Hardgainer
Magazine — How
Stuart McRobert
Changed Strength
Training
August 1989 — the same summer Batman broke box office records, a small magazine launched that changed how serious trainees thought about building strength
The summer of 1989 belonged to Batman at the box office. While cinema queues stretched around the block, a publication with considerably less marketing budget quietly opened for business — and for the community of trainees it was aimed at, its arrival was considerably more significant than any blockbuster.
Hardgainer magazine launched in August 1989. It ran for over a decade and its philosophy is as relevant now as it was then.
Stuart McRobert's vision —
the magazine mainstream bodybuilding needed but refused to publish.
Stuart McRobert had a specific audience in mind — the overwhelming majority of trainees who followed mainstream bodybuilding programmes and made little or no progress. These were the hard gainers: people with ordinary genetics, ordinary recovery capacity, and ordinary lives outside the gym, for whom the high-volume programmes promoted in commercial bodybuilding magazines were not merely ineffective but actively counterproductive.
The mainstream bodybuilding press of the late 1980s was dominated by programmes designed for — and by — genetically exceptional trainees and, increasingly, chemically assisted ones. The advice was written as though all trainees shared the same capacity for volume, frequency, and recovery. They did not. Hardgainer magazine existed to say so plainly, and to provide a practical alternative.
The articles that fill the Hardgainer pages are as relevant today as they have ever been. The mainstream bodybuilding press has changed its format but not its underlying assumptions. The hard gainer's situation — and the training approach that addresses it — has not changed at all.
Three voices that gave Hardgainer
its authority and its readership.
McRobert built Hardgainer's authority by attracting coaches and practitioners who shared his back-to-basics philosophy — people with decades of practical experience and no financial interest in the supplement industry or the mainstream press. Three names in particular gave the magazine its credibility with serious trainees.
Three practitioners whose combined experience spanned decades of real-world coaching.
- Brooks Kubik Author of Dinosaur Training — one of the most influential back-to-basics strength training books ever published. Kubik's emphasis on heavy compound work, old-fashioned implements, and genuine effort without complexity aligned precisely with Hardgainer's philosophy.
- Dr Ken Leistner Chiropractor, powerlifter, and strength coach with decades of experience training real people in real gyms. Leistner's no-nonsense approach to high-intensity, low-volume training was a consistent counterweight to the volume-obsessed mainstream.
- Bob Whelan Washington DC-based strength coach and a consistent voice for abbreviated, hard-work training principles. Whelan's practical coaching experience brought real-world application to the philosophical framework McRobert had established.
The Hardgainer philosophy — abbreviated compound training, adequate recovery, progressive loading — is the same foundation the Minimum Effective Strength System is built on. McRobert, Kubik, Leistner, and Whelan were making the same argument in 1989 that the evidence continues to support today.
What Hardgainer stood for —
and what it stood against.
Get bigger by getting stronger. Abbreviated programmes. Compound movements. Progressive loading.
The Hardgainer approach rested on a simple foundation — the most effective path to muscular development for the natural, genetically average trainee is progressive strength on a small number of compound movements with adequate recovery between sessions. This was not a novel insight in 1989. What made Hardgainer significant was its willingness to say it clearly and repeatedly, in the face of a mainstream press that promoted the opposite. The magazine's mission was to expose the gap between what was sold to ordinary trainees and what actually worked for them — and to provide the practical alternative. That mission remains relevant in an era when the internet has replaced the newsstand but the same misleading content continues to circulate in different formats.
McRobert eventually compiled his work into book form — most notably in Brawn and its successors — and has since made the Hardgainer back catalogue available in digital format. For any trainee interested in the history of back-to-basics strength training, the original magazine articles remain as direct and practical as they were when first published. The philosophy has not dated because the physiology it is based on has not changed.
What the Hardgainer philosophy produced
for a 60-year-old novice in one year.
The most direct demonstration of what the Hardgainer approach produces in practice is not a theoretical argument — it is a specific training result from a specific person who applied the principles at an age when most people have stopped expecting progress.
60 years old. Complete novice. One year of abbreviated training.
- Total bodyweight gained 40 lbs
- Deadlift at one-year anniversary 285 lbs
- Overhead press at one-year 150 lbs
- Previous shoulder problems Resolved
- Age when he began 60
Pat Leraris began as a complete novice at 60 years old and applied the Hardgainer philosophy consistently for one year. The results — 40 pounds of bodyweight gained, a 285-pound deadlift, a 150-pound overhead press, and the resolution of shoulder problems that had been present before training — are the practical answer to the question of whether the approach works for ordinary people of ordinary age. For the full account, see the basic weight lifting page.
Hardgainer magazine made the case in 1989. The evidence has continued to accumulate in the same direction ever since. The Minimum Effective Strength System is the current expression of the same philosophy — abbreviated, compound, progressive, and built for the ordinary trainee who wants genuine results.