethic, but nothing crazy. I had started at 132, so I figured I had really milked out all gainz that my frame could carry.

But I was wrong, I was so incredibly wrong. And as soon as I shifted my view of “acceptable” volume and my genetic potential, I began to grow, and grow fast. People now call me a genetic freak.

I genuinely believe it’s all in your mind. There have been some studies conducted on athletes who are told they’re being given a new legal steroid and triple their gains in weeks depsite the fact they were merely taking a placebo sugar pill. Needless to say, the power of belief is huge.

Now, whenever I start any program, I tell myself I am going to respond to this better than anyone because I have superhuman genetics. My genetics are crazy, and you know what happens, I do gain more. But that never used to happen. I got realistic results, and mostly, because I expected realistic results.

Expect great things, and you will see what you are capable of. Run the program 6 days a week and just try to eat 800g of carbs daily and you’ll soon see just how much of a challenge it is. You’ll be amazed the progress you can make if you actually decide to give it your all and make no exceptions.