Dennis James’ 10 Tips for Building a Massive Physique

Commit to Two Rules

Numerous factors can hold you back from gaining lean mass—lack of consistency in your training efforts, relying on unhealthy foods, even stress—but James points to a couple of culprits as the most common causes. “No. 1, make sure you’re eating enough, and No. 2, train heavy,” he says. “That’s where I always start off with anyone who is looking to gain size.”

Give Everybody Part Its Due

Bodybuilders often fold a couple of muscle groups into one workout—chest and triceps, back and shoulders—but that means you’ll never be able to hit the latter one fresh and full of energy. “I recommend just one body part a day,” James says. “That’s back, legs, shoulders, chest, and arms, doing each of them just once a week.” If your legs need the added attention, consider breaking them up into a quadriceps and a hamstrings day.

Cycle Your Weight Load

While James did say “train heavy,” that doesn’t mean indiscriminately. He often has his clients use a two-week cycle, using four-to-six-rep working sets for two weeks while pushing toward failure, then two weeks of eight-to-12-rep sets. “In those first two weeks, if you can do more than six reps in a set, you need to increase the weight,” he says. “The higher-rep weeks, I call those quality training. That’s where you’re really focused on form and squeezing the muscle hard during every lift.” Science backs James’ low-rep, high-intensity suggestion—one such study in Physiological Reports in August 2015 tested groups of men with rep ranges of 10 to 12 versus three to five, discovering that the latter group saw significantly greater 1RM bench-press strength and arm-mass gains after eight weeks.

Load Up the Bread and Butter

These days, you have plenty of effective exercises to choose from in the weight room, but there are certain moves no serious bodybuilder should ever go without. “I call these the bread-and-butter exercises, ones that should always be a part of a training program,” James says. “For me, it’s incline barbell presses for chest, lat pulldowns and barbell rows for back, squats for legs, seated presses for shoulders, French presses for triceps, and barbell curls for bi’s.”

Embrace Machines

“Back in the day, pro bodybuilders would stick mostly with free weights, but that’s because they were the best tools we had,” James says. “Nowadays, the machines they’re making are so good you can incorporate them without feeling like you’re losing any benefits. You don’t need to avoid them to try and be ‘old school’—if you don’t take advantage of machines, you’re just being stupid.”

Watch the Clock

It’s easy to get overzealous when you’re chasing a goal, but too much time in the gym can be counterproductive. “A great workout shouldn’t be any less than 45 minutes and no longer than an hour,” James says. If you’re keeping your rest periods one to two minutes long and moving from exercise to exercise with purpose, that’s plenty of time to break down a muscle group adequately and set it up for recovery and growth.

Follow a Straightforward Nutrition Plan

In getting ready for his last contest, the 2012 Masters Olympia, where he finished third, James made sure his approach to food was simple. “I ate a clean six meals daily, and my protein sources were always chicken, steak, egg whites, some fish, and protein powders,” he recalls. “I’d eat potatoes sometimes for carbs, but I’m a rice man. I’m also not big on vegetables, but whatever’s green I’d include asparagus, broccoli, green beans, and spinach.”

Then, James would wash it all down with a gallon or so of water, and that was it—nothing fancy or out of the ordinary. Sticking to such basics also works just as well for weight gain.

Dial Back Your Protein

“I used to eat a lot of protein, three to five grams per pound of body weight per day,” James says. “But now we know that’s not necessary. I used to eat 12 to 15 ounces of meat with each meal; now I have my clients do no more than eight ounces per meal.

Two grams of protein per pound of body weight per day is more than enough for you to make solid gains.” Pro bodybuilders have tended to go well above recommended norms when it comes to protein, but some researchers have been slowly coming around to higher intakes—for instance, in 2017, the International Society of Sports Nutrition published a position statement paper on protein consumption that supported up to 1.4 grams per pound of body weight daily for regular exercisers.

Expand Your Carb Options

Brown rice (45g of carbs per cup) and potatoes (37g of carbs per medium-size white potato) are commonly suggested carb sources for bodybuilding, but they’re not necessarily the easiest foods to load up on, especially for hardgainers having trouble getting enough daily calories. “I put a lot of people on pasta because it’s easier to swallow,” James says. “It’s not good for cutting [at 68g of carbs per cup], but in the off-season it’s OK.”

Reflect On Your Progress

While you should regularly weigh yourself and keep written track of your results—weekly at the very least—the mirror is a better gauge of your progress. “A scale just tells you how heavy you are, it doesn’t tell you how much fat you’re carrying,” James says. “If you’re gaining a lot of fat, you’re doing something wrong. In my view, a bodybuilder should look like a bodybuilder in season and out of season. Even when you’re trying to put on muscle, you still want to see your abs all year long.”